February 17, 2025 • 30 mins
In Francis Ford Coppola (Part 2), we discuss the origins of pizza, his experience eating lambs’ brain as a child, and how a loophole during America’s prohibition led to Francis buying the Inglenook winery with his earnings from The Godfather. We both bought in bottles of his wine to taste - a lovely way to begin and to continue a conversation.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Italy is an interesting place because it was for so
long these city states. There was the Vatican, of course
for thousands of years, which was Rome dominated by the
Roman Catholic Church, and then there were you know, in
(00:20):
the north there was a tremendous influence from German and
French foodte you have butter. Then Genoa they were fishermen,
of course, because they was on the sea. Did you
know that the Neapolitans make something called pastela Genovese, which
is a Neapolitan dish called pastase, and it's made one
(00:41):
hundred percent with onions. And the point the reason they
call it Allergendovese is because the Neapolitans think that the
Genovesi are real cheap skates.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
They are apparently, well, I shouldn't say that, because one
of my best friend is yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
And so they Neapolitans make the cheapest dish they can,
which is onions and they call Jennavese. Uh. And of course,
as you know, every every region of Italy has a
different specialty, certainly its own pasta. So in the south,
in Pulia, they have orichuette, which are the little the
(01:14):
little ear like pastas, and then in Bologna they have
portalini or whatever. The story I like to tell about
pizza because people think that pizza is this American staple.
But the truth of the matter is when I was
a little kid, you know, before about five years old,
we used to go to a pizza and have pizza
(01:35):
and no one knew what that was. Where was this
in New York were we lived in Queens, but we
my father would take us to a restaurant I remember
called Luis Gino's and it was a very authentic news.
This is the forties, This would have to be, yeah,
in the forties, you know, forty four, because but no
(01:56):
one knew in America, no one had ever seen a pizza,
knew it a pizza. The kids said, what are you
going to a pizzaio? What's that? And in fact I
remember for fifty sons they he would even make a
little pizza that I would get, and pizza, of course
was a Neapolitan dish. But the American soldiers came up
in World War Two through North Africa and up and
(02:19):
went right through Naples, so they brought coca Cola, and
they brought back pizza, and they brought pizza back to America,
and then two years later pizza was the rare new thing.
As a kid, everyone knew what pizza was and.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
What was the food like in the forties.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
What.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
So, you grew up in a family that cooked Italian food,
But I think that there's a big difference between Italian
food and Italian American food, don't you know.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Well, none of my family the region we come from,
not my mother's side that was Naples, but my father's
side and my grandfather's side, and he dominated what kind
of food his wife would cook, and he loved the
classic Bernaldes food, which is Lucania. Lucania is if you
look at Italy as a map, the arch of the
(03:10):
that's Lucania between Pulia and over here is Calabria, and
then in the center on the water and what's called
the Medponto is this region where we're from. My grandfather
wanted to eat Vanlez food. So my grandmother didn't know
(03:31):
how to cook that food because, believe it or not,
she was from South Italy, but she wasn't born there.
Her father was from South Italy and he went to Tunis,
because Tunis was a new city built in nineteen hundred
and it was all built by Italians. And so he
went there and he had three girls, my grandmother, and
(03:55):
then Tunas. You had to be in cahots with a
French partner because Tunas was a French protectorate, and the
French partner double crossed him, and he got mad and
left and took his daughters and went to New York.
So there were these three girls, very well educated. They
spoke Italian because they were from an Italian family. They
(04:17):
spoke French because Tunas was a French they spoke Arabic
because their school was Arabic, and they spoke English because
they were going to go to America. So my grandmother,
what this wonderful grandmother was actually born in Tunis, but
she married my Italian grandfather and he wanted to eat
this type of food. It turned out that in the
(04:40):
railway station of this region, the guy who cooked that
the railway also went to New York, and that man's
son taught her how to cook all this authentic what
we call vernals food. And these are these very strange dishes.
There's one I'll describe to you called new Marid New Marid.
(05:03):
What Marid is is you take you take all the
sort of sweetbreads and lungs and and and awful, and
then you package it in something with it, you know,
and then yeah, and you make these these new meriads,
which then you cook on a grill like more like
(05:31):
it's not but new Merid is this is nu Merid.
There's only someone who knows it says this is numerid,
This is not humrid. Also something called figurative. Will you
take the lining of the stomach that looks like lace,
and you put a pork liver and a and a
bay leaf, and then you wrap all these all these
(05:54):
It is so they ate that kind of food, even
though back in Italy that kind of food was getting
co opted and changed by modern influences.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I mean they still there's a restaurant that has been
around for centuries which only cooks awful.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
They give spinals slaghetti.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
The tragedy is in America, the food and the authorization
have just blanketly refused to prove any awful whatsoever. So
you really have to go to the butcher on your
own and say this is just a personal.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
When I lived in Paris, Francis.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
There was a if you wanted to eat brains, they
would bring you up the head of the veal.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Well that we have that in our town. It's called
kabutzel and kaboot cell is literally the half of a
lamb's head split with the eye and everything in it
and all, and then it's made of reganato like sort
of regonato. Would be with the regano and breadcrumbs and
stuff in the oven roasted and we would be They
(07:01):
would bring this, and I was funny because the big
challenge was no one that I knew, even my big
brother who was daring and my grandfather. No one I
ever knew. Did I ever eat the eye? But but
I would eat the brain?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
But I would eat I would eat the.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Brain because I thought if I ate the lamb's brain
that I would become smart. You ever heard of something
called lambroshone. What it is is, in reality the bulb
of a hyacinth, and it's a dish that's it looks
like a little onion, but it's not an onion. It's lombars.
We called it lambashun. There's two hundred ways of cooking them,
(07:42):
and it's your well, the favorite one is when you
sort of you bar boil them and then you you
score them, and then you put them in hot oil
and they burst into flowers.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
What I want to talk about as well, There's so
many things we should meet again. I'd like to know
why did you buy a vineyard? You directed all these movies,
you did great things. Why would you go and buy
vineyards and start a great vineyard?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Do you want to know why I bought a vineyard? Yeah? Okay,
because when I was I'm an Italian American, which means
I never saw a table that didn't have wine on it. Yet.
United States had prohibition. But there was a rule in
prohibition that a few people know about, is that wine
drinking families. If you were a European or Italian, or
(08:29):
French or Hungarian or German, you were allowed to buy
the grapes and if you made it in your home,
you could make two barrels of wine in your own
fermenter in your home. So most Italians continued drinking wine
during prohibition, but did so by buying the grapes and
(08:49):
making the wine themselves. My grandfather did. But my grandfather
had nine boys and no girls, so I had all
these uncles, and these uncles told me of the fun
of having the grapes come because they still used to
steal the grapes because they didn't have fruit. A poor
family like mine would take one orange and give each
(09:11):
kid a segment of the orange. So they was so
all I heard was how much fun it was when
Grandpa made the wine and Italian Harlem. So when I
made the Godfather and had a little bit of money,
I suggested to my wife, let's buy a small house
in Napa with grapes and we'll have like an acre
(09:32):
of grapes, so we'll make wine and give it to
the family. So we went with an agent and the
agent told us this isn't for you, but they're going
to auction the most beautiful wine property in a Napa
valley and it's a chance to see it because it's
I mean, it's not what you want to do. It's
much more money, but it's it's the home of the
(09:55):
family used to own ingle Nook because Inglenook was getting
broken up at that So we went looked at it. Well,
what year was this? This must have been after with
the Godfather. What was the huh? So seventy five? So
we went to see this place, and it had two things.
That had a mountain, a whole mountain, beautiful mountain. It
(10:19):
had one hundred acres of wine. And then there was
the rest of it was that where the owner lived,
and it was separate from the winery. And it had
what had been a lake that was now with a dam,
but it was sort of dried up, and it had
a little swing on a tree, and I thought my
daughter Sophia could swing on that swing. So I just
(10:40):
my wife thought I was crazy, but I made an
offer for it, and we didn't get it. Then everything
we looked at seemed ridiculous compared to this gorgeous thing.
So someone said that the people who did get it
were going to build sixty homes on the mountain, but
they ran into trouble with nap Is agricultural zoning. So
(11:04):
I went before I was going to make apocalypse, I
went to them and said, you know, I heard that
your owners can't build these sixty homes, would be be
interested in selling it to me? And they said yes,
and I said okay, And so to borrow the money.
It was about a million and a half dollars, which
was a lot of money for me, but I had
made the Godfather, so they gave me the loan and
(11:27):
I went and made Apocalypse.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Now do you think that having a vineyard and producing
wine had parallels to making Oh?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Definitely. When I came back after I had tried to
buy an island in the Philippines, and my wife said, wisely,
when you you know you'll never come back here again.
It takes nine hours. And besides, you bought a winery
and they're all asking what do you want to do
with it? So I said, oh, you're right, And so
it had one hundred acres of vineyards and then NAPA
(11:58):
people come and try to put contract on. Other words,
other wine makers want to get those grapes, and they'll say, okay,
we'll pay for it, and we'll pay you a month.
So I said, well, if everyone wants our grapes, maybe
we shouldn't sell them. Maybe we should make wine ourselves.
And she said to me, well, how do you know
how to make wine? I said, I don't know how
to make wine, but I don't know how to make
(12:19):
films either, And so I decided to keep the grapes
and make make the wine. And that's the wine you
have there here.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
What you want to do.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
I want to taste this and I want to smell it,
is what I want to do.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
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(13:00):
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if we wanted to learn about wine, how do people
learn about wine?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Well, I don't want to ever be one of those
guys who.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Talks like that I wanted to smell.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
The No, I don't. I don't want that. I just
want to appreciate it so I enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
So this is oscar ursa Milier, which is a cabinet
blend that's.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Probably seven cabinet three percent lowe something like that. Smell it,
put your nose.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Are you going to have one too?
Speaker 1 (13:44):
So you look at it. It has a beautiful color,
it's this red. What do you smell well, beautiful bouquet,
A real wine. Guy goes, this is my laboratory.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
You're pointing to your nose.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
This is a classic book. Yeah, and new Bordos do
not or not they don't want a lot of alcohol,
you know, like less than fourteen percent of.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
I was going to ask you what is a classic border.
Classic Bordeaux is blending of cabinet with mellow and then
sometimes some others.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
So Pett, this was actually made the man who makes
Chateau Margo and his is this your own? Chateau Marco
is our head of our fantastic he does both. But
this is a baby.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Okay, so this is the twenty nineteen, twenty nineteen. Do
you think it is too soon to be drinking?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Oh for sure, for sure.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
When would you drink it? Then?
Speaker 1 (14:35):
In twenty years?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
In twenty years? Okay, but it's good, it's good.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
We just have a little shake that we'll see you
here years. So what are you drinking now? What year
would you be drinking now?
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Two thousand and five, two thousand and five.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Let me let me tell you how to drink it.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Okay, smell it, yeah, family, smell it.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Then when you take it, you put enough of it
so your mouth is full, but don't swallow it, and
you judge the mouthfield that it's a pleasure. Then slowly
you let it go and you see how long the
finish is a good wine that takes a long time
to finish. So this has a nice nose, pretty color.
