Born and raised outside of Puglia, Chef Luigi Fineo can hardly believe that he gets to cook for a living in Los Angeles. The chef is being modest, however, as his cuisine has earned Michelin stars and countless other accolades along the way.
But just because he cooks elevated food doesn’t mean his roots aren’t fully rustic. Because of this, we wanted to chat with Fineo to see what some of his favorite techniques are for cooking at home. Lucky for us (and you), he combined two techniques that you’ll simply have to test out for your next post-pandemic dinner party.
Chef Luigi Fineo
What’s a technique that makes you think of home and that you still enjoy cooking in your own kitchen?
There are these two techniques that I grew up with that is both a style and a technique. The first is called al forno which basically means to bake. But when you talk to us about al forno, we think about succulent lamb or seafood and it’s more of a combination of baked and braised. But the other technique is soffritto because for us, we don’t cook with really high heat or with a fast pace. Everything is really slow, low heat, and it takes like six hours to make the tomato sauce on a Sunday. And soffritto is pretty much the base that we use for many things like soups or sauces.
Perfect, so let’s walk through a dish where you’ll combine these methods.
Okay, let’s talk about Pesce al Forno. It’s mostly done on a Sunday or a special occasion because it takes a long time. So, soffritto is the name of the technique and soffriggere is when you’re actually making it. When you start, you’re going to use small vegetables like celery and carrots, a bit of garlic, bay leaves, some peppercorns, a bit of olive oil, and you put it on low heat and slowly start to cook it down.
To get even more specific, let’s say you want to make baby octopus. Start with chopping celery, carrots, and garlic and heat it in a braising pan on simmer with extra virgin olive oil. You’re going to do this for about 15 minutes and you’re stirring during this process. Everything slow and gentle.
Preparing soffritto. Credit: Luigi Fineo
Once you’re done breaking down the vegetables, what comes next?
Next, you take the baby octopus or moscardini and you place them in the pan and increase the heat to medium. Then you start to mix everything around and get the oil and vegetables to coat the octopus. You keep doing this for about 15 minutes on medium heat.
After 15 minutes, you’re going to add about a quarter cup of white wine. Maybe something from Puglia like a Verdeca that’s a little sweet. Let the wine simmer for about 10 minutes until the alcohol evaporates and then you add what we call conserva di pomodoro. This is a tomato sauce that is premade during the summer and can be stored all year long.
How much of this conserva di pomodoro are you adding to the pan?
Back in Italy, they actually use beer bottles to store this tomato sauce because the bottles are very thick and solid. For this recipe, you might use half a bottle of the sauce. You keep stirring and stirring until everything is well combined and then you cover the pan with a lid and create a heat chamber.
When you put the lid on, do you turn the heat back down to low?
No, at this point you put the pan into the oven. This is where you combine the al forno with the soffritto. You want the oven to be about 350 degrees Fahrenheit. You’re going to keep this in the oven for about an hour and 15 minutes, but after an hour, take the lid off and keep cooking for the last 15 minutes.
You’ll know if someone says they’re cooking al forno that they’ve taken a lot of time and really thought it through, and it’s going to be really, really good.
When it comes out of the oven, what is the consistency like?
It’s very small because it shrinks a lot, but the baby octopus will be really tender, and you can probably break through it with just a fork. The best part of it is just dipping bread into the juice, it’s just so good.
While I’m talking to you, and actually going through the steps, it makes me think about my own house and my mamma cooking these things and missing the smells. It reminds me of coming home from church on a Sunday, and I’d be starving, but the smells are overwhelming so you just start eating it and you can’t stop even though you know it has to feed the whole family later. It’s just that good.