Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

The 2004 winner of the James Beard Foundation's Best Chef: New York City award, Andrew Carmellini is a young veteran of some of the world's finest restaurant kitchens After stints at Lespinasse, Le Cirque, and Cafe Boulud (where he was chef de cuisine), he opened A Voce, which has quickly become one of New York's best-loved and best reviewed restaurants.

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URBAN ITALIAN

Bloomsbury USA

Contents

INTRODUCTION: TRUE STORIES.....................32A NOTE ON THE RECIPES..........................36ANTIPASTI......................................88PRIMI..........................................160SECONDI........................................206CONTORNI.......................................238DOLCI..........................................282BASES..........................................302A GUIDE TO LOCATIONS...........................307ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................308INDEX

Chapter One

LEARNING TO COOK isn't just about knife skills and timing and technique, and it's not all about that I-am-an-artist thing either, It's about who you are and how you deal with the world: with banging out a meal for six hundred on the fly, for example, or with a crazy restaurateur, or with a pack of starving models, or with three months without a day off. And it's about understanding that cooking is more than just applying heat to food in complicated ways: a good cook brings his or her life to the table, and sucks as much experience as possible from the world to do it. So my education in Italian cooking has happened in kitchens, sure, but also on bucolic hilltops and in train-station cafs in the middle of the night, in Jaguars and in a 1974 Fiat 127, in fancy restaurants and in tents, on the road pursued by the polizia and at Park Avenue black-tie events. It's not like a Hollywood movie, where you go into culinary school and come out with a big knife and a hot job; it's more like a bunch of crazy home videos-the kind of stuff that comes out at the end of the night, with old friends, when everyone's had a drink or three. Here are a few of my favorites from the Italian reel.

My grandmother was Italian, in that old-school "if you're not suffering, you're sinning" kind of way. Her family, the Bertins, had drifted into northern Italy from their native France way back when, but she never had a lot of love for the French or their hoity-toity food. This whole "haute cuisine" thing, the idea that France was the cradle of restaurant culture-it was all garbage, Grandma said: if it hadn't been for Catherine de' Medici and her Italian cooks, the Frogs would still be boiling up chunks of meat and fat and calling it dinner. The Italians, they knew what flavor meant!

But she always gave people their props, Grandma-and Auguste Escoffier, he was due his props, French chef though he was. She gave me his books when I was a kid-my first real cookbooks-and she told me stories about him. The greatest cook of all time, she said. Precision! Integrity! Ingredients! Now that was a chef! Her favorite story about Escoffier went like this:

Once, Escoffier was making a banquet for three hundred people, a wedding. This was no big deal for Escoffier. Three hundred people was like nothing to him. Everything was timed perfectly; every dish went out gorgeous, and the people couldn't believe how great everything tasted. The dessert was souffl, and it was supposed to go out right after a certain speech was made. It couldn't be served during the speech, because the speaker was the bride's father, a big important guy in Paris, but it had to come out as soon as he was done, or the timing would be off for everything for the rest of the evening. Escoffier knew the guy would talk for twenty minutes, which was exactly how long it would take to make the souffls. So twenty minutes before the speaker was due to begin, he gave the signal, and all his cooks started cracking shells and separating the yolks and whites of six hundred eggs. And fifteen minutes before the toast started, the great chef and his cooks began beating the egg whites, because the most important thing, with souffls, is to beat the eggs continuously-fifteen minutes without pause, as fast as you can. As soon as the speaker stepped up to the podium, glass in hand, the beating of eggs ceased, the souffls went into the oven. Escoffier had a little drink-they all had a little drink-and they waited, quietly, so as not to disturb the souffls. And at the twenty-minute mark, the souffls were perfect.

But this father of the bride, even though he was important, he was kind of a nervous guy, and so he'd had a bottleful of wine, more or less, before he got to the podium. When the twenty minutes were up, he was just getting warm, and he was so important that nobody felt like they could tell him to hurry up. Escoffier stuck his head out the kitchen door, and he listened, and it was clear the guy wasn't making any wrapping-up sounds. So he told his cooks to trash all the souffls-three hundred souffls!-straight out the back door to feed the beggars in the alley. The cooks didn't dare complain-yeah, precision, ingredients, creativity, the guy had it all, but Escoffier was not known for his patience, was not an easygoing, low-maintenance-type chef. They washed their bowls, went to the pantry, cracked another six hundred eggs. For another quarter of an hour-sweating, grunting, swearing-this kitchen full of men whisked the souffls, biceps and triceps bulging, Again, the souffls went into the oven. The cooks collapsed against the counters, dripping with sweat. Precisely twenty minutes later, they raised their shaking arms and-gently, gently-pulled the souffls from the oven, Once again, each one was a thing of beauty, steamy and high and absolutely ready, right on time. The waiters stood at the door, poised, their smiles ratcheted tight.

And still, the bride's father, drunk, important, more powerful than anyone else in the room, went on talking and talking, He remembered his childhood, the rope swing in his backyard, the time he cracked open his head on a rock hidden in the lake. (The cooks had thoughts, muttered comments.) He told the story of his first true love, of another woman who broke his heart, of the day when he realized that he would be rich. He talked of how the bride was the most headstrong child anyone had ever had to raise, but how she was worth ten of her brother, who seemed somehow to have no interest in money, not even in spending it, except on paint and books and food, fancy food, which he guessed was culture but what good did it do?

Again, the alley door was propped open. Again, the beggars were treated to dessert. The kitchen boys were sent running to all the markets, to their grandmothers' and mothers' and aunties' houses, anywhere, everywhere, for more eggs. Again the eggs were broken, the whites beaten-the cooks shaking now, their arms spasming out of control, whipped egg white flying up, coating their eyebrows, their chins. The beating this time took twenty minutes, they were not so fast, and they tried not to weep directly into the bowls-the salt being very bad for the flavor. Escoffier, sweating through his chef's jacket, beat his eggs as though his arms were mechanical, magical, glaring out over the bowl, daring anyone else to give up. Again the souffls went into the oven. The cooks slid to the floor, their backs against the counters, their knees bent up in front of them. Escoffier stood, arms crossed, terrible, serene. In the dining room, the guests, he could see, were slumping over their wine, turning their napkins into folded flowers, playing games with feet and fingers under the table. The father of the bride talked, and talked, and talked, and the cooks lost hope: they would be making souffls over and over,...