​On my gastronomic trip last month to Pavia and its surroundings, the meals each featured a locally popular red wine from the Oltrepo Pavese, the productive wine region south of the city, Bonarda Vivace.  Bright and vivacious, just slightly bubbly in fact, and very pleasant, this dry medium-bodied red is very well suited to seems to the task of accompanying a large share of the non-seafood dishes in the area.  When it was already on the menu as part of the group, it was recommended for at least part of the meal when I dined on my own in Pavia.  And, it worked well in every case. 
 
Bonarda Vivace exhibited characteristics of a broad a style of wine that I have really enjoyed when I’ve encountered in Italy over the years: lighter in body and alcohol, a refreshing tartness, low tannins and enough fruit for my palate.  Very moderate prices, too.  The seven or so Bonarda Vivaces on the wine list at an acclaimed old-line trattoria ranged from €13 to €16.  Easy to consume a sufficient amount around the meal without worrying too much about the effects, on the head or in the wallet. 
 
As much wine that I consume, as much Italian wine that I shop for and consume, Bonarda Vivace wine about which I was unfamiliar as it doesn’t appear to be exported to the United States.  I recently had a fully still version at 13 Celsius, a wine that is a little bigger and more structured and less of a quaffer.  And that might be the only one I’ve encountered on a wine list here.  And I also get the impression Bonarda Vivace does not take much in the way of wine list space even in the big metropolis of Milan, just thirty to forty miles distant, and a perusal of a few lists seem to confirm that.  Just from their province of Lombardy, these have to compete with excellent Nebbiolo-based wines from Valtellina and then the great wines from Piedmont aren’t even 100 miles.  Even among the wineries of Oltrepo Pavese, Pinot Nero, Pinot Noir, is considered the better varietal.  And it is.  Their sparkling wines grab more attention, too.
 
But I found these wines to be very easy-drinking, helped with its effervescence and welcome acidity, light tannins and some nice fruit – often red currants, plums and sour cherries – judicious in typical Italian fashion and tempered with some earthiness or underbrush.  These are food wines, tasting better with food, as most Italian wines do.  These are wines that are not great, at least the dozen or so I sampled, but more than good enough.  No Bonarda Vivace received the coveted Tre Bicchiere in a very recent Gambero Rosso wine guide I have, though about fifteen received the two-glass designation, the next level down.  In different guises, it’s been simple well-made Chianti, a surprisingly light on the palate Aglianico, or the lighter Dolcettos and Barberas and Valpolicellas of more than decade ago before the warming globe helped to pump up the alcohol content.
 
Part of the difficulty for consumers with Bonarda Vivace – after the fact that Americans can’t get them – is that there are the two Bonardas, the Vivace, which will almost always have “Frizzante” on the back label – the fuller, still one that I mentioned above.  These Bonarda wines are made with 100% Croatina.  Sometimes wineries will bottle the grape as Croatina.  And then there is Bonarda made in neighboring Piedmont.  It is a different grape, as is the Bonarda made in Argentina and California.  It is confusing, even more than most Italian wines, a difficult thing to achieve.
 
I believe that it’s certainly worth sampling, but you almost have to go to source to do so.  Another reason to visit Pavia, a place that I quite enjoyed.

​Today, Thanksgiving, is pinnacle pumpkin consumption in this country with pumpkin pie leading the way.  And I’m looking forward to having at least a large size even after overeating beforehand.  I do like pumpkin pie.  Pumpkin pie and Saint Arnold Brewing Company’s fall seasonal Pumpinator are about my only consumption of this iconic American fruit.
 
While I was in northern Italy last month, I had several dishes, savory flans or light souffles (sformatos) and risottos, made with pumpkin according to the English translation of “zucca” on the menus we were given.  Each of these dishes was very good, at least a couple especially so.  The pumpkin taste with which I was familiar was absent.  Pumpkin can have a strong flavor and the various flavors in these different preparations were rather subtle, with the exception of the gorgonzola that complemented the zucca in a risotto, a combination that works very well and which I had enjoyed before.
 
