Why is it that we tend to make friends in Italy so often with chefs and winemakers? It must have something to do with the question posed to Willie Sutton about why he robbed banks. “Because that’s where the money is.”

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This March marked the fourth anniversary of us buying la Fattoria del Gelso, our villa in Umbria. It also marked the fourth anniversary of us meeting Ernesto Parziani, the chef-owner of Cannara’s best restaurant, Perbacco. Both are cause for celebration.

We remember clearly that March day when, finally, the notaio closed his mouth and with much bravado placed his signature on the definitivo, closing a process that took a year from the time we started looking at properties in Umbria. The closing took hours and stood out as particularly pointless and inane, which is saying a lot about a process that contained so many pointless and inane formalities along the way. Our notaio, the hybrid lawyer-title insurer who is, unfortunately, a required fixture in acquiring property in Italy, was a man of such pomposity, narcissism and misogyny as to make us all gag. For some reason he found much common ground with me, a former attorney, referring to me over and over as avvocato. His need to hear himself speak and the fact that he drafted the closing documents on the spot in front of the assembled mass of sellers, buyers and advisers meant that the process, which we had assumed would take an hour, lasted three or four. When it mercifully was over we asked our agents, Wendy and Corrado, if they would invite the sellers, a divorcing husband and wife, if they would like to join us for lunch to celebrate our transaction and to share our mutual dislike of the notaio over a glass of wine.

They accepted and when asked for a recommendation of where to dine near the villa, suggested Perbacco. It was the start of something special.

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Since that day in March 2008 we have dined frequently at Perbacco, overcoming our friend Ernesto’s initial unwillingness to speak to us. The first half dozen visits there I attempted in my halting Italian to connect with Ernesto, offering compliments to him on his wine list and on his music. He most often stared at me with his head cocked to one side as if saying, “I can’t believe anyone can speak Italian so poorly.” It was only on our sixth or so visit that Ernesto finally responded to me completely. In English. In fact, his English was and is flawless. When I expressed my complete surprise over his fluency and asked why he had allowed me to flounder so badly in Italian he responded nonchalantly, “you have to try.”

Some time later we happened to broach the subject of having Ernesto organize cooking classes for us and the guests at our villa. And from that the Monday cooking classes, held on Ernesto’s only day off, were born. And they are the stuff of legend, a nonstop orgy of learning about, making and consuming food stretching from the wee hours of the morning until nearly sunset. Search the blog for reports on our cooking classes with Ernesto and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

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So this Monday, Ernesto’s day off, was to mark another chapter. Dinner cooked by Ernesto at the villa. We and our guests would be able to participate or watch or just eat. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

We arrived back at the villa late in the afternoon after a tough day of truffle hunting with our friends the Bianconis, having bagged a number of truffles (be careful not to swallow the buckshot) and Ernesto, his wife Simona and his sous chef Giuseppa were busy in preparation. We said our hellos and welcomes and left them to continue learning their way around our kitchen as our fellow truffle hunters all crashed for a brief siesta, sinking deep into truffle induced comas.

When we eventually arose there was still plenty to do in preparation for dinner and a number of guests helped in the kitchen, mostly by watching Ernesto and Giuseppa and drinking champagne. And the watching, along with a little helping, was an experience. To see Ernesto and Guiseppa transform our kitchen – a large, well equipped space but one with some eccentricities – into their kitchen, to take control over that foreign space, was truly amazing. And when the first course, an appetizer of pizza alla cipolla di Cannara, a soft pizza with local Cannara onions emerged from the oven, it was obvious that Ernesto & Co. had learned the ropes of their new workplace.

After nibbling on the pizza in the kitchen with Ernesto, we retired to the dining room, which had been set and decorated by Simona. For those who have had the pleasure of dining at Perbacco, they are familiar with Simona’s decorative work. The little restaurant is a jewel, with whimsical decorations and themes painted and applied on every wall, table, chair and even in the Alice in Wonderland bathroom. At the villa, Simona added touches of visual interest around the table, including a centerpiece of vegetables and flowers that featured artichokes. We eagerly seated ourselves around the table, awaiting the first courses from Ernesto.

And for the next several hours Ernesto and Simona emerged from the kitchen with a parade of dishes conceived by him and prepared with Giuseppa’s help. First a tender dish of squid flavored with bay leaf, served on a bed of cannellini beans, followed by an unforgettable stew of moscardini – tiny octopuses – served in a rich tomato pizzaiolo sauce with a crostino topped with black olive tapenade. It was received with much smacking of the lips, made more enjoyable by Ernesto’s tableside commentary about the dish, its origins, inspiration and flavors.

Next was a tagliatelle pasta topped with river shrimp and wild asparagus. Again the food and the conversation melded perfectly. And with each visit to the table Ernesto lingered longer, talking not just about the food, but about how and why he selected the particular dish, weaving in stories about his past and about Italian food culture. It was pure delight.

But not as delightful as the spalla di maiale in porchetta, the roasted pork shoulder that followed. Pork is the centerpiece of Umbrian cooking and it doesn’t get any better than roasted pork shoulder, suffused with pork fat to keep it moist and slow roasted in a wood oven. Its aroma preceded it out of the kitchen by several seconds and by the time it was served the assembled guests were ready to wolf it down. It was, as they say, a little slice of heaven, even if it was not served in little slices.

A dessert of lemon torta with a strawberry sauce capped off the meal, the diners to a man and woman raving about it as being the best dessert they had had in Italy. It wasn’t a bad breakfast the following morning either.

So after a day of truffle hunting, cooking and eating, we said good night to our guests but only started our evening with Ernesto and Simona, enjoying a glass or two of wine with into the wee hours of the morning them in our living room. And as we said goodbye to them, in English and Italian it was clear that we had come so far since those first days when Ernesto pretended to not speak English. Back then, before he knew us and we knew him he told me, of speaking Italian, that “you must try.” And try we did. On a night like tonight it was clear that that effort had a most wonderful payoff.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy