The Harry's Bar Cookbook

550 Pages·2006·1.37 MB·English

by  Arrigo Cipriani

THE HARRY’S BAR COOKBOOK
A Bantam Book / November 1991
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1991 by Harry Cipriani, Inc.
Jacket and interior photographs copyright © 1991 by Christopher Baker.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cipriani, Arrigo.
The Harry’s Bar cookbook: recipes and reminiscences from the world-famous Venice bar and restaurant /
by Arrigo Cipriani; introduction by Jan Morris.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-54059-1
1. Cookery, Italian. 2. Harry’s Bar (Venice, Italy) I. Baker, Christopher. II. Title.
TX723.C562 1991
641.5945—dc20 91-8408
CIP
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group,
Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1745
Broadway, New York, New York 10019.
v3.1
To my father, Guiseppe Cipriani
I wish to extend my special thanks to the following people who shared the
unique experience of preparing this book for publication:
When Molly Finn and I first sat down together and talked about Italian
restaurants, risotto, and our shared dislike of pretentious food, I knew this book
would become what I wanted it to be. As we sat together in Bellini by Cipriani
in New York, in Harry’s Dolci, in Harry’s Bar, in my little office above the
restaurant in Venice, and at Molly’s table in New York, she asked questions and
I talked. In all our kitchens she watched, tasted, and asked more questions. In her
own kitchen she developed the recipes, cooking all our food until it tasted just as
it does in Harry’s Bar. I thank her for understanding what I said and for sounding
my voice in the text. It has been a satisfying partnership.
Jane Garmey helped in the writing of the text; Blair Brown Hoyt developed the
original recipes and tested them; Christopher Baker captured Venice in his
photographs; Sally Schneider styled the food photographs; and Michael Belardo
chose wines for my recipes.
Thank you, Michael Winner, for all of your kind words about Harry’s Bar.
In addition, sincerest thanks go to Fran McCullough, my editor; Coleen O’Shea,
who gave me a home at Bantam Books; B.W. Honeycutt and Christiaan Kuypers
for their most beautiful book design; Sharon Squibb, who prepared the proposal
that got this whole effort started; and Angela Miller, my agent, who made it all
happen.
And, finally, I want to tell my relatives, friends, and colleagues in both Venice
and New York how much I have appreciated their help. They are Alfredo Del
and New York how much I have appreciated their help. They are Alfredo Del
Peschio, Paolo Rossi, Nicola Cicchini, Guiseppe Appezzato, Giovanni Fabbro,
Tommasina Cipriani, Tullio Fabris, Giancarlo Tondin, Guiseppe Marangi,
Salvatore D’Andrea, Philippe Forcioli, Euton Callwood, Evaristo Cassol, Adis
Schiavo, Vanni Dal Pan, Giulia Tirraoro, Barbara Timm, Giovanni Pirina,
Alessandro Moro, Alessandro Schlessinger, Francesco Tozza, Eduardo Ynami,
Tiziano Caminati, Mikial Mozo, Angel Moreno, Sal Musso, Lap Nguyen,
Manuel Baez, Marisa Sparer, Stefania Pango, Sandro Orlandi, Claudio Ponzio,
Mario Berton, Vladimiro Tome, Lucio Zanon, Bruno Dussin, Melinda Skehan,
Nevio Torresin, Valentino Carlon, Luigino Calzavara, Pier Giuseppe Sereno,
Remigio Ianna, Carlo Marcolin, Otello Cazzin, Mirco Zampieri, Ugo Carrano,
and Vittorio Tomé.
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
Drinks
Wine
Appetizers
Sandwiches
Salads
Soups
Pasta
Rice, Risotto and Polenta
Fish
Poultry
Meat
Vegetables
Sauces
Breads
Desserts
by Michael Winner
It is quite simple. The best meals in the world are to be purchased at Harry’s Bar
in Venice. There is no restaurant that comes anywhere near it, in my view, for
excellence, freshness, taste and simplicity. The ambience of the downstairs bar
where tourists mingle with celebrities is sensational! The great thing about the
food at Harry’s Bar is that it is clear, extremely fresh and beautifully prepared
without being over-fancy or plate decorated. In fact I have never seen plate
decoration at Harry’s Bar which these days is a miracle.
The other thing about Harry’s Bar, which sadly you won’t get from trying to
make the food at your own home, is the extraordinary brilliance of the service.
There’s a ballet of incredible precision and skill as the waiters glide between the
tables. The service is like lightning. And masterminding it all is the food guru,
Arrigo Cipriani. Arrigo is one of the greatest restaurateurs ever in the history of
the planet. He has great knowledge, enormous charm and a marvellous quiet
dignity which pervades the room when he is there. And when he is not there the
staff manage to keep up almost the same ambience.
The crowning glory of any meal at Harry’s Bar is the desserts. Enormous
cakes are somehow displayed in all the hubbub and chaos, each one of which not
only looks good (which is easy for a cake) but tastes outstanding.
I am glad you are being offered these recipes to try at home. If you cook them