The reason for the lack of pumpkin-ness, as I might have known, is that zucca is not a pumpkin in the American sense.  It “closely resembles our butternut squash” according to a phrase in a cookbook I came across after returning home.  So, in case you have the hankering for more pumpkin after Turkey Day, Italian recipes calling for zucca in the original Italian might not work as intended with it.  Or, it will just taste more American.

An excellent Risotto Carnaroli del Pavese mantecato alla zucca Bertagina di Dorno, salsa al gorgonzola e polvere di liquirizia at Cascina Vittoria, about 20 miles south of Milan, last month

​The Certosa of Pavia was part of a nearly weeklong tour of Pavia and its surroundings I was on last month.  The Certosa is a famous church and monastery compound, about twenty miles south of Milan, “The pinnacle of Renaissance architecture in Lombardy,” according to a fairly erudite and wordy older English guidebook I have.  And Jacob Burckhardt, the famed 19th century Swiss historian of Italian Renaissance architecture, called it “the decorative masterpiece in all of Italy.”  I found the Certosa impressive.  The church, which is most of the complex, especially its façade, was gorgeous on a foggy morning and filled with more than a few striking works of art, from its ceilings to chapels.
 
It’s also an active monastery, somewhat active, as there are just six monks that lead a contemplative life there including the one or two that help out with tourists like us.  The Certosa has a small gift shop, much smaller than the much more visited monastery and church in Assisi.  It’s rather quaint and homey and it even sells the peppers that the monks grow in the courtyards on the grounds.  I saw a couple different peppers, including the Carolina ghost peppers.  I quickly joked to another person on our trip that that the Certosa should be selling another ghost pepper, “holy ghost peppers.”  And they probably could get quite a fair penny for the “Holy Ghost Peppers,” especially if labeled accurately.
 

​I was at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck last week and heard owner Teresa Andrews extol the virtues of their Irish breakfast, which I don’t doubt that it is excellent, like all their food.  Hearing a description of the breakfasts quickly made me think of a vignette about the similar British breakfast that I came across a few years ago from the Pomodoro!:A History of the Tomato in Italy by David Gentilcore, a book that I found to be very interesting.  The author is a professor of early modern history at the University of Leicester in the UK, and the quality of writing and pace of the book makes it a better read than the output of most academics.  It is also more widely researched than most tomes about food, both academic and otherwise. 
 
It lives up to its title, being chock full of engaging facts about the Italians’ and Italian-Americans’ favorite fruit (that is used as a vegetable).  One regards the influence of the British breakfast habits on the development of Italy’s most famous tomato.  The traditional full British breakfast consists of bacon, sausage, poached or fried eggs, baked beans, toast with butter, and grilled tomatoes.  It is likely the antecedent to the far superior big American breakfast.
 
However lacking in comparison to our breakfasts, one component of the British version had deep resonance in Italy:
 
 “British demand was able to affect production strategies in Italy. In fact… the British were indirectly responsible for the introduction of the ‘San Marzano’….  The British like fresh tomatoes cooked, especially baked or grilled…there was no way for whole tomatoes to by enjoyed beyond the short growing season [in the UK]… In southern Italy, it turned out that the small, egg-shaped tomato varieties that were most popular here also were suited being canned whole…. The tomato variety that made this all possible was a… ‘recent cross’ between the ‘Re Umberto’ and ‘Fiaschetto’ varieties. This was the ‘San Marzano’, variety after the town near Salerno, where it was first cultivated. In just a few years, the ‘San Marzano’ had become the major variety used for canned whole tomatoes.”
 
The delectable San Marzano was quick to reach preeminence in Campania near Naples after getting a boost from the Brits.  It’s fun tidbit about the tomato that many deem to be the best for making tomato sauces for pasta, for meals well removed from breakfast.

