Tony's comin' to dinner.
Oh, yeah, we're having pretty much
all of the greatest hits this afternoon.
Everybody says their mom is the best cook.
Is this normal that people cook so well in their homes,
or is your mom extraordinary?
Yes, she's badass.
A feast!
Oh, my god, it's like the Mt. Everest of deliciousness.
Everything is made from scratch.
Damn right, there's some pine needles in there
because she's kind of short-sighted.
Amazing home-cooked foods
surrounded by friends and family.
You are my hero.
Thank you, you are mine, too.
It's a family thing, served family style.
This one of those lucky-to-be-alive,
I-like-my-job moments.
I'm Anthony Bourdain.
♪ That's right ♪
I write, I travel, I eat...
♪ Aw, look out now ♪
...and I'm hungry for more.
♪ Ugh! ♪
♪ You got to ♪
♪ Get lost ♪
♪ No reservations ♪
Some things remain the same,
like tradition, like family, and like food.
The family gathers together and cooks together.
They eat, drink, share news,
kids running around everywhere,
younger nieces watch over shoulders,
hoping to pick up valuable secrets.
And once you've had the real thing, home-made like this,
you can never go back.
That is so great.
You cook, you eat what you got.
Here we go, guys... Squirrel pot pie.
I have had squirrel before. It's delicious.
Have you had it in a pot pie?
There's backyard barbecues where dad massacres the meat
in a charred submission,
and then there's a party at the Pardus house.
New Paltz, New York.
Backyard of chef instructor Michael Pardus, CIA.
That is really good brine.
All these dragoon friends and former students
in a collaborating on a massive culinary operation
of a magnitude unseen since Operation Overlord.
A feast, a cross-section of impeccably prepared
Vietnamese and Korean specialties
that would thrill the hearts of any homesick native
of either country.
Oh, and this guy, Scott Beattie,
the heavyweight mixologist
who literally wrote the book on artisanal cocktails,
is slingin' the drinks.
You can eat it, you can drink it.
You can make love to it.
Whoo!
It's a whole new world of cocktails.
Michael Ruhlman.
This Cleveland-based writer and one-time Food Network judge
invited himself along for the trip.
Thank you.
Delicious. Everything was going swimmingly
until I ran into the terrifyingly precocious
Sierra Pardus, Michael's daughter,
who spent the rest of the evening beating up on me
like a veal cutlet.
For Christmas my dad got me a college neurology textbook.
Why?
'Cause I wanted one.
Why?
'Cause I went through a phase
where I wanted to be a neurologist.
Microbiology and nanotechnology is very fun
'cause each microchip looks like a city.
You're, like, the smartest person
I've ever talked to on this show.
How old are you? Ten.
I'm half-Czechoslovakian.
Really?
We're going to Czechoslovakia in a couple weeks.
- Really? - Yeah.
And if you say, um, "Jak se máte?"
That means, "How are you doing?"
- Really? - In Czech.
My grandfather taught me that.
You gotta work for this show, I'll tell you.
You work harder than me, and you know more than me.
But it's hard also.
You're not buying that, are you?
No, no.
Oh, yeah, sitting on a plane for 18 hours in first class,
eating chicken and prime rib
and then going to foreign countries
and walking around and eating great food and buying souvenirs.
Oh, yeah. It's got to be a really tough job.
Oh, man.
Oh, man!
I'm feeling bad now.
That's harsh.
Kid's diabolical.
She's diabolical.
I've never encountered a more incisive critic
of my life's work.
And go for it.
Dinner is served!
We've got the fixings for Vietnamese sandwiches, banh mi.
We've got the fixings for some bulgogi Korean grilled beef.
Put a little bit of the Korean chili paste,
and then you make a little taco out of it.
Got some salads on the table of green mango
and some oyster kimchi that's really good.
So, if you're not sure how to do this,
just watch the person next to you.
In between being advised of my many deficiencies,
I managed to enjoy a spectacularly lavish bun bo
with a complement of build-your-own garnishes
and a hearty, some might say,
enchantingly rich and spicy broth.
This is the broth right here?
Basically simmered pigs' feet.
Nice.
Mike, what's this meat loaf here?
It's a pâté with cinnamon and ginger.
Never sat in a backyard in New York State,
or anywhere else in the continental United States,
for that matter, and had food like this.
He's an overachiever.
Yeah, by the way, watch your language around the kid, okay?
He's a foul-mouthed man. Have you ever noticed?
The language.
I watch your show.
Oh. Oops.
We'd have to charge you a lot of money for that.
You could stare at me, but money's money, kid.
There we go. Now we're talking. Now we're starting to deal.
You know, he knows Emeril, too. They're very good friends.
My dad hates Emeril.
He doesn't hate Emeril.
He does.
No, he doesn't hate Emeril.
I play pranks on him in the supermarket,
and I put Emeril hot sauce in his cart,
and he says, "Get that crap out of my cart."
I told them about how you hate Emeril.
You can just leave the table for another 10 minutes.
We're just getting to the good stuff, you know?
I feel like I've known you forever, but I've never met you.
Why, thank you.
That's a very good dinner-party skill, by the way,
filling in awkward moments in the conversation.
It's a skill you learn in sixth grade.
Why don't you just take over the show?
I mean, you already stole the thing.
I don't even know why I bother.
On the one hand, I've had to work about 75% less
than I usually have to work on this show...
And it is work, by the way, young lady.
Yes, moving your mouth... So much work.
We'll be right back after the break.
You're sure this is your daughter,
you didn't hire her from Central Casting?
She's not a ringer.
This is all not some elaborate joke, right?
I've just been punk'd.
Just for the heck of it,
would you swing on my rope swing?
I will.
Whoo!
By the end of the evening,
everything was golden and nice and right with the world,
and even the slings and arrows of a little girl
could not deter me from having a really good really good time.
Whoo!
♪♪
Over 1,500 years old,
Venice was a city-state built on 117 small islands
in a lagoon of the Adriatic Sea.
It was the center and clearinghouse
for everything good from everywhere else.
Down the street lives our friend Stefano,
the Mooring man, and his family...
A decidedly different, more low-key setting...
A house, a backyard,
kids running around, grandma in the kitchen.
You know this is gonna be good, right?
Wow. Wow.
That's the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
♪ No reservations ♪
Venice was a city-state built on 117 small islands
in a lagoon of the Adriatic Sea.
Down the street,
a decidedly different, more low-key setting...
A house, a backyard,
kids running around, grandma in the kitchen.
You know this is gonna be good, right?
The family matriarch...
Still apparently happy to stand for hours on end,
painstakingly making family meals from heirloom recipes.
She says she wouldn't have it any other way.
Venice's great restaurants...
To a great extent, Italy's...
Succeed or fail to the degree
that they evoke this kind of cooking.
Or at least that's what Lori de Mori says.
She's an American cookbook author and food writer
who's been living in Italy for decades.
To my mind, certainly,
Italian cooking is home cooking.
And today, I'm really happy it's Stefano's home.
What had been a heavy, suffocating, late-summer heat
lifts with a nice, sustained breeze off the Adriatic
through the curtains of this tiny family kitchen.
Onions start to cook.
Family members help out.
A little of this, a little of that...
Ingredients measured out in practiced increments by hand.
Salute e grazia.
Do you know that rule? Yeah?
Bad manners to let pasta get cold.
All right. It's so pretty.
We start with bigoli,
a thick, tubular, long-cut pasta,
like a hollow spaghetti,
in a sauce of slow-melted, salt-cured anchovies.
As with nearly everything on the menu,
it's labor-intensive.
So, when you know that you want to have this pasta,
you have to start three days ahead.
Three days ahead?
She said, "You have to kill the onions."
"The onions have to die.
"And their death is that they just dissolve...
And give themselves up."
Oh, you mean during the cooking process.
Yeah. So you melt them.
You say melt, and she says kill.
Lots of pepper and white wine.
Does everybody's mother make this dish the best?
You know what I mean?
Si. Si.
It's indescribably flavorful
and is just the right balance of sauce to starch...
Sauce more condiment than main event.
Mm-mm-Mmm.
Oh, man, that's the best.
Oh, man. Oh, wow.
Wow. That looks hot.
That's the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Yes. Exciting.
