Articles by: Charles Scicolone

 It was raining on the Amalfi Coast as we left Praiano headed toward Amalfi. We were driving to the Monte di Grazia winery in Tramonti and the traffic was terrible because of the holiday weekend.  We passed Amalfi and the turnoff for Ravello, and then back down to the beach and Maiori and Minori. Here the traffic became lighter as we began our assent toward Tramonti and the Monte di Grazia winery. Up and up we went until we were some 500 meters above sea level--it looked like we were in the clouds.

Laurie Howell of Amalfi Life(www.amalfilife.com) had put us in touch with her partner, Giocondo Cavalieri, who is from the town of Furore. He is also the Slow Food representative in the area and became interested in the Monte di Grazia winery because they make excellent wine and are certified biological (organic cultivation).. Also Sabine Emmy Eller, a friend of Giocondo’s, was with us. She suggested we stop to visit a cheese producer, Anna Dora Campanile whose cheeses are not sold commercially. You have to go there to buy it. There were two large posters on the wall one stating that the place was Caseificio Artigianale and the other simply stating Tramonti -- Il Paese della Pizza. Michele brought Mozzarella Fior di Latte and Provola.  We then made our way to the winery.

                When I saw the hillside vineyards I was taken by surprise. The vines were very old; in fact I have never seen a vineyard with such old vines that were still producing. Some were over 100 years old and most of the others seemed to be more than 50 years old. The vines were planted in the tendone method. This is the traditional method for planting vines in Southern Italy. The leaves are trained to form a canopy that protects the grapes from the sun.  It is like a pergola with an overhead trellis from which the grapes hang down.  In one of the vineyards an old vine looked like it was holding up the whole tendone.  The poles that hold up the tendone are made of chestnut wood from trees in the nearby hills and the vine “branches” are attached to the tendone by willow shoots.

                We were met by Alfonso Arpino, a doctor who took over his family’s vineyards as a hobby, though they soon turned into his passion. He took us to his winery, the smallest I have ever been in. The winery produces only three wines and the total production is less than 6,000 bottles.  After a very quick tour, Dr. Arpino took a bottle of his 2007 white wine and said we could drink it upstairs. He led us to a comfortable and modern apartment above the winery that he rents to travelers.  The terrace had a panoramic view of the surrounding mountains. Since it was still raining we tasted the wine inside. The white, called Monte di Grazia Bianco, is made from local grapes that are handpicked, like all his wines. Three grape varieties are used:

Pepella has only a few large grapes on the bunch, the rest being the size of peppercorns, though they all ripen at the same time. 

Ginestra, the name comes from the yellow-green color which is similar in color to the gorse flower.

Bianca Tenera (Biancolella). The wine had hints of citrus with undertones of pear and almond a very nice mineral character and good acidity. The white, like his other two wines, are fermented and aged in stainless steel tanks. 

I liked the wine so much that I stopped tasting it and began to drink it, and Dr. Arpino just smiled.

                Dr. Arpino invited us to stay for dinner in his home, where we would taste the other wines. His wife Anna prepared farro e fagioli bianchi, a dish of farro and beans, in this case uova di lucertole or lizard’s egg, one of several types of beans that grow in the vineyards. The beans and farro are cooked separately, and then are simmered in a tomato sauce seasoned with rosemary.  It was hearty and delicious.  Dr. Arpino said that the coexistence in the vineyard of both vines and beans improves both. The vines shade the beans and the beans provide nitrogen for the soil which improves the vines.

With the farro and beans we drank the Monte di Grazia Rosato made from 70% tintore grapes which have dark pink juice (hence its name) and 30% mosiro, even more obscure, an ancient red variety from Campania.  This grape also has pink juice, though not as dark as the juice from the tintore, and with a more delicate skin. There was no skin contact in the making of this rose, just the juice from these two grapes to get a dark rose wine with good fruit and hints of strawberries and blueberries. It had good mineral character and acidity with a dry finish and aftertaste.

Anna also had made pizza scarola, a double crust pizza stuffed with escarole, anchovies, olives, capers and garlic.  Michele remembered her mother making the same escarole pie. There was also a frittata di zucchini and local chesses and salami.

The last wine was Monte di Grazia Rosso.  We tried both the 2005 and 2006 vintages made from 90% Tintore and 10% Pedirosso so-called because it has a red triple-branched stem that looks like a dove’s claw.

