Brunetti's Cookbook

232 Pages·2010·5.29 MB·English

by  Pianaro

Brunetti’s Cookbook
Brunetti’s Cookbook
Recipes by Roberta Pianaro
Culinary stories by Donna Leon
Illustrated by Tatjana Hauptmann
Text copyright © 2009 by Roberta Pianaro/Donna Leon and Diogenes Verlag
AG Zürich Recipes: English translation copyright © 2009 by Janet Edsforth
Stone Illustrations copyright © 2009 by Tatjana Hauptmann and Diogenes
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First published as A Taste of Venice: At Table with Brunetti in Great Britain in
2010 by William Heinemann, The Random House Group Limited, London
ISBN-13: 978-0-80219710-8
Atlantic Monthly Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Distributed by Publishers Group West
www.groveatlantic.com

*Asterisk in the extracts taken from the Brunetti novels indicates that there is a
recipe available for these dishes – refer to the index at the end of the book, or to
the detailed table of contents at the beginning of each section.
Contents
Foreword by Donna Leon: Brunetti a tavola
STRADA NUOVA
ANTIPASTI • ANTIPASTI
ORECCHIETTE CON AMORINI
FIRST COURSES • PRIMI PIATTI
SANT’ERASMO
VEGETABLES • VERDURE
CAPITANO ALBERTO
FISH AND SEAFOOD • PESCI E FRUTTI DI MARE
VOLATILE
MEAT • CARNI
VON CLAUSEWITZ AT RIALTO
DESSERTS • DOLCI
INDEX
Brunetti a tavola
It was never my intention to write a cookbook. After the publication of the
fourth Brunetti novel, however, readers began to comment about what they
viewed as the conspicuous presence of food and meals in the books. The
Brunetti family, sometimes Brunetti alone or in the company of colleagues or
friends, ate meals that struck many readers as exceptional in their quality,
complexity, and sheer length.
At first, this response surprised me, for there had been nothing intentional,
nothing precious, about the placement of meals in the books: these novels dealt
to a certain degree with family life in Venice, and this was the way that I had,
during the last forty years, observed Venetians to eat. Soon it became apparent
that such comments came most often, one could say almost exclusively, from
readers in countries – how to say this gracefully? – with a culinary culture
different from the Italian? (Yes, that sounds sufficiently polite.) Though many
Italians have read the books and remarked on them to me over the years, none
has ever mentioned the presence of food: for them, as for me, Brunetti’s meals
are simply a part of the received culture. How else would people be expected to
eat?
Certainly, all Venetians, all Italians, do not eat like this all of the time. But I
think it is true to say that most of them were raised eating in this manner, and
that they still see these long, sensual meals as the normal way to deal with food.
It’s not only Venetians who view food in this way: we non-Italians who live
here, at least if we live here for any length of time, soon come to regard eating
well as a normal part of daily life, worthy of attention but hardly of comment.
There is a refreshing lack of self-importance in the way Italians in general
think and talk about food: it does not occur to them that their appreciation of
food or their interest in it makes them in any way special. This is as normal to
them as it is for the British to discuss the weather or for Americans to talk about
money. Eating well is not an achievement, a cause for self-promotion and pride:
it’s simply something you do twice a day in a manner that will provide as much
physical pleasure as possible.
One of the first things that was said to me when I came to Italy forty years
ago, speaking not a word of the language, was ‘Mangia, mangia, ti fa bene.’ Eat,
eat, it’s good for you. At first sound, the command seems to fit into clichéd ideas
about Italians: one pictures a heavy-bosomed mother saying it to her numerous
children, or the grandmother in some cloying pasta commercial gathering her
family under the protective wings of her pappardelle. But, as I was soon to learn,
this is nothing more than their recognition of a simple truth: eating is good for
you, and eating well is better for you than eating badly. Further, the person who
concerns him or herself with feeding you is often doing so out of a desire to keep
you well or make you better. In short, it is a manifestation of love, the most
simple – if you will, the most primitive – manifestation of love of which we are
capable.
In the decades I’ve been in Venice, the person who has made that love most
manifest is my best, oldest, and dearest friend here, Roberta Pianaro, known to
all of us who love her as Biba. It was she and her husband Franco who first
opened up this world of food as culture and food as love to me. I’ve been eating
at their table and helping in their kitchen for more than thirty years, during
which time they have taught me to open not only my mouth and my sense of
taste to food, but my mind to it as well.
I don’t know how to write a cookbook. I do, however, know how to write
about my own experiences with food and cooking and cooks, always seen from
the point of view of a person raised in one of those cultures I still don’t know
how to describe politely: best perhaps simply to call it a culture with a different
attitude to food. After all, with two Irish grandmothers, one grandfather Spanish
and the other German, I can hardly present myself as legitimate heir to a rich
culinary tradition.
Italian life is filled with food: people talk about it constantly, spend a great
deal of time shopping for it and preparing it, and devote a joyous amount of time
to eating it. One has but to pay close attention to them when they talk about
food, or when they cook and eat, to begin to understand how fundamental it is to
the living of a happy life and how vital it is to Italian culture.
It is the great privilege of my life to have been absorbed, if not into Italy
itself, then at least into one Venetian family. Roberta and Franco have, over the
years, allowed me to become part of their lives, not only as a guest at their table
but as a member, however much a latecomer, of each of their families.
When the idea of writing a Brunetti cookbook was first proposed to me I
responded in the normal Italian fashion, by turning to my family for help.
Whatever I’ve learned about food or how to prepare it I’ve learned during my
years spent watching Biba in the kitchen, often sitting at the table and chopping
vegetables or asking why something was done in a particular way or in a
particular sequence. Though she learned some of the dishes she prepares from
cookbooks, most of Biba’s skill stems from being raised within a family that
loved to cook and eat, and from having the good fortune to have been born with
the culinary equivalent of perfect pitch. Often, when I asked why a certain spice
had to be added to a particular dish, Biba could come no closer to an explanation
than to say, ‘Because it’s best.’
I would not, and could not, have undertaken this project without her help.
Each time we emerged from the kitchen, whether to test and taste what we had
made or to share it with friends and the people we love, I was made aware of that
fundamental truth that is the animating spirit of Italian cooking: ‘Mangia,
mangia, ti fa bene.’