Wisconsin Foodie

– Announcer: This week on Wisconsin Foodie : - Daniel Bonanno: Really good cooking.

The simple things take the longest.

That is nine months in the making.

And that's what the beautiful part about it is.

– Luke: That is a good bowl of pasta.

You could talk about that bite, like, all day.

– Daniel: Yeah.

I have my restaurant to cook for you, and I'm just trying to like curate something that you could cook for yourself and here's the products.

– Luke: You could literally grab like any 10 elements off of those shelves and put together something that like, would equate a masterpiece in most people's, you know, culinary repertoire.

- Yeah.

Tenuta's has really stuck there and kept it growing.

Honestly, I met people around the world that knew this store.

All right, you ready for this?

– Luke: I think so.

Oh my gosh!

- Yes.

- That is a monster!

- Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.

[upbeat music] - The dairy farmers of Wisconsin are proud to underwrite Wisconsin Foodie and remind you that in Wisconsin, we dream in cheese.

[crowd cheering] Just look for our badge.

It's on everything we make.

- At Organic Valley, our cows make milk with just a few simple ingredients: sun, soil, rain, and grass.

And grass and grass.

- Yee-haw!

- Organic Valley Grassmilk.

Organic milk from 100% grass-fed cows.

- Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993.

Just a short drive from Madison, come visit Swissconsin and see where your beer's made.

- Wisconsin's great outdoors has something for everyone.

Come for the adventure, stay for the memories.

Go wild in Wisconsin.

To build your adventure, visit dnr.wi.gov.

From production to processing, right down to our plates, there are over 15,000 employers in Wisconsin with career opportunities to fulfill your dreams and feed the world.

Hungry for more?

Shape your career with these companies and others at fabwisconsin.com With additional support coming from the Conscious Carnivore.

From local animal sourcing to onsite, high-quality butchering and packaging, the Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically-raised, grass-fed, and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers.

The Conscious Carnivore: Know your farmer, love your butcher.

Additional support coming from the Viroqua Food Co-op.

Central Wisconsin Craft Collective.

Something Special from Wisconsin.

Crossroads Collective.

The La Crosse Distilling Company.

As well as the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

[upbeat music] - Luke: We are a collection of the finest farmers, food producers, and chefs on the planet.

We are a merging of cultures and ideas, shaped by this land.

[sizzling] We are a gathering of the waters, and together, we shape a new identity to carry us into the future.

[upbeat music] We are storytellers.

We are Wisconsin Foodie .

[paper tearing] So we're at Pig in a Fur Coat on Williamson Street in Madison.

Daniel, thanks for having us in today.

- Welcome, welcome.

- Tell us a little bit about the restaurant.

- Well, just celebrated our eighth year.

My business partner and I opened it up just to do good food, and developing those flavors and my own unique flavors from my childhood.

And also what I learned through my traveling.

As a young line cook, I worked in Minneapolis, I worked in Chicago, Milwaukee, and then I moved to Italy and I studied in Italy.

And I think Italy really opened my eyes on what real Italian food is.

Growing up Italian American, I would see these red sauce joints use these canned tomatoes.

Like, we only get the stuff from Italy, the farm to table.

That's what it was.

They didn't call it farm to table.

That's just the way they cook food.

But when I was in Italy, I was like, "We gotta do this in Wisconsin."

I use all Wisconsin products, but I use Italian techniques.

Kind of the things I learned from all those places, and keep it simple and just focus on the food.

Yeah, so this is like our lardo that we cure.

We kinda do it in a traditional way from Colonnata.

They're famous for their marble.

So the whole city is encased in marble.

It's a beautiful city.

It's just been curing for about nine months.

So it used to be, you know, a softer piece of meat.

And now it's just hard, like a, like a bacon, like a cured meat, like a pancetta almost.

There's something to like, if you use extra virgin olive oil, 'cause it has what, .04 oxygen and water in it.

So it definitely encased that herbs and all that stuff in there too, it just becomes great.

Both my parents immigrated from Italy.

They would cure meats, had a huge garden in their backyard.

And that's where the passion grew.

And I'd have friends come over in junior high, high school was like, "Why does your basement smell?"

"Oh, 'cause we got a soppressata curing in the other room and it kind of stinks."

[Luke laughing] - I'm literally drooling, thinking about all these things.

Is there a chance we could eat some stuff?

- Of course.

- Great.

- Yeah, we can do it.

- Awesome.

- A little bit of oil, not too much oil 'cause you're gonna try to render off the fat.

All right.

At this point, I wanna add some Calabrian chilies to it, give it a toss, not letting anything burn, but let it warm up, let it release, let it get soft.

