At last year’s Identità Golose (“Epicurean Identities”) gastronomic conference in Milan, while other speakers were addressing such subjects as “Sea Flavor: Pasta Which Is Not Pasta” and “Cooking with Nitrogen: Iced Semolino of Olive Oil,” Pierangelini offered the strictly no-nonsense “Simple Thoughts (On an Egg and a Pig).”
“The first step in my cuisine,” Pierangelini tells me, “is to find the best materials, even those that others can’t find. Then it’s a matter of how I work with them. One must know them, feel them; one must decide all that one can do with them and still remain natural. To cook like this is to walk a tightrope, way up high, with no net. If I fall, I fall.”
As my meal ends, Pierangelini disappears into the kitchen and returns a few minutes later with a plate in his hand. “It’s licorice ice cream with a beet purée, that’s all,” he says as he sets it down in front of me. There are a few slivers of white truffle on top of the ice cream. “This is not dessert,” he assures me. “You take licorice, beets, and three slices of truffle, and you have the earth.” Nothing could persuade me to sample this outlandish creation—nothing except all the stunningly good food I’ve already had at Gambero Rosso. I take a spoonful of all three elements together. The vermilion sweetness of the beets softens the metallic charcoal tang of the licorice; the truffle smooths out the edges. I actually like it—a lot—and eat it all.
The truffles that have figured so lavishly in my meals, he tells me as I finish my very last scrap of one, are not from Piedmont, but from Tuscany, mostly from around Volterra, near San Gimignano. “Many truffles now are doctored with gas to make them more fragrant,” he says. “These are harvested by a friend.” I mention white truffle oil. “Chemicals!” he exclaims. “I detest truffle oil!” I tell him that in America it is a common ingredient today, used even by some of the most famous chefs. He snorts. “The next time you come,” he says, “we’ll talk about the culture of chefs.”
I can’t wait.
Gambero Rosso Piazza della Vittoria 13, San Vincenzo (Livorno) (0565-70-10-21)
Tuscany à la Ducasse
I’m not sure that Trattoria Toscana (Tenuta La Badiola—Località Badiola, Castiglione della Pescaia [Grosseto]; 0564-94-48-00; andana.it.), the freestanding dining complex on the grounds of L’Andana, Alain Ducasse’s elegant resort hotel in Castiglione della Pescaia, in Tuscany’s Maremma region, qualifies as a trattoria. In décor and pace of service, and in its notable absence of hustle and bustle, it seems more purely a ristorante—slightly more serious—and anyway, the chef, Christophe Martin, is French.
That said, it is a warm, attractive place, with pale rose marble and terra-cotta floors, squared-off brick columns, pinkish walls, and pots of herbs sharing space with elegant glassware on the tables, and the food is solid, imaginative, and (mostly) convincingly Italian.
A spectacular tagliere (platter) di cinta senese offers seven or eight kinds of charcuterie based on the famous local pig breed of that name, including fennel-seeded finocchiona in two sizes, prosciutto from Arezzo, two different “tartares” of raw sausage meat, and, best of all, some curls of subtly herb-scented tarese, like lardo but with some pale meat attached. Pennette are tossed with ribbons of cuttlefish and bottarga from both tuna and mullet in a sauce of cuttlefish ink—powerful and satisfying. A dish of octopus, baby mussels, and sausage in red-wine sauce, topped with little diamonds of fried chickpea flour, improbably delicate—like a pommes soufflées version of panisses—suggests a slightly more rustic take on something Franck Cerutti might serve at Ducasse’s Le Louis XV, in Monaco (where Martin once worked). Meat figures prominently among the main courses, including rabbit from the estate with thyme and porcini, braciole of milk-fed veal, also raised here, and a memorable roasted tagliata—sliced T-bone—of Maremma beef.
The wine list isn’t huge, but it has many fine selections, including Maremma Tuscans both super and just plain good (like a cherry-bright Sassotondo San Lorenzo 2001, 100 percent Ciliegiolo), and three wines from the resort’s handsomely manicured property, under the Tenuta La Badiola label: a rosato made from Alicante grapes and two whites—a lively, tasty unoaked 100-percent Vermentino and a surprising and successful blend of Viognier (80 percent) and Vermentino.
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