(15:14):
Now now the mouthfeel h and a long finish. So
that is, but that will become much softer in four years.
It will become softer if you just.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Now, you know it's enjoyable. Now. But let me let
me tell you something incredible.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
I had a taste of seventeen eighty three, seventeen seventy
three eighty three Margo, which was a wine that Thomas
Jefferson drank and you go on take it was unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Where did teach.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Margo had a big tasting in la years ago?
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (16:06):
And I tell you this wine was incredible. And then
also I tasted nineteen ten, same tasting.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
I want to go back to the seventeen eighty three wine,
so that they would have taken that wine out of
the bottle many many times, not really.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
If it was, it was obviously kept at Bargo, so
it was perfectly. They might have recooked it a few times,
but now this is a This is an interesting wine
here because this.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Was okay, say what it is.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
That's nineteen seven and nine knee Bomb couple. So that
was the first wine I made when I told my
wife that I was going to make. Uh, you want
to taste it?
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah, of course this is nice. We should It were
seventy eight.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Okay, that's seventy eight. That's the first one we made.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
I bought it last night. Beautiful wine.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Be interesting. It be interesting to compare that with this
because this is made by a master winemaker in perfect conditions,
and that was made by jerk me back well, who
didn't know anything. When I want but the grapes will
I mean the terells, Yeah, yeah, If the grapes were great,
the wine will be greally.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
How are you finding climate change effect?
Speaker 1 (17:20):
So far? Our last years have been wonderful, but climate
change is coming and then there's going to be some
devastating events. That's what I wonder how Trump is going
to explain you know, he's saying there is it's a hoax.
I don't know how he's going to explain some of
the disasters they're.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Going to have.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
But the one I was talking to the people that
we buy wine from in Kianti, and you know it's
agriculture and it's just changing.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Well, but you buy the super Tuscans, right they are
competing with these that's the Tinianello and.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Actually came to the Elson.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
But they a lot of those young winemakers came to
you to learn their fathers were farmers, and the new
Italian winemakers are coming to California to learn what you're
doing in that.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
But also you know there was a lot of wine
made in areas like Salento or down in Leche that
they that they used to put in the super Tuscans
and benefit them now that they're coming out as wines
from Salento, you know from the south, like have you.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Had the wine from Metna from Sicily?
Speaker 1 (18:29):
No?
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Oh we have? Do you like them? Oscar?
Speaker 2 (18:32):
They're real, they're they're they're growing the wine on the
slopes of this is just open.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
But if you'll find that if you let this sit
open all that I bet you this could go either way.
We don't know.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
This is the seventy seventy eight, this is the one
I made.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Okay, Okay, let's see.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
For yourself.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
It's got a lot of nose.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yes, and you see immediately the color is so much,
I mean brown.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
See when I invited you to come and do this,
you didn't know you'd be drinking.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
It's got a beautiful nose.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
This is really this is fantastic.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
You get how old is it? If it's seventy eight,
eighty eight, ninety eight, it's forty years old.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
No more, forty six wow, six years old and it
still has this this horrible freshness today.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
And we just opened her, yeah, and we and we
just opened this. This is so much. This is August
as well. Imagine when this is forty.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Years somebody bought me a nineteen forty eight bottle of
Santa Mio which come in and he wouldn't decant it.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
He just opened it up, poured it out and said,
just let's drink it right now.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Said he said, it doesn't need to breathe, it doesn't
need to that hold of canter myths, he said, it's
a myth.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Well, that's a myth. It only pertains the cabernet. I mean,
if it's these other grapes, sirah or whatever, you're drinking
it doesn't rowan wines. This is a pretty good for
some of you. This was the wine that I told
my wife, well, I don't know, I shall take this.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
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Speaker 1 (20:35):
The thing to understand about me and cooking is that
I love to eat. I just that's the most wonderful thing. Well,
and I was very poor, so rather than be able
to go to a restaurants, I couldn't afford that. So
whenever I wanted to eat something, I would call my
mother and say, Mom, how do you make spaheti with clams?
And she would tell me how to make spaghetti of clams.
(20:57):
And then I developed a technique of every time I
loved something, whether it was in a restaurant, I would
always if I loved it, I would go back and
say how do you make it? So if I went
to a Moroccan restaurant and they had a bastilla, I
said how do I make it? And I learned how
to make bustilla.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
With the almonds and yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
So in other words, over the years, all my favorite dishes.
I knew how to make most of my life. I
was much heavier than I am now. But there was
a time when Anthony Bourdain visited the a palazzo I
have in the south of Italy, in the region of Basilicata,
(21:38):
and it was film that I was part of it.
I was there, my granddaughter was there, and I tell you,
I looked like a whale. And I looked at myself
in this Anthony Bourdaine segment, and all I could see
was the enormity of myself, and I said, well, I
have got to do something about that. And this was
(21:58):
well about four years years ago, I guess five years ago,
and he passed away since then. And you know, my
wife was very petite when I married her, and she
was through the sixty years of our marriage, and she
was always telling me, you know, you got to do
something about your weight, because you know, it's a life threat.
We all know. You don't see many three hundred pound
(22:21):
eighty five row men walking around because they don't survive. So,
seeing myself so gigantic, I went to a wonderful place
that existed in North Carolina, part of the Duke Duke Schools.