Cuttlefish from the lagoon, cooked in its own ink
and served with fresh, slow-cooked polenta.
The polenta, still steaming,
is cut at the table with a thin thread,
and then all that goodness luxuriates
in an inky bath on your plate.
Does anything else that turns your teeth black taste as good?
Anytime you find
the Italians and the Chinese doing the same thing,
it's probably because it's a really good idea.
Oh, yeah.
We're having pretty much all of the greatest hits this afternoon.
Pretty much the best.
And the most famous of Venetian dishes,
the classic liver-and-onions fegato Veneziana...
Sweat the onions, sear the liver,
deglaze with wine, cook through, and serve.
It's just a wonderful, wonderful flavor.
Onions are miraculous things.
You can make an onion taste so many different ways,
depending on how you treat it.
No mystery here...
Only a delightfully sweet, sour, savory symphony of offal.
I'd like to ask both moms here...
When you go out to a restaurant, what makes them angry?
Passion... if there's no passion, it's...
Passion and then another "P" word,
which is patience... Patience.
Which there's... It abounds in Venice.
She likes to eat her own food.
If she's home by herself,
she makes herself a lovely meal all by herself.
I don't think she's going out very often.
And quite simply, it's easy to see why.
This is one of those "lucky to be alive,"
"I like my job" moments. Mm.
♪♪
A lot of stuff going on in the streets of Naples.
Seems like there's some kind of religious festival every day.
But there's something else going on
that happens only today, Sunday.
If there wasn't all this music all over Naples,
from windows low and high,
right now, you'd hear the slow simmering
of meat in red sauce.
Scarpetta?
Shoes. Yeah, of course.
Mule shoes. Middle shoe, literally,
but here it refers to the practice
of dragging your bread across the bottom of the plate
to mop up every last bit of sauce.
Here is where the red sauce trail ends,
where it began, and where I came to realize now
it persists in the same form familiar
to any Italian American who grew up with something
called Sunday gravy.
Ragu.
To Napolitanos, it's ragu,
which might over time have been garbled
or mistranslated to gravy.
But who cares?
What it really means is mom, anybody's mom.
♪
Here is where the red sauce trail ends,
where it began, and where I came to realize now
it persists in the same form familiar
to any Italian American who grew up with something
called Sunday gravy.
Ragu.
What it really means is mom, anybody's mom.
My mom for the day I adopted from Rosario,
our production driver.
I love this woman.
I love everything about her,
her toughness, her cooking, her sense of humor.
Meet Josepina, mother of seven
and an awesome cook and an awesome, awesome person.
The original plan...
Some other family agreed to take us in for money.
My producers got them off Craigslist.
When that fell through, Rosario here simply said,
"What about my mom?
I eat there every Sunday anyways. Come on."
Which turned out to be the best thing that happened all shoot.
Hey.
Buongiorno.
Ahh.
Hey!
She's saying that...
She said that she cook for you
and you have to do something for her.
Nice.
This is good, real good.
Words fail.
Buon appetito.
Oh!
Mmm. Mmm.
Ohh. Yeah.
Mmm.
Buonissimo. Mmm.
Mmm.
Oh! Yeah.
Nice.
So, if you died tomorrow, what do you want to eat today?
Ragu. This is it?
The same meal.
And of course, he wants it his mom's way.
We make a mix before... Onion, the garlic,
Olive oil, virgin olive oil.
Very good quality. To put the meat inside.
Josepina used pork sausage, veal,
pork ribs, and braciole,
which are pieces of veal wrapped around Parmesan cheese,
garlic, basil, parsley, raisins, and pine nuts.
Brown the meat in the pan, then...
You put the tomato juice inside,
and then leave for five or six, seven hours.
Very low. Low.
Low and slow, right. Plop, plop, plop.
And when the oil go in the top of the ragu,
maybe then it's ready.
You leave the oil or you take it off?
No, no, no. Take it off.
Now, notice there's no big chunks of meat in the sauce
when she sauces the pasta.
You get the pasta, tossed and topped
with the meat-flavored tomato sauce.
And then, later, as the next course,
you get all that tender meat which has been set aside.
Look at this thing. Oh, my God.
It's a mix. Mt. Everest of deliciousness.
