Original subtitles

- Oh, wow.

Steep.

Oh.

Ugh.

This is...

OK, here we go.

Finally. God.

I had no idea it was that far.

So I've just made my way up...

Thousands of steps to this place,

Castle Brown,

which is in Portofino,

which is in Liguria.

And Liguria is a crescent

right on the coast of Italy

bordering Tuscany and France.

They'll carry me out of here on a stretcher,

but I don't mind because the food is amazing.

I'm Stanley Tucci.

I'm fascinated by my Italian heritage,

so I'm traveling across Italy to discover how

the food in each of this country's 20 regions

is as unique as the people and their past.

Their rugged environment has made

the Ligurians tough and unafraid of a challenge.

So you call this...

Centuries of wrestling their food out

of a small amount of land have given these people

a wisdom that's right for our times.

- The harshness of their region

has made them inventive.

Oh, my God. Whoa.

- Liguria gave us pesto.

It's really good.

Their land drove Ligurians to the sea

and made them great traders with spectacular wealth...

Wow, wow, wow.

And sophisticated tastes.

Incredibile.

The name Portofino is a compound of two Italian words,

one meaning a harbor,

the other meaning an impossibly gorgeous,

pastel-colored place full of boats and sports cars.

Liguria is long and thin and has its feet in the sea.

This is the fabled Italian Riviera,

and Portofino, once a small fishing village,

is a jewel in its crown.

In the 1950s, it was popular with the rich and famous,

but Portofino was the place to be seen, not really to eat.

These days, there are plenty of restaurants

serving classic Italian food,

but what you don't find so much

are traditional Ligurian dishes.

The angularity of their landscape

determines what the people of this region eat.

Their narrow, terraced fields forced them

to be creative with what they grow.

Yeah?

- Carlo Cracco is one of Italy's

most famous Michelin-starred chefs.

He came from Milan to serve Ligurian dishes in Portofino.

His menu depends on farmer Iva Labanino.

She cultivates crops and also forages for wild food.

Hi. Ciao.

- Ligurians seem to be indestructible.

Iva and her husband Alberto are both in their 80s.

- 83. - 83?

- 25-year-old Mattia Pecis is Carlo's head chef.

- OK, let's go.

This is the arugula, the wild arugula.

- The real... - That's my favorite actually.

Yeah. Yeah.

- That's delicious. Yeah.

Biological?

- Mm-hmm.

Iva's vertiginous land isn't suitable

for grazing livestock.

Like so many Ligurians,

she thrives on vegetables and leafy greens.

- Iva is not only a great cultivator.

She's also a great gatherer.

In the fall, she harvests walnuts

provided she can get the right staff.

- Back at Carlo's restaurant, he reveals

why Iva's greens are central to his Ligurian menu.

- This is a preboggion.

Preboggion is the mix of herbs that we catch before...

- What does it mean, preboggion?

That's the dialect?

- Yeah, it's the dialect.

When you boil...

- Yeah.

- You mix the...

- The blender? Yeah. - The blender.

And then you have the d'hôte.

- That's what you end up with?

- Yeah.

- Yes. We don't...

- Only a bit. - Just...

- A little bit. - Yeah.

In Italian, we call ravioli.

In Liguria, is pansotti.

- Pansotti. - Pansotti.

It's the real typical ravioli in Liguria.

Very simple because we have only herbs...

- Yeah. - And pasta.

- Mm-hmm.

- And then move the ravioli.

- Don't laugh at me.

In the local dialect, pansotti means belly,

because loaded with preboggion,

they look a little portly.

That's sad.

Meanwhile, Mattia is making a walnut sauce.

- Taste.

- Mm. Oh, wow. - Walnut.

- Walnut. - Margarine.

- Mm-hmm.

- Olive oil, and salt, rock salt.

- And that's it? - That's it.

- Beautiful.

At a table on the terrace,

it's time to ask one of Italy's greatest chefs

why Ligurian food is appropriate for our times.

- Mm-hmm.

- Si.

- Si.

Oh, wow.

Grazie.

- Wow.

I've never tasted a pasta...

- Yeah?

- No, never, no.

That's very different than anything I've ever tasted.

It's so delicate.

- Ah.

- Si.

- That's very well put. Cheers.

- Thank you, Chef. Thank you.

