After five days of preliminaries, the big day had arrived. Up until today we had butchered pigs, made sausage, tried our hands at pizza dough and pasta, shopped for fresh vegetables and foraged in fields for their wild brethren, we had baked, broiled and boiled, kneaded, preheated and weeded. We had broken bread and baked it too with Danilo, Moreno, Gabriella, Jennifer, Simone, Salvatore, Ernesto and Mauro. Tonight, however, we were on our own. Dinner was ours to imagine, conceive, develop, design and execute. Tonight we were cooking – cooking with gas. And with wood and carbone. Preparing a dinner for the ages. Dinner for 30.

Our week long Cucinapalooza, six days to be more accurate, was an idea that not so much sprung or burst forth from the deep recesses of our minds as it did ooze from them. It was a program developed in response to an ache, a hard-to-describe need for something we weren’t quite getting from our previous visits to Umbria. And if you’re a loyal reader of our adventures you no doubt must be scratching your head wondering what stone we could have possibly left unturned. On our past trips we had cooked for sure. We had taken cooking classes and lazed about the kitchen unscripted. We had prepared meals for just the two of us and we had entertained for dozens. And we had prepared and eaten so much Umbrian cuisine we were pretty confident that we could distinguish the contender from the pretender.

What we hadn’t had the opportunity to do in the past, or rather what he hadn’t taken the opportunity to experience before, was la cucina umbra in depth. Always in a rush to try something else, something new, we had engaged in a series of drive by experiences, learning some technique here, some recipes there, and always enjoying the experience. But true learning requires trial and error, failure followed by failure leading to success. And a cooking class here or there does not afford one the opportunity to build. It was that ache, that yearning to truly learn and internalize not just what an Umbrian recipe consists of, but what it feels like, that we were trying to satisfy. And so the idea of the Cucinapalooza took shape slowly. Slowly because the need it was designed to fill was only slowly revealing itself.

Days one through five of Cucinapalooza were the preliminaries, exercises to build skills, knowledge and confidence, as well as the habits and mindset of an Umbrian cook so that those lessons could be applied to a final, culminating dinner. And what a dinner it was going to be. We had put together a guest list of nearly 30 people, including our group of six chefs, or Cucinapaloozers as we liked to call them. Nearly everyone other than the American Cucinapaloozers was Italian and most knew a thing or two about cooking and Umbrian cuisine. And then there was Gilocchi.

Readers of our blog may find the name Giuliano Gilocchi familiar. A year ago, he was featured in Bill and Suzy’s Excellent Adventures for having provided us a great evening and a great adventure. A month before that evening we had been out to dinner with Giuliano and several other business associates at what has become one of our favorite restaurants, the Oste della mal’Ora, a tiny osteria in the historic center of Terni. That evening over a wonderful dinner presented to us by Renzo, the Oste’s owner, a heated argument grew up between Giuliano and another friend, Paolo, over who was the better cook. Our dinner companions and we looked on with amusement as the boasting and one upmanship reached stratospheric levels. Thinking (and hoping) it could go no further, Suzy and I interjected and invited the two chef wannabes to settle their argument the only way we knew how that would provide us with a benefit. We would organize a competition between the two in which they would prepare dinner for our guests at the villa on separate nights, each dinner to be judged and graded on a standardized scale. On that evening the Gelso Throwdown was born.

And so our final culminating Cucinapalooza dinner was not to be simply a dinner, it was to be round one of the Second Annual Gelso Throwdown. In this corner, weighing in at somewhat over 1,000 lbs., the American Cucinapaloozers. And in the opposite corner, weighing in at 75 kg. the reigning champion and holder of the coveted Throwdown Hotdog trophy, Giuliano Gilocchi.