Fiorelli, the typical Napolitano version.
It's a wild vegetable.
Wild green. Yeah.
Garlic, olive oil, and pepperoncino.
It's bitter, a little bitter.
A little bitter with you in your life is good.
Sauce. Sauce.
Mom, whatever you say, I'm doing that.
Here, is this a traditional Sunday thing?
Yeah. Every Sunday?
Really, traditional Sunday.
This is the... the Sunday meal.
Right. A rag...
Right. So what's Monday?
Maybe the rest of the ragu from the day before.
Next day ragu is even better, right?
Much better. Maybe for the next two days.
Right. Even cold, it's good.
Yeah, yeah. On the bread. It's like a marmalade, you know?
No, believe me.
In the morning, it's the best breakfast.
Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow.
Okay.
I hear you.
To the chef.
My visit to Istanbul has provided me
with one of life's singular delights...
Being proven wrong in a delicious way.
Cheers. Thank you. Serefe.
Homemade like this comes highly recommended by our fixer, Esra.
Esra arranged for her mom
to prepare a real home-cooked meal for me,
which means grandma gets dragooned into hard labor
in the kitchen, too.
This is okra.
It looks like cute, little baby okra.
Something I loved was this dish
of artichoke hearts, peas, and onions
topped with a puree of fava beans and dill.
Have you had anything like this before?
It tastes like something... I would expect to find
something like this in Northern Europe.
Really? Because this is very Turkish.
- Really? - Absolutely.
So, what happens if Turkey gets its wish
and it becomes part of the E.U.?
A lot of those foods are gonna have to disappear.
♪ No reservations ♪
My visit to Istanbul has provided me
with one of life's singular delights...
Being proven wrong in a delicious way.
Cheers. Thank you. Serefe.
Have you had anything like this before?
It tastes like something... I would expect to find
something like this in Northern Europe.
Really? Because this is very Turkish.
- Really? - Absolutely.
Zucchini borek...
A legacy of the old empire and a family favorite.
It hails from the Balkans.
The most traditional for our family is the borek,
because my father was born in the Balkans.
When the Ottomans ruled the Balkans...
For 500 years... We're from there.
So, we're all mixed.
Yeah, it's confusing in a really good way.
Italy is a very, very family-oriented culture.
Where does Turkey fall in the family...
Just like Italians. I would say a little bit more.
You have to be in the same city.
You have to be close to your parents.
If a young Turkish man calls home
after a few weeks of no contact,
who does he speak to first... Mom or dad?
Mom.
I don't like the sound of this at all.
Main course... an intense yet subtle braise of lamb
and eggplant puree.
The eggplant is baked first,
and then you put kasar cheese.
Wow. This is sensational.
So, what one dish...
Is there, like, a traditional dish that she...
There was a different kind of pilaf, or rice,
with liver... mainly liver... But also spices.
Outside membrane of the lung.
And the rice is stuffed with the lung thing.
And it's baked in the oven for a very long period of time.
That's a very traditional dish they don't make anymore. Wow.
So, what happens if Turkey gets its wish
and it becomes part of the E.U.?
A lot of those foods are gonna have to disappear.
That's why many people don't want to be a part of the E.U.,
because they want to eat all that liver.
Dessert... and desserts are always astonishing
in this country I've come to know...
Is flaky and rich and topped with pomegranate seeds.
I will admit that I even avoided coming here for a while.
I mean, I just thought, "How good could it be?"
"It'll be lamb on a stick."
And we take so much pride on our cuisine.
We're really...
If you had time, I mean...
Every region of Turkey has really different cuisine,
and Istanbul, you can take glimpses of each one.
If somebody faints, we would give them yogurt.
So, if you faint, you're in good hands.
I'll wake up with, like, yogurt all over my face.
We will put it on you.
As is so often the case
when you sit down at a Sri Lankan table,
a number of different curries are headed your way.
But it's the crab that's the hottest.
Our Sri Lankan-American fixer, Skiz, knows what to ask for.
We arrive at our destination,
which is really less a place than a person.
Thank you, Leela.
Leela cooked for Skiz's family
for over 45 years of her life.
