Sea-quel

On yet another perfect evening, lapped by cool rustles of soft sweet Umbrian nighttime air, under a blanket of darkness lit by thousands of tiny pinpricks of brilliant luminescence we dined. We dined al fresco as we had the night before and many previous nights over the past weeks. But tonight the food arrived at the table not plate by plate on Alvaro’s sure hands, but wheeled in on wave after wave of gigantic carts, like some culinary Trojan Horse. And make no doubt about it, while the offerings on the carts were meant as gifts to our group of 25 assembled around the table, they just as surely they were planned as a means of conquest. Beware of Italians bearing gifts. Especially if they are offered by Giuliano Gilocchi.

This night had been long anticipated, having been set in motion in April when we arrived at the villa to inaugurate our Cucinapalooza cooks tour, our first all-cooking tour in which every one of our six days was spent cooking with a different local chef, learning not just the recipes of Umbria, but the way of life in the Umbrian kitchen. For five days we practiced and discussed, handled ingredients and brainstormed. All of this effort culminating in a final night’s dinner which was dubbed the Geslo Smackdown II, chapter two of the previous year’s culinary challenge that saw our friend Giuliano Gilocchi walk away with the coveted Hot Dog trophy signifying his ascendence in the pantheon of great cooks at our Umbrian villa. Giuliano had won the first edition of this now annual competition and he would be defending his Hot Dog against the challenge of our Cucinapalooza group who on that April night prepared a meal so good that it put the fear of God even in the godless Gilocchi.

And so, on this perfect evening he returned to la Fattoria del Gelso to see if he could improbably convince the three judges who were there to rate his four courses – antipasto, primo, secondo and dolce – that his meal was better than that of the Cucinapalosers two months earlier. He was here to claim the second Smackdown trophy.

The rules for this year’s competition were an amalgam of strictures and guidelines come up with by a hodgepodge of personalities that demonstrate just how dangerous humans can be when they have too much time on their hands. And like the fabled committee that set out to design a better horse (see, giraffe), the rules of this year’s Smackdown made perfect sense to anyone who sat in on every Rules Committee meeting and little sense to anyone else. This was made clear by the looks of bewilderment on the faces of our guests when I detoured to give a “brief” explanation of the rules during my introductory welcome, a detour reminiscent of our late night return from Spello on our first visit there, returning home not on the well paved direct route through Rivotorto to the highway, but instead along a rocky unlit goat track that looped around the back side of Monte Subassio. Not that the rules mattered when you pit a group of Americans against a group of Italians. Think Italy-France World Cup – Zidane-Materazzi.

We planned our day to be away from the villa in order to give Gilocchi & Co. the freedom and space to prepare their dinner away from prying eyes. So by midmorning we were hurtling along the superstrada northward toward Citta di Castello for a visit with our friends the Bianconi family to treat our guests to a truffle hunt and a truffle lunch and demonstration. For most, this unique experience would be the highlight of the day, if not their trip. Here in Umbria, at least on this day, it would have to take a back seat.

When we returned to the villa it was buzzing with
activity, Giuliano and his companion Sonia busy in the kitchen cleaning unrecognizable shelled creatures from the sea, with our friend Fabio busy chopping and dicing carrots and other crunchy bits. In the dishroom Carla was working on a towering tower of something we would discover later had to do with the dessert course. Two hours before the appointed dinner hour all seemed calm and efficient in il mondo gilocchi.

And sitting on the counter, amid a sea of seafood, was a complete anomaly, a beautifully rolled up, if somewhat haphazardly tied pancetta or pork belly. The Smackdown rules this year called for each team not just to prepare a massive dinner for a crowd or 20-30, but – just to keep everyone honest – at 1:00 on D-Day (dinner day) a list of five ingredients would be revealed to the cooks, ingredients that would have to be incorporated into the meal. In April the American team was provided a list by Giuliano that included flour (for baking pasta), flour and yeast (for making pizza dough), asparagus, a bag of lamb bones and a horrible looking guinea fowl. Overall his list of secret ingredients had been eminently fair and our group returned the favor, requiring Team Gilocchi to incorporate truffles, eggs and milk (for gelato), a huge pancetta that we had bought in Norcia the previous day, lentils and two bags of marshmallows, which Pete and Nancy had brought with them from the States a few days earlier, as marshmallows are neither known nor available in Italy.

Every twenty minutes or so I would pop my head in the kitchen to monitor our adversaries’ progress and things continued to go smoothly, with more shellfish appearing on baking sheets and now numerous moki coffee makers stuffed full of shells. The pork belly had made its way to the outdoor woodburning oven and was roasting nicely, its meaty smell overwhelming the delicate softness of the predominantly seafood menu (as we had hoped). With every visit to the kitchen the supremely confident Giuliano would wave me in and show me one more secret that he had hidden up his sleeve and I must say he had enormous sleeves for every course and every item was being prepared with one thing in mind. Victory for the Italians.

As the dinner hour neared, Alvaro began to set up bar under one of the two gazebos by the pool, an enormous hollowed out melon being used as the punchbowl for the aperitif. Champagne glasses were arranged artistically and the enormous U shaped table was set elegantly. All was coming together without a hitch under a perfect Umbrian early evening sky. The sun was sinking toward the horizon and the smattering of clouds promised another fabulous tramonto or sunset.