to only half the standard of Harry’s Bar restaurant food you can consider
yourself a triumph.
MICHAEL WINNER
LONDON, 2006
BELLINIS IN PARADISE
A Few Memories of Giuseppe Cipriani, Founder of Harry’s Bar
It is with sadness that I tell you today, once and for all, of my father’s death.
Two months ago, after a violent bout of influenza, he insisted on being taken
home from the hospital. With the craftiness of a child he persuaded the doctors
that he would find all his old familiar things in his room, from the bell-push to
his spectacles — all ten pairs of them, which he would put on and take off in
continual confusion, looking around each time with the curiosity of a blind man
seeing things for the first time.
He knew by now that the end was near. With that extraordinary inner
knowledge that he had of his own brain he had even shown me just where the
trouble was. “Something happened here,” and he pointed his finger at a spot just
behind one of his large ears. “The pain is here, but they,” and he pointed at the
hospital, “don’t want to listen to me.”
Once he was home he realised that he could no longer find his things as
before. I fixed the bell-push to the head of his bed with some Scotch tape and I
put his spectacles at a place on his left exactly where he wanted them. Then,
with that habitual “look” of his, he said: “Get me up on my feet.”
I immediately knew then, and he knew it too, that all the life in him went into
those few stiff, lurching steps that we took together, in those few yards.
Certainly, we all felt an immense love.
Then the house was invaded by Baxter glucose bottles and, winking at me, he
said: “Harry, we’re over the hump now.” It seemed that the life had to go into
him this way, drop by drop, into his almost invisible veins, but no, out it came
again with agonising pains. Then he burst out, “What a farce! Those clowns …”
Then he began a long sleep with intervals of extraordinary freshness and
clarity, incredible wisecracks, flashes of loving affection, moments of sweet
uncomplainingness. At Easter he asked for champagne. He managed just to wet
his lips with it, then he blew me kisses, and from the thin thread of his voice I
could make out, “Take the rest and get drunk.”
Three weeks later, with breaths that became longer and longer and fewer and
farther between, he finally pushed the life out of himself. It was Saturday night
farther between, he finally pushed the life out of himself. It was Saturday night
and I’m sure he had planned it for then. “They work on Sunday, and on Monday
when the bar is closed and they have nothing to do, they can hold my funeral.”
On sight of his lifeless body I only remember a calm, composed and very
white face, and the clothes which fell loosely about his legs and clung to them as
clothes do only to the dead.
The undertakers turned up their noses at the plain coffin which he himself had
wanted and which we found in Mestre only after considerable difficulty. The
funeral was a simple homemade affair. We tightened the screws down ourselves
with blunt screwdrivers we’d managed to find. And we carried the coffin on our
shoulders somewhat lopsidedly as my son is one metre eighty-five and I’m only
one seventy; who the third bearer was I don’t remember, but the fourth was
Sandrino, the spluttering boatman, who is as they say, “as high as a nickel”.
Seven stupendous gondolas — “with dazzling brass fittings, mind,” he’d said,
and so they were.
A chilly day, low grey clouds chased by a strong North wind. In front of
Harry’s Bar the heavens opened up with all they’d got, and it poured down just
as he liked it. Then the Rio della Paglia, to left and right as far as the hospital,
and then out on the lagoon into the wind with all the vaporettos and boats
slowing down to look at those gondolas with their sixteen splendid gondoliers.
There was a cheerful atmosphere as at a wedding. We recalled his biting
remarks, his simple directness, his humour over things that drive most people to
tears. We hoisted him once again on our shoulders and took him into the
cemetery — the most beautiful cemetery in the world in my view. A moment to
gaze on the coffin where it was laid on the earth, then brief shovelling and it was
covered over. Just as he had wished — between two strangers, with that open-
mindedness of a man who looks for others to live with and to die with too.
I imagine that someday I too shall arrive up there and a solemn and
benevolent voice will say:
“Harry, among all your many misdeeds, there’s one …”
“Which one?” I’ll ask, pretending not to understand.
“You know very well. You never had your father blessed by the Church.”
“But that was not his wish.”
“And what do you know of that? Couldn’t he have changed his mind at the
last moment?”
“Forgive me, but would it really have made much difference?”
“You are an ignoramus, and impertinent, and what’s more, a sinner!”
“If that’s how it is, I’m sorry, but I permitted myself to say that to you because
I seemed to have caught a glimpse of him over there with that writer with the