It was the Duke Fitness Center, and it wasn't really
a spot. It wasn't like you go there and get
pampered and get massages and stuff. It's more like going
(22:44):
to college and taking your major in health so that
you're taking courses in nutrition, in psychology. You know, there's
like a lot of psychological reasons why you might might
be obese. Your culture, your your family, what your traditional
food is of your Mike case, I'm Italian Americans, so
(23:06):
you know, there's a lot of pasta and pizza. And
it was a fabulous experience. I was there almost four
months and had a very interesting system. You learn a
lot about the different food groups and what they contribute
and then the balance between them, and then you sort
of decide what your caloric intake is going to be.
(23:28):
Yourself say well, I'm going to live on two thousand
calories or eighteen hundred cal whatever it is. And you
make your own menu a week before and you say,
I'm going to have you see the options, and you
make your menu and then you hand it in and
when you hand it in the next week, when you
go for your meals. Because you won't lead together with
(23:49):
the other people in the program, they give you exactly
what you had specified, and you can't say, well, give
me a little bit more of that or a little
of essen. Instead, you can't fudge with it. You did
it and you have to stick to it. And so
you become accustomed to what you have decided is the
sensible and you have advice. I mean, you have a
(24:11):
balance of elements, and basically you start, you know, at
first you lose a lot of weight because most of
it's water, and then you start traditionally losing weight, and
then over what was four months, I lost about forty
five pounds and continued. And this is also in goots
(24:32):
with an exercise with so part of the day you
do exercise part of the day, you go to classes
part of the day. The psychological aspects are very interesting
because there's some logic of why you might keep yourself
overweight that you never may have considered. There were people
there who were over four hundred pounds and it was
(24:55):
so heartbreaking because you know that they're not going to
live and they're prisoners of this addiction to eating.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
The interesting thing is that this is five years ago
that you haven't gone off it.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
That is that your discipline. Do you think or there's.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
More to it than that. The human being is a
marvelous creation, as you can imagine. And when you lose
a lot of weight, suddenly your body thinks you're dying
because traditionally rapid weight loss happens because you have some
illness or you have some condition that's causing it. So
(25:32):
the body does anything it can, and it has a
lot it can do to get you to put that
weight back on, so it manipulates your metabolism, so you
start gaining weight. So most people who lose a lot
of weight and comment about it on how they suddenly
start gaining it back again. So what you have to
do when you lose a lot of weight, you have
to just keep it, keep it off for three years
(25:57):
and then you reach your point. If you can manage
to keep the weight off for three years, it sort
of stabilizes and it becomes the new level. And that's
what I did. So now it's been four or five years.
But it's a struggle.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
I love to Yeah. I always think that if you
deny yourself.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Sometimes if you say no to food, sometimes you're saying
no to just being there, the pleasure of table and
talking to friends and being with them. So it does
take a lot of but you can eat very very well.
I said to you a few minutes ago. It's not
how much you eat, but I just want to make
sure that you're eating food.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah. But aside from that, look, I've been in a
food business and the wine business, and I'm happy to
talk about the similarities between the wine business and the
hotel business and food business with the.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Film business making a movie, yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Because there are many similar parts of it. But we
have a lot of needs and appetites, and unfortunately, food
and alcohol are one that have been commercialized the most,
and they are fortunes made in food and drink, both
in quality food and drink and in junk food as
(27:07):
they call it. So that you know, you're constantly being
pitched to have you know, let's have lunch, let's do
let's celebrate. Well, this is going to be Thanksgiving, We're
going to have the big Thanksgiving dinner. Or this is
the big Christmas dinner. We're gonna have plumb pudding. So
most of our celebrations are tied into something that's connected
to other people, the business they're in. So, you know,
(27:29):
I looked at all of the all of the pleasures
that we have. And I realized that of the many
pleasures that I used to overindulge in, really the only
two I'm allowed to do now, which I can do
as much as I want. It has no bad result.
Is learning. Learning is a great pleasure, and you can
(27:52):
do that without limitation, and you get no bad reaction.
If you drink too much, you get sick, and it
will be not you. If you chase ladies too much,
your wife will get mad and abandon you. If you
eat too much, you'll get obese and die. But you
can't learn too much, and you can't listen to music
too much that they don't have a payback of unless
(28:14):
you listen to music too loud. But you can listen
to music all you want and not pay the price,
and you can learn all you want. And so you know, basically,
over the last five six years, I've become since I
really lost a lot of this way that became an
incredible reader. I just at night, I always have a
(28:35):
book of my bed waiting for me, my companion. I'm
actually reading. How do you pronounce it? A lot of
stuff I read I can't pronounce the Greek, ancient Greek theogony, theogeny. Yeah,
that sounds better inod right, Yeah, that's who I'm reading.
