CÀ DI CICUL - WHERE THE PRESENTE MEETS THE PASSITO

Close your eyes.  I'm about to take you on a very special journey.  We're not going back to the future.  We're going back to the past.  See the wagon wheels, the wooden trays?  Ready for the moscato grapes and the brachetto grapes that will be carefully laid out to dry in the warm air of a vine covered shed.

  

There's a basket of grapes - just picked and still warm from the sun.

Smell the fruit?  It's wonderful, isn't it?

Imagine this. You're standing in your new Jimmy Choos - in a barn filled with grapes harvested just minutes before.  You look around. Everything is sepia. Everything except that fancy retina display on your iPhone4.  You know its 2011 because you arrived in a brand new 'cloud catcher' white Fiat Seidici.  But somehow, you're not in the present.  You're in a wonderful dream, a dream that you've had before.  A dream about Italy.  An Italy that still looks, smells, feels like your first introduction to this magical country.  You remember the pictures that your friend Vinny's family framed and hung on the walls of their house in America.  You remember the faded photos that were scotch-taped to the cash register at Carmine's pizzeria.  O.K. You can open your eyes now.  You're at
CÀ DI CICUL, in Strevi, Provincia di Alessandria, the alto Monferrato.  You're at a small wine farm hidden in a sea of vines. Bang! Pop! Wow!  Yo, is this place for real?  You betcha.  Andiamo.  Let's have a look around.

(this is what the old time travel writers called "bucolic")

Disclaimer:  I was a (non-paying) guest at this lovely place.

Cà Di Cicul is dedicated to the production of passiti, the delicious concentrated dessert wines

 made from naturally dried grapes.

Exit 1 North 

"Oh my god," he exclaimed.  "It's like a postcard."

Here, the grapes are moscato and brachetto (which tastes to me like wild berries).  Should you ever see Brachetto in a shop or on a winelist, indulge. Aaaand!  Don't forget, kids, Brachetto goes great with chocolate.  Chocolate and wine, charter members of the five basic food groups.  No?

This is a very small farm

  The grapes arrive in the drying shed and are stacked in shallow wooden boxes on old wagons.  I'm told that they are among the last to still use this method.

The drying shed - an Alto Monferrato industrial park - not!

Before we eat we have a look at the laboratorio of our host, Gianni Salina.  The device on the right is used to hang a bag that is used for doing something for the holidays.  I'm not exactly sure since I wasn't paying attention.

By this time we were all getting hungry.  What's that in the wood oven?  Could it be?  Yes it is. A fantastic pan of everyone's favorite - farinata al forno.  I can't believe that I've done several posts and never ever mentioned the king of snacks.  Farinata is a simple batter of chickpea flour, olive oil and water.  This version had a bit of rosemary added to it.  You can find this all over Liguria and in lower Piemonte.  The French also make it.  They call it socca and you find it around Nice (which Italians call Nizza - not be confused with Nizza Monferrato - which is about ten minutes from Strevi- and the place where you get the best cardoons for bagna caöda - which will be the subject of another posting soon).
The farinata is just about ready.  It's time to sit down for dinner.  Buon appetito.

ragazzi - è pronta la farinata?

As my buddy Fabio would say, "una bomba"

Brothers and sisters - this is the bomb.  The real deal.  Piping hot, out of the oven and onto the table.  Check out the salami (to die for).

  



This is, for me, the quintessential Italian experience.  A table set with the simplest of plates, utensils and glasses. A table where the important things are the company and the food.  Followers of this blog already know my aversion to a snotty restaurant - what Italians call a 'chicaria.'  Pronounced sort of like the pianist, Chick Corea or the green vegetable, cicoria.  A place more interested in style than substance. This evening I'm in, what is for me, the épitomé of cool.  Like if Miles or Mingus or Arbus or Lenny Bruce were wine farms in Italy.



We sit at the table, pour some wine and begin the beguine.  A sensual dance of...

               

Crispy on the outside and wonderfully creamy on the inside, farinata redolent (ugh, a foodie word) of wood smoke and hot from the oven.

The salami is local - soft, chewy, fatty, wonderful...

These are 'peperoni ripieni alla piemontese'
spicy fresh peppers stuffed with capers, anchovy, olives and fresh herbs

So what are we drinking with our antipasti?  Vino da tavola drained into someone else's old reclosable bottle.  I ask "what wine are we drinking?"  "A mix," I'm told. "Whatever is left over."

The bottle is way older than the wine.  

The wine, not bad at all.

After an hour or so, it's time to get serious.  First to arrive, a fabulous platter of roast chicken.

What could be better?  Some ribs.  Same family pigs that provided the salami.  Grazie, Porky!

What an incredible meal.  It's the height of tomato season (the best in years).  So how about...

  

Vine ripened, a bit of sliced red onion, salt, pepper, olive oil.

Our hosts have decided that a feast like this deserves some serious wine.  