The 2005 was drinking very well with red fruit, hints of black pepper and spice. It had a long finish with a great after taste of red fruit and black pepper. The 2006 was very different with more earthy aromas, fruit and only the slightest hint of black pepper.  It needed more time to develop. These wines have the qualities that ensure they will last for a long time.  All of the wines had very good acidity so they are perfect with food. 

                We had such a wonderful time with Alfonso and Anna that we invited them to come to dinner at our rented house in Praiano. Giocando wanted them to see the great view of the sea and Positano. They brought a large assortment of local cheeses and hard bread known as pane biscottato.  Anna and Alfonso showed us how to dip the slices in water to soften it.  It was great with the cheese and salami.  Michele loved the whole grain flavor and texture and even took some back to NYC with her.  She plans to serve it with the first ripe tomatoes of the season. 

                With the meal, we drank the 2007 Monte di Grazia Rosso which has the same characteristics as the 2005 but needed more time and the 2008 Bianco and Rosato.  Meeting Alfonso and Anna was a very special experience.  It has been a long time since I encountered a new winery that has left such an impression on me.  At this point, the only place that you can find the Monte di Grazia wines in this country is at Balthazar Restaurant in Soho.

www.montedigrazia.it

Praiano. (Campania) How does one describe paradise or at least my idea of it?  Two years ago, Michele and I went to the Amalfi Coast and did not want to leave. We found the perfect town, Praiano, with the perfect view of the sea, the sky, Positano, and Capri.  Praiano is located between Positano and Amalfi and it is a 25 minute ride by bus to reach either of them. It is an ideal location for getting around the Amalfi Coast.

We were concerned that it might not be as good as we remembered, but as soon as we walked out onto the large terrace of the house that we rented and looked at the trees, the flowers and the view, we knew it was just as we remembered it.  Our first order of business was to find a place to have lunch. Michele chose La Gavitella, her favorite restaurant. The walk down to the beach and restaurant is very scenic but it is over 400 steps. Going down is not too bad, but going up…!  

   We like to go on Sunday because both the beach and the restaurant are crowded and watching the people is always fun.  I started with sautéed shrimp with salt and pepper that were so good you could almost eat the shells, followed with spaghetti with clams, zucchini, olive oil and basil.


The clams were small and tasty, the spaghetti “al dente” and the zucchini, the best I have ever tasted. The waiter brought a cart full of fresh fish and shell fish for us to choose from. The crabs were still moving and I picked the biggest one. The chef cooked it in a light tomato sauce and served it with paccheri, a large tubular pasta.  It was delicious.

Michele had a tender octopus and potato salad to start, followed by an unusual dish of linguine with bits of local fish, lots of lemon and hot pepper.  She thought it was great. We had a bottle of 2007 Falanghina from Cantine del Taburno that went very well with the food.

 We began talking with a group of Italians at the next table and found out that they were from Positano.  They had wisely arrived by boat, avoiding the steps.  Alfonso said that La Gavitella was the best fish restaurant in the area. He and his friends came often and knew the names of the waiters and the chef.


The chef is Tomasso and he had worked in New York City, we found out later. Alfonso kept pouring wine into our glasses and took pictures of all of us. 


They were very informative, interesting and we were all having a good time. After dessert, Alfonso ordered Berta grappa chardonnay and poured me some. 


We could have gone on all afternoon, so I declined when he offered again, but he insisted, and I had another, not wanting to offend him. We thanked all of them for a very enjoyable afternoon, ordered caffe, said Ciao and returned to the beach where I promptly fell asleep. Later, on the way up, the steps seemed steeper than usual.

Michele likes this restaurant so much that we returned there three more times and the food was always special. Restaurant Gavitella will pick you up by boat from Poistano or Marina di Praia but from our house high above the restaurant the stairs were the best way. The restaurant was worth every step.

The waitress looked at us strangely when Tom ordered the finanziera.  “Do you know what it is?” she asked, “Are you sure that you want to eat that?”  The dish is a specialty of the restaurant Osteria La Libera in Alba, but few foreigners who visit Piemonte order it.  Finanziera is a rich stew and one of the classics of Piemontese cuisine.  The ingredients include calf’s brains, sweetbreads, spleen, testicles, and cockscomb. Tom enjoyed every bit of it.  My friend, wine writer Tom Maresca and I were in Piedmont for the Alba Wines Exhibition.  He has eaten it a number of times and his answer to both questions was” yes”.  