(28:55):
It's the story of the birth of all the gods
and how how in Greek mythology there were all these
creatures and they were just involved in the most erotic
activities you cannot but gave birth chaos, made it with
the goddess of this and that and and it's an
(29:17):
incredible story of love making, which is what about the
earth as we haven't.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
That's so pretty good.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Did you know that there are people alive living in
the south of Italy and in Sicily who still speak
ancient Greek. They call it Greco, but I mean it's
a living language. The town is they speak ancient If
you a Greek person were to go there, they wouldn't
be able to talk to them. Wow, isn't that amazing?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
I mean that must be quite a small No, No,
there are.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
There are whole little communities throughout throughout the south. It's
called Magna Grecia because Greece when it sent its colonies
to the south of Italy, it didn't they didn't come back,
they stayed. My father I was a terrible student, and
my father said, if you're not. If you don't shape up,
I'm going to send you to a Jesuit school. And
Jesuit schools would terrify because they beat you if you
(30:08):
didn't learn. And I said, you know, I wish he had,
because then I would have had Greek and Latin.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Thank you, Francis, Thank you for
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Italy is an interesting place because it was for so
long these city states. There was the Vatican, of course
for thousands of years, which was Rome dominated by the
Roman Catholic Church, and then there were you know, in
(00:20):
the north there was a tremendous influence from German and
French foodte you have butter. Then Genoa they were fishermen,
of course, because they was on the sea. Did you
know that the Neapolitans make something called pastela Genovese, which
is a Neapolitan dish called pastase, and it's made one
(00:41):
hundred percent with onions. And the point the reason they
call it Allergendovese is because the Neapolitans think that the
Genovesi are real cheap skates.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
They are apparently, well, I shouldn't say that, because one
of my best friend is yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
And so they Neapolitans make the cheapest dish they can,
which is onions and they call Jennavese. Uh. And of course,
as you know, every every region of Italy has a
different specialty, certainly its own pasta. So in the south,
in Pulia, they have orichuette, which are the little the
(01:14):
little ear like pastas, and then in Bologna they have
portalini or whatever. The story I like to tell about
pizza because people think that pizza is this American staple.
But the truth of the matter is when I was
a little kid, you know, before about five years old,
we used to go to a pizza and have pizza
(01:35):
and no one knew what that was. Where was this
in New York were we lived in Queens, but we
my father would take us to a restaurant I remember
called Luis Gino's and it was a very authentic news.
This is the forties, This would have to be, yeah,
in the forties, you know, forty four, because but no
(01:56):
one knew in America, no one had ever seen a pizza,
knew it a pizza. The kids said, what are you
going to a pizzaio? What's that? And in fact I
remember for fifty sons they he would even make a
little pizza that I would get, and pizza, of course
was a Neapolitan dish. But the American soldiers came up
in World War Two through North Africa and up and
(02:19):
went right through Naples, so they brought coca Cola, and
they brought back pizza, and they brought pizza back to America,
and then two years later pizza was the rare new thing.
As a kid, everyone knew what pizza was and.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
What was the food like in the forties.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
What.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
So, you grew up in a family that cooked Italian food,
But I think that there's a big difference between Italian
food and Italian American food, don't you know.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Well, none of my family the region we come from,
not my mother's side that was Naples, but my father's
side and my grandfather's side, and he dominated what kind
of food his wife would cook, and he loved the
classic Bernaldes food, which is Lucania. Lucania is if you
look at Italy as a map, the arch of the
(03:10):
that's Lucania between Pulia and over here is Calabria, and
then in the center on the water and what's called
the Medponto is this region where we're from. My grandfather
wanted to eat Vanlez food. So my grandmother didn't know
(03:31):
how to cook that food because, believe it or not,
she was from South Italy, but she wasn't born there.
Her father was from South Italy and he went to Tunis,
because Tunis was a new city built in nineteen hundred
and it was all built by Italians. And so he
went there and he had three girls, my grandmother, and
(03:55):
then Tunas. You had to be in cahots with a
French partner because Tunas was a French protectorate, and the
French partner double crossed him, and he got mad and
left and took his daughters and went to New York.
So there were these three girls, very well educated. They
spoke Italian because they were from an Italian family. They
(04:17):
spoke French because Tunas was a French they spoke Arabic
because their school was Arabic, and they spoke English because
they were going to go to America. So my grandmother,
what this wonderful grandmother was actually born in Tunis, but
she married my Italian grandfather and he wanted to eat
this type of food. It turned out that in the
(04:40):
railway station of this region, the guy who cooked that
the railway also went to New York, and that man's
son taught her how to cook all this authentic what
we call vernals food. And these are these very strange dishes.
There's one I'll describe to you called new Marid New Marid.
(05:03):
What Marid is is you take you take all the
sort of sweetbreads and lungs and and and awful, and
then you package it in something with it, you know,
and then yeah, and you make these these new meriads,
which then you cook on a grill like more like
(05:31):
it's not but new Merid is this is nu Merid.
There's only someone who knows it says this is numerid,
This is not humrid. Also something called figurative. Will you
take the lining of the stomach that looks like lace,
and you put a pork liver and a and a
bay leaf, and then you wrap all these all these
(05:54):
It is so they ate that kind of food, even
though back in Italy that kind of food was getting
co opted and changed by modern influences.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I mean they still there's a restaurant that has been
around for centuries which only cooks awful.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
They give spinals slaghetti.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
The tragedy is in America, the food and the authorization
have just blanketly refused to prove any awful whatsoever. So
you really have to go to the butcher on your
own and say this is just a personal.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
When I lived in Paris, Francis.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
There was a if you wanted to eat brains, they
would bring you up the head of the veal.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Well that we have that in our town. It's called
kabutzel and kaboot cell is literally the half of a
lamb's head split with the eye and everything in it
and all, and then it's made of reganato like sort
of regonato. Would be with the regano and breadcrumbs and
stuff in the oven roasted and we would be They
(07:01):
would bring this, and I was funny because the big
challenge was no one that I knew, even my big
brother who was daring and my grandfather. No one I
ever knew. Did I ever eat the eye? But but
I would eat the brain?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
But I would eat I would eat the.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Brain because I thought if I ate the lamb's brain
that I would become smart. You ever heard of something
called lambroshone. What it is is, in reality the bulb
of a hyacinth, and it's a dish that's it looks
like a little onion, but it's not an onion. It's lombars.
