Eating Italy: A Chef's Culinary Adventure (2 page)

Through the years we kept in touch from afar. I visited him during my research trips, and it was clear that he had gone “native” and was fully immersed, soaking up everything he could. I wasn’t the least bit surprised. “You get out of life what you put into it.” It’s such a simple adage, but it’s the very
modo
—the manner—in which Jeff lives his life.

In early 2007, we opened Osteria in Philadelphia with Jeff at the helm. Another person, given the same opportunities that Jeff had would not have achieved the same level of success. But Jeff excelled in Italy and at Osteria because he puts absolutely everything he has into absolutely everything he does. It’s all in, all of the time.

That’s why I’m so excited about
Eating Italy.
This book is a true, complete journal of Jeff’s travels, experiences and adventures in Italy. Reading it makes you feel as if you are right there with him. . . discovering, tasting, and cooking. A dish always tastes better when you hear the story behind it. From Venice to Florence and Piedmont to Lombardia, Jeff leaves no stone unturned when sharing the moments that led to all of these beautiful recipes.

Eating Italy
also illustrates how the ambition that first drew me to Jeff continues to grow and evolve. Jeff doesn’t simply cook Italian food. He lives it. If this book is anything, it’s evidence of that. But it’s much more. It’s the impassioned work of a chef who has lived more than most and who still has a great deal to share with us. I, for one, am thrilled to be along for the ride.

—MARC VETRI

INTRODUCTION:

AT FIRST I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT ITALIAN FOOD

Restless. Ambitious. Headstrong. That was me as a teenager. I wasn’t planning on sticking around Nashua, New Hampshire, for too long. At age thirteen, I got my first job at Kinsley House of Pizza, a Greek pizza place around the corner from my house. They started me out folding pizza boxes, and before long I was slicing tomatoes. Then I asked if I could make the dough. By the time I was a high school sophomore, I was cooking all the pizzas.

My high school had a two-year culinary program, and I jumped on it for junior and senior year. Cooking seemed like good honest work, and I had a knack for it. I saw it as my ticket out of town to discover new places, new people, and new ideas. At sixteen, I started working at the Hilltop Steak House and Butcher Shop, a chain restaurant in the Northeast. A year later, they made me kitchen manager of the place. We did a thousand covers a day, and with that kind of volume, I really learned how to work a kitchen.

Going to culinary school seemed like the next logical thing to do. I enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America and graduated in 1998. For my externship, I went as far away as possible: Aspen, Colorado at the Caribou Club. Within a year, the chef, Miles Angelo, offered me a job as sous chef. I learned everything I could in his kitchen, paid attention, and said, “Yes, Chef,” more times than I can remember. A few years later, I became executive sous chef and stayed on for four years.

As a young professional, I’d made good progress in my career. But, as usual, it wasn’t enough for me. I was still restless. We cooked mostly American, Southwestern, and Asian food at Caribou. I wanted to learn more. I heard that Marc Vetri was looking for a sous chef, so I flew to Philadelphia to apprentice with him. At that point, Italian food wasn’t really part of my repertoire. Sure, I made pizzas at Kinsley House as a teenager, but that was barely Italian food. The differences between the two restaurants were like night and day. Vetri’s kitchen was half the size of Kinsley’s, but the food we turned out in that tiny space was on another level entirely. We made pasta, bread, and sausage in-house, and cut fish and meat to order. Everything was prepared from scratch. By hand. With pristine ingredients. That spring, I took on the sous chef job at Vetri and put my nose to the grindstone. I made it a point to come in early every day to learn the fundamentals of Italian cooking. Once a week, I took wine classes with Marc’s partner and wine expert, Jeff Benjamin.

After a few months, what continued to amaze me about Italian cuisine was its stubborn simplicity. We used a minimum of ingredients. The flavors were uncomplicated. The plating was spare. If you didn’t execute everything to perfection, you could easily screw it up. Compared to all my other training, learning to cook Italian food was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, searching for a tiny sliver of culinary perfection buried deep in a mountain of madness. It was just the kind of focus I needed in my career.