The relationship evolved quickly
into one single extended family,
with Leela now retired into a position
as sort of an honored great-aunt.
She's a living repository of the very best
and most authentically prepared Sri Lankan dishes.
In her head are thousands of recipes
utilizing the endless ingredients
available on this island.
And yet she uses no recipes, weights, or measures.
Everything Leela cooks...
Every dash, sprinkle, or portion...
Comes from a lifetime's immersion
into the flavors available.
Measurements by eye, by hand...
The way she's always done things.
Except for the crabs, which we picked up on the way
and which, after an escape attempt,
required a little wrangling...
...everything we're eating
came from within a short walking distance.
Some ingredients are a bit of a reach,
like these gotu kola nuts.
But most ingredients require time...
A lot of time... And constant attention.
They do have electricity here,
but it's hard to see how that would speed up
the dozens of little procedures so many of the dishes require.
The ancient Persians referred to Sri Lanka as "Serendib,"
from which we get the word "serendipity."
Mmm. You did it again, Leela.
Finding Skiz, his family,
and this woman, Leela... This incredible cook...
If that wasn't serendipity, I don't know what is.
What a spread.
Leela, thank you so much.
- She can make anything. - Chicken curry.
This has got everything in there...
The liver, the kidneys, all that good stuff.
Cashew curry.
All the flavors, all the colors.
I've been waiting a long time to eat this crab curry.
No one makes it like Leela.
Oh, yeah, you're not kidding.
Amazing home-cooked food,
surrounded by friends and families.
Just two hours from the closeness and crowds
and, well, paranoia of the capital,
this feels like another world.
Oh, man, that's good. The crab curry's unbelievable.
This area is quite well-known for their seafood stuff.
How often do you come to visit?
You don't have to make an arrangement.
You just drop in?
And more likely than not,
you'll be asked to stay for lunch.
That's the Sri Lankan hospitality.
Well, best meal yet. And I'm finally getting
my three-finger rice-sauce smushed thing going down.
Eat more.
I have to go back for some of that crab sauce.
Oh, please, please. There's tons of it.
Gonna get a little crab sauce. I'll be back.
Everybody says their mom is the best cook,
but Helen has a real claim to that statement.
In a place like Penang,
where such a high value is put on cooking well,
Helen's mom, Eileen,
is something of a national treasure.
Today she's making a veritable feast
of traditional baba nyonya standards,
recipes passed down in her family for generations.
Now, that's the famous one, very, very unique to us,
because it uses fish stomach.
Wow.
♪ No reservations ♪
Helen Ang is a writer and expert
on the subject of traditional dishes.
Helen's mom, Eileen,
is something of a national treasure.
Today she's making a veritable feast
of traditional baba nyonya standards,
recipes passed down in her family for generations.
Now, that's the famous one, very, very unique to us,
because it uses fish stomach... Pickled fish stomach.
Wow.
- Fermented. - Salted.
- Salted and fermented. - Powerful.
Wow.
When you come across a chewy, rubbery bit...
- Mm-hmm. - That is the fish belly.
I like that. That's good.
It's a really nice balance. It's very savory.
The baba nyonya are descendents
of the original Chinese merchants
who settled here hundreds of years ago.
Over time they took on a lot of flavors and ingredients
of their new environment.
The resulting cuisine is a truly unique mutation,
a fusion of local Southeast Asian ingredients
and taste preferences
with Chinese technique and preparation.
But it's a cuisine in danger of disappearing,
as so many of the ingredients are difficult to source,
and because dishes like this, otak-otak,
a fish custard wrapped in banana leaf,
are so labor-intensive to prepare.
See, everything makes use of local ingredients...
Banana leaves, coconut,
these leaves which grow wild.
Mmm.
- Is it too hot for you? - No, it's fantastic.
Just awesome.
They're very strong flavors, aren't they?
Yeah, but "strong" sounds like a...
- Like a bad thing. - No, I mean...
They're forceful. These are not shy flavors.
They declare their intentions.
Requiring about a day and a half
spent in the kitchen, but well worth the effort...
Mom's specialty.
This is dried cuttlefish.
Oh, nice.
Now, this is a very, very traditional dish,
you know, on Chinese new year.