​A trip to the small town of Vigévano – pronounced vee-JAY-ven-oh – was part of the itinerary on a recent gastronomic sojourn to Pavia, south of Milan and its environs.  I had never heard of Vigevano much less its splendid piazza, the Piazza Ducale that provides a grand and beautiful centerpiece for this town of around 60,000 about 25 miles southwest of Milan.  It is one of the most impressive piazzas in its own way that I’ve seen in Italy, as much so as the far more famous and visited seaside St. Mark’s Square in Venice and the scallop-shaped Piazza del Campo in Siena.
 
Built according to the ideal Renaissance proportions of three-to-one for such matters, the rectangular piazza measures something like 48 meters by 144 meters and was designed in the 1490s by Bramante, later the original chief architect of St. Peter’s in Rome.  Continuous three-story arcades line three sides while a magnificent concave baroque façade of the cathedral that more than aptly caps one end of the piazza.  This was instigated in the late 1600s by a Spanish bishop, Juan Caramuel de Labkowitz, who later presided over the congregation.  Decorative light-colored cobble stones from the nearby Ticino River contrastingly provide attractive geometric designs and a subtle sense of dynamism to the piazza, which is studded with cast iron lampposts, an addition from early in the past century.  A visit to it was a delight, even on a rainy and chilly day. 
 
The sense of specialness of the piazza is related in the city’s website with a vignette about the famed conductor “Arturo Toscanini, [who] despite his ill health, asked to be taken to Vigevano to sit at the tables of the bars around the square, as he considered Piazza Ducale to be a musical symphony, a four-sided orchestral composition akin to the four movements of symphonies.”  A beautiful one at that.

​The late Marcella Hazan helped to popularize a more authentic Italian cuisine in this country beginning in the 1970s, especially for dishes from her native region of Emilia-Romagna.  Among the very greatest of those dishes is the ragù bolognese, the slowly cooked meat sauce named after the city of Bologna meant to be served with freshly made pasta.  Hazan has an excellent version in her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, related in her usual authoritative, or didactic, fashion.  Below is a slightly modified version that I’ve used to great effect over the years, spicing it along the way.  I’m a longtime Houstonian, after all.
 
Though I had a tasty ragù at the new Rosie Cannonball, I believe that this tastes better.  That is takes at least five hours to create is part of the reason.  It’s better with better beef, and make sure that it is at no more than 80% lean.  Some good chuck, hormone-free from H-E-B worked very well the other day.
 
Olive oil – 1 tablespoon
Butter – 3 tablespoons
Onion – 1, chopped
Celery stalk – 1, chopped
Carrot – 1, diced
Ground beef, 80% lean – 1 pound
Whole milk – 1 ¼ cup
White wine – 1 ¼ cup
Peeled tomatoes – 1 15 ½-ounce can
Nutmeg, ground – a pinch
Serrano peppers – 3, seeded and diced
Salt – a pinch
Black pepper
Parmigiano-Reggiano – grated
 

1. Melt the butter in a cast iron pan or a heavy-bottomed pot with the olive oil and cook the onions until translucent.
2. Add the carrot and celery and cook for at least 2 minutes stirring to coat the vegetables well with the butter and oil.
3. Add the ground beef along with a pinch of salt and a few grindings of black pepper.  Break up the beef and cook until the beef is brown.
4. Add the milk.  While stirring frequently let simmer gently until the milk is evaporated completely.  This will take at least a half an hour.  Cooking the meat in the milk before adding the wine and tomatoes reduces the impact of the acidity of the wine and tomatoes.
5. Add the pinch of ground nutmeg.
6. Add the white wine and simmer until entirely evaporated, which will take another half hour or so.
7. Add the tomatoes and stir in well.  Cook uncovered with “the laziest of simmers” for at least 3 hours.  If the sauce begins to dry out, which is likely, add some water.  Before serving, there should be no water left in the sauce.

Serve with just cooked pasta and some grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.

