Indisputably Italian

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Award-winning Italian chef Celestino Drago will demonstrate his recipes and his techniques at the Kapalua Wine & Food Festival. Photo courtesy of Celestino Drago 23rd Annual Kapalua Wine & Food Festival July 8-11 at Kapalua Resort Tickets: Cooking demonstrations, $100; wine tours, $30; tasting seminars, $100-$130; Grand Tasting and Seafood Festival, $140. The Kapalua Bay Hotel, the Kapalua Villas and the Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua, all offer packages that include event entry, rooms and other amenities. Information and reservations: (800) 527-2582; kapaluamaui.com. Schedule of events July 8 5:30 p.m. — Welcome reception (press, participants, four-day ticket holders). July 9 1:30 p.m. — Roy Yamaguchi cooking demonstration, the Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua 3 p.m. — Joseph Phelps Vineyards "Insignia" vertical tasting, The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua 5:30 p.m. — Grand Tasting, Kapalua Bay Hotel July 10 10 a.m. — Napa Valley Vintners "New World/Old Wine," Kapalua Bay Hotel 12:30 p.m. — Suzette Graham cooking demonstration, the Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua 2 p.m. — Kapalua wine tour (drop-by tastings in various locations) 3 p.m. — Connoisseur 101 tasting with Riedel Crystal, Kapalua Bay Hotel; 6 p.m. — Winemaker dinners at various local restaurants July 11 10 a.m. — Sparkling Wines from Around the World, Kapalua Bay Hotel 12:30 p.m. — Celestino Drago cooking demonstration, the Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua 2 p.m. — Kapalua wine tour 3 p.m. — Cheese- and wine-tasting seminar, Kapalua Bay Hotel 5:30 p.m. — Kapalua Seafood Festival, the Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua

Chef Celestino Drago, arguably the best-known and most award-winning Italian chef in the United States today, understands perfectly how that difference happened. "When they get here, they have to start working, you do whatever is in front of you," said Drago by phone from his Santa Monica office. Despite 23 years in the United States, he retains the accent and somewhat idiosyncratic syntax of one who has never, in his heart, quite left his home country.

"Many, they start restaurants but they are cooking without the ingredients they are used to, without the experience of cooking really — probably Mamma was cooking in Italy. They got to make do with what they got and they do abondonza — big portions — to satisfy the people. People come to think this is Italian cooking: tomato sauce from cans, big portions, meatballs."

"Maybe in the family, they have authentic food, they make a garden, but not in the restaurant," concluded Drago, who will be in Hawai'i to share his approach to food and wine at the Kapalua Wine & Food Festival July 8 to 11 on Maui. He'll prepare a dinner with the staff of D.K. Kodama and Chuck Furuya's Vino restaurant on July 10 and give a cooking demonstration July 11, as well as participate in other festival events.

Drago recalls his early days in an American restaurant kitchen with an almost comical misery. Arriving in Los Angeles in 1979, he found tomatoes so flavorless his mother wouldn't have allowed them in the house, fresh basil available only few months a year and radicchio almost nonexistent. On occasion, he would air-freight cases of radicchio from Italy, in which case the bitter pinky-purple leaves were so precious they had to be carefully seeded through salad like gold dust among glitter.

"It was very difficult, very depressing. I did not enjoy cooking here at all," said Drago, who grew up the eldest of eight in the town of Galati Mamertino, between Messina and Palermo on Sicily. Sent off to technical school in Tuscany at age 15, he look a part-time job in a restaurant and soon learned he liked cooking better than computing. Investors from California found him, not yet 20 but already a pasta chef, and whisked him off to Los Angeles.

Twenty-three years later, he is happy to report that he can now find all the juicy, red tomatoes, pungent basil and fresh radicchio he needs — as well as most of the other ingredients integral to Italian cuisine.

