Author Archives: Do Bianchi

my lasagne alla bolognese for @MyLifeItalian’s birthday

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For her birthday dinner this year, Tracie P requested lasagne alla bolognese, one of my pièces de résistance in the kitchen.

In my experience, lasagne alla bolognese are best prepared over the course of two days: the key is to make the ragù the day before (classic soffritto, equal parts ground pork and lean beef, one sausage link crumbled, tomato purée, white wine, chicken stock, salt and pepper to taste, a bay leaf, and a dash of chili flakes, simmered slowly for a few hours after the meat has browned well and been deglazed with the wine).

I cover the ragù and reserve it over night in the oven (there’s no need to refrigerate it since it will be reheated after you assemble the lasagne).

Making the lasagne isn’t as challenging as it seems: all you need is a food processor and a pasta rolling machine. (There’s a great recipe for making pasta sheets in Cesare Casella’s Italian Cooking Essentials for Dummies.)

Once you’ve rolled out and trimmed the lasagne, you layer them (in a oven-ready casserole dish that’s been greased with butter), alternating between ragù (the first), béchamel (second), and freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano (third, topped with a layer of pasta).

For my béchamel, I always use a tablespoon of white wine and a tablespoon of chicken stock, two subtle ingredients that give the sauce great nuance in my experience. And the Parmigiano Reggiano must be freshly grated, a sine qua non to great lasagne alla bolognese.

The combination of the rich flavors and textures is one of the supreme expression of Italian gastronomy and well worth the time and effort it takes to make this dish. We paired with a bottle of 2010 Langhe Nebbiolo by Produttori del Barbaresco. (The classic pairing would be Lambrusco, of course.)

Georgia P is still not ready for the fattiness of lasagne alla bolognese but she did get to have some pappardelle that I made from the trimmings. We tossed them in a pat of butter and topped them with a dust of Parmigiano Reggiano. She loved them…

We’ve had such a wonderful year, with too many blessings to count.

Thanks for reading and buona domenica, yall!

Alice Feiring joins us @SottoLA with Frank Cornelissen and Lou Amdur

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From the department of “ubi maior minor cessat”…

Above: When ever Alice (foreground), Tracie P, and me get together, we always manage to cause trouble (just ask Alice; she’ll tell you!).

A few months ago, I was approached by one of the top wine distributors in California, Amy Atwood, who asked me if Sotto in Los Angeles (where I curate the wine list) would like to host a wine dinner with radical natural winemaker Frank Cornelissen, who raises wines on Mt. Etna (Sicily).

I was thrilled, of course, and I immediately reached out to Natural wine authority Lou Amdur, a Los Angeles icon in the field: to not have Lou at the event would have been nothing less than egregiously negligent.

And of course, my dream was to have Alice Feiring there as well: between her excellent blog and her two monographs on the subject, Alice is the Natural wine movement’s leading authority and its most sage voice. (And she’s also a dear, dear friend who has not only mentored me at different moments of my career but also helped me regain my footing in some of the darkest moments of my life.)

Well, folks, I’m here to tell you that dreams do come true.

We’ve hit the Natural wine trifecta: this week Alice agreed to attend our Cornelissen dinner at Sotto on November 11.

Click here for details. I hope to see you there: it should be a night to remember…

Declassified Dettori 06 Cannonau Renosu & carnitas at Bahia Don Bravo (La Jolla)

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Last year I was lucky to pick up a case of 2006 Romangia Rosso Renosu by Dettori (Sassari, Sardinia), Alessandro Dettori’s declassified Cannonau from the “uneven” 2006 vintage there (as Antonio Galloni has called it).

The U.S. retailer and Alessandro don’t seem to be on the same page as to why the wine was declassified (possibly because of a language issue?).

According to Alessandro, he decided to bottle the wine in 2008 in the middle of a disastrous vintage for him. Normally, he would have let the wine age longer in vat before bottling. But according to one of his ever lyrical emails, the bottling was inspired by a bout of powdery mildew during the devastating summer (for Dettori) of 2008.