​I returned just over a week ago from a weeklong gastronomic trip to northern Italy where esteemed food writer John Mariani – long of Esquire now of Forbes for his monthly output – was another of the invitees.  His preferred pre-prandial cocktail is the classic Daiquiri.  So much so, and given the confusion with the frozen version that the name Daiquiri denotes to many and the cocktail’s relegation to the hinterlands of competence for too many establishments before the advent of the craft cocktail craze, Mariani has his preferred recipe printed on his business card that he can offer to a waiter or bartender in case they need some help.  Traveling regularly overseas, especially, these can come in handy, and he used one to good effect to start a dinner at an excellent restaurant in Pavia where our group dined for our final meal.
 
I had read about this business card-cum-cocktail recipe in at least one of Mariani’s pieces in years past and chuckled once again when I actually saw it.  I might need to copy the idea in some form in the future, albeit some variation of the Martini.  Dropping by Public Services before dinner this past Saturday with the idea of starting with a Daiquiri, I showed the business card / recipe to Justin Vann, the bar’s head and one of the city’s top wine and spirits pros, who mentioned that he had a better Daiquiri recipe.  Two, in fact, and asked if I wanted a classic version – which I had had there before and quite enjoyed – or something, “interesting and funky,” I think was the phrase he used.
 
I decided to give the latter a try, as Public Services has done a terrific job with the numerous of cocktails in a range of styles that I’ve consumed there in recent years.  This so-called funky Daiquiri is made with an ounce-and-a-half of Smith & Cross rum and a half-ounce of Plantation Pineapple rum along with the appropriate amount of fresh lime juice and simple syrup, shaken and served in a chilled couple cocktail glass affixed with a wedge of lime.  The Smith & Cross is a “funky, Navy-strength pot-still rum from Jamaica” according to its importer that’s popular in tiki concoctions, which provided a very flavorful yet smooth backbone even at 114-proof to the cocktail that was an excellent and balanced blend of tart with some sweet and maybe just a hint of pineapple from the secondary rum to my palate.  I didn’t find it too funky.  Interesting, certainly, and very enjoyable.
 
This cocktail is not on the menu.  There is not even a name for it.  Vann said that he knows it as Marcella’s Daiquiri, seemingly named after the manager there who created it.  If you are a fan of Daiquiris, it’s certainly worth a try.
 
Public Services Wine & Whisky
202 Travis (at Franklin), 77002, (713) 516-8897
publicservicesbar.com

The second image is Marcella's Daiquiri, or the Daiquiri with no name, at Public Services

Before a trip to Pavia recently, all I had really heard about it was zuppa alla pavese, a historic soup named after this city that’s not far south of Milan, something that I had come across in Ada Boni’s classic “Italian Regional Cooking,” which was published in English fifty years ago.  The legend associated with its creation is related in that tome:
 
“On February 21, 1525, Francis I, King of France, was losing the battle of Pavia. Pursued by the Spaniards and about to surrender, he stopped at a cottage near the city and asked for a meal. As it happened, a classical vegetable minestrone was being prepared in the kitchen, and the cook, with a proper sense of occasion, decided to enrich it. She added a few slices of stale bread, toasted and buttered, broke a couple of eggs over the, threw in a few handfuls of Parmesan cheese, and poured the boiling vegetable broth over the top.  Francis ate this strange new dish with great curiosity, and as the Spaniards closed in, he thanked the peasants for their hospitality, declaring, “What you have given me was a King’s soup.!” And that, according to authorities on Lombard cooking, was the origin of Pavia soup, or zuppa alla pavese.”
 
As my trip was sponsored by Pavia’s chamber of commerce and mostly of a gastronomic nature, I assumed that zuppa alla pavese – it’s named after the town and seemingly it’s most famous dish, after all – would be served at least one of the meals, and likely more.  It wasn’t.  Not only that, but the dish does not seem to exist on any of the town’s menus – at least I didn’t find and I was looking – and might not even be cooked much at all in the area.  Our guide and translator, both from the area, had never had the dish.  One reason that it might not be found on too many menus is that it’s relatively straightforward and unfussy dish, and one with centuries-old roots; how many menus sport items that were created in the 1500s, after all? 
 
