MARIANI’S

  March 29, 2004                                                                      NEWSLETTER

                                                                        Menu cover from Harry's Bar in Florence, 1977
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This newsletter is also available on the very comprehensive food site www.sautewednesday.com
which has dozens of other links to food articles from around the world, as well as at  The Grumpy Gourmet at http://www.grumpygourmetusa.com/links.html

 -Readers trying to reach me through e-mail cannot do so by hitting REPLY to this newsletter. Instead, write to me directly at johnmariani@prodigy.net .   

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Cover Story:  Tuscany's Amiata by Lucy Gordan

The All-American Pizza by John Mariani

New York Corner: Restaurant Daniel by John Mariani

Quick Bites

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AMIATA:  TUSCANY'S DELECTABLE MOUNTAIN 

by Lucy Gordan

      Although Tuscany is certainly one of Italy's most popular tourist destinations,  Mount Amiata remains off the beaten path.   In the provinces of Grosseto and Siena, this extinct volcano, 1,738 meters at its summit, with enough geothermal activity to heat the baths of little-known but bijoux spas at Bagno Vignoni and Bagni San Filippo, is a treasure of unspoiled nature, down-to-earth,  hospitable people, and genuine traditional cuisine like nonna used to cook. 
    The food festival called "Amiata a Tavola" is held for five weekends in May and June, and a sixth in November, when everyone may participate in local olive oil- and wine-tastings, watch local craftsmen make ceramics, wood-carvings, and wrought-iron, visit the coal mines (once the area's principal industry), and feast on local specialties.  Sixty-seven restaurants joined in last year’s contest to produce the best local dish made with local ingredients and served with a local wine, with  First Prize going to the restaurant La Pieve di Semproniano in Semproniano for tortelli di baccalà with a leek sauce;  Second to "Il Podere dei Nobili," in the nature reserve Monte Amiata, for a traditional local sweet called "Ciaramito", made with chestnut flour, raisins, and pine-nuts; and Third to Piccolo Borgo in Semproniano for the local specialty acquacotta, a bread and egg peasant soup. 
    Starting with the Epiphany, folkloric festivals and celebrations fill up the calendar on Mount Amiata.  The most dramatic takes place on November 24 as part of the grand finale of Amiata a Tavola.  A fertility rite, it's called "La Focarazza a Santa Caterina" and takes place in this tiny frazione just outside Roccalbegna.  At sunset a huge "haystack" made of heather is built at the top of a hill just outside town.  When it's completely dark out, the stack is blessed by the priest, then set on fire.  When the blaze is over, all the bachelors from Santa Caterina go into action, a genuine-tug-of-war, trying to grab and drag the still-smoldering stollo (the stack's main pole, a trunk of Turkey oak) down the steep hill to their contrada or neighborhood, where it's triumphantly displayed for several days.  Then it's burned and its ashes scattered over the fields in hopes of a good harvest in the future..
      Besides Amiata a Tavola, this magical mountain offers something for every taste.  Culture-vultures will enjoy Amiata's ring of  quaint hill towns,  among them Arcidosso (home of the mystical 19th-century prophet Davide Lazzaretti and his sect); Castel del Piano (famous for its paintings by the Nasini dynasty); Santa Fiora and Piancastagnaio (with Jewish ghettoes dating to 1555); Roccalbenga (for its bread and castle); Radicofani for its Carolingian castle (right) and local Robin Hood, Ghino di Tacco, who, mentioned in both Dante's Divine Comedy and Boccaccio's Decameron, robbed medieval pilgrims going to Rome along the Francigen Way.  No less evocative are the region's medieval churches, the most splendid of which are the Romanesque abbazie  of The Holy Redeemer at Abbadia di San Salvatore and of St. Antimo, not far from Seggiano.

No matter what the season, don't fail to visit the Daniel Spoerri Sculpture Garden near Seggiano (left), founded here by the Rumanian-born Swiss emigré sculptor famous for his "Eat Art" movement and as chef-owner of "Galerie J" in Paris, and "Spoerri" and "Eat Art" in Düsseldorf, all famous for his "Cannibal Supper."   The garden's many humorous works-of-art are cleverly placed in a huge area and many have a eno-gastronomical theme:  "The Throne of St. Grappa", "Drunk Demi-Johns", "Eternal Breakfast", "Eternal Lunch", "The Cup", "The Drip-Moulding of Meat-Grinders", and "Bibendum" to name a few.   In other words, "The Garden of Eatin'"!     
    Speaking of vultures, Mount Amiata's several nature reserves, with their well-marked trails for trekkers and hikers, are the undisturbed habitats of  birds of prey like  sparrow hawk, goshawk, buzzard, short-toed eagle, harrier, and hobby, as well as  wild boar, porcupine, and roe deer.  Monte Labbro counts 117 species of birds, 53 of mammals, 13 of reptiles, and 10 of amphibians.  In addition giving refuge to most of Monte Amiata's fauna plus the skunk, wildcat and otter.  Rocconi and Pescinello, both owned by the WWF, are bird-watchers' paradises where Egyptian vultures, harrier eagles, hobbies, lanners, sparrow-hawks, kite, kingfishers, and woodpeckers are easy to sight. 
    Botanists will find beech, chestnuts, firs, cork, numerous species of oak, Turk's cap, St. John's lily, deadly nightshade, Solomon's seal, three-quarters of the many species of wild orchids found in Italy, and a plethora of wild herbs and berries used abundantly in local dishes--the cuisine of the poor.
     Besides trekking, hiking  along he "Chestnut Trail" alone has six well-marked branches, and bird-watching, sport enthusiasts can enjoy horseback riding, mountain-biking, speleology in the grottoes of Sassocolato or di Bacchea near Monte Penna, and all snow-sports, with ski-lifts at Prato della Contessa, Prato delle Macinaie, la Marsiliana, and Rifugio Cantore.
  When it comes to wine, slopes near the hilltown of Seggiano produce excellent Tuscan wines.  You will see yellow signs to the "Strada del Vino di Montecucco," and you can sample the wine at the Castle of Pontentino, almost a village in itself and recently  restored by wine-producer Charlotte Bolston Greene, niece of the writer Graham Greene.   
    Amiata's slopes are covered with olive and chestnut groves, the beech woods are  full of wild mushrooms and white truffles at the right season, not to mention  deer, wild boar, hare, and pheasant, throughout the year.  Local pecorino cheese made with sheep's milk, if not  as well known as its namesakes in Sardinia and Abruzzo, is delicious, as are products made with "cinta senese," a small local black pig with a white stripe.   

Accommodations and Restaurants in the area:  Stabilimento Termale di Bagno Vignoni, Piazza del Moretto 32,  Bagno Vignoni; 577-887365; www.bagnovignoniterme@tin.it; Terme San Filippo, Bagni San Filippo, 53020 Bagni San Filippo 577-872982;  www.termesanfilippo.it.; Locanda La Pieve, Via della Società Operaia 3; 564-987252; www.altramaremma.it.;  Ristorante Podere dei Nobili, Parco Faunistico dell'Amiata, 58031 Arcidosso; 564-966867; Il Piccolo Borgo, Piazza Fazio Cacciaconti, Rocchette di Fazio, Semproniano ; 564-986173 ;  Hotel Contessa, Località Prato della Contessa, 564-959000;  For a calendar of local festivals, and the program of Amiata a Tavola 2004:  visit www.amiataturismo.it

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THE ALL-AMERICAN PIZZA by John Mariani

It would be the height of folly to declare pizza to be the quintessential Italian food-- especially since few Italians outside of Naples, where it was conceived, ever laid eyes on one until well after World War II.  It is, however, perfectly reasonable to declare pizza the quintessential American fast food. Indeed, Pizza Hut, which was bought out by PepsiCo in 1977, today ranks fourth among the Top 300  food service operations in the U.S.
    It seems doubly ironic that nearly all of America’s pizza chains originated in the Midwest, where Italian immigrant communities are still rare, and most were begun by entrepreneurs of non-Italian background: Frank and Daniel Cranny started Pizza Hut in Wichita, Kansas; Tom Monaghan debuted Domino’s out of  Ypsilanti, Michigan;  Papa John’s is out of Louisville; Chuck E. Cheese out of Irving, Texas,  Little Caesar’s out of Detroit, and Godfather’s Pizza out of Omaha.
   That none of these produced pizzas even vaguely resembling the simple goodness of the Neapolitan         original demonstrated a complete disregard of Italian culinary traditions while at the same time transforming the pizza into American fast food--topped with everything from hamburger meat to avocado slices and chili.  Little Caesar’s and Godfather’s even manifest a troubling willingness to tie pizza to the appalling stereotypes of Italian gangsters.  Sadder still is the fact that the founder of Godfather’s is an African-American named Herbert Cain, who, one assumes, would be rightfully indignant had anyone named an African-American soul    food restaurant Rufus’s, Amos and Andy's, or Sambo’s--this last the name of a now defunct chain ironically co-founded as a pancake house by an Italian-American in Santa Barbara, California) accused as being “racist.” the California Pizza chain (itself once owned by PepsiCo).  Thick-crusted, skillet-cooked “Chicago-style pizza” was invented by that city’s Pizzeria Uno restaurant, Thanks to Wolfgang Puck, the “California gourmet pizza” was born in the 1980s, which led in turn to the opening of the national chain called California Pizza Kitchen.
      While no food item is immune to change and evolution, and while the  Neapolitan pizza alla Margherita     would never have been created had American tomatoes not taken firm root in Neapolitan soil, it is typical of  the American food industry to take something simple, light, nourishing and regional and it make it bigger, gloppier, heavier, and leaden with fat.  As John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle state in their book Fast Food (John Hopkins University Press, 1999), “So completely altered as final product as well as sense of place did pizza become through automobile convenience that, despite nominal continuity with the past, it largely divided from the past. In the reformation, pizza sustained broad currents of modern American culture.”

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NEW YORK CORNER
by John Mariani

RESTAURANT DANIEL 60 East 65th Street; 212-288-0033; www.danielnyc.com

    Few among his professional colleagues would disagree that Daniel Boulud is one of the best, most influential, and hardest-working chefs at his level of deluxe French cuisine.  He proved it when he was chef at Le Cirque, and, for the past eleven years, at his namesake restaurant (which, in its second incarnation, happens to be on the former premises of the old Le Cirque).  There was never any doubt that Restaurant Daniel (afterwards "RD") would aim for the very highest tiers of haute cuisine and deluxe dining, and though it took a year or two to get the lighting right in what is a kind of Venetian fantasy decor, the place is a splendid example of high posh. 
    You enter from East 65th Street and to your right is a very elegant  private dining room and a chic bar-lounge (above). Before you stretches a hall leading to the maître d's desk, where you will be cordially greeted and, if you've been there even once before, personally recognized and welcomed back.  Then you are guided down a few steps into the large two-level dining room (below) where it would be difficult to find a bad table (it's basically a rectangular room; some prefer the slightly elevated floor that rings it, while others enjoy the main section.) Service is impeccable--there seem to be dozens of captains, waiters and busboys to do one's bidding, and  sommelier Jean Luc Le Dû stocks one of the grandest cellars in the world, with more than 1,500 selections with--thank you very much-- more than 90 priced under $50.  You can of course spend your way into the stratosphere as well, with old Bordeaux going up to $5,700 a bottle.

   It is difficult not to be impressed by the flourishes at RD, from the grandeur of the room itself to the glamour of those  guests who sweep into the room dressed to the nines, and so should you. (There is a  dress code at RD--"jackets and ties required for gentlemen"--but it doesn't seem to apply to those non-gentlemen who arrive after 9:30 without ties and with women sporting  jeans and t-shirts.)  Table settings are gloriously luxe, the silverware heavy,  and the glassware pings! to the touch.       
   Jean-François Bruel is executive chef at RD, following the highly-lauded Alex Lee. Bruel, just 28, hails from Lyons and has worked in the kitchens of Marc Haeberlin, Georges Blanc, and Michel Guérard, so his professional lineage puts him squarely in tune with Boulud's high standards of cuisine, especially since he's now been at RD for six years.  Still, the menu is very much Boulud's, and the largess of the kitchen shows itself in extra little canapés and amuses with which to begin an extravagant evening here.  I am not a big fan of lengthy tasting menus, but recently I left myself in Boulud and Bruel's hands and, because the portions were of a reasonable size and the cadence of the meal so perfect, without long waits and too much wine between courses, my wife and I felt wonderful after a three-hour dinner here, enjoying two separate tasting menus.       
    I can do little more than copy out what we had without further comment than to say the food was exquisite, enchanting for its creativity, admirable for its restraint.  In a couple of instances there might have been one two many ingredients on the plate and presentations seem slightly more rococo than they used to be, but there's simply no arguing with the great flavor coaxed from perfect ingredients here, starting with a duo of roast mackerel with a fennel confit and basil in white wine, with pickled vegetables scented with cumin and a dab of carrot purée. Two forms of small red mullets arrived, one poached in a bouillabaisse jus, the other pan-seared and served with braised Swiss chard, crispy pork belly and a jus flavored with capers and pine nuts.  With this course we sipped a Tablas Creek viognier '01 from Paso Robles.   Next came a Jerusalem artichoke soup with black trumpet mushrooms and sage oil, and baby artichokes stuffed with tomato, along with a salad of mâche with smoked squab and walnut dressing, accompanied by a glass of P. Blanck gewürztraminer '01.

