Stefano de Pieri

Stefano De Pieri The great communicator and cook for his region.

Of all the chefs in this book, probably the one with the greatest affinity to the land and now, to the television screen, is Stefano De Pieri. Possibly it’s his Italian family’s peasant background which makes him such a natural. His warmth and passion for what he is doing radiate from the screen.

De Pieri’s family were subsistence farmers near Treviso in the north of Italy. He stresses the word ‘subsistence’, "It was a hard life, we ate well but very simply. And only what we could grow on a small plot of land." It taught him a great deal, such as how to use all parts of the animals, vegetables and grains they raised.

It also taught him about the danger and the importance of politics. His father avoided joining the facisti by "hiding behind his five children and his cows which kept him too busy to go to meetings. He wasn’t stupid, he didn’t want to be part of it." When Stefano came to Melbourne in 1974 to join his brother, Sergio, he soon became involved in politics in formal and informal ways. He joined the ALP and became editor of Nuovo Paese in 1978.

But food was always important to him and his love of cooking led him to join the kitchen of Melbourne chef Raymond Fenech (who had worked at ‘Mietta’s’ a few years before) in the early 1980s. Then in 1984 he joined the Department of Ethnic Affairs in Victoria, and later became a ministerial adviser working for both premiers John Cain and Joan Kirner. He even attempted to enter Victorian parliament in 1991, after which he resigned from the department.

Not long after, he married Donata Carrazza and moved to Mildura where Donata’s parents had recently acquired the Mildura Grand Hotel. It is here in ‘Stefano’s Cantina’; that he further developed his interest in cooking. He refuses to call himself a chef, saying in his book A Gondola on the Murray that "I am of the school of the untrained, or the self-taught, and I rely very much on the memories of my past in the Veneto farm for the food I like to cook and eat."

It is interesting how many of the chefs in this book refer to taste memories and the importance of these for them. Palate is a natural faculty you are born with, but it is the memory of tastes and their active pursuit which develops the fine educated palate. You can have chefs of great technical skill who have an ordinary palate – either through lack of taste memories or from natural failings. The great chefs and teachers in this book strive to develop palate in their pupils. They do this by making them taste again and again.

In Stefano’s case, he has strong and vivid memories of the food of his native Italy which he strives to recreate constantly in Mildura. For Stefano, this is also about justifying and giving a place to regionalism and to an understanding of where food comes from. He gets very frustrated about the way Australians ignore their country, clinging to the cities and ignoring the reality of life. He wonders aloud about how many of them actually know where food comes from, "you could tell them that spaghetti grows on trees, and they would believe you." He despairs of the lack of food education in the schools, despairs even more about "the rubbish" children are given to eat in tuckshops. "There should be some basic understanding given of nutrition and then also of the cycle of production. We lack a peasantry here, so how else are our children going to know about food?"

And then the author and politician in Stefano comes out when he talks about this contradiction in Australian society; with the bulk of people living in the cities but the nation having such a strong rural tradition. He waxes lyrical about the poetry of Henry Lawson, or his friend, Les Murray, about the symbolism of the water, about why he titled his book and television series, ‘Gondola on the Murray’. The stories in the book are fascinating, they give glimpses into Italian country life which still exists in remote areas, a life so far away from the technological and creative advances of the major cities there.

You may ask, what has this got to do with being a chef, and a great one? It’s about leadership, about vision and about palate. The dishes which are cooked in ‘Stefano’s Cantina’ evoke and inspire memories, and his quest for ingredients and his passion for the land generates growers there. But he is very critical of his fellow chefs – "Our industry bears the weight of the country not taking food seriously at all." Stefano says that whilst "chefs talk about getting good and fresh produce all the time, it’s just a scramble. They pounce on the latest ingredients. Writers say this chef is better than that the other one because he or she has succeeded in finding something special. Then the chefs all want the same thing at once."

Is it Stefano the chef or the politician speaking when he asks, Why can’t it be the norm? "There is no attempt made to sustain production and to introduce standards". He feels that there needs to be generosity on the table, to create a sense of community where people think about their lives in a broader way. He hopes we can develop a sense of a shared life, of a mutual understanding between food producer, chef, and consumer.

And he feels strongly that he can achieve this more effectively by staying in the kitchen. Now too, he has the forum of television, he feels that his passion for food is coming across to the common man. There are even busloads of pensioners coming to the Cantina and eating risotto for the first time in their lives.

Even with the fame of television, it is still difficult to cater well for the numbers required to maintain the "white elephant" that is the Mildura Grand Hotel. The town needs more places doing regional food to attract a bigger pool of eaters, and Stefano has hopes of attracting other passionate operators to the area. Then there is the Mildura Arts Festival started 1995 with inspiration from his brother, the acclaimed organist, Sergio de Pieri. And the development of the wine industry, which he expects will be "a civilising force".

And so too the phenomenal interest in olive oil which Stefano is encouraging with the acquisition of a state-of-the-art olive press, imported from Italy, to allow many of the smaller growers to become viable and to produce a higher grade oil. It has just seen its first major harvest.

There is also the production of another television series and another book. Here he is much less optimistic, "Italian cooking has been visited and revisited, every stone has been turned and re-turned, and there are books containing ridiculous non-existent recipes just to fill the pages. You cannot keep making the same tired old statement. But they want another one." Stefano admits to being lucky. I am sure that he will find more Italian words of wisdom to give us.

INFLUENCES

Maggie Beer, Luigi Carnacina, Philip Hodgins, Les Murray, the Veneto region

A review of Stefano's Cantina.

Stefano de Pieri's Recipes