The dearth of the dish, and the resonance of its name, had encouraged the self-same chamber of commerce to encourage local eateries to update the dish in a variety of creative ways in a program called, “zuppa alla pavese 2.0” that might not have gotten too much traction.  I did encounter that, well, a sign announcing it at one restaurant.  I couldn’t get a table at the only place where I saw.  The restaurants are especially tiny in Pavia, it seems, befitting a pedestrian-centric municipality not needing to seat an influx of tourists.  No matter.  A rendition of zuppa alla pavese is easy to recreate at home.  Good bread and good stock are quite helpful.  And, if you can get some of those gorgeously orange-yolked eggs that are used in Italy, even btter.
 
Zuppa alla pavese – adapted from “The Silver Spoon”
 
Serves 4 as a first course
 
Thick slices of hearty bread with the crusts removed – 4
Butter – 2 tablespoons
Meat broth, homemade if possible, of course – 3 cups
Eggs – 4
Parmigiano-Reggiano – 4 tablespoons
 

1. Preheat oven to 400 F
2. Bring the broth to a boil.
3. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the bread on both sides.
4. Put the bread in four ovenproof bowls.
5. Break on egg on top of each slice of bread and pour over the hot broth.
6. Add the Parmigiano-Reggiano to each bowl.
7. Put into the oven for a few minutes or until the cheese melts.

I finally made it to Rosie Cannonball, the new restaurant that’s part of a cluster of related establishments on lower Westheimer that began with the slick neo-honky tonk Goodnight Charlie’s.  The fare from the short menu at Rosie Cannonball is mostly Italian with trattoria fare rooted in the Emilia-Romagna region of central Italy along with pizzas and a handful of Spanish and Portuguese items.  It’s a comfortably attractive and quaint place that seems especially well-suited during the day for the ladies-who-lunch whom made up most of the clientele when I visited the other day.
 
After spending the previous week in Italy dining quite well, I still had the hankering for Italian food and pasta, as usually do in any case.  The Cavatelli Al Sugo Bolognese all’Entra, Parmigiano Reggiano seemed to fit the bill on a crisp day.  It featured a short, sturdy pasta served with a slowly cooked meat sauce that is a specialty of Bologna and its surroundings and seen throughout central and a fair part of northern Italy.  Their sauce, the ragù, is made with ground beef and pork, no veal.  The Entra designation, and likely the recipe, comes from the restaurant north of Bologna where the chef once worked, I was told.
 
I quite enjoyed the dish.  Their cavatelli is made in-house with all-purpose flour that provided a nice bite, flavor and cavities to catch the meaty sauce.  The other pastas on the menu use the softer, more finely milled ’00’ that’s appropriate for those.  The ragù tasted like it should, hearty but not overly so, if with just a touch of chalkiness likely from the beef.  I could have used some bread to sop the remaining little bit of it – “fare la scarpetta” as the Italians say – but none was offered, unfortunately.  Their ragù was maybe slightly less flavorful as the couple ragùs I had eaten the week before in Italy, and what I make at home, using a slight adaption of the Marcella Hazan’s terrific, very long-cooked version. 
 
Though like what I ate, the portion for the cavatelli was quite small.  It was certainly smaller than what is usually served these days as a primo in Italy, the first course, usually pasta or risotto, traditionally meant as a preface the secondo, the protein-centric course.  The portion sizes have grown larger at Italian in the past decade or longer, but it’s been since about the start of the millennium – a span of time that includes nearly a dozen trips to Italy – that I can remember a pasta portion as thriftfully sized as this was.  This might work without much concern for the ladies-who-lunch, or children, but I doubt it will satisfy most diners even at lunch.  Even less so at dinner, as the waitress told me the portions are the same for dinner.  You’ll need another course in the evening to be sure.
 