Marc and Jeff noticed how I took to the cuisine, and how inspired I got. That spring, they brought me to Vin Italy, an international wine expo held annually in Verona. Every Italian wine you could imagine was there, and you could sample them all. The food was like nothing I’d ever tasted—heaps of locally made salumi and cheese—all of it artisanal, beautiful, and incredibly delicious. Each day of eating, drinking, sampling, and talking got me more and more excited.

When we arrived back home, I knew what I had to do. I had to pack up my life, once again, and move to Italy. A window had opened up inside me. During that trip, I felt a real connection to Italian food and wine but even more so to Italian people and culture. I can’t fully explain it. . . the Italian lifestyle was just so different from what I was used to
in America. It was a breath of fresh air, and I wanted more.

I’ve never been afraid to stick my nose into things. Sometimes you just have to put yourself out there and take risks. I had no idea if living in Italy would lead to anything good, but I knew I had to go. I took on a second job, and scrimped and saved for months. I scrounged up enough money to last me one year.

This book tells the story of what happened next. I’d planned to stay a year and ended up staying for three. I hoped to find a paying job and ended up finding my wife. I fell head-over-heels in love not only with a woman but also with her family, her cuisine, and her culture. Each chapter takes you into the Italian towns and villages that shaped me the most, like Alme, where I trained with Italy’s youngest Michelin-starred chef; Cinque Terre, where Claudia and I spent our first romantic getaway; Leffe, where I snagged my first executive chef position; and Trescore Balneario, where Claudia and I got married just before we opened Osteria in Philadelphia. The recipes I learned and the dishes I created along the way are all here. And there’s plenty of detail about restaurants, wineries, bars, markets, and inns all over Italy, so you can experience the places where I cut my teeth and discovered the world’s most welcoming cuisine.

After those first few years in Italy, I came back a different person. I was a better chef for sure, but more important, I had a sense of purpose. My ambition wasn’t blind anymore. I found love in my work and in my life. I realized that good cooking is about putting your heart and soul on a plate. It doesn’t matter whether you cook at home or in a restaurant kitchen. Cooking has to be something that you enjoy and feel in your body. If it’s not, you taste it right away in the food.

That’s the Italian way of cooking that I try to convey in these pages. I hope the stories and recipes here help you find that kind of joy in your own cooking—no matter what style of cuisine you prefer.

I ARRIVED AT THE MANGILI BUTCHER SHOP AT FOUR IN THE MORNING IN EARLY 2003. I’D VISITED ITALY A FEW TIMES BEFORE, BUT THIS TIME I SAVED UP ENOUGH MONEY TO STAY AND WORK FOR A YEAR. SOME FRIENDS SET ME UP TO WORK UNPAID AT A SMALL, FAMILY-OWNED BUTCHER SHOP IN PALADINA, A TINY TOWN JUST NORTHWEST OF BERGAMO.

When I got there, a line of calves stood near the back door, and the holding area stank of cow shit. I had some butchering experience but couldn’t speak Italian. The Mangili family didn’t care. There was work to do. An old man with salt-and-pepper hair said something to me in Italian, handed me a small knife, and led me to the kill floor. His knife was a giant medieval-looking ax with a long wooden handle and curved blades on each side. The kill floor was made of terra-cotta tile that sloped to the center to drain the blood. A veal calf had just been shot and was hanging upside down on a hook. The old man lifted his axe and cut the head clear off the animal. One perfect swipe! He hung up the head and we started skinning the calf together.

For hours, I stood with the axe man at a big white table in the back room as he showed me how to butcher various cuts of veal, such as shank, breast, and shoulder. Before I knew it, the axe man was motioning for me to stop. It was lunchtime. They closed the butcher shop and we all went upstairs to eat. Everyone started talking, and I learned that the axe man was Maurizio, a brother-in-law in the Mangili family. The two main owners were Oliviero and Francesco Mangili. One of their daughters, Alexandria, worked the front counter with the customers. Even though I was a complete stranger—and an American—no one was nervous about having me in the house. They completely opened their doors to me. I had a dictionary in my back pocket and pieced together some of what they were telling me. Oliviero and Francesco’s grandfather started the butcher shop two generations ago. There were a couple of other butchers in Paladina, but the Mangilis were the only ones that raised their own cattle on their own farm. The veal calves came in on Wednesdays. The steers on Thursdays. Pigs were Mondays. Goats and lambs, Tuesdays.