His menus at Drago in Santa Monica and Il Pastaio in Beverly Hills run to an elegant simplicity: fried olives stuffed with meat and herbs, arancini (risotto triangles with something a little savory tucked into the center of each), spaghetti cacio pepe (pecorino romano, butter, salt, pepper and high-quality, perfectly cooked pasta), tuna in a broth of tomatoes, olives, capers and onions, skewered swordfish rolls Sicilian-style, Italian-style steaks.

Still, he says, Americans know little of authentic southern Italian food. He gets a bit testy when he notes how many fine-dining Italian restaurants proudly tout themselves as "northern Italian" — which in America is code for "no watery tomato sauce, no burned garlic, we serve something other than pasta and veal." But southern Italian food has nothing to do with big portions and heavy sauces, Drago said: "That thing was bugging me, that people really didn't know what they were missing."

So in 1991, when he opened Drago, he included a small number of Sicilian specialties among the more contemporary offerings, and suddenly those five or six dishes were getting most of the press and buzz. Gourmet magazine said there were only two places in the country where you could get real Sicilian food.

Drago got so excited that he next opened a restaurant that was all Sicilian, but it was in a bad location, and he kept getting complaints from diners who wanted capers in their piccata, which isn't the way it's done in Italy. "I tell them, if you want that, go somewhere else," he said. "Eventually, I give up and change it to a steak house" (now also closed).

Drago, who has brought three of his brothers over to work with him in his family of restaurants, said his latest projects continue the family's efforts to bring more authentic Italian food ways to the United States: Enoteca Drago in Beverly Hills, a wine bar where small dishes are paired with tiny servings of various wines;, and Dulce Forno, a wholesale bakery in Culver City, Calif., that will open a retail outlet in September.

He notes that, in Italy, he can never recall sitting down for a glass of wine without food — even if it was just a little cheese, some olives and cured meats. Cocktails or espresso you drink alone, he said, but "wine, never. Wine is for food."

As to the bakery operation, "I have been doing my own bread all the time because bread on the Italian table is so important," he said. He's grateful for companies like La Brea and Il Fornaio that have made it possible for Americans to get and appreciate Italian-style breads.

Ask Drago what food or dish characterizes his mother's kitchen and transports him back home in memory, and his answer expresses the purity of his cooking style.

"To me, of course, it is the tomato," he said. "We have a big farm and we produce everything; all we used to buy was salt and sugar. We use tomatoes so many different ways. But tomato salad was on the table every single night, just simple, tomato and onion with a little olive oil. Those sweet tomatoes — every time I go home I want that same tomato salad, it doesn't matter what else we eat."

A little do-it-yourself Drago cuisine for the home cook

As sophisticated as Celestino Drago's restaurants are, you'd expect his recipes to be beyond the average home cook. And some are. But for his frequent public appearances and coverage in magazines, he maintains a stock of eminently doable but still interesting dishes. Here's a sampling.

Drago's pear and spinach salad combines sweet fruit with salty cheese and the slight bite of radicchio and crisp frisée. Frisée is that lacy, light-colored lettuce; it's a member of the chicory family. If you can't find frisée, substitute romaine. And if pears are hard to come by, use a sweet apple. Imported pecorino Tuscano is one of a family of hard, dry, aged sheep's milk cheeses. The more widely available pecorino Romano may be substituted.

Insalata di spinaci, pere e Pecorino Toscano

• 1 cup baby spinach
• 1 cup frisée
• 1 cup radicchio
• 1 ripe pear cut into thin sticks
• 4 ounces pecorino Toscano cheese, cut into small sticks
• 4 red cherry tomatoes cut in half
• 4 yellow cherry tomatoes cut in half
• 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• Salt and fresh ground pepper

Prepare dressing by mixing olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper to taste in a large mixing bowl. Wash, pat or spin dry and add spinach, frisée and radicchio. Slice pear, pecorino and cherry tomatoes. Toss well. Serves 2.

Drago's easy 30-minute ragu (meat sauce) tops wide, flat pappardelle noodles for a hearty dinner. You should be able to find all the ingredients in a well-stocked grocery store. Pancetta is Italian bacon, cured but not smoked; thin-sliced ham is a possible substitute. If you can't find dried porcini, use dried shiitake. Use a hearty red wine — a cabernet sauvignon or zinfandel — for this.