And then at this point then, I'm gonna add my tomato sauce to it.

And basically, you just wanna let the tomato and all the other ingredients just incorporate for about a couple minutes.

Now I'm gonna add my pasta.

The key to making a really great pasta dish is cooking the pasta 90% there, and then finish the rest of the way in the sauce for absorbs that flavor.

Maybe a quarter cup of pasta water.

'Cause it's seasoned, it's starchy, it's beautiful.

So here you go.

Boom, all together.

I'm gonna take the fresh basil.

I'm gonna tear it, I'm not gonna cut it.

It's gonna add aromatics, it's gonna be freshness, almost a sweetness 'cause basil's kind of sweet, to the dish.

Basil takes about 30 seconds and you're done.

Boom.

I like to put it on the middle, give it a little twist, put the sauce on top, and then you're gonna finish it off with Pecorino Romano, right on top.

Pecorino Romano is gonna be salty, sharp, really balance out the dish.

Voil, all right.

So here's the Bucatini all'Amatriciana.

- What is it?

- It's a spaghetti with a hole in the middle.

- Right.

- It means little hole.

- Spaghetti with a hole.

- Yep, so... - Man, I smell like the richness of the tomato, pork.

Like there's a decent amount of pork in this.

- Oh, just the lardo.

- Okay.

- Yeah, it's the fat rendered out, and then you just-- it's folded into the pasta, so... - It smells amazing.

- Thanks.

- That is a good bowl of pasta.

- Thank you.

- Of course.

Like number one, the pasta is cooked perfectly.

So it's just slightly al dente, which means that it has a little bit of like snap left to it.

But then you get all of these other flavors that kind of come in, like that herbaceous tomato, the acid, the salt, that's really like that first hit that you get and it's really well-balanced, but then you get the chilies that kinda like linger on your palate, but it's cooled and kind of mellowed by the Pecorino Romano.

It's one of those dishes that really works your whole palate.

But the thing that I love about it is it's straight up comfort food 'cause this is like a meal that I could eat every single day.

- Yeah, and it's super easy to prep.

I remember eating this and then go watching Juventus games with my dad.

[Luke laughing] Just simple.

- Awesome.

Well, I mean, this is, this is completely delicious.

- Thank you.

- So there's another facet obviously to Pig in a Fur Coat, and that's the deli.

And I have to say like, you come from a family operation.

Does that still extend here?

- Yes, so my dad runs a deli in Kenosha called Tenuta's Liquor and Deli.

At a very young age, my brother and I and my sister would work there.

So they just kept on getting Italian products and just educating the community.

I mean, that's the food that shaped me as a little kid.

You know, you go to school and I had a prosciutto sandwich and everybody else had Lunchables or something.

There's a bunch of different types of prosciutto.

And I knew that as a kid, I'm like, "Why are we gonna get San Daniele?

"Why won't we get Parma prosciutto?"

Like how do you know these?

I'm like, "This is my family stuff."

So that's kind of like my snootiness when it comes to cured meats.

Yeah, there's definitely more and more products I see that are just, I forget they're there and you can't get in Madison.

I just wanted to get what my dad and his family did in Madison.

So about two years ago, my business partner and I and my brother opened up Alimentari by Pig in a Fur Coat, which is like a stone's throw away from here.

Offer five different types of prosciuttos, more cured meats, some Italian, French, Spanish cheeses in there.

Well, like we get, you know, the Pecorino Romanos we got the Brown Cow Parmesan Reggiano, and then we also make fresh pastas.

– Luke: Okay.

– Daniel: And then also get some really good products that I use here, like olive oils, vinegars, salts 'cause people ask me all the time, like, "Where do you get this stuff?"

– Luke: Sure.

– Daniel: So I just did it, just opened this deli.

I have my restaurant to cook for you, and I'm just trying to like curate something that you can cook for yourself, and here's the products.

We're gonna be cheaper, super high-quality, and also sliced fresh.

No preservatives to keep it fresh on the shelf.

Plus on my break, I just go walk over there, slice of prosciutto and come back.

[Luke laughing] It's great.

That sounds pretty much perfect.

So talk to us a little bit about the menu that you run here.

- So we use a lot of diverse things, like we have raviolo filled with a duck egg and ricotta.

Octopus dish, so like cooked octopus with crispy pig's head with a mole sauce, fried potatoes.

Super good.

- What about the foie, like-- - Oh man, yeah, foie gras.

I mean, to be fair, like foie's one of those ingredients for a lot of chefs, it can be polarizing, right, and for diners, like, "Oh, foie, I don't..." Tell me about your philosophy with foie.