And then ‘round the corner there arose such a clatter I had to go see just what was the matter. Away to the oven, past gentlemen and dames, Giuliano’s porchetta was engulfed in flames.

There, shooting from the outdoor pizza oven were flames so enormous and hot that I immediately thought of calling Red Adair for assistance in extinguishing them. For well over fifteen minutes Marco (who happens to be a local volunteer fireman) and others battled the grease fire in the oven, but every time they opened the door they would be forced back by the Vesuvian eruption that shot forth. Finally, as the fire began to burn itself out, it was doused in several inches of salt which extinguished the flames and provided a salty crust for the porchetta. While I was certain that the meat had been burned beyond recognition, when the foil was removed what emerged was a nearly perfect, if a bit salty, Umbrian porchetta. While certainly not planned, Gilocchi & Co. had turned disaster into glory, a porchetta afumicata con crosta di sale. The only thing they missed was having the guests roast marshmallows over the conflagration and make s’mores.

And so the dinner began. First with aperitifs on the lawn by the pool. The sun was in fact setting gloriously as we sipped wine and tropical punch and Alvaro and Maria Pia passed cups made from beautifully folded paper filled with delectable small fried sea creatures – baby octopus, shrimp and others – that were so delicate and so delicious that we all thought the competition might have already been won. But a few minutes later, when we took our seats at the table, Giuliano rose and described the mixed seafood antipasto that was set before us on judge Gerardo Ribigini’s hand painted ceramic plates – two different shrimp lightly gratineed (one of them a gambero rosso, my favorite), an oyster and other delicacies. And so we settled into the first act of an hours long play that could have aptly been titled As You Like It or perhaps A Midsummer Night’s Dream. If victory was going to go to the Italian team it would indeed be a case of All’s Well that Ends Well.

The next act seemed to have been inspired more by Disney than Shakespeare. For our pasta course would take us Under the Sea, not where mermaids and their crab companions reside, but where the mighty pesce spada or swordfish roam. The printed menu that was in front of each place declared that the primo course would consist of mezza maniche pasta with a swordfish. And while the menu did not lie, Giuliano did indeed have a trick up his sleeve. For when he and Sonia wheeled out the chariot that carried this second course, it did indeed contain a platter of delicious tube shaped pasta with delectable chunks of swordfish. Pasta and more, the cart was burnished with a hood ornament of the head of the swordfish from whence the meat came, the beast’s tail bringing up the rear. This was no fluke, the Italians were in it to win it. Talk about a dagger to the heart. Or perhaps more aptly, a sword.

And while presentation was only one of the five categories that our three judges (our ceramicist friend from Deruta and two professional chefs who were visiting us from America) would be basing their scores on, it proved to be impossible to not be affected and won over by this truly inspired presentation. To cut to the chase, the competition was in the can.

Despite the high expectations set by swordfish pasta, the next course, which featured baked monkfish did not disappoint. Particularly when you consider that this tasty flesh, sometimes dubbed “poor man’s lobster” comes from such an incredibly ugly animal. I had been treated to a glimpse of the rana pescatrice in its natural state in the kitchen before it was cooked, the horrible flat fish with an enormous mouth and menacing teeth slathered in a sticky goo that reminded me more of a creature from Alien than something that would shortly be served at our table. But when the baked carcass was wheeled out of the kitchen to assume its position tableside, still looking at us with its hideous face and razor sharp teeth, slabs of firm, sweet flesh were spooned onto our plates. It was Beauty and the Beast, in more ways than one, as the words from Be My Guest began to play themselves out in my mind:

Course by course, one by one
‘Til you shout, “enough! I’m done!”
Then we’ll sing you off to sleep as you digest
Tonight you’ll prop your feet up
But for now let’s eat up
Be our guest!
Be our guest!
Be our guest!

From there Team Gilocchi needed only to play out the string in order to amass enough points to surpass Team America. Not content to rest on their laurels, but rather to win the laurel, a triumphant tower of fruit was wheeled out next, as the first half of the dolce course. There on a stand the size of an enormous wedding cake were dozens of skewers of fresh fruit punctuated by pulsing lanterns of color that lit up the darkness as midnight approached. It was a flamboyant display of fruit that would have made Carmen Miranda want to put it upon her head and swing her hips. And as we awaited the dolce portion of this final course our American guests began to do just that, dancing under a blanket of stars, while

their Italian counterparts opted instead for a smoke. And on each fruit skewer was a marshmallow, the American oddity that the Italians were at a loss how to use, adding them on to the tower of fruit simply as a garnish. Within minutes several of the guests had deconstructed their skewers and were roasting their marshmallows over the small votive candles that were illuminating the table. When life gives you lemons . . .

When dessert finally made its way outside, a combination of cakes, handmade chocolates and the obligatory gelato, it was clear that despite April’s work of culinary art put on by our Cucinapaloozers, by equal parts force of will, superb cooking and unrivaled bravado, the Italians had triumphed and laid claim to the Hot Dog trophy. After a celebratory fireworks display, a few more cigarettes, some more wine and champagne we said our goodnights, our buona nottes and our a dopos to our judges, our guests and to Giuliano, Sonia, Fabio and Carla. For tonight, while there had been no losers, we had indeed crowned our Cucinapawinners.