Lunching With Leo

How to throw the perfect casual get-together, alla Famiglia Baldassarre.

Having friends and family over for chill Sunday dinners is one of chef Leandro Baldassarre’s favourite things. It’s so important to him, in fact, that he has built his life around it.

“I really enjoy my weekends,” says the owner of Famiglia Baldassarre, a much-loved pasta shop in Toronto’s Geary Avenue corridor. “I mean, I started this business to afford myself a weekend — and evenings, frankly. That’s why I got out of restaurants.”

Baldassarre’s pasta enterprise, which is closed weekends and Mondays, is famous for its fresh pasta lunch offered three days a week and enjoyed by the handful of people who get there early enough to score one of 15 seats at the tables facing the retail counter. Since running a business means “there’s always something” — time off isn’t always entirely his own — Baldassarre tries not to let occasional interruptions derail his favourite downtime activity, namely, spending time with his partner, winemaker Drea Scotland, and hosting the many folks who drop by to watch the soccer game or enjoy a little barbecued jerk chicken.

“My boyfriend’s a great cook and we have all the best stuff at home,” says Scotland. “So, it makes me feel rich to be able to share [that] with friends. The informal at-home thing is really nice.”

But entertaining shouldn’t feel like a chore, the couple offer as advice. Just give it a little forethought and take a page out of their books by keeping it real with simple fare and in-season ingredients.

Stock the Pantry for Aperitivo Hour

Almost all dinners at their place kick off with aperitivo, which is all about the wine, cocktails and salty, crunchy snacks.

“I’m always stocked with things like peanuts, chips, grissini and taralli — all things you can buy at any Italian specialty store,” says Baldassarre. “You just put out all these little dishes and fill them up — olives, lupini, grissini, boom, boom, boom. Crack a bottle of sparkling and, in 30 seconds, you’re already just eating and hanging out around the table.”

Antipasto: A Casual First-Course Feast

“You can save on things like prosciutto by buying whole cuts and slicing them at home,” says Baldassarre. “Go to any deli and they always have ends like the last six inches of a leg of prosciutto.”

No slicer? Don’t stress. He says you can still do a lot with other cured meats, so long as you have a good knife and the basic skills.

Antipasti are all about salumi (cured meats), pickles and other treats, like cheese, artichokes and roasted peppers for casual grazing while the host is cooking the risotto or grilling the meat. “You can make a frittata two or three hours before and it never has to go into the fridge, since it’s a room temperature kind of thing.”

Primi: Make It a Kitchen Party

Many hosts avoid dishes like risotto that need to be prepared à la minute and might take you away from your guests. And if you have the set-up, Baldassarre says the best solution is to just make it a kitchen party.

“When I’m cooking, we’re all there together. I’ll be at my stove here and everyone else is right there eating their antipasto. So, it doesn’t bother me to be standing and stirring with my guests there.”

Plus, risotto doesn’t have to take 20 minutes if you buy the right rice, he explains. “The time it takes to cook a risotto really depends on the size of the kernel. If you buy Vialone Nano, a rice with a very, very small grain, it only takes about 11 or 12 minutes.”

People are sometimes intimidated by risotto, but it’s quite forgiving, he notes. It won’t be ruined if you turn off the heat for five minutes to tend to something else.

So, cook what you want, Baldassarre says. “Entertaining at home is really about expressing yourself.”

Secondi: Master the Braise

“I do a lot of braises. Let’s say you have a bit of lamb shoulder and a bulb of fennel and a red onion — that’s enough for a braise. You flour your lamb a bit, give it a little browning, throw in a little wine and cover it with broth. Let that cook down and it’ll make its own beautiful little gravy.”

Mastering braises is largely about learning which cuts are best cooked low and slow. Serve it with polenta, and you’ll have an easy four-ingredient dish. And the oven does most of the work.

“Anything with a long, slow bake buys you time,” he adds. “I like to think of appliances as labourers that are doing something for you. The longer you can leave them alone without worrying about it, the better.”

Enchanted by Jerk

In January, Leo Baldassarre took his first trip to Jamaica — including an excursion to Boston Bay, the purported birthplace of jerk. It all made quite an impression on a chef who, by his own admission, does nearly all of his travelling in Italy.

Jamaica hit on all the elements that I love about Italy,” Baldassarre says. “The convivial nature of the way they get together to eat. The incredible ingredients. The simple food. Dishes that are about how things taste, not how they look. And that no-recipe aspect to things — nothing’s written down, everything is like ‘Nonna’s secret.’”

So, when he got home, Baldassarre did what all good chefs do when they return from abroad, enchanted with the food of some other place. Working with his flavour memories and culinary instincts, he got to work on reconstructing those dishes he had liked most.

A couple of practice sessions later, he was ready for the big time, as his lunch guests included the friends who showed him around Jamaica, where they have roots. And so, it came to pass that a lunch that began with a Rubenesque frittata, delicate marubini in brodo, and a luscious autumnal risotto somehow segued to Boston Bay chicken, charcoal-roasted yams and a re-creation of the spicy casing-free chicken sausage served up by a cook called Bumpy at the Boston Jerk Centre.

And it worked. As one of the guests put it, “Welcome to Bumpy Baldassarre’s!”

VINO: What Grows Together Goes Together

Scotland and Baldassarre refer to their downstairs cellar, where they make wine together every year, as the “cantina.”

“We make pretty fresh stuff at home and that seems to work with a lot of Leo’s cooking,” says Scotland. “So really, it’s easy to just grab that stuff from the cantina for dinners.”

The cantina is also home to a few bottles from Scotland’s winery, Drinks Farm, such as a Riesling and a Cabernet Franc blend called Giosuè, as well as Jarel, an expression of L’Acadie Blanc and Petite Pearl. “I’m focused on making wine that tastes true to a place, which is just inherently exciting to pair with great Ontario produce,” she adds. “It just goes together and it’s natural.”

DOLCI: Keep it Simple

“I often just make apple pie for dessert. I’m not going to do some nifty version you’ve never heard of. I’m going to go buy Tenderflake lard and make a delicious apple pie. It’s like, who are we impressing here? It’s about us being together, right?”

– Christine Sismondo