We called it lambashun. There's two hundred ways of cooking them,
(07:42):
and it's your well, the favorite one is when you
sort of you bar boil them and then you you
score them, and then you put them in hot oil
and they burst into flowers.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
What I want to talk about as well, There's so
many things we should meet again. I'd like to know
why did you buy a vineyard? You directed all these movies,
you did great things. Why would you go and buy
vineyards and start a great vineyard?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Do you want to know why I bought a vineyard? Yeah? Okay,
because when I was I'm an Italian American, which means
I never saw a table that didn't have wine on it. Yet.
United States had prohibition. But there was a rule in
prohibition that a few people know about, is that wine
drinking families. If you were a European or Italian, or
(08:29):
French or Hungarian or German, you were allowed to buy
the grapes and if you made it in your home,
you could make two barrels of wine in your own
fermenter in your home. So most Italians continued drinking wine
during prohibition, but did so by buying the grapes and
(08:49):
making the wine themselves. My grandfather did. But my grandfather
had nine boys and no girls, so I had all
these uncles, and these uncles told me of the fun
of having the grapes come because they still used to
steal the grapes because they didn't have fruit. A poor
family like mine would take one orange and give each
(09:11):
kid a segment of the orange. So they was so
all I heard was how much fun it was when
Grandpa made the wine and Italian Harlem. So when I
made the Godfather and had a little bit of money,
I suggested to my wife, let's buy a small house
in Napa with grapes and we'll have like an acre
(09:32):
of grapes, so we'll make wine and give it to
the family. So we went with an agent and the
agent told us this isn't for you, but they're going
to auction the most beautiful wine property in a Napa
valley and it's a chance to see it because it's
I mean, it's not what you want to do. It's
much more money, but it's it's the home of the
(09:55):
family used to own ingle Nook because Inglenook was getting
broken up at that So we went looked at it. Well,
what year was this? This must have been after with
the Godfather. What was the huh? So seventy five? So
we went to see this place, and it had two things.
That had a mountain, a whole mountain, beautiful mountain. It
(10:19):
had one hundred acres of wine. And then there was
the rest of it was that where the owner lived,
and it was separate from the winery. And it had
what had been a lake that was now with a dam,
but it was sort of dried up, and it had
a little swing on a tree, and I thought my
daughter Sophia could swing on that swing. So I just
(10:40):
my wife thought I was crazy, but I made an
offer for it, and we didn't get it. Then everything
we looked at seemed ridiculous compared to this gorgeous thing.
So someone said that the people who did get it
were going to build sixty homes on the mountain, but
they ran into trouble with nap Is agricultural zoning. So
(11:04):
I went before I was going to make apocalypse, I
went to them and said, you know, I heard that
your owners can't build these sixty homes, would be be
interested in selling it to me? And they said yes,
and I said okay, And so to borrow the money.
It was about a million and a half dollars, which
was a lot of money for me, but I had
made the Godfather, so they gave me the loan and
(11:27):
I went and made Apocalypse.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Now do you think that having a vineyard and producing
wine had parallels to making Oh?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Definitely. When I came back after I had tried to
buy an island in the Philippines, and my wife said, wisely,
when you you know you'll never come back here again.
It takes nine hours. And besides, you bought a winery
and they're all asking what do you want to do
with it? So I said, oh, you're right, And so
it had one hundred acres of vineyards and then NAPA
(11:58):
people come and try to put contract on. Other words,
other wine makers want to get those grapes, and they'll say, okay,
we'll pay for it, and we'll pay you a month.
So I said, well, if everyone wants our grapes, maybe
we shouldn't sell them. Maybe we should make wine ourselves.
And she said to me, well, how do you know
how to make wine? I said, I don't know how
to make wine, but I don't know how to make
(12:19):
films either, And so I decided to keep the grapes
and make make the wine. And that's the wine you
have there here.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
What you want to do.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
I want to taste this and I want to smell it,
is what I want to do.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
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(13:00):
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if we wanted to learn about wine, how do people
learn about wine?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Well, I don't want to ever be one of those
guys who.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Talks like that I wanted to smell.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
The No, I don't. I don't want that. I just
want to appreciate it so I enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
So this is oscar ursa Milier, which is a cabinet
blend that's.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Probably seven cabinet three percent lowe something like that. Smell it,
put your nose.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Are you going to have one too?
Speaker 1 (13:44):
So you look at it. It has a beautiful color,
it's this red. What do you smell well, beautiful bouquet,
A real wine. Guy goes, this is my laboratory.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
You're pointing to your nose.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
This is a classic book. Yeah, and new Bordos do
not or not they don't want a lot of alcohol,
you know, like less than fourteen percent of.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
I was going to ask you what is a classic border.
Classic Bordeaux is blending of cabinet with mellow and then
sometimes some others.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
So Pett, this was actually made the man who makes
Chateau Margo and his is this your own? Chateau Marco
is our head of our fantastic he does both. But
this is a baby.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Okay, so this is the twenty nineteen, twenty nineteen. Do
you think it is too soon to be drinking?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Oh for sure, for sure.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
When would you drink it? Then?
Speaker 1 (14:35):
In twenty years?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
In twenty years? Okay, but it's good, it's good.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
We just have a little shake that we'll see you
here years. So what are you drinking now? What year
would you be drinking now?
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Two thousand and five, two thousand and five.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Let me let me tell you how to drink it.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Okay, smell it, yeah, family, smell it.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Then when you take it, you put enough of it
so your mouth is full, but don't swallow it, and
you judge the mouthfield that it's a pleasure. Then slowly
you let it go and you see how long the
finish is a good wine that takes a long time
to finish. So this has a nice nose, pretty color.