And you eat that with fresh lettuce
and a dollop of sambal belacan.
- It gives you a real kick. - Right?
You take a dollop of this, put it in there.
Mm-hmm.
Put a dollop of that, and put it in your mouth.
Okay?
And how hot or spicy you want it is personal.
Let it breathe.
Mmm, delicious.
It was really great.
Best meal I've had so far in Penang,
and in fact, it's the best meal I've ever had in Malaysia...
Far and away, not even close.
What an accolade.
Not even close.
We won't give the address, because if...
You know, people will see this on television,
and they'll be hanging out front.
I'm with Sami Yaffa,
former bass player for the band Hanoi Rocks,
later of the New York dolls.
We're at Radio Rock,
crowd-sourcing a dinner scene in Helsinki.
- Good morning. - Morning.
So I have a mother who's a grandmother for three,
and I think she's a professional drunk.
And she makes the best traditional Finnish food,
in my opinion.
Apparently our radio solicitation
of the perfect grandma paid off big-time
because Piia, the young woman who called us on Radio Rock,
she was not kidding.
Turns out her mom is everything she promised and more.
Party animal...
great lady...
fantastic cook.
Every once in a while on this show,
out of the blue, everything goes right.
This was one of those times.
Tina, Piia, and their neighbor Sarah
deliver the goods big-time.
On the menu, the famous Karelian stew...
Turn them, turn the fish.
...fried whitebait...
Ah! Yeah.
...and Karelian pies,
which I get a crash course in how to make.
She's just pressing the pastry and rolling it into... thin.
It's going to be a big one, a big
Big, big...
- Big. - Big.
The shape, it looks like a
It should look like it.
You want to do it? Can I?
- Sarah. - Yes, you can.
Uh... that way.
It needs to be round one.
Oh.
It's fine, it's fine. You can try with that one.
It's... it's fine, it's fine.
- Am I pathetic? - No, no, no, no.
It's fine, it's fine.
A thin layer. More.
Leave like 2 centimeters.
More.
A little here?
- Yes. - All right.
And there, there, too.
Fold here?
No, no, no, no. Other side.
All right. Yeah? Good? Then up?
- Yeah. - Do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
You get it!
Yeah!
Oh, man.
It's perfect.
It's beautiful.
I like yours better, so to speak.
Look at that. This is like a train wreck.
It's Paris Hilton Monday morning.
I don't even know what this shot was about, though,
it's called "Granny Slippers," disturbingly enough.
Salmiakki vodka and Irish cream?
Sure... why not?
- Cheers. - Cheers.
♪ No reservations ♪
Piia, the young woman who called us on Radio Rock,
she was not kidding.
Her mom is everything she promised and more...
Party animal, fantastic cook.
Yeah.
I don't even know what this shot was about, though,
it's called "Granny Slippers," disturbingly enough.
Salmiakki vodka and Irish cream?
Sure... why not?
- Cheers. - Cheers.
That's good.
Oh, it is good.
This is the basic soup my mother does.
So, mushroom soup. And you guys actually...
You get these mushrooms yourselves?
Yes. She picked them.
She picked 'em? Wow.
There we go.
And what is... what is that?
Uh, table booze.
Table booze.
- Table booze. - I like the sound of that.
It's very Finnish.
Said there might be some pine needles in there
because she's kind of short-sighted.
So she might have scooped some pine needles in there.
Happy? I'm happy. I'm so happy.
Is this normal that people cook so well in their homes,
or is your mom extraordinary?
My mom is extraordinary, yes.
Yes, she's badass. Absolutely.
Pretty awesome, right?
Wow, look at that.
The pies, the fried fish,
and a really tasty foraged mushroom salad
accompanied the stew.
And no these ladies can cook.
The egg on top.
There's pork and beef with lots of fat.
Oh, wow. Oh, that's great.
- Absolutely. - You weren't kidding.
Some serious cooking going on here.
Mm.
So, what happens if a reindeer wanders into the front yard?
Is she shootin' it in the brain?
No, she'll call her friend who will come and kill it.
And she will cut it to pieces.
I figured.
Some people have said some extremely unflattering things
about the cuisine in Finland. An easy joke.
Yeah, Finland, it just sucks.