- It's where you get it from and who's producing it and the love they have behind it.

So I use Au Bon Canard, and he does about 3,000 ducks a year, which is amazing.

It's small, small farmer, but it is some of the best foie gras in the world.

'Cause he's doing amazing stuff.

- That's crazy, so what do you do with it?

- So like, there's a couple different things we use.

We make foie gras mousse.

I definitely had customers in here buy like six of those dishes when they're eating here.

They just love it.

- Yeah.

They'll get it in the beginning, get it again, and then get it for dessert.

[Luke laughing] So I do these bombolone.

– Luke: Yeah.

– Daniel: And it's a mini donut.

And I wanted to put the foie gras inside of it.

It was really hard 'cause it was a hot donut, so it just melts.

So what I did instead was I took the sugar out and we used a lot of malt and honey.

So it's a little more savory.

I took the donut, I wrapped it in lardo, served it with a fig port jam, which we make here, and made a foie gras mousse disc with grappa on top.

It hits your salty, sweet, savory, rich, and then a 13-year-old balsamic, just to garnish the plate.

And that's it, here we have a foie gras mousse.

- I think the question when I see a dish like this is do you want me to eat this all in one bite?

- Cut it in half and try to get everything in one bite.

- Okay, here we go.

Get it all on it, get the jam, there you go.

Yeah, wait for it.

There it is, right there.

- Mm-hmm.

Damn.

You can talk about that bite like all day.

- Yeah.

- So when I first taste it, you get like that luxurious, buttery mouthfeel.

But the thing that I think is really interesting is there's a bitter note in that fig a little bit.

- Yep.

- That really combines well with the malt.

- Yep.

- It's consistency.

You get like a little bit of bounce, in that bombolone, but it's so counterbalanced with the lardo and then the soft and suppleness of that foie gras.

Even as we go now, as I'm breathing more and we're like what, a minute out, something like that.

I've been pontificating about that first bite.

I get like umami kinda pulling me back in from that fois.

Like that earthiness, that richness.

That really beckons for that second bite.

- Yeah, really good cooking, It's like putting on an opera, putting on a show.

You have a lot of preparation for one dish, you know, making the foie gras mousse takes a couple of days.

Making bombolone, you can't make that on the fly.

And the simple things take the longest, right.

That is nine months in the making.

And that's what's the beautiful part about it is.

- That's fantastic, dude.

- Thank you.

- Of course, man.

- Thanks.

- That's my pleasure.

So I'd love to see like a little bit more behind the scenes of where you're from and the food culture that basically puts dishes together like this.

And I'm wondering like if we went to Kenosha sometime, you think you could walk me through Tenuta's?

Yeah, let's go.

- Awesome.

[groovy music] - Daniel: Well, my dad, it was 1965 I think when they moved here, I think there was a handful of delis back then, like in Wisconsin, especially Chicago that were been around.

They tried to recreate what they had in Italy.

And so there was a lot of mini deli stores on every block.

And then over time, you know, generations don't wanna do that.

Tenuta's really stuck there and kept it growing.

Honestly, I met people around the world that knew this store.

So it was kind of amazing.

There's just a lot of Kenosha traditions, a lot of Italian, but also sprinkled in here is other heritage from like, you know, Greece, Polish, German food.

There's a little things here and there that, you know if you would ask my father, could you get that in?

He would get it for you.

– Tony Bonanno: A lot of residents here in Kenosha, they were from my hometown.

So when I started working here, everybody's requesting a lot of pasta, olive oil, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella.

I even brought in buffalo mozzarella when it was not available here in the States.

And I get the real San Marzano tomato, which is from Naples.

- How many different vendors did you work with?

- I had almost close to 200.

- 200 different vendors?

- Mm-hmm.

- Whoa, at one point.

That's a lot to keep, you know, to keep track of.

- So then I fall in love because I love food.

I like to eat it.

So I try almost everything.

[laughing] Anything that's here, I probably tried it.

- It's hard not to.

- Yeah.

- It's hard not to snack here.

- Yeah.

- It's like your ultimate charcuterie board.

They have these connections throughout all over, from California, New York and they just buy in bulk and they just have amazing stuff.

I think having a store like this, a small business, is very important.

'Cause it's just the customer relation.

If you can't find something, maybe something you had in a different country, they would find it for you.

And it's just that personal care.

And there's been employees here that have been working here for 20-plus years.

There's a handful of 'em.

And so you can't get that.

These box stores, they don't have that dedication.

- So we're just trying to be how it started.

My grandfather started it, it was small.

And it was kind of built on what the customers wanted.