     Shellfish was next--truffle-crusted lobster with ten (I wasn't counting) winter vegetables, Savoy cabbage and a truffled lobster cream; and a langoustine with crispy basmati rice, cauliflower coulis, and a coconut-curry emulsion, served with a brisk and beautiful Domaine Caillot Meursault '00--a terrific match-up.  By this point we were pacing ourselves, but nothing could have stopped us from gobbling up a plate of agnolotti with a black truffle coulis and emulsion of Parmigiano, or the potato gnocchi with more black truffles and a crayfish sauce à l'amèricaine.  A Clos Rougéard Saumur Blanc '99 was a surprisingly flavorful component with this course, while the next wine, Chambolle Musigny Louis Jadot '97 packed more power to go with Dover sole with truffles  (yes, French restaurants still define their haute-ness by lavish use of truffles), and fungi porcini with a side of creamed spinach and caramelized salsify, and cod poached in olive oil. These were admirably simpler dishes at this point in the meal and preparatory to the main meat dish--mallard duck with olives, fennel, and a fricassée of radish and turnips, served with RD's own "Cuvée Daniel," a Côtes-du-Rhône Les Grenadiers '00.
    RD has a very fine selection of cheeses (four for $17, six for $21), and its desserts, under executive pastry chef Jean-François Bonnet, fit seamlessly into the overall splendor of the menu here, with sweets like apple frangipane with spiced chibouste and chestnut ice cream, and roast pineapple with nougat glacée and rhubarb-vanilla gelee and fromage blanc sorbet, along with five  chocolate desserts including caramelized rice crispy with chocolate leaves, peanut ice cream and cappuccino foam (right).
     A three-course meal at RD is $88; five courses $120, with a separate vegetarian menu available.

     Given the intensity and labor of such a meal--night after grueling night--at RD, there is some legitimate concern that Boulud may be stretching his energies too thin.  In New York he has managed to run two other estimable restaurants--Café Boulud and DB Bistro Moderne (he sold off his share in Payard Patîsserie & Bistro)--both easily visited by him on a daily basis.  Then there are the books, signature food products, and the cooking demonstrations on the celeb chefs circuit.  He also took on a consultancy for the new Queen Mary 2 and has opened a branch of Café Boulud in Palm Beach (to be reviewed here in an upcoming issue).  More troubling is his renouncement of a former contention that he would not be coaxed to faraway Las Vegas like other chefs with little  intention of ever being there.  Now comes word that he will indeed be opening up some sort of restaurant there, probably along the lines of Café Boulud.  All this is a bit much for a chef who has long prided himself on being in his kitchen at RD most nights of the week.  I worry.

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FOOD REVIEWS WE NEVER FINISHED READING

“I used to be something of a taco slut, happy to wait in line at Pancho Villa or Tacqueria Cancun without any sense of loyalty.”—Marcia Smart, “Ten Restaurants We Love,” 7X7SF (February 2004).

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BUT STILL A FEW POUNDS SHY OF WHAT IMELDA MARCOS WEIGHS WITHOUT SHOES

A claim for the world’s longest barbecue—eight-tenths of a mile—was made by the mayor of Cebu, Philippines, while the bakers of the city of La Trinidad plan to bake a 60-ton strawberry shortcake for their upcoming annual strawberry festival, which would beat the 58-ton record of a town in Alabama. 

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MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET NEWSLETTER is published weekly.  Editor/Publisher: John Mariani. Contributing Writers: Robert Mariani,  Naomi  Kooker, Kirsten Skogerson,  Edward Brivio, Mort Hochstein, Lucy Gordan. Contributing Photographers: Galina Stepanoff-Dargery,  Bobby Pirillo. Technical Advisor: Gerry McLoughlin.

 John Mariani is a columnist for Esquire, Wine Spectator, Diversion and the Harper Collection. He is author of The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink (Lebhar-Friedman), The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink (Broadway), and, with his wife Galina, the award-winning new Italian-American Cookbook (Harvard Common Press).   To  purchase from amazon.com, click on the image below.

copyright John Mariani 2004