Maybe he was concerned the onslaught of bacteria tainted a few of his vats. Or maybe, as he suggested in an email, he remembered how previous generations bottled their wine right away. They did so because they wanted the wine to be ready for the winter and feared being without wine. But by doing so, they also avoided potential spoilage issues.

I’d seen mixed reactions to this wine in the chat rooms. But I also know that Alessandro’s wines require patience — in your cellar and at the table.

He calls his declassified wines “Renosu,” meaning sandy (from the Latin [h]arena, meaning dry, sterile sand). According to his own gloss on the term, it refers to the wines raised in the lower-lying sandy subsoils as opposed to his hillside vineyards (when in fact, the grapes used to make this wine were once intended for his flagship red wine, the Dettori Rosso).

The good news is that the only bad news is that I wish I would have bought more of it!

When opened a bottle the other night with a heaping helping of carnitas at our favorite taco stand in La Jolla, Bahia Don Bravo.

We didn’t get any of the volatile acidity that folks on the boards have talked about and the wine was fresh and bright, juicy and tasty. Had I not known it was a declassified Dettori, I would have said it was the rosso (it’s one of those wines that, if you follow the producer, you can easily pick out in a blind tasting).

I loved the wine and it was a fantastic pairing for the salty, fatty carnitas.

Georgia P had refried beans for the first time that night. I think it’s safe to say that she liked them. ;)

We were sad to say goodbye to grandma Judy, Georgia P’s cousins, and all our good friends in San Diego. But after a week on the road and away from our little house at the corner of Gro[o]ver and Alegria, it was time to get back to Texas where we belong…

@ZanottoColFondo at Spicy House, best pairing for Asian imho

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Move over Josmeyer, Prosecco Col Fondo (in this case, Zanotto) is the new Riesling when it comes to pairing with Asian cuisine imho. Its refreshing saltiness and crunchy mouthfeel just take it over the top… Dinner last night at the excellent Spicy House in San Diego…

dan dan noodle

eggplant and green beans

twice cooked pork with leeks

beef rool

thanks again, Mary, for taking such good care of us! :)

allo fräuleins! Oktoberfest @JaynesGastropub is rocking

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Tracie P, Georgia P, and I stopped in for an early dinner on our way back from Los Angeles yesterday at Jaynes Gastropub in San Diego.

We may have been part of the “early-bird” crowd but that didn’t stop us from getting a taste of the Oktoberfest celebration there.

Schnitzel, spätzl, bratwurst… and of course, Schneider-Weisse beer.

But I still couldn’t resist getting my favorite, the Jaynes Burger (Vermont cheddar, house-pickled onions, and aioli).

Oktoberfest continues this evening at Jaynes… definitely worth checking out…

Luigi Tecce: “what I don’t put in my wine”

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Luigi Tecce’s wines first came to my attention two years ago when I was visiting and tasting in southern Italy. They blew my mind… They’re some of the best wines I’ve ever tasted… period… end of report…

And I’m very proud that we have the 2009 Satyricon (Campi Taurasini) and 2007 Poliphemo (Taurasi) on our new fall list at Sotto in Los Angeles.

These are native-yeast-fermented, large-cask aged STUNNING expressions of Aglianico from Campania. I’ll never forget the look on Tracie P’s face when she tasted the wine with me last night at dinner.

“This,” she said, “THIS is what Aglianico tastes like.”

She would know: she lived between Ischia and Naples for nearly five years.

I loathe the saying that Aglianico is the Nebbiolo of the south. If anything, Nebbiolo is the Aglianico of the north!

But I will say that there is a virtual kinship between Luigi Tecce and Bartolo Mascarello. Here’s a translation of the back label:

cultured [pharmaceutical] yeast NO
enzymes NO
malolactic bacteria NO
added tannins NO
de-acidification NO
clarification NO
filtration NO
gum Arabic NO

No need to call this wine “Natural.” It’s just wine… great wine… friggin’ brilliant wine…