- Thank you too. - Thank you.

- This is Genoa, Liguria's capital city.

It's a swelegant, elegant place

that's a strong contrast to the rugged interior.

Plum in the middle of the coastline,

for eight centuries, this port was the center

of a great Mediterranean trading empire.

Today, we're not far from the docks,

which is also Genoa's pesto district.

Take a look at this.

Can you see it out the window?

That says La Terra del Basilico.

That's the land of basil.

And basil, of course, makes pesto.

Pesto is so beloved here

that they have a pesto competition every two years.

Chefs come from all over Italy to wrestle with

mortar and pestle and pay homage

to the great green sauce invented here in Liguria.

Their judge is Roberto Panizza,

known as the King of Pesto.

- We're meeting his majesty at a basil farm

high above the town.

They made it sound like a bucolic farm thing,

didn't they?

Oh, my God.

This is it.

OK, I was expecting something more pastoral,

but these greenhouses are in fact

a modern take on ancient Ligurian terracing.

Do you think this car will stay in this position,

or is it just gonna roll back?

Roberto treks up here because the microclimate

is perfect for basil cultivation.

Roberto?

OK?

The crop is bathed in salt air from the Mediterranean below.

- Wow.

- Wow.

Inside, there's another kind of ocean.

- It's a system of growing.

It increase the flavor, increase the sweetness.

- Si.

Oh, my God.

Whoa, whoa.

- I'd like to have a shirt made out of that.

- Ah, DOP?

- Yeah.

- The unusual harvesting method lets the staff

hover over the crop, judging by eye

which stalks have grown six inches,

the moment of peak flavor.

Down at sea level in Genoa,

Roberto runs a restaurant where the fragrant smell

of crushed basil brings in the crowds.

The king is going to give me a lesson in Genovese pesto.

Basil, obviously.

Parmigiano and lightly smoked pecorino.

Extra virgin olive oil.

Garlic. Cloves, three of.

Salt. Pepper.

Pine nuts. All crushed by this.

Well, I've got pestle envy.

Then you need a mortar,

or a marble kiddie pool.

It's beautiful.

It's bigger than the first apartment I had in New York.

- Now we go to crush the garlic.

You always make it by hand?

- Yes. - Yeah.

After the garlic, the pine nuts.

Then comes the basil.

The smell of it... - Yes.

- Oh, it's incredible.

- We need a lot of oil.

We need a Ligurian oil because it's sweet.

- See, I think that's a problem.

My mortar and pestle are too small.

It's like you want to paint with it.

- This is a pecorino made with raw milk.

- How long has that aged?

- Well, one year.

Parmigiano-reggiano.

- Uh-huh.

- And now we crush.

Try.

- Yes.

- Wow.

Sorry. I'm just...

- It is good? - It's really good.

Yeah, it's the smoked...

- Yes. - Slightly.

Not really. - No much.

- No. - No much.

- But it's different.

- But it's a memory of the cheese.

- That's very interesting.

OK, let's go make the thing.

- It's heavy.

- Yeah, I mean, you get a hernia.

Jesus.

- Wow, who knew it could be so dangerous making pesto?

Dish of the day, pesto with trenette,

a typical Genovese pasta.

- No.

Si.

- Right.

- Mm-hmm.

- Si, Si.

Two types of starch, tons of protein and vitamins.

Low cost, high value.

Very Ligurian.

Beautiful.

So humble, this dish.

So humble.

Just like me.

OK.

Well...

This is, I told you, one of my favorite things...

In the whole world.

At home, I cook the simple but gorgeous dish all the time,

but not as well as this.

It's amazing.

It's creamy. - Mm-hmm.

- The two different cheeses, I really love that.

It's just beautiful.

My kids, like all kids,

just love pesto,

Luguria's gift to the world

and Italy's great green ambassador.

- I'm in Genoa, and I'm on Via Garibaldi.

But one of the things that's really cool

is that we have a real façade here

made out of stone and all that.

But then throughout the entire city,

there are these painted facades.

They're so well done that from a distance,

you often... you can't tell.

And supposedly it was done

because if you didn't have money,

you did this instead of building the actual edifice.

But anyway, I thought it was a really cool thing.

Has nothing to do with food at all.

But there is a connection.

In Genoa, the taste for art and thriftiness

extends to the kitchen because this great port

has to feed both the workers and the wealthy.

The docks made Genoa rich.

It became known as La Superba.

But not everybody lived the high life.

These are the carugi, back alleys where

dockworkers and sailors have for centuries

come to eat good, simple fare.

I'm meeting Laurel Evans, a relocated Texan food writer.

Hello. How are you?

- I'm good. How are you?

- Good, good.

When she married a Genovese gentleman,

she became a devotee of focaccia,

a great working-class staple that originated here.

Wow. Wow.

- Yeah, so this is some of the best focaccia.

- Gorgeous. Buongiorno.

Buongiorno. - Buongiorno.

The real local thing has large dimples in it

and is brushed with olive oil and sea salt

before its final rise.

- First, you must try the simple focaccia.

That is where everything begins.

- OK, so let's try the most simple focaccia,

which would be that one.

- That guy right there.

- Are you gonna eat some too?

- I will absolutely try some. - Yeah?

- And let me tell you a little bit of a trick

about eating focaccia that a local told me.

You want to tear off a corner,

and then you eat it upside down.

That way, the salt hits your tongue first,

and then the rest of the flavors follow.

- Ooh, I just started salivating when you said that.

- OK, see?

- Mm. I always want more salt though.

- You could have more salt than this?

- Wow.

Yeah, that's hitting me. Ciao.

- Ciao.

- A step away from working-class Genoa,

it's all marble and gold.

- So it looks like we're in a completely different city.

- Yeah, it does. Yeah.

- This is where you really feel the wealth

of the upper classes.

- So this is the banking center but also, like,

shopping and all that sort of stuff?

- Yeah. You have some of the first banks that were founded

in Europe in Geneva because all of these merchants

and wealthy ship captains needed somewhere

to put their money.

So Genova has a nickname, which is La Superba.

Superba means grandiose,

splendid, beautiful, ornate,

but it also means a little bit haughty,

a little bit snobbish.

- The place to eat like a merchant prince

is The Cook, a popular new restaurant

of Chef Ivano Ricchebono,

in a startling 14th century setting.

Wow, wow, wow.

Oh, my God, it's gorgeous.

We've come to see Ivano make

a Renaissance-era Genovese pasta.

- The name corsetti refers to an ancient coin

with a cross design.

This pasta definitely displayed your wealth

and family crest to your guests.

And they're also delicious.

Well, that's always helpful, yeah.

After all the carbs, the all-important protein.

In humbler households, the meat would go into the sauce

to add flavor and then come out again

to make a second meaty meal, which is very Ligurian.

- While the meat sauce reduces before the pasta is added,

Laurel and I position ourselves under the frescoes,

ready for conspicuous consumption.

- To La Superba.

- La Superba, and having this restaurant all to ourselves.

- Oh, man.

Couldn't get much better than this.

Hi, chef.

- Oh, look at this. - Oh.

OK, corsetti.

- Mmm.

- That sauce is gorgeous.

- Mmm.

Have you tried the meat yet?

- No, not yet.

Ah, beautiful. Delicate.

- Rich but delicate.

That should be the new nickname for Geneva.

- Turns out the pasta is just the opening scene

of an epic drama.

Cappon magro was once a snack for sailors,

just fish and sea biscuits.

Then the wealthy got hold of it.

When the church announced that nobody could eat meat

on so-called magro days,

magro meaning lean,

the rich adapted this dish

to keep themselves from fading away.

Oh, my God.

No.

- Speaking of elaborate and ornate.

- Come on.

- Chef.

- So we have lobster,

shrimp, mussels.

- Si.

- Wow.

Fantastic.

- Si.

- Si.

Bello.

Our Genovese fare has embodied

this tale of two cities in one,

the focaccia, food of the backstreets,

and Ivano's haute cuisine.

But to me, they're both superb.

- The Ligurians have green thumbs,

their gardening skills honed on some of Italy's

most challenging terrain.

Head 80 miles down the coast from Genoa, turn left,

and you'll find Taggia,

home of Italy's greatest olive,

the taggiasche.

The Valle Argentina, or Silver Valley,

reaches inland from the sea, funneling salty breezes

into these bone-dry heights.

The microclimate is perfect for growing olives.

Paolo Boeri's family have worked these groves

for five generations.

Wow.

- So welcome to Gacci.

- Gacci.

- Gacci, yeah.

That's our oldest olive grove.

And that's the first land my family bought 100 years ago.

- Really? - So we started from here.

- Really? - For olive grove.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Whoa.

- And we are lucky because we are in this land.

This land is the valley where this olive,

the taggiascha olive... - Yeah.

- Were created in 1600.

The Benedictine monks, they start, like,

matching different species.

- Yeah. - And they invented...

They created the taggiascha.

Forest on the top.

- Yeah. - That make everything fresh

and give a lot of flavor to the ground.

- Right. - And plus the sea wind

that always coming up.

- Even working with nature, the human effort is Herculean.

No harvesting machine can cope up here.

Miles of nets are laid to catch the falling fruit.

- And here you can see they're preparing

the net for the picking.

- Yeah.

- Because all these hectare of olive grove

are going to be covered by this net.

In this way we can always keep the fresh fruit,

pick it at its best, and without touching the ground.

Long work, but it work because the olive oil at the end

will be really, really high quality.

- Yeah, I bet. I bet.

It's quite a job keeping something horizontal

in all this vertical.

The hills are alive with the sound of pickaxes.

These walls are basically keeping everything in place.

- They keep the entire mountains up.

So all those were built 1,000 years ago.

They need a lot of care because they're pretty old.

With the water and everything, imagine the pressure

they have on that.

- So you call this...

- Heroic agriculture because... - Heroic agriculture.

- Yeah, because everything here must be done by hand.

So as you can see, it's so narrow and small,

but everything should be done as once, so with hands.

- There's something about hard physical labor

that always gives me an appetite,

especially when someone else is doing it.

Luckily at Paolo's family home in the town of Badalucco,

lunch is underway.

- Rossella, how are you?

- Fine. - Nice to meet you.

Stanley. A pleasure.

Everything olive is famously good for you.

Paolo's father Franco is 1,000 years old.

Kidding.

Rossella is making a local classic,

cornelio a la ligure.

That's rabbit, funnily enough, with the olives.

- I add some extra virgin olive oil.

- Yes. Is it yours?

- Yes. Absolutely.

I was just checking.

- It's not from Spain.

- No, absolutely not. - No.

- Then I add some garlic.

- Oh, you put everything in.

- Yes, everything.

- That's a liver.

- The liver, yes.

We wait for half an hour.

- Do it for a half an hour?

- And it gives the water.

- It releases the water? - Yes. Yes.

- Oh, hi, boys.

- Hi. - Hi.

- Si, all right, let's do it.

- I can't drink that much oil.

Mm, it's nice.

- That's beautiful. That's nice. Yeah.

- Yes, very creamy.

As the rabbit starts cooking,

time to take some palate-cleansing beer

down to the place where the Boeri oil story began.

Wow.

Si.

- Si, si.

- Si.

- Oh, I see.

In the 1900s, Paolo's grandfather

could have gone to America and made his fortune.

But as the oil rush began in California,

he stayed home and struck green

in the hills above Badalucco.

OK.

Oh, my God, beautiful. - You like some more?

- Sure. Yes, yes.

I mean, yeah, I like olives.

- Voila.

- I guess I'm in the right place then, aren't I?

Yes.

You like? - I do like it.

- Wow.

This is really delicate.

I'm glad Papa Boeri didn't go to California.

Thank you so much for... Yeah, thank you.

We and Liguria are the richer for it.

- The further east you travel down the Ligurian coast,

the wilder and rockier it becomes.

The locals are people of the sea,

which is their workplace and their pantry.

This is the beautiful Cinque Terre region.

Corniglia, one of five villages

built into the cliffs, is home to Guido Galetti.

Ciao, Guido. - Ciao, Stanley.

- Guido's family have worked the sea for centuries,

their lives revolving around the daily task

of catching food.

- Mm. Yes.

- Beautiful. Yeah, it's a beautiful fish.

Beautiful.

- Oh.

- The villages of Cinque Terre feature five castles

designed to repel Saracen pirates.

Today, visitors are welcome.

They come to experience life in harmony with the elements,

the only way of being the Ligurians have ever known.

The Galetti home on the outskirts of town

is also a restaurant, catering for visitors who eat

what's been foraged from the sea

surrounded by objects foraged from the land.

This is Pietro, Guido's son and head chef.

- On the terrace, the heart of this forward-thinking family,

Guido's wife Monica Comonello.

- OK.

- Si.

OK.

First though, Pietro makes a starter

that's typically Ligurian, stuffed to make it go further.

In this case, anchovies.

Without a microscope, Pietro fills each tiny fish

with cheese and herbs,

and then they're rolled in breadcrumbs and fried.

- OK.

- Guido catches fish, finds furniture,

and makes his own vino del marinaro, sailor's wine.

- Ciao, ciao.

We're cooking outside to enjoy the sea air,

but also because the kitchen

was just too small to film in.

- Ah.

Oh, those are the little ones, yeah.

- That smells so good.

The base is a fish stock.

Pietro is adding parsley and marjoram.

Yeah, that's beautiful. That's beautiful.

Delicate, not overpowering.

- Oh, my God, yeah.

- Si.

- Si.

- Beautiful.

- Si.

- The fish is gilt-head bream,

the star of the morning's catch.

- Grazie.

Si.

- Grazie.

Grazie.

Oh, how beautiful is that?

- Si.

Oh, I have to try one of these.

I forgot.

Excuse my reach.

Pietro's stuffed anchovies are a meal in themselves,

and they're delicious.

Bravo. - Grazie.

- Bravo. - Delicious.

- Si.

- No.

- All I can say is thanks.

- Grazie. - Grazie.

Thrift isn't stinginess.

It's a cure for overconsumption.

Their hardscrabble inheritance means Ligurians can show us

the real luxury, how to live happily off the land and sea,

satisfied that enough is plenty.

- The Ligurian landscape might be ungiving,

but their sea is very generous.

Since ancient times, the waters near

the city of La Spezia have been a shellfish goldmine.

I've come to the picturesque harbor of La Grazia

to meet undersea farmer Paolo Varela.

- Buongiorno. Welcome on board.

- Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Paolo is a farmer of bivalves.

The oyster is his world, as is the mussel.

This is the fabled Gulf of Poets.

It's a bay in a notch of the cliffs

at the far eastern end of the Ligurian coast.

In the 19th century, oysters from these waters

were cheap and plentiful, food for the masses.

Last century, the industry went into decline.

- Yeah. Yeah.

- To bring it back. - Yeah.

- We're headed for the undersea ranch

where Paolo and his fellow fishermen

farm oysters and mussels.

Across 30 square acres of sea,

thousands of mussels hang on strings,

maturing in the tide.

While growing, the mussels also filter

out of the water any impurities

their oyster cousins don't like.

As a result, the oysters grow fat and juicy,

something Paolo is happy to show off.

- And we insert between the shells,

and then voila.

- When I do it, it's a disaster.

- And so green.

- Oh, my God, they're... Why are they so green?

- Our sea.

Phytoplankton.

- That's all from the phytoplankton?

- Yeah.

- I've never seen an oyster that color.

That's amazing.

Like so many Ligurian producers,

Paolo rides the wave of sustainable food production.

- Right.

- Carbon, yeah.

- For every 100 kilos of oysters grown,

50 kilos of CO2 leave the atmosphere.

At the cooperative's plant,

mussels are processed by machine, oysters by hand.

Some, though, are processed by mouth by Paolo

because he likes to breakfast on green oysters

and a glass of vermentino, the local wine.

- Cheers. - Cheers.

- The industrial setting seems fitting

for just-processed oysters.

- I'll hold it.

- OK. - Ready?

I'm ready.

- No lemon or anything else is required.

That's a really good oyster.

That's delicious.

Really salty, briny,

but sweet, like, a sweetness.

- As you talk, you smell the power from the nose and ears.

- Whoa.

Wow.

- Si. - That's really...

- Inspired by Liguria's fresh seafood,

I've decided to cook a meal for those who have labored

so hard to help me make this series.

As we prepare the meal together,

I cannot help but think of the meals I've shared

over the last three years with Italians

from so many different regions and walks of life.

I've traveled through this peninsula

searching for a definition of a country

that is at once welcoming and resistant,

beautiful and dark, ancient and young.

Yes, pieces of the country we all know as Italy

are to be found in the hills,

fields, homes, mountains, castles,

ruins, and medieval streets.

But my search has led me to realize

that Italy as a single pure entity

is to be found only at the table.