If they asked for something, you tried to take care of 'em or maybe you got a deal on something.

And that's what you did.

We're landlocked, so we probably are overcrowded.

We probably have more stuff in here than we can fit, but that has always been a way we've been.

Some people say, "You should build a new store," but it just wouldn't be the same, I think.

You know, it'd just be another store.

I think the smell and you know, you get some young kids come in and they're plugging their nose and we laugh at it.

And then some people think it's the greatest smell in the world, so.

– Daniel: So yeah, it's a very unique smell, the store.

Here, you would smell like the meats, the cheeses, the herbs, all that stuff, the oils, it just, you know, people would always wanna bottle that up, they said, and sell it.

I'm not sure how to recreate that smell, but it was always on my clothes growing up.

So coming down the aisles here, you have olive oils for days, vinegars.

One of my favorite products are some of these canned tomatoes, you know, the passata ones are awesome for like, quick tomato sauces at home.

A lot of DOP, San Marzano tomatoes like this one right here, very famous one, La Bella brand.

What else?

Like oh man, all these canned tomatoes, amazing, from all different parts of Italy too, mostly south, but you have a lot of vinegars.

And then you have like balsamic, the real balsamic vinegars are on top shelf.

Hard to reach, really great stuff.

This is the pasta aisle where they have like their own brand, dry pastas.

And then we get into like the De Cecco brands.

And then we're gonna get to the more high quality stuff.

You know, some of the stuff that I actually brought in to the deli to Madison.

There's just so many different cuts of pasta.

So everyone just grabs like the penne pasta, the spaghetti.

I love the paccheri pasta.

It's like a really thick rigatoni.

This, you can see it.

It's almost like a three-inch by one-inch diameter.

It's an amazing cut, so.

That's one of my favorite ones.

So like, there's a big difference in pastas.

You get these brands, like the Pirro brands.

They use like a brass die.

They take about three days to cure.

So you have great texture to it.

The cook time on it is much longer, and it's hard to overcook it 'cause it's a much better product.

This is my favorite cut of pasta, right here.

It just takes about 18 minutes to cook.

It has a great bite and absorbs a lot.

It's just fun to eat.

I believe they-- you can tell they hand-rolled each noodle.

It's fantastic.

It's out of this world.

- This is unbelievable.

– Daniel: Hey, Luke.

- How's it going, man?

- Good, how are you?

- Great.

- Enjoying your time?

I am.

This is actually my first time in Kenosha ever.

So this feels like I get kind of a behind-the-scenes tour and I get to learn a little bit more about the people that are here, but also the cultural traditions that are in the city.

- Well, I'm glad to host you, so.

- Yeah, thanks, man.

What's good here, what do you do?

- Every time I'm back, I always get the muffuletta.

- Okay.

- Some prosciutto.

- Yeah.

- And maybe some string cheese.

I don't-- that's a childhood thing.

[laughing] - What kind of prosciutto?

I mean, there's so many varieties, right?

- My favorite is San Daniele.

- Okay.

That actually sounds like a go for me.

– Man: I can grab one for you.

– Luke: Is that cool?

Awesome, great, thank you.

- Cool.

- Are you gonna eat?

- Yeah, let's eat, great.

Oh, we're gonna need the big one.

Yeah, perfect.

- There's nothing subtle about two men sharing a sandwich that's nothing short of massive.

- Agreed.

All right, you ready for this?

- I think so.

– Woman: All right, here you guys go.

- Oh my gosh!

- Yes, thank you, thank you.

- That is a monster.

So I just take... - Yeah, take it.

We'll go sit outside and eat it.

- Yeah, all right.

We'll work on this.

- Thanks, guys.

This eats like a job.

This is nuts.

Cool.

- Cheers.

- Let's talk about the prosciutto first.

So this, one of the things that I love to do with prosciutto is hold it up to the light.

- Yeah.

- And why, what are we looking for?

There's a couple of different things.

You know, you want it thin, you wanna make sure you get a little bit of the fat and the meat on there, but usually traditionally, how you wanna eat prosciutto is kind of tear it up and eat it 'cause you want some of the fat and the meat together.

So you don't really eat the whole slice in one bite.

- Right.

- So that's a lot of meat.

[laughing] - Thin to win, though.

That's always like the M.O.

with prosciutto.

- Yes.

- And just about any charcuterie, right?

- Pretty much, yeah, you...

The thinner it is, the more it's gonna melt in your mouth and it's gonna be... - Yeah.

- Yeah, you don't have to gnaw on it for a while.

- Awesome, so I'm gonna have you do my job.

Let's both take a piece of prosciutto.