Another thing caused me a pause in addition to the parsimonious portion was that the price was an outstanding $22.  Not only smaller than what is served in Italy for a similar dish, and nearly everywhere else, it was much more expensive.  On this recent gastronomic trip to Italy, a well-known national food writer and I talked about how pasta prices in Italy have nicely remained around €11 or €12, or so, about $12.25 to $13.50, at most restaurants for the past decade or longer.  Though I enjoyed the cavatelli preparation, I felt that it was one of the worst dining values I’ve had in a while. 
 
Another caveat in addition to those two for the cavatelli, were the wine prices.  Perusing the wine list, I found just eight of the two or three dozen Italian reds were under $100, which I found annoying to state the least.  With two Master Sommeliers with the hospitality group, I expected more.  There are certainly many excellent choices on the list, but the accompanying prices, which may be fair, are on the high side for most diners.  Based on one visit, I believe that Rosie Cannonball is a welcome addition to the local dining scene, one that I plan to revisit.  It’s just one that might be a little pricey for what it is.
 
Rosie Cannonball
1620 Westheimer (between Mandell and Dunlavy), 77006, (832) 380-2471
rosiecannonball.com


Cavatelli al Sugo at Rosie Cannonbal

I just returned from a trip to Pavia and its surroundings that was sponsored by its local chamber of commerce and included the significant nearby wine region of Oltrepò Pavese.  Located in northern Italy barely a half-hour train ride south of Milan, this is a city and region just a little further south that are essentially unknown to most American wine drinkers, including those who purchase a lot of Italian wine, like myself.  Just as unknown is that the Oltrepò Pavese produces a lot of Pinot Noir.  In fact, with more than 7,000 acres of the grape and roots in the area back over 150 years, the Oltrepò Pavese “earns the distinction of Pinot Noir’s Italian home” according to the Wine Spectator.
 
Used mostly in sparkling wines – where the region is also a big producer and unknown to American consumers – it also makes a fair amount of still Pinot Noir.  Or, Pinot Nero, as the varietal is called and labeled there and nearly everywhere in Italy where it is bottled.  It’s been planted in Italy since the mid-1800s at least and the Italianized name is quite longstanding unlike the more recently planted Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.
 
The labeling of Pinot Noir as Pinot Nero is a problem, I believe.  If American can find a Pino Nero from the Oltrepò Pavese or anywhere else in Italy, they might not immediately think that the wine is Pinot Noir.  Or if they know Pinot Nero is Pinot Noir that might think that it is something outside the bounds of typical Pinot Noir, maybe even adulterated.  I mentioned this to the owner of Prime Alture, one of the wineries that we visited.  I should have looked at his Pinot Noir first.  He seemed to have the same concerns as me, and his is labeled as Pinot Noir.  Unfortunately, though he said that he is in most of the top restaurants in Milan, he doesn’t yet have an American distributor, even if he might be more ready for the market than most.
 
I had several versions of Pinot Noir recent trip and enjoyed them all, including a white wine made with the grape, which was new to me.  It very nicely complemented the sturgeon dish at a famed long-running trattoria in Pavia.  A few years ago, at a dinner at a sommelier’s house, I had a Pinot Nero from the Alto Adige that was fantastic, even outshining an excellent white Hermitage from the cult producer Jean-Louis Chave that had nearly twenty years of age.  To generalize, the Pinot Noirs produced in Italy provide a different take on the grape, neither Burgundian or Californian in any of its guises, dry with subtle red fruits like blackcurrant and raspberry, not bold, and balanced with nice acidity.  Each has tasted Italian to me, maybe with a hint of underlying bitterness that is present in a great many of the reds of the country or something.  If you enjoy Pinot Noir, especially with food, it’s worth your while to give Pinot Nero a try, from Oltrepò Pavese or elsewhere, provided you can find it.

A white Pinot Nero (or Pinot Noir) at Antica Osteria del Previ in Pavia just over a week ago.