Extra Virgin Recipes & Love from Our Tuscan Kitchen

307 Pages·2014·11.86 MB·English

by  Gabriele Corcos

Copyright © 2014 by Debi Mazar and Gabriele Corcos
Photographs copyright © 2014 by Eric Wolfinger
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House
LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com
CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House LLC.
COOKING CHANNEL and associated logos and EXTRA VIRGIN are trademarks of COOKING CHANNEL, LLC, and are used
under license.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mazar, Debi.
Extra virgin : recipes & love from our Tuscan kitchen / Debi Mazar and Gabriele Corcos; photographs by Eric Wolfinger. — First
edition.
pages cm
Includes index.
1. Cooking, Italian—Tuscan style. I. Corcos, Gabriele. II. Title.
TX723.2.T86M398 2014
641.59455—dc23 2013032506
ISBN 978-0-385-34605-4
eBook ISBN 978-0-385-34606-1
Book and jacket design by Jan Derevjanik
Jacket photography by Eric Wolfinger
All photographs are by Eric Wolfinger with the exception of: 1.4, 2.1, 2.21, 3.3, 11.4 by Jeremiah Alley; col2.1, 1.8, 2.10 by Lorenzo
Carlomagno; and 1.1 by David Lang.
Photographs courtesy of the authors: 7.5 by Chiara Sinatti and ded.1, 11.2, and 11.9.
Cooking Channel photographs on col.1, fm1.1, 1.3, 1.8, 2.14, 7.1, 9.1, and 11.1 are provided courtesy of Cooking Channel, LLC. © 2011
Cooking Channel, LLC.
Cooking Channel photographs on 1.5, 7.6, 10.1, and 5.1 are provided courtesy of Cooking Channel, LLC. © 2012 Cooking Channel, LLC.
First Edition
v3.1
We dedicate this book to one another,
to our daughters, Evelina and Giulia,
and to families everywhere.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE TUSCAN KITCHEN: ESSENTIALS
Appetizers
Pastas and Sauces
Risotto
Soups
Salads
Meat
Fish
Vegetables
Pizza
Panini
Desserts
Drinks
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX

INTRODUCTION
DA FIRENZE IN AMERICA
A RECIPE FOR LOVE, LIFE, AND FAMILY
DEBI: I grew up with a deep love for food, thanks mostly to a grandmother who cooked well and
could win over anybody with her braciole. But it was also because of that truly unique food
upbringing that a lot of New Yorkers talk about, where your street could be a meeting place not just
for people, but for aromas from seemingly all corners of the earth. There would be fried chicken from
one window, spicy island dishes from another, and down the block something garlicky and peppery
wafting out of the Italians’ houses. And all that might be in the air while I was thinking about the
dinner I was about to have in Chinatown!
When I was eight years old, my mother moved us to Saugerties in the Catskills area of upstate New
York and essentially became a hippie. She got into gardening—growing corn, zucchini, tomatoes, and
basil—and taught herself how to cook, making delicious meals, and baking bread and pies. It was a
bit of a culture shock for a young girl with the excitement of city streets in her blood, but it opened my
eyes in the best way possible to good, fresh, locally grown food. We had neighbors in Woodstock
who were from Northern Italy, and it was at their house that I had my first taste of freshly made pasta,
which was always hanging over drying racks and draped over chairs around their house. Nothing
against my grandmother’s heavy, delicious Sicilian-style dishes, but this was something special, and
different.
I’d always adored Italian cuisine and its well-honed use of ingredients that have been cultivated
and enjoyed for centuries. But meeting and falling for Gabriele, I discovered how much great food
also comes from a desire to feed the ones you love. I’d always thought I would have to win over a
man with my own cooking. I remember plenty of times I’d go to all this trouble to cook for a guy
who’d show up late, if at all, and who’d never appreciate the time and effort I put into a meal. At the
very least, I had my dinner parties, which had become popular gatherings for my friends. But here
was this handsome Florentine, passionate about life, art, history, and food, who not only wanted to
cook FOR me, but loved impressing me with the vegetables, fruits, cheeses, and meats of his country,
region, and family. Hot, right? Then he took me to his hometown of Fiesole in the hills above
Florence, to the beautiful land where his family had lived for generations, and the sense of history
was overwhelming. I have a deep fondness for ancient cultures and strong traditions. Gabriele
showed me the fruit trees, the wild herbs, and the rustic sweep of it all, and I fell for him all over
again.
I’ll be honest—merging our refrigerators involved some negotiation at first, mostly when it came to
what he thought about some of my food staples. I had good extra virgin olive oil, fresh herbs, quality
ingredients for a sauce. But one look at my rice milk, tofu, and bean sprouts, and Gabriele had to
control his impulse to take over our kitchen. I would come home exhausted from shooting a TV series,
too tired to think about much of anything except learning lines for the next day, and I’d find that my
husband had whipped up a dish inspired by his scouring the local farmers’ markets. Then I
understood what an act of love it is to provide a simple, fresh, and delicious meal for your amore. I
may have occasionally had my head in the plate, I was so freakin’ tired, but you would have seen a
smile as my face fell forward!
As our beautiful daughters, Evelina and Giulia, came into the picture, and since Gabriele and I
decided to turn our kitchen-inspired happiness into a website to share our joys of traditional Tuscan
cooking, our passion for the flavors of my husband’s land has only grown. Our television show has
been another outlet for what we’re trying to convey. But there’s no substitute for this: a book with
easy-to-make, joyful meals from our heart and soul.
So please use this book. Dog-ear the pages. Get sauce on it. Let a spray of olive oil from a
vigorous drizzle mark its pages. Write your favorite notes—your own inspirations—in the margins.
Let the love we put into these recipes become a part of your home. Your family will thank you, the
friends you cook for will look at you in a new light, and maybe that special someone you hope to woo
will find that decision about you a little easier to make! We crave the spice and sweetness of life
after all, and as I’ve learned from loving Gabriele, delicious food made from great ingredients is the
means to achieve it.
GABRIELE: I’ve walked through olive fields picking fruits of the harvest, and stood by my
grandmother as she made ravioli by hand, and stolen a bite of prosciutto from my hidden stash when
my kosher Jewish father wasn’t home. I grew up with a strong sense of food’s connection to the earth,
to family, and to personal pleasure.
These are the experiences that make me the Tuscan cook I am today, and I find the greatest joy in
life from cooking the food I grew up with for my family and friends. It’s the same joy I experienced as
a percussionist when I was pursuing a music career—that thrill of performing for audiences. There is
a direct connection between doing what I love and the feeling it gives me when I experience it.
It’s interesting how often making food for someone else may seem routine on the surface, but inside
you teem with deeper emotions connected to caring for others. My earliest memories of learning how
to cook come from my mother, a schoolteacher, showing me the ins and outs of the fridge and the
stove, so I could make my baby brother Fabio’s bottle on Sunday mornings, while Mom slept in after
a hard week. (Not waking her up was step one of the recipe.) Feeding my brother was a taste of
responsibility and maturity—tied up in providing for someone unable to fend for himself—that I
never forgot. Then when Nonna Lola, my beloved grandmother, taught me the secret to her wonderful
almond cake, it was like being given a family heirloom, from a doting grandmother to the grandson
who cherished her cooking. When I was a newlywed with a pregnant wife, it dawned on me what my
life had been leading up to: the ability to feed my family, to turn the making of a fragrant, nourishing
bowl of pasta with red sauce into an act of the most sincere love.
When Deborah and I started making home videos to share on the Internet, teaching people the
basics of traditional Tuscan recipes, we watched our site grow into a much larger audience. I was
surprised at how freeing it was to be in contact with the world through the food I loved. Then again,
learning to cook as I grew up was a form of freedom, as was breaking certain rules in our house, too.
The funny thing about mio amore Deborah’s story is that for her, it took leaving the city and landing in
the country to round out her appreciation of food. For me, I would often feel stuck on our Florentine