Piemontese food is not what most people think about when they think of Italian cooking.  The Piemontese are meat eaters and they also eat a lot of game.  Mushrooms, the rare and espensive white truffles, cow’s milk cheeses and hearty pasta make up the larger part of the daily diet.  This food is conducive to great wine, and in my opinion, the Langhe region of Piedmont, is the best place in all of Italy for food and wine pairings. 

            Tom is very much into the whole “nose to tail” concept of eating.  On another occasion he ordered trippa di vitello, or stewed cow’s stomach.  When we are in Alba, I have two favorite restaurants, l’Arco and La Libera.  Tom can find the foods he likes, but I stick to more conventional Piemontese dishes such as carne cruda, raw veal that is hand chopped and flavored with extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. In the fall I like to have shaved fresh white truffles over the meat, a great combination. I love risotto and at Restaurant I’Arco I enjoyed it with asparagus tips and fava beans.  Braised rabbit can be found in restaurants in the United States but rabbit here does not have the same flavor as those at restaurant l’Arco.  Living in New York, I see pigeons all the time, but I only eat them at Osteria La Libera.

        II have been going to I’Arco for over 20 years and it never disappoints.  Osteria La Libera has been open for less than two years and I think I have found another favorite. They both have very good wine lists.  At I’Arco we had the 2001 “Sarmassa” Barolo from G Brezza & Son and at La Libera the 1999 “Rabaja” Barbaresco from Castello di Verduno, both were excellent.

            Tajarin (Tagliatelle) with meat sauce is served in almost all the restaurants in the area. I think I had it four times during the week I spent in Piemonte. The best was at Ristorante Villa Tiboldi in Canale. The restaurant is in a lovely hotel owned by the same people that own the Malvira winery. The pasta was cooked just right and the meat sauce could not have been better. It was a bit untraditional because the chef placed a few thinly sliced pieces of fried zucchini on the top. The crunchiness of the zucchini added to the texture and the taste.

      I do not like to have my morning coffee in the hotel because I prefer to have it standing up at a caffe. After many disappointments (which were better than almost anything in this country), I found IL Salotto.  Every morning I would have the same thing--cappuccino and a brioche vuoto (empty).  The women behind the counter knew what I wanted before I walked in. One morning I decided to have a cherry brioche and it caused many comments by the staff. The Italians do not say espresso, they saty caffe, and the caffe at IL Salotto is also excellent. 

I am not a big dessert eater, but every time I had the chance I would go here for a cono at Caffe Brasilera. They have the best gelato in Alba. I always order the stracciatella, which is vanilla with chocolate chips.  At Brasilera, it looks like a little bit of vanilla gelato covered with big pieces of chocolate. The gelato is wonderful and so is the chocolate, it gives new meaning to vanilla chocolate chip.

In the hills above Alba in the middle of a vineyard is the Locanda Del Pilone. We had stayed here few years ago and Michele wrote about it for an article in the Wine Spectator.  The food is not traditional but our meal was excellent. I started with warm lardo served with mustard on bread made from black rice. Black rice! I was told by Marinella Chivero from Well Com Travel who was sitting with us that it was an aromatic rice called Venere (Venus). It was originally from China where at one time it was reserved for the emperors because of its nutritional value, rarity and aphrodisiac qualities.  It was called the prohibited rice of Venere. Now it is available in the supermarkets of Alba.

            The second course was foie gras in two different styles, served with jelly and sweet maize bread.

Lastly we had suckling pig with fennel, blood oranges and black olives. The hotel and restaurant is owned by the Boroli winery. We drank the Boroli Barolo 1997 and 1996. It was the perfect meal to end our trip.

After this great lunch I visited two more wineries and did not get back to Alba until 6:30. Just enough time to have another cono, caffe and una grappa.

I am now the Consulting Wine Director for Enoteca on Court and Marco Polo Restaurant in Brooklyn.  Hope to see you there.  Michele and I are leaving for the Amalfi Coast on Friday and I will return to the Enoteca on June 15.