(15:14):
Now now the mouthfeel h and a long finish. So
that is, but that will become much softer in four years.
It will become softer if you just.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Now, you know it's enjoyable. Now. But let me let
me tell you something incredible.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
I had a taste of seventeen eighty three, seventeen seventy
three eighty three Margo, which was a wine that Thomas
Jefferson drank and you go on take it was unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Where did teach.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Margo had a big tasting in la years ago?
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (16:06):
And I tell you this wine was incredible. And then
also I tasted nineteen ten, same tasting.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
I want to go back to the seventeen eighty three wine,
so that they would have taken that wine out of
the bottle many many times, not really.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
If it was, it was obviously kept at Bargo, so
it was perfectly. They might have recooked it a few times,
but now this is a This is an interesting wine
here because this.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Was okay, say what it is.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
That's nineteen seven and nine knee Bomb couple. So that
was the first wine I made when I told my
wife that I was going to make. Uh, you want
to taste it?
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah, of course this is nice. We should It were
seventy eight.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Okay, that's seventy eight. That's the first one we made.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
I bought it last night. Beautiful wine.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Be interesting. It be interesting to compare that with this
because this is made by a master winemaker in perfect conditions,
and that was made by jerk me back well, who
didn't know anything. When I want but the grapes will
I mean the terells, Yeah, yeah, If the grapes were great,
the wine will be greally.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
How are you finding climate change effect?
Speaker 1 (17:20):
So far? Our last years have been wonderful, but climate
change is coming and then there's going to be some
devastating events. That's what I wonder how Trump is going
to explain you know, he's saying there is it's a hoax.
I don't know how he's going to explain some of
the disasters they're.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Going to have.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
But the one I was talking to the people that
we buy wine from in Kianti, and you know it's
agriculture and it's just changing.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Well, but you buy the super Tuscans, right they are
competing with these that's the Tinianello and.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Actually came to the Elson.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
But they a lot of those young winemakers came to
you to learn their fathers were farmers, and the new
Italian winemakers are coming to California to learn what you're
doing in that.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
But also you know there was a lot of wine
made in areas like Salento or down in Leche that
they that they used to put in the super Tuscans
and benefit them now that they're coming out as wines
from Salento, you know from the south, like have you.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Had the wine from Metna from Sicily?
Speaker 1 (18:29):
No?
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Oh we have? Do you like them? Oscar?
Speaker 2 (18:32):
They're real, they're they're they're growing the wine on the
slopes of this is just open.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
But if you'll find that if you let this sit
open all that I bet you this could go either way.
We don't know.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
This is the seventy seventy eight, this is the one
I made.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Okay, Okay, let's see.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
For yourself.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
It's got a lot of nose.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yes, and you see immediately the color is so much,
I mean brown.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
See when I invited you to come and do this,
you didn't know you'd be drinking.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
It's got a beautiful nose.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
This is really this is fantastic.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
You get how old is it? If it's seventy eight,
eighty eight, ninety eight, it's forty years old.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
No more, forty six wow, six years old and it
still has this this horrible freshness today.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
And we just opened her, yeah, and we and we
just opened this. This is so much. This is August
as well. Imagine when this is forty.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Years somebody bought me a nineteen forty eight bottle of
Santa Mio which come in and he wouldn't decant it.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
He just opened it up, poured it out and said,
just let's drink it right now.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Said he said, it doesn't need to breathe, it doesn't
need to that hold of canter myths, he said, it's
a myth.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Well, that's a myth. It only pertains the cabernet. I mean,
if it's these other grapes, sirah or whatever, you're drinking
it doesn't rowan wines. This is a pretty good for
some of you. This was the wine that I told
my wife, well, I don't know, I shall take this.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
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Speaker 1 (20:35):
The thing to understand about me and cooking is that
I love to eat. I just that's the most wonderful thing. Well,
and I was very poor, so rather than be able
to go to a restaurants, I couldn't afford that. So
whenever I wanted to eat something, I would call my
mother and say, Mom, how do you make spaheti with clams?
And she would tell me how to make spaghetti of clams.
(20:57):
And then I developed a technique of every time I
loved something, whether it was in a restaurant, I would
always if I loved it, I would go back and
say how do you make it? So if I went
to a Moroccan restaurant and they had a bastilla, I
said how do I make it? And I learned how
to make bustilla.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
With the almonds and yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
So in other words, over the years, all my favorite dishes.
I knew how to make most of my life. I
was much heavier than I am now. But there was
a time when Anthony Bourdain visited the a palazzo I
have in the south of Italy, in the region of Basilicata,
(21:38):
and it was film that I was part of it.
I was there, my granddaughter was there, and I tell you,
I looked like a whale. And I looked at myself
in this Anthony Bourdaine segment, and all I could see
was the enormity of myself, and I said, well, I
have got to do something about that. And this was
(21:58):
well about four years years ago, I guess five years ago,
and he passed away since then. And you know, my
wife was very petite when I married her, and she
was through the sixty years of our marriage, and she
was always telling me, you know, you got to do
something about your weight, because you know, it's a life threat.
We all know. You don't see many three hundred pound
(22:21):
eighty five row men walking around because they don't survive. So,
seeing myself so gigantic, I went to a wonderful place
that existed in North Carolina, part of the Duke Duke Schools.
