THE CHEF: Cesare Casella; Where 'Duck à l'Orange' Is a Canard (original) (raw)
Food|THE CHEF: Cesare Casella; Where 'Duck à l'Orange' Is a Canard
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- Feb. 11, 2004
''AT home, I like to work with hands,'' said Cesare Casella, the chef and an owner of the Manhattan restaurant Beppe, as he used a chubby index finger to stab a mix of chopped sage, rosemary and garlic deep into the joints of a five-pound duck. ''It's more sensual, makes the food taste better. You make better food at home.''
Never mind that he was in a utilitarian test kitchen at Beppe, two flights above the dining room. For Mr. Casella, home and kitchen have been one and the same since he was 3. He grew up in the kitchen of Il Vipore, the tiny restaurant his parents opened in 1964 in Pieve Santo Stefano, Italy. And indeed, his family -- well, his mother, primarily -- seem ever present when he cooks.
Stocky and effervescent, Mr. Casella, 44, is a proud but playful Italian revivalist, mining the early history of Tuscan cookery for recipe ideas but equally likely to kick tradition out the window in dishes like his mortadella muffuletta, inspired by a trip to New Orleans.
On a wintry afternoon, as Mr. Casella prepared an orange roasted duck, he turned away for a moment to spark up a burner on the stove.
''My mama and my grandma, they do this,'' he said as he rested the back of a long-handle serving spoon over the open flame. The spoon gradually turned a dull, ominous gray, and after nearly a minute, he took it from the flame, turned back to the stainless preparation table and -- in a move best left to a professional chef -- plunged the spoon into the cavity of the duck, sizzling the inside on contact and sending an eruption of curling smoke and vapor into the kitchen. ''You cook the fat inside,'' he said, ''it's going to give nice flavor.'' It also keeps excess water and fat from soaking the stuffing, he explained.
He turned to a small bowl heaped with sweet and spicy Italian pork sausage and a quarter-cup of diced pancetta, the beginnings of the duck's stuffing. These he dumped into a medium-size mixing bowl. He then scraped small piles of diced celery and carrot into it from a hand-painted serving plate. He added a cup of Tuscan bread -- crust off, cut into cubes.
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