- All right.

- And I'm gonna have you tell me what you taste when you eat prosciutto.

There you go.

- Yeah.

So what do you taste, for the viewers at home?

- Well, I'm getting like, you know obviously salt because it's aged 24 months.

Should be a little nutty flavor, sweetness from the meat.

I get some floral notes.

With San Daniele, it's gonna be more of a sweeter, pink prosciutto, where Parma is gonna be a little more saltier.

- That is, I think, one of the sweetest prosciuttos I've ever had.

- Yeah.

And it lingers with the nuttiness.

- Yeah.

- It's amazing.

So the muffuletta.

- Yes.

I wanna take a piece of this just to be able to illustrate it here.

- So what you got here is you obviously got your bread, your lettuce, you got provolone, pepperoni, capicola, ham.

You got some mortadella and Genoa salami with marinated peppers and Italian vinaigrette.

[Luke laughing] It's a lot.

So they come in a couple different sizes, but we've got the biggest one 'cause why not?

- 'Cause why not?

When in Kenosha.

- Let's dig in.

- All right.

Is there a specific way you eat it?

I don't-- just don't make a mess.

Okay, don't make a mess.

- Cheers.

- Usually with your mouth.

- Yeah.

That's ridiculously good.

- It's refreshing.

- Right?

It doesn't feel like a lot.

Like this thing looks huge.

- But the bread's light.

Yeah, that lettuce is really refreshing and crisp.

The provolone is really creamy, and that combination of Italian meat, it's amazing.

It's peppers, onions, delicious.

This is the best sandwich I've had in a long time.

How many of these do you think you can take down?

- In my heyday, probably half of it.

Now, maybe one.

You can do four in your heyday?

- Yeah.

I think the gauntlet's been thrown.

- I just wanted a longer break back in the day.

I'm still eating, Dad, I can't come back to work.

[laughing] - You took down a whole muffuletta.

He's paging you on the overhead.

- I'm still on break.

- If you know anything about good food and the construction of good food, you could literally grab like any 10 elements off of those shelves and put together something that, like, would equate a masterpiece in most people's culinary repertoire.

- Yeah.

- I've always brought like other chefs with me to come visit Tenuta's.

And it just, the expression on their faces.

Like "How did I get this far without knowing of this place?"

And it kinda just makes me, you know, just happy and proud of the family and my upbringing.

- Sure.

I'm gonna try to keep the tradition alive and try to still introduce people to Tenuta's and to this type of food.

- Yeah, it's amazing.

Thanks for bringing me here.

- Well, thanks for coming.

- Of course.

I feel like this is one of the untold secrets of Wisconsin culinary, these pockets of independent grocers and delis and people holding onto cultural traditions really make dining exciting.

But this is the essence of our culinary tradition.

This is the essence of a lifetime of work.

This is the essence of Wisconsin.

- I think it's important to find your local grocery store, a small place, and just encourage them to do more stuff and stand behind them.

- Can I start a second piece of muffuletta?

– Camera Operator: No.

- Okay.

[both laughing] No!

– Daniel: My parents, they're super proud of me.

So when Dad comes here, he tries to eat whole menu for some reason, and it never works out.

- I put 'em to work nice and early.

I try to keep 'em out of trouble and... - He tried.

[both laughing] - Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.

[upbeat music] - The dairy farmers of Wisconsin are proud to underwrite Wisconsin Foodie and remind you that in Wisconsin, we dream in cheese.

[crowd cheering] Just look for our badge.

It's on everything we make.

- At Organic Valley, our cows make milk with just a few simple ingredients: sun, soil, rain, and grass.

And grass, and grass.

- Yee-haw!

– Organic Valley Grassmilk: organic milk from 100% grass-fed cows.

- Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993.

Just a short drive from Madison, come visit Swissconsin and see where your beer's made.

- Wisconsin's great outdoors has something for everyone.

Come for the adventure, stay for the memories.

Go wild in Wisconsin.

To build your adventure, visit dnr.wi.gov.

- From production to processing, right down to our plates, there are over 15,000 employers in Wisconsin with career opportunities to fulfill your dreams and feed the world.

Hungry for more?

Shape your career with these companies and others at fabwisconsin.com.

With additional support coming from the Conscious Carnivore.

From local animal sourcing to onsite, high-quality butchering and packaging, the Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically raised, grass-fed, and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers.

The Conscious Carnivore: Know your farmer, love your butcher.

- Additional support coming from the Viroqua Food Co-op, Central Wisconsin Craft Collective, Something Special from Wisconsin, Crossroads collective, The La Crosse Distilling Company, as well as the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.