CÀ DI CICUL also produces some first rate still wines.  Gianni suggests a Barbera d'Asti.  A bit of acidity, big fruit and no oak.  Well that's not exactly true.  The wine rests for a while in botti grande, the hugh upright barrels that are used, not once, but year after year.  The wine mellows without taking on the flavor of new wood (or wood chips - heaven forbid)!  It's so good, I talk Gianni into 18 bottles.  That's it.  They make 800 bottles a year and it's all spoken for. Eight hundred bottles.  That's two minutes of production for the wine giants who live in California and Australia.  Beh!

We did it.  Salami, farinata, stuffed peppers, chicken, tomatoes, ribs.  How great was that.  Oh, did somebody say "cheese?"  No, please.  Maybe just a few grapes.  A cookie or two.

More to drink. Care to try our moscato? Perché no. Our moscato's not too bad.

Not too bad.  Are you joking?  It's................ wonderful.

Now I'm getting nervous. A few of the women at the table disappear into the house. Their devilish grins suggest that we're not quite done here.  And then they return. I'm like, "Oh, no. It's a cake. No! It's two cakes. And cookies. What the fuck?"

torta di nocciole 

(hazelnut tart)

usually horrible

this was not horrible

Maybe it wasn't 

torta di nocciole

(is this a haiku?)

torta di mele

(apple cake)

usually horrible

this was not horrible

Maybe it wasn't 

torta di mele

(is this another haiku?)

What is this dinner lacking? What are we missing? Yes! The maison d'etre. The magnamater, the geeta' with the heata', the ayatollah of rock n'rolla, the p...p...passito. The reason for being, the liquid of the gods, the white James Brown. Passito, baby. It's like good sex - but sexier. It's like good weed - but weedier. The crown jewel of the azienda arrives in this beautiful slim bottle. Unfortunately, I neglected to take a good photo of it. However, you can see the cake ladies pretty well. I'll leave you all the pertinent information at the end.

    beautiful

Hang in there, we're almost done. Sig. Gianni wanted us to taste the new moscato passito, still in the tank. He draws out a glass for us to try. Mmm.

the passiti at rest - is that Bacchus hanging on the wall?

There it is. This is why a strainiero like me cannot get enough of this country. It's the reason I live here. It pulls me in. It's why you work hard and hope you can someday (magari) live like the great people at CÀ DI CICUL do.

Grazie mille, Sig. Gianni!

CÀ DI CICUL
Valle Bagnario - Reg. Cavannone, 19
15019 Strevi(AL) Italia
39 (0114) 36.36.53
http://www.ciculvini.it

grazie, as well, to my homies (fabio & paolo) 

and to the women they're lucky enough to know 

BISTECCA PIEMONTESE

OMG!!! Last night, for dinner, I made the Piemontese eq of the traditional Bistecca Fiorentina.  Why Piemontese?  Technically, a "Fiorentina" is always Chianina beef from Spain Toscana.  The acknowledged Tuscan godfather of all things bistecca, Dario Cecchini, sources his Chianina beef from Spain.  Here he is.  This guy is serious.  http://www.dariocecchini.com/prod_fiorentina_eng.html.  The fact that it's from Spain doesn't make it bad, it just stretches the boundaries.

Beautiful, no?  This Razza Bovina Piemontese(please see below).  It's our own beef and it is delicious.  Look for it in the U.S. Raised domestically in California, it's hard to find but worth the effort.



I shop a few steps from home.  There is a macellaio (butcher) here in Ovada that's great.  These two guys are old school.  I look forward to visiting them.  There's almost always a line of customers and these boys do everything to order.  The name of the place is Macelleria Rocca (Luciano and Pietro).  It's like in a time warp. The local gossip, however, is as fresh as the product.

I asked them for a "bistecca, come una fiorentina, per due."  In English, it's "a steak, like a 'Fiorentina,' for two people.  This monster weighed in at 1.6 kilos (3½ pounds)!  OK, the bone weighed quite a bit.  But look at this sucker.

The precise cut, should you be wondering, is called a "costata di manzo."  A costata can be any kind of bone-in chop, so be specific.

Obviously you want to buy the best quality you can afford.  This one cost €27 euros (about $38 U.S.).  Bring the meat up to room temperature before you cook it.  Otherwise it will burn before it cooks through. Make sure your fire is very hot.  I use lump charcoal and when it's still blazing, I add a log of hardwood (filched from my wood oven stash).  It imparts a fabulous "profumo."

The fire - she is ready.  And so are we.







You'll need a wire brush to clean the grill.  I may have had a vodka (or two) at this point.  Obviously the cleaning job was barely adequate.  So shoot me.

Ready, kids?  OK.  Fasten your seatbelts.  Tray table in an upright position. Here we go.

Step 1 - make a stupid face while tossing the steak on the barbie

Step 2 - Use tongs.  You don't want to pierce the meat with a fork.

Step 3 - Pour some wine.  Tonight it's a Barbera.  This grape has a nice bit of acidity and works well with anything that's got some fat (the food - not the cook)

That's correct.  You're very observant.  Bravo. No seasoning at all when the meat first hits the fire.  About 5 - 6 minutes in and you're ready to flip it.

Step 4 - After you've turned the meat you can add a sprinkle of sea salt to the top.  The salt from Sicily is great.  It's simply called ' sale grosso siciliano.'

Notice the corn.  In Italy people are like "what the fuck do we do with this?"  Italians do not eat corn on the cob.  A few weeks ago, my buddy Mirco, when confronted with this outrage, proceeded to take a knife and fork to it.  In fact, it's almost impossible to even buy it.  Here, you feed it to the livestock.  Come on, ragazzi.  Wake up.  This is soooo good.  I found a bunch of ears the other day at the supermercato.  Thus, we feast.

Step 5 - Pay attention.  This is critical.  Stand the bistecca on its bone and cook for another fifteen minutes - more or less.  If you have an instant read  thermometer it should be at about 115 - 120 degrees.

Take the steak off the fire and let it be for a few minutes.  This will allow it to absorb the blood and will give you a juicy result.  Maybe open another bottle of wine.  Here's the beast at rest.

Step 6 - Take a sharp knife and cut right around the bone.  Then wack the meat  (not your meat) into big chunks.  Let everyone do their own slicing.

There it is, kids.  Bistecca Piemontese (come fiorentina).

ciao - d

LET'S GO TO A SAGRA TONIGHT!

One of the great things to do in Italy in the summer and fall is spending an evening in the countryside at a sagra.  You can find any number of these celebrations every week-end.  They're organized by the pro loco to get people together and to raise a bit of money for the community.  The formula is simple and I bet it hasn't changed in centuries.  Pick a local food specialty (or specialties), add wine and music and serve under the stars. The subject of this week's post is the Sagra di Stoccafisso held every year in Gaggina (which is a frazione, or 'burb, of a small town near Ovada called Montaldo).  I have many friends from Montaldo and it's great to see all the generations of their families eating, drinking and dancing alongside their neighbors and friends.  Hungry, yet?

Open wide - here comes a nice big heaping plate of JOY.

park the car in a field surrounded by vines

Talk your friends into going early and ask them to save you a place.  This maneuver avoids the excruciatingly long lines at the booth where you order your food. It also boosts your 'cred' among real Italians. 

Find your buddies.  There they are, right behind the guy shoving something in his mouth.

Order some wine from one of the volunteer servers.  I ask for Barbera (a scandal in this dolcetto drinking zona).  Blasphemy?  Maybe, but I'm not the only one doing it.  Tonight's vino is from Tre Castelli, the local cooperativo.

The wine is delicious.  So what does a bottle cost?  How about €4.  I know.  It's crazy.  What does a half way decent glass of wine set you back in the U.S.?  Like ten bucks!

  

And the glasses - maybe not Riedel, but they do the job perfectly well.

So what's for dinner?  This is, after all, the Sagra di Stoccafisso.  This traditional dish of salt cod is why we're here.  Well, maybe not.  Since I prefer Barbera to Dolcetto, this also allows me to skip the stocca' and dig into the other national dish of the Alto Monferrato - anlöt ravioli as they call it out here in the countryside.  Instead of nudo (with a splash of wine), I go for the ragu.

This is a bomba atomica.  I know people who eat this every day, sometimes twice a day.  It's that good.  How about a second pasta?  Did somebody say "lasagna formaggio?"  Check this out.  I especially dig the presentation.

  

This modest plate of pasta is terrific.  Put it on decent china, shower it with chopped herbs, add a sprig of flowering rosemary sticking up at a 45º angle and voila, Mario fucking Batali.  Don't get me started.

So, about this whole stoccafisso business.  99% of the people here worship it. Reconstituted in boiling water, cooked forever with olive oil, onion and olives, this is everyone's idea of heaven.  But as Mark Twain used to say, "go to heaven for the climate, go to hell for the company."  Listen, I've tried this dish like fifty times.  The best I can say about it is that sometimes it's not terrible.  I'm happy to be writing this blog in English.  Otherwise, I'd be run out of town.  

Where were we?  For you meat lovers I give you...

Need more starch, like this bellissima bimba (below)?  

Polenta with ragu.  Yumm!  

BTW - that's stoccafisso over there on the right.

O.K., O.K. here's a better shot.  That's an entire table eating 'stocca and polenta.  Together. The whole table. Maybe I should try it just one more time.  Nah.  The next thing I'd be trying is trippa.  Don't get me started.

Let's give a big hand to the volunteers who make these evenings possible.

               
After we eat we dance (ignoring these other options)
                                   ↓

Let's dance!

So there you have it.  A beautiful place, great food, good company and a shit load of wine.  Next time you ask yourself, "where should we go on vacation?" remember the Alto Monferrato.  There are a lot of wonderful places to visit in Italy.  Do you really want to see your next door neighbor from Long Island in some tourist trap in Tuscany or would you rather leave the same old crowd behind and experience the real deal in a place like Gaggina?

There may be a temporary shortage of wine, but that will be fixed by tomorrow.


ciao - d