It was the Duke Fitness Center, and it wasn't really
a spot. It wasn't like you go there and get
pampered and get massages and stuff. It's more like going
(22:44):
to college and taking your major in health so that
you're taking courses in nutrition, in psychology. You know, there's
like a lot of psychological reasons why you might might
be obese. Your culture, your your family, what your traditional
food is of your Mike case, I'm Italian Americans, so
(23:06):
you know, there's a lot of pasta and pizza. And
it was a fabulous experience. I was there almost four
months and had a very interesting system. You learn a
lot about the different food groups and what they contribute
and then the balance between them, and then you sort
of decide what your caloric intake is going to be.
(23:28):
Yourself say well, I'm going to live on two thousand
calories or eighteen hundred cal whatever it is. And you
make your own menu a week before and you say,
I'm going to have you see the options, and you
make your menu and then you hand it in and
when you hand it in the next week, when you
go for your meals. Because you won't lead together with
(23:49):
the other people in the program, they give you exactly
what you had specified, and you can't say, well, give
me a little bit more of that or a little
of essen. Instead, you can't fudge with it. You did
it and you have to stick to it. And so
you become accustomed to what you have decided is the
sensible and you have advice. I mean, you have a
(24:11):
balance of elements, and basically you start, you know, at
first you lose a lot of weight because most of
it's water, and then you start traditionally losing weight, and
then over what was four months, I lost about forty
five pounds and continued. And this is also in goots
(24:32):
with an exercise with so part of the day you
do exercise part of the day, you go to classes
part of the day. The psychological aspects are very interesting
because there's some logic of why you might keep yourself
overweight that you never may have considered. There were people
there who were over four hundred pounds and it was
(24:55):
so heartbreaking because you know that they're not going to
live and they're prisoners of this addiction to eating.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
The interesting thing is that this is five years ago
that you haven't gone off it.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
That is that your discipline. Do you think or there's.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
More to it than that. The human being is a
marvelous creation, as you can imagine. And when you lose
a lot of weight, suddenly your body thinks you're dying
because traditionally rapid weight loss happens because you have some
illness or you have some condition that's causing it. So
(25:32):
the body does anything it can, and it has a
lot it can do to get you to put that
weight back on, so it manipulates your metabolism, so you
start gaining weight. So most people who lose a lot
of weight and comment about it on how they suddenly
start gaining it back again. So what you have to
do when you lose a lot of weight, you have
to just keep it, keep it off for three years
(25:57):
and then you reach your point. If you can manage
to keep the weight off for three years, it sort
of stabilizes and it becomes the new level. And that's
what I did. So now it's been four or five years.
But it's a struggle.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
I love to Yeah. I always think that if you
deny yourself.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Sometimes if you say no to food, sometimes you're saying
no to just being there, the pleasure of table and
talking to friends and being with them. So it does
take a lot of but you can eat very very well.
I said to you a few minutes ago. It's not
how much you eat, but I just want to make
sure that you're eating food.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah. But aside from that, look, I've been in a
food business and the wine business, and I'm happy to
talk about the similarities between the wine business and the
hotel business and food business with the.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Film business making a movie, yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Because there are many similar parts of it. But we
have a lot of needs and appetites, and unfortunately, food
and alcohol are one that have been commercialized the most,
and they are fortunes made in food and drink, both
in quality food and drink and in junk food as
(27:07):
they call it. So that you know, you're constantly being
pitched to have you know, let's have lunch, let's do
let's celebrate. Well, this is going to be Thanksgiving, We're
going to have the big Thanksgiving dinner. Or this is
the big Christmas dinner. We're gonna have plumb pudding. So
most of our celebrations are tied into something that's connected
to other people, the business they're in. So, you know,
(27:29):
I looked at all of the all of the pleasures
that we have. And I realized that of the many
pleasures that I used to overindulge in, really the only
two I'm allowed to do now, which I can do
as much as I want. It has no bad result.
Is learning. Learning is a great pleasure, and you can
(27:52):
do that without limitation, and you get no bad reaction.
If you drink too much, you get sick, and it
will be not you. If you chase ladies too much,
your wife will get mad and abandon you. If you
eat too much, you'll get obese and die. But you
can't learn too much, and you can't listen to music
too much that they don't have a payback of unless
(28:14):
you listen to music too loud. But you can listen
to music all you want and not pay the price,
and you can learn all you want. And so you know, basically,
over the last five six years, I've become since I
really lost a lot of this way that became an
incredible reader. I just at night, I always have a
(28:35):
book of my bed waiting for me, my companion. I'm
actually reading. How do you pronounce it? A lot of
stuff I read I can't pronounce the Greek, ancient Greek theogony, theogeny. Yeah,
that sounds better inod right, Yeah, that's who I'm reading.
(28:55):
It's the story of the birth of all the gods
and how how in Greek mythology there were all these
creatures and they were just involved in the most erotic
activities you cannot but gave birth chaos, made it with
the goddess of this and that and and it's an
(29:17):
incredible story of love making, which is what about the
earth as we haven't.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
That's so pretty good.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Did you know that there are people alive living in
the south of Italy and in Sicily who still speak
ancient Greek. They call it Greco, but I mean it's
a living language. The town is they speak ancient If
you a Greek person were to go there, they wouldn't
be able to talk to them. Wow, isn't that amazing?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
I mean that must be quite a small No, No,
there are.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
There are whole little communities throughout throughout the south. It's
called Magna Grecia because Greece when it sent its colonies
to the south of Italy, it didn't they didn't come back,
they stayed. My father I was a terrible student, and
my father said, if you're not. If you don't shape up,
I'm going to send you to a Jesuit school. And
Jesuit schools would terrify because they beat you if you
(30:08):
didn't learn. And I said, you know, I wish he had,
because then I would have had Greek and Latin.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Thank you, Francis, Thank you for
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair
Host
Ruth Rogers
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