It started with lardo

In the past few months my dad and I have been rediscovering the food he made with his family growing up on a rented farm outside of Naples, in a small town called Marigliano.  They raised pigs, chickens, cows.  And when they slaughtered an animal, they wasted none of it.  Real nose-to-tail cooking, out of necessity.  Pancetta stesa, lardo, salami--real salumi.  

They baked 15 loaves of bread every two weeks in a brick oven the size of a fiat.  My dad would tell me how they'd heat the oven with wood he and his brothers chopped and once the oven reached temperature, and before the wood burned down to ash, they would sweep out the coals into a wooden bucket of cool water.  His family would then dry the coals on the roof and reuse them to heat their bedrooms at night.  No waste at all.

We didn't talk much about this sort of stuff when I was growing up, but not for any particular reason.  We just never really thought about it.  But then Mario Batali opened his Otto Pizzeria and Enoteca in Manhattan and I read the New York Times review and about the lardo pizza.  Cured pork fat on pizza.  I really wanted to try it.  I went with a friend about 5 or 6 years ago and we loved it.  I told my dad about it and he said, "Oh, lardo.  We used to make that when I was a kid."  What?  Really?  How?  He explained the salting and hanging and waiting.  I loved it and was fascinated by it.

I took him to Otto about 3 years ago after he had back surgury and we went for a follow up visit at the NYU Medical Center.  We ordered the lardo pizza.  He hadn't had lardo in over 30 years, when he left Italy to come to here.  After a few quiet bites he looked at me and said, "This brings me back better than my own memory."  That's how powerful food can be.

Before leaving, over a few glasses of the house fruit-infused grappa, we caught a glimpse of Mario leaving Otto, his red pony tail and clogs--a blur of orange.  

We now take my dad to Otto every January for my his birthday.  We order the lardo pizza and a few bottles of the Campagnian wines they have on the list.  We went for the third time this year.  

Over the last few months, I've been trying my hand at homemade salumi.  Pancetta, bacon, duck proscuitto.  My dad is doing it now too.  And I've been baking loads of bread--mostly variations of the no-knead method.  Last summer, with the help of my dad of course, we built a raised garden bed in my yard and grew heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, herbs, etc.  I learned to make my own tomato conserva (tomato paste), based on my dad's instructions of how he used to do it on the farm in Naples (although I used a convection oven to his rooftop sun-heated roof top).  It's all been so rewarding and enjoyable that I wanted a way to start tracking these projects, but I also wanted some structure (such as cooking all recipies from a cookbook) and, given the lardo beginning, Mario Batali's Babbo Cookbook seemed the natural place to start.  

But "Cooking Babbo" has greater meaning than the name of Mario's restaurant and my decision to cook every recipe in the book.  "Babbo" in Italian means dad.  My dad, me (I am the father of two beautiful children), and, of course, the restaurant of the man who in the old-world topping of a pizza had started me on an extraordinary culinary trek.

I haven't been to Babbo yet, but my wife and I are having dinner there on February 28 to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary.  I'll let you know how it goes.

So, I will make every recipe in the Babbo Cookbook and I will try to use all of the ingredients no matter how hard to find (although I will allow some substitutions as noted in the recipe, but only if needed and very rarely, if at all).  I will also try to make from scratch all that I can--examples would be the pancetta, guanciale, bread, sausage, pasta, etc.  In the summer, I will use vegetables and herbs from my garden.

Not every post will be a Babbo dish, but the overwhelming majority of them will be.  I'll throw in some other dishes and projects (building a brick oven, maybe?).  But overall, this is about Babbo and celebrating the food of Mario's restaurant, but also about my dad and the food he grew up with.

One last note:  I will not publish the recipes from the Babbo Cookbook.  You can probably find many on the internet already or, do as I did, and buy the book--it's really a wonderful.

Welcome.

David

P.S. If you want to reach me, please feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail at david@cookingbabbo.com.