Pappardelle with meat ragu

• 1 pound pappardelle
• 1 ounce dried porcini mushrooms
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 ounces thinly sliced pancetta, finely chopped
• 2 medium celery ribs, finely chopped
• 1 medium carrot, very finely chopped
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 3 thyme sprigs
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 pound ground turkey
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 2 cups tomato puree
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving

In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the pappardelle until al dente.

Meanwhile, in a medium heatproof bowl, cover the porcini with the boiling water and let stand until softened, about 5 minutes. Lift the mushrooms from the water and coarsely chop them. Reserve the soaking liquid.

In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil. Add the porcini, pancetta, celery, carrot, onion and thyme sprigs and cook over moderately high heat, stirring often, until the vegetables start to brown, about 5 minutes. Add the ground beef and turkey, season with salt and pepper and cook, breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon, until no pink remains, about 5 minutes. Add the red wine and boil over high heat until reduced by half, about 3 minutes. Add the tomato puree. Pour in the reserved mushroom soaking liquid, stopping before you reach the grit at the bottom. Bring to a boil and simmer over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until thickened and flavorful, about 12 minutes. Discard the thyme sprigs.

Drain the pappardelle and return it to the pot. Toss with the butter and then add half of the ragu and toss well. Season with salt and pepper and toss with the 1/4 cup of Parmesan. Transfer the pasta to bowls, top with the remaining ragu and serve. Pass additional parmesan at the table.

Serves 6.

Whole-wheat pasta is making inroads as more people become conscious of the need for fiber-rich diets and carbs that carry some roughage with them. Here, Drago presents a very simple, rich but fresh-tasting pasta dish that is meant to be served in small portions as a first course or a quickly prepared late-night supper. Use the best-quality ricotta you can find and be sure to grate only the thin yellow portion of the lemon rind.

Whole-wheat spaghetti with fresh ricotta and lemon zest

• 1 pound whole-wheat spaghetti
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• Finely grated zest of 2 lemons
• 1 cup heavy cream
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 pound fresh ricotta
• 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the spaghetti until al dente.

Meanwhile, in a large, deep skillet, melt the butter. Add the lemon zest and cook over moderate heat, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the cream and bring to a boil. Simmer over moderate heat for 3 minutes. Add a pinch each of salt and pepper and remove from the heat. Stir in the ricotta.

Drain the pasta. Add it to the skillet and toss well. Add the parmesan, season with salt and pepper and toss again. Transfer to bowls and serve.

Serves 6.

Clip this unusual and indulgent bread pudding recipe from Drago Restaurant and save it for Christmas season, when Costco and other stores bring in those sinful, buttery fruit breads called panettone (PAHN-eh-TONE-ay). Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread is available in larger grocery stores among the jams and spreads.

Drago's Italian Bread Pudding

• 1 (1-pound) loaf Italian panettone
• 1 cup Nutella chocolate-hazelnut spread
• 2 cups whipping cream
• 1 cup milk
• 4 eggs
• 3 egg yolks
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 4 teaspoons vanilla extract

Cut panettone into 16 (1/2-inch-thick) slices and toast lightly. Spread Nutella on toasted panettone.

Arrange slices in slightly overlapping single layer in greased 13-by-9-inch ceramic baking dish.

Bring whipping cream and milk to boil in saucepan. Beat eggs, egg yolks, sugar and vanilla with electric mixer until mixture starts to ribbon (mixture will be pale and thick; when beaters are lifted, batter falls slowly back into mixture forming a temporary "ribbon").

Remove milk mixture from heat and gradually add to egg mixture to create a custard base. Mix well.

Strain custard mixture through fine sieve and pour over bread slices in baking pan to cover.

Bake bread pudding in water bath (place baking pan in larger pan with hot water halfway up sides) at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

Remove from oven and allow to rest before serving.