But I haven't had a bad meal actually.
So wait... Oh, yeah, oh, okay.
Here we go. Moving on to serious business at hand.
Oh, this is table booze.
Yes, it is.
First of all, I wanna thank you
for the best meal we've had in Finland.
Without question, not even close,
far and away the best meal we've had in Finland.
Say, "Thank you for coming."
Thank you so much. You are my hero.
Thank you. You are mine, too.
Finally, what it's all about...
Eating with the family in Sardinia... my family.
- Cin cin! - Cin cin!
A few years ago, I married this woman, Ottavia,
and with her came a large family in Lombardy
where she grew up and another large family here
where her father's people are from in Sardinia.
Every family has its general, its designated chef.
And in the Busia family, there's no doubt who runs the kitchen.
Andreana's the leader of the family.
She's tough.
Every floor of this five-story compound has its own kitchen.
But this is the communal one,
the main kitchen for special events.
And Andreana's busy making the best meal of the trip,
with her son Flavio, of course, more than ably assisting.
He's done this before, I gather.
The smells coming out of the kitchen would,
I promise, bring you happily to your knees.
If you could smell this, you'd be biting
and snapping your way through your TV screen.
Hunks of cinghiale. That's wild boar, you know?
One of the few words I actually know
braising away for one of my favorite things,
a special request.
I can recite this meal pretty much by heart...
Sliced prosciutto of wild boar, homemade sausages,
green olives from the yard, wild asparagus,
local artichokes and mushrooms,
roasted pepperoncini in local olive oil,
Andreana's handmade ravioli with homemade ricotta,
and malloreddus,
the tender yet slightly chewy,
ever-so-wonderful gnocchi-like things, which...
Which I'm insane for, tossed with the braised wild boar.
Oh, yes.
There's a little roasted lamb and lamb bits, the liver,
and whole roast suckling piggies...
and eel...
and Andreana's famous snails with spicy pomodoro.
It's like a greatest of the greatest hits
of Sardinia all on one table.
- Cin cin! - Cin cin!
Generally speaking, you don't trust restaurants around here.
It's a sign of failure or desperation or ignorance
to have to go to a restaurant.
Laziness would be a marginally acceptable excuse, I guess.
But otherwise, everybody seems capable in the kitchen.
Did you have the pepper because it's very spicy.
- Good. - It's good.
Oh, yes. And I'm gonna give you all the food
that Mama won't let you have.
If she ate every day like this,
the grilled cheese would be a thing of the past.
I know.
I wish she could eat like this every day.
We have to take my aunt over with us
and bring her to New York.
My favorite pasta's coming up next, malloreddus.
Oh, the malloreddus, the malloreddus.
I'm so excited. Oh, I love this dish.
Mm. Very happy.
This is malloreddus with wild boar.
Nice.
It's very simple but delicious.
Now, they're kind of like gnocchi, but...
But they're not. They don't use potato.
Flour, water, and salt, nothing else.
- Oh, wow. - Oh.
- Aw. So cute. - Nice.
It is cute, huh?
In a delicious sort of a way.
I know. Wow.
It's all the inside of the pig, everything, like, everything.
And it's wrapped up in the stomach of the pig.
- Right. - The heart, the lungs,
everything that you can find inside the pig
is all wrapped up inside its stomach.
Ooh, the tail of the pig, it's good luck.
It's all crunchy and crispy.
Oh, oh.
What do you do after your dreams come true?
I've had three or four full lives already,
most of which I was surprised to find I'd survived.
This is, like, bonus round.
Undeserved, probably.
But like some insane pinball machine,
life keeps kicking out extra points
regardless of how I've played it.
I imagine myself, of course,
keeling over among the tomato vines
in the backyard somewhere,
chasing a grandchild around
with a slice of orange in my mouth.
Big tray of pig parts
and another one of pig innards,
good wine, daughter happy.
For a guy who so rarely is home with such a distorted view
of what home is or might be to start with,
I'm a pretty sickeningly happy guy these days.
I tend, I know, to over-romanticize things,
especially when it comes to all matters Italian
or Sardinian.
This is, after all, a country not my own,
though I guess now it is as much as any place.
This is home now.