 I just returned from a cruise around Sicily – my fourth trip in the last two years.  (See The Island in the Sun Parts I and Il, April 18 and May 3.) All my grandparents were born there and I grew up in the same house with my mother’s mother. She was from Palermo and came to America as a teenager.  She was a very good cook and made many Sicilian specialties for me. 

 I have a fondness for things Sicilian, especially the food.  It is difficult to get genuine Italian food in this country, but I thought that Sicilian food like my grandmother’s was impossible to find, until I met Salvatore!

When I was working at I Trulli, Salvatore Fraterrigo was hired as the chef. We became friends, in part because he was from Sicily. Salvatore had owned Il Radicchio, a restaurant in Trapani where he was born. The restaurant got very good reviews in the Italian press. Salvatore and I always talked about Sicilian food and one day I suggested that he come to my apartment and cook a true Sicilian meal for us. Michele does not like to share her kitchen with anyone but after talking with Salvatore she agreed. The meal that he made for us could not have been better if we had been in Sicily.

Salvatore now is the chef for the Sicilian restaurant Cacio e Vino in Manhattan where we often go for dinner. If you go there ask for Salvatore, he never disappoints. So I decided to ask him why his food is so good and how he keeps it so genuine, just like my grandmother’s.

Salvatore’s earliest memories are of his mother Candida and his grandmother Vitina cooking. He watched them with great interest and asked them if he could help. Not only did his mother let him help, but she took the time to show him every single step of the dish that she was preparing! He feels that his love of food and cooking comes from those happy days in the kitchen with his mother and grandmother.

He also has fond memories of large family gatherings and the food at Christmas (fried baccala, peperoni ripeni),  New Years Eve (lentils and sausages, cardi fritti, carciofi repieni, zucca in agrodolce, sfinci with sugar and cassatelle di ricotta fritte) and lunch on New Years Day (caponata, fritture in pastella, sarde a beccafico, baked ziti, falsomagro with Sicilian ragu, and cassata).

Making Cous Cous, a Trapanese specialty, was a family event with the women doing the cooking and his father buying the fish early in the morning to make sure that he would get only the freshest. Occasionally, he would not get the varieties that his wife Candida wanted and he would never hear the end of it. Salvatore would watch the women cook and if he got up early would go with his father.  Like his mother, Salvatore made it quite clear that the true Cous Cous is only made with fish. Use anything else and it would not taste right. My grandmother from Palermo (which is not far from Trapani) never heard of Cous Cous.

One of his mother’s favorite dishes was pasta with sardines (pasta con sarde). She would only

make it using bucatini or malfadine pasta because it worked well with the other ingredients including wild fennel, pine nuts anchovies and raisins.

His mother made a meat dish I had never heard of. She called it agglassato. braised eye of round beef ( girello) cooked with sliced onions in a covered pot over a slow fire. The sauce made a great pasta dish using bucatini.

Salvatore (chiamato affettuosamente, “Toto”) soon began cooking for his friends and classmates at informal gatherings and parties and was in great demand. After graduation he wanted to learn more and went to work in a local seafood restaurant. He enjoyed the experience and was offered a job with Peppe Giuffre, a well known chef and owner of a catering company. When Pepe Giuffre opened a Sicilian restaurant in Paris, Salvatore went with him and through these experiences he perfected his technical skills.

To gain more experience Salvatore worked in restaurants in New York, Washington D.C, Los Angles and London. These experiences brought him into contact with many different cooking styles and philosophies, from food piled higher and higher to dishes covered with foam, and everything in between.

His cookbook “I Tesori della Cucina Siciliana” was very well received in Sicily and was  in all the stores, when I was there.

Salvatore feels very strongly about “la Famiglia”.  Cooking and food in Sicily revolves around the family. It is a convivium, cooking and eating with the whole family sitting around the table in their own environment talking and laughing.

Food, he feels, is like art and follows the fashions of the times. Some inventive chefs use different combinations of food to express what is in vogue. Salvatore feels that while they should express themselves, there is a line that they should not cross. Some of these chefs are like alchemists with their strange combinations of ingredients and techniques. They cross the line when it becomes more art then food.

Salvatore believes that his mother’s cooking was the best. She used time tested methods, the best and freshest ingredients and traditional recipes. The love with which she cooked was reflected in the love for her family, a combination that is hard to beat.

Salvatore feels that good coking comes from his family and the good ingredients in the earth. When Salvatore cooks for you it is like being part of his family.