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Throughout the week we had been of two minds, existing in the here and now with our chef instructors, but at the same time planning for our culminating Throwdown dinner for which we would be on our own. We attacked the idea of bread dough, specifically pizza dough, with particular zeal, Pete working late into the night to allow his experiments to rise before being refrigerated in the morning. We discussed cocktail recipes and took copious notes and photographs as Salvatore showed us how to incorporate stinging nettles into pasta dough or Ernesto showed us how and explained to us why to wrap skewers of meat in caul fat. The rules of the Throwdown were fairly simple – our team was to make 4 courses plus a bread course, which would be judged by three impartial judges (two of whom are business associates of ours and one a longtime friend) on five factors – taste, presentation, originality, use of ingredients and degree of difficulty. Scores on each of the courses could range from 1-10 points, with 10 being the highest score.

The real wrinkle in all of our planning and preparation was that at 1:00 on D-Day, Guiliano was to reveal a list of five “secret ingredients” that we would have to incorporate into our meal. The “use of ingredients” score would reflect how well we integrated the secret ingredients into each course. Fewer points would be awarded, for instance, if we garnished a pasta with anchovies (in the event that anchovies were one of the secret ingredients) than if we had prepared an anchovy sauce for our pasta and served it on a bed of anchovies.

Another wrinkle in our preparations was that the rules called for us being out of the kitchen at 7:30, when our guests arrived. The point was that we should be entertaining and interacting with them, not just cooking for them, so part of our game day preparation was to ensure that our servers for the evening – Maria Pia, her sister Franca and the ever professional Alvaro – would be able to finish and assemble our handiwork. As it turned out, they supplied a slightly rule bending bit of assistance and advice during the afternoon’s preparation as well.

Our preliminary menu ideas called for an Umbrian dinner with an American twist, an American steakhouse type menu – complete with Frank Sinatra background music – but with dishes recognizable and, we hoped, edible and enjoyable by our largely Italian guest list. Over the course of the week we had been moving toward certain menu items and on this Thursday we were locked in, having already bought what seemed like an entire chianina cow for the bistecca alla fiorentina that would be the main course. If you haven’t bought steak for 30 before be sure to bring the title to your house, as it requires a mortgage or other such financing. In addition, we were leaning toward a nettle pasta using the technique Salvatore had shown us the day before for boiling and pureeing nettles and adding them to pasta flour. Each of us was tasked with ultimate responsibility for an aspect of the meal, a concept Pete referred to as DRI or “directly responsible individual,” but which in our case could have been more aptly referred to as DUI. Nonetheless our DRIs were busy conceiving and planning the cocktails and nuts, pastas, breads, main course and room setup. And then 1:00 came.

On schedule Wendy escorted us into the dining room of the villa where a table had been laid out with Gilocchi’s secret ingredients, each of the five covered under a cloth. One by one Wendy unveiled the ingredients – a bunch of asparagus (not too difficult), a bag of flour to be used for making pasta (elementary), a bag of flour and a packet of yeast for making focaccia or pizza dough (a more difficult task but one for which we were prepared), a bag full of lamb parts that contained more bone than meat, the legs, ribs and tail (this would be a challenge) and the piece de la resistance, a horrifying looking bird, its cold lifeless eyes mocking us as if to say, “you don’t even know what I am, let alone how to prepare and eat me.” Gilocchi, eminently fair in his first four ingredients had thrown us a real curve ball with the faraona and we were hoping not to hit it foul.

After the reveal, we immediately caucused and reviewed our preliminary menu, making quick decisions on how to alter it to accommodate the new ingredients. And with little disagreement or dissention we locked down the evening’s menu – adding to the contorno dish grilled asparagus served on a puddle of asparagus puree (a scrabble like double word score) and a variety of breads for a breadbasket that included a focaccia topped with grilled Cannara onions. A bit more problematic was how to use the lamb carcass, as lamb is not such a regular feature of Umbrian cuisine, deciding after much discussion to top our nettle fettuccine with a light sauce of lamb, something approaching a gravy, to counteract the heaviness and the gaminess of the lamb. For the guinea fowl we decided to mask its hideousness as much as possible, roasting the bird and then pureeing it into a pate which we served on toasted bread – crostini faraona.

