Wednesday,
June 04, 2008 3:31
Authentic
The
ANNOTICO Report
Luciana
Spurio, Chef, was the answer to
Authentic
By
Dianna Marder
Inquirer
Food Columnist
May. 29, 2008
...At 48, Spurio commands the kitchen at Le Virtz,
a Passyunk Avenue restaurant devoted to dishes she
grew up cooking - the cuisine of the Abruzzi region, where she spent much of
her childhood, and of Ascoli Piceno, the neighboring seaside resort where she
was born.
At the
restaurant, she re-creates her grandfather's hand-crafted sausage, her
grandmother's ravioli filled with braised rabbit and grated amaretto cookies;
grilled monkfish and savory deep-fried olives. She cooks by touch and taste,
making herself an essential ingredient in each dish.
"I learned
from the old women," say Spurio, a sturdy beauty
with thick blond hair twisted into a braid that stretches down her back.
"In
But put any two
cooks in the kitchen, she says, and give them identical ingredients for the
same dish, "and the results don't taste the same," she says, her
English perfected now but still heavily accented.
"Because
it's all in what the cook brings to the food. It's the touch."
The owners of Le Virtz, Francis Cratil and
Catherine Lee, knew the restaurant they hoped to open would need a chef who was
native to the
Cratil, 44, originally from
But after they
honeymooned and made several extended visits, they came to love the southern
coastal and mountainous region and became determined to bring the area's
authentic dishes, and perhaps its style, home to
"The
Italians have a kind of genius for living," Cratil
says. "You can sit in an Italian piazza, or stroll during the passageata, and there's never that vibe you get on
The couple met Spurio in 2004 on one of her many visits to the States; she
heard that they were looking for a chef and introduced herself.
On their next trip to
"I was a
little concerned because Luciana was working at a seafood restaurant," Cratil says. "And that's great on the
"Luciana
took us to her home and she cooked the regional dishes for us there and we were
sold," he says. "We knew this was the person we wanted to start a
restaurant with."
It is probably
best to condense the details involved in obtaining a work visa for Spurio. Perhaps it is enough to say the process took 18
months and at one point, a humiliated Spurio was
handcuffed by
"Basically,"
Cratil says, "I had to convince immigration
officials she was essential to our business. We had to produce expert testimony
that to execute this cuisine you need someone for whom the cuisine was
native."
Le Virtz opened in the fall and at long last the exhausted but
pleased chef sits sipping red wine, surrounded by platters of her creation:
Scripelle m'busse:
a soup of crepes rolled with pecorino in chicken broth; Linguine al Cartoccio: calamari, clams, mussels and shrimp sauteed in olive oil and garlic and steamed in parchment;
and Maccheroncini alla Chitarra con Ragu d'Agnello: lamb
ragu with strips of pasta so thin they resemble
guitar strings. The pasta is cut on a chitarra,
a wire-strung board passed down in Italian families from mother to daughter.
"These
things you can't learn in a school," Spurio
says. "You learn many things in a school, but not recipes."
Her father worked
for a florist, her mother tended to hearth and home. And as the only daughter, Spurio did not have to compete for attention - as long as
she was in the kitchen.
"The only
time I was not in the kitchen was when I was being born," she jokes.
One of her
earliest kitchen chores was pitting olives. Now her menu features Olive all'Ascolana: breaded fried olives stuffed with braised
beef, pork and chicken.
"Everything
on my menu now I learned at home, the timbale, the pasta dough, the ravioli. None of this was made with machines."
"This is our
culture and this is the way for me to remember my family every day because of
the smells."
"This is the
way we cook for friends too, to keep them close. And the same I did with my
daughter," says single-mother Spurio, referring
to Maria Victoria, a graduate student in political science and international
relations in
Spurio was introduced to
"I thought
it was a little dirty," she says in a whisper, like a guest hesitant to
offend her host.
The Italian
Market was also a disappointment: not enough Italians, too few appetizing
ingredients.
Here she leans
forward in her chair, desperate it seems, to explain what Americans are doing
wrong with food.
"When I
don't eat very well, I feel sad," she says. "If you don't eat right
you get sick - you can see that all around. Why is it people don't care?"
Americans, she
says, rely too much on recipes. Some aspects of cooking just can't be conveyed
that way.
"They ask:
How much salt should I put in the water for the pasta. And what can I tell
them? It's experience."
"Americans
want all the directions, but you have to practice and learn from mistakes. Some
tomatoes are more watery, some have more acid and you need to add a carrot or
an onion."
Turn off the
exhaust fan in the kitchen, she advises, and listen for the right sizzles.
"The eyes,
the ears, the nose, these are what you're cooking with and you put yourself in
the recipe."
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