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Cooking class true to coastal Italy

By KIM PIERCE / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

With a "Buon giorno!" as big as his smile, Grotto chef Tommaso Lestingi started off the Italian Club of Dallas' first cooking class recently.

Grotto chef Tommaso Lestingi prepares Risotto Pescatore with vegetable broth because chicken doesn't go well with seafood, and fish broth is a flavor that can overpower other flavors in the dish. From there, he got right to work showing how to make three dishes from his native Puglia as a dozen-plus attendees gathered 'round the dining room's huge, granite-topped counter.

Puglia is the Italian region on the Adriatic Sea at the bottom of the "boot."

And while seafood risotto was on chef Lestingi's menu -- as you might expect from a region nearly surrounded by water -- he began with a salad.

Not your typical lettuce- intensive affair, this one is made by whittling raw artichoke heart, celery, Belgian endive, onion and radicchio into small pieces.

He squirts lemon juice over the veggies, which prevents the artichoke from turning brown, and adds some chunky Grano Padano cheese.

"There's a lot of artichoke in Southern Italy," he says. But in general, he notes, it's a poor region for salad ingredients.

"I'm making this a very home-style salad," he says as he adds a generous pour of olive oil and salt, pepper and 15-year-old balsamic vinegar to the big bowl. He tosses the salad by holding the pan and literally tossing the ingredients in the air. You can try this at home; just take it easy till you get the hang of it.

Chef Lestingi explains that he has been cooking since he was 10. "From 12 years old, I work," he says of starting in a pastry kitchen.


Chef Lestingi prepared Insalata Carciofi for the Italian Club of Dallas' first cooking class. Helpers plate and serve the salad, which is a crunchy, multitextured wonder with a rainbow of flavors -- from the sweetness of the artichoke to the bitter radicchio -- to match the contrasting colors.

From the salad, he moves on to the risotto, using three portable burners.

One holds a pot of vegetable broth seasoned with saffron, which he will add a ladle at a time to the rice. On top of one, he cooks mussels, clams, shrimp, squid and octopus, with a touch of olive oil, garlic, parsley and pepperoncini in a skillet. And he tends to the rice in a sauté pan over the third.

He explains that he uses vegetable broth because chicken doesn't go well with seafood and "the fish [broth] sometimes makes too strong a flavor."

Then he turns and asks a helper for a wooden spoon. Never use a metal spoon with the risotto, he admonishes. And the dish must be stirred about 20 minutes. A metal spoon, he says, will ruin the starch.

Unlike in America, where risotto is a main dish, he explains that in Italy pasta or risotto come just after the antipasto. After that would come lamb, chicken or fish. Salad would not be served as a course, he says. Rather, the salad and vegetables would be on a plate at the center of the table.

He tests the risotto for doneness by flicking a bit off the wooden spoon into his hand and lifting the rice to his lips.

"You want the rice al dente," he says. "Hard, almost."

When it's just right, he adds the seafood to the rice, sprinkles parsley over all and plates a serving with an exclamation of "Mama mia!" The dish lives up to his description, with tender seafood and creamy, full-flavored, al dente risotto.

He finishes with a chicken cacciatore -- not the heavily tomato-sauced version popularized in America, but a delicate casserole with carrots, celery, tomatoes, mushrooms and bell peppers.

Throughout the class, chef Lestingi is right at home with the portable burners. While demonstrating the chicken, he tells about the time recently when the power went off at Grotto for two hours.

"It was a disaster," he says, a shock of hair spiraling down on his forehead. "... But we cooked [all of] dinner on these little burners."

Kim Pierce is a Dallas freelance writer.