Then our group of Americans went to work as Americans do, with a combination of teamwork and individual initiative (a natural outgrowth of the DRI overlay), obtaining a little assistance and feedback from Maria Pia, Franca and Alvaro. Truth be told, the two women perhaps crossed the line just a wee bit assisting me with rolling out and cutting the pasta. But with great efficiency by late afternoon all phases of the meal were coming together. The mood in the kitchen was surprisingly calm and businesslike and it smelled great!

Of course, some of the guests arrived early, which required occasional mingling as the table was being set up and the outdoor video screen set up. But at 7:30 the cars started arriving down our gravel driveway in an increasing tempo. We escorted the guests to the outdoor area around the pool where Sidecars were being served, together with candied nuts. A projector played a loop of videos of our previous five days of cooking while Frank Sinatra belted out the old standards.

After some introductory remarks and a welcome, we invited our guests inside to be seated, having arranged place cards for each guest to distribute the few bilingual speakers strategically around the table. In typical Italian fashion, several simply picked up their place cards and moved them to a preferred location. No matter, however, as throughout the evening Italians and Americans were engaged in deep conversation all around the table, regardless of whether they could understand one another or not.

And after a few more welcoming remarks (I apparently like the sound of my own voice,), white jacketed Alvaro, a professional with service in his DNA began the serving the meal. A mammoth bread basket with four types of homemade grissini, focaccia and our pizza made the rounds followed by platters of antipasto featuring the faraona crostini and the asparagus. There were nods of appreciation and congratulations all around and then the judging began. Upon announcing each category of scoring – taste, appearance, etc. – the judges would hold up a wooden spoon with a number marked inside, later giving their comments about the dishes. Now I am sure that the fact that we are customers of the judges and share a common language with the third in no way influenced the judges’ scores – but they were high.

Next came the nettle pasta with lamb salsa. On top of each nest of green fettuccine was a small pile of essentially pulled lamb, which had been braised until it was soft enough to pull from the bone. We had been warned that our Umbrians guests might find lamb too strong. That was not the case and once again our panel of completely impartial judges awarded shockingly high scores.

Then at last the bistecca made its entrance, first being paraded around the table in its raw state by Alvaro and chef Pete (DRI secondo) and then once again being presented table side to display the perfect charring it underwent in our outdoor wood oven before being carved into enormous slabs. Cooked outdoors over embers – scorched outside then stood upright – it was cooked perfectly, practically raw and chewy, just the way they like it in Umbria. For a while the animated conversation between American and Italian came to halt, replaced by the clanking of silverware and the occasional moan of satisfaction.

The high scores for the secondo were only to be outdone by the dessert course, conceived and executed by Dory. The real masterpiece among the assortment of sweets was the chocolate truffles that were dotted with chocolate shards and uglied up to resemble real truffles. Talk about appealing to Umbrians. High marks once again, and deservedly so.

From there it is hard to recall precisely how the evening wound down. The coveted Throwdown trophy was passed around and each guest made a short video greeting to viewers who were watching the dinner on our live streaming channel Bill and Suzy TV. And despite some bravado by Giuliano, he gave a most genuine praise to our appointed leader, Pete, acknowledging not just the outstanding effort of our group, but the delicious results. Although we had introduced elements from outside Umbria, we had done so knowledgably and our Umbrian-ness was acknowledged and appreciated.

In the classic movie City Slickers, Billy Crystal asks Jack Palance what is the secret of life. Curley (Palance) replies by holding up a single finger. “The secret to life is your finger?” asks Billy Crystal, not understanding. No, replies Curley, the secret is to focus on one thing. Cucinapalooza was such a week. We focused on a single thing – cooking in Umbria. And while we came closer to our goal of thinking like an Umbrian, to knowing what it feels like to be an Umbrian in the kitchen, the ultimate rewards of our week of Cucinapalooza were many. Like an onion, comprised of layer upon layer, our week of cooking really was about many more things than just cooking. It was about the land, about culture, it was about relaxation and losing yourself, it was about friendships, sharing and bonding. And in that way Cucinapalooza was a lot like Italy itself, a land with so many personalities, so many layers, each enjoyable and utterly engaging, each inextricably bound up with another, and each one waiting to be discovered, explored and experienced.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy