Wisconsin Foodie

Osteria Tre Tassi

– Luke Zahm: This week on Wisconsin Foodie: – Robin Brown: So we are Osteria Tre Tassi.
I am Robin Brown, chef and owner.
Backyard-to-table, Mediterranean-inspired Italian cuisine.
One of the reasons why I decided to move up to Door County was the connection with raw ingredients, and I can trace everything down to probably a 20-mile radius.
Buffalo ricotta and burrata ravioli.
– Luke Okay.
– Robin: “La nonna pavara.”
That’s how it’s called in Italian.
– Luke: Which means?
– Robin: “Grandmother duck.”
I mean, that’s the translation.
[Luke laughing] – That’s the squeeze of experience right there.
– Robin: These are the tomatoes that we picked half an hour ago from the farm.
Enjoy it, dig in.
If you don’t like it, I don’t care.
I’ll just– [Luke laughing] – Oh, my gosh, that filling is like heaven.
Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.
[gentle music] – Did you know Organic Valley protects over 400,000 acres of organic farmland?
So, are we an organic food cooperative that protects land, or land conservationists who make delicious food?
Yes; yes, we are.
Organic Valley.
– Twenty-minute commutes.
Weekends on the lake.
Warm welcomes and exciting career opportunities.
Not to mention all the great food!
There’s a lot to look forward to in Wisconsin.
Learn more at InWisconsin.com.
– 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.
– As part of the seventh generation at Jones Dairy Farm, being part of the leadership at our company is extremely important.
I’m really fortunate that I have a lot of the sixth generation family leaders that I can look up to.
– The Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers are proud underwriters of Wisconsin Foodie.
It takes love of the land and generations of farming know-how to nurture a quality potato crop.
Ask any potato farmer and they’ll tell you, there’s a lot of satisfaction in healthy-grown crops.
– With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore.
From local animal sourcing to on-site, 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.
– Also with the support of the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
[bright, driven folk pop 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.
[glasses clinking] We are storytellers.
We are Wisconsin Foodie.
[gentle music] We’re working our way up from the base to the tip of Door County, and our destination is Ellison Bay.
The chef we’re gonna meet up with is no stranger to Wisconsin Foodie.
We saw him at San Giorgio in Milwaukee, and like many chefs, he has decided to open up his own restaurant, in the space formerly known as the Wickman House.
I can’t wait to see how Robin takes the ingredients of Door County and uses his upbringing and tradition from Italian cuisine to make something truly special and unique that end up on the dinner menu tonight.
– Robin: So we are Osteria Tre Tassi.
I am Robin Brown, chef and owner of this beautiful restaurant nestled in Ellison Bay, Door County, Wisconsin.
Gnocchi di patate– just potato, a little bit of 00 flour, egg, and love.
Pasta and bread service is the morning ritual, and then we start with the sauces.
So philosophy of the restaurant is farm-to-table, backyard-to-table, Mediterranean-inspired Italian cuisine.
So we decided to not call this a restaurant, but call this a osteria, which is basically a tavern.
We’re keeping things extremely simple.
Honest, simple, fresh, homemade, from scratch.
Except for wine and olive oil and some tomatoes, everything is pretty much a local product.
So I’m part Italian.
I was born and raised in Napoli.
Came back to the States in 2018.
Ah!
Dual citizen.
Decided to go up to Door County.
One of the reasons why I decided to move up to Door County was the connection with the raw ingredients.
In Italy, you wake up at 4:00 a.m. to go at the docks to pick up fish, because if you don’t show up at 4:00 a.m., the next restaurant operator is gonna just, [chuckles] get all the best of the product, the cream of the crop for himself.
By moving up here, I just found a very similar situation.
I found myself at home.
This is from Lake Michigan.
Broccolini stems, these are blanched and just washed with an ice bath, and now we’re gonna saut these and create a nice sauce out of all the scraps of the broccolini.
Yeah, so let’s soften them up a little bit more.
I don’t throw away anything of the harvest of the broccolini, so the tips, the florets, we saut.
We blanch the stems, we puree ’em, and that’s a sauce for pasta, so nothing goes to waste.
So I’m always readjusting my menu, my specials, according to what the farm funnels, so you treat food, ingredients with a completely different mindset.
So these are sausages that our good friends from Tenuta’s in Kenosha make.
And we’re very lucky to have partners like this involved in the process.
There is a strong connection with the ingredients.
I know the producers, I know the fishermen, I know my farmer, and I can trace everything down to probably a 20-mile radius that is found in my cuisine, in my food, in my menu on a day-by-day basis.
Broccoli and sausage, so two different versions of broccoli.
One is pureed stem of the brocco that most people throw away.
We blanche it, puree it, the giant fennel sausage, with a little broccoli flour.
And it’s finished up with a little bit of Pecorino Romano.
So, what people can expect here at Osteria Tre Tassi is, yes, an Italian-inspired menu, but not only Italian.
It’s more Mediterranean.
Why is that?
Because I– There is a lot of whitefish, and back home, we would cook with a lot of fish.
And we’re surrounded by beautiful countryside that offers us chanterelles, morels.
If I look back to myself in 2015, when I was back in the UK, my dream was to open, like, a little farmhouse, which I would just experiment with cured meats, making my own cured meats, my own pasta cuts, and I always had that little dream in my drawer.
Things moved so fast that I didn’t even realize that my dream became true, moving up here.
[speaking Italian] …and make the broccolini and sausage.
– Right.
– And another key component, and that’s an ingredient, it’s not a herb, in Italian cuisine, it’s basil.
I’m just making sure that product shines as best that it can, so I need the best ingredients possible.
I need the best tomatoes, I need the best whitefish, the best pasta.
This is our signature house ragu, called– dish called pappardelle alla tasso.
Egg pasta, creamy ragu– beef, veal, and pork– and we grind all the meat in the house, and the beef is… Angus beef chuck flap.
These are casarecce.
This is our, probably the number-one seller we have here in the restaurant.
It’s basil pesto, toasted pine nuts, fried Romanesco zucchini, zucchini blossoms, and a little smidge of burrata, the stracciatella that we make in-house.
It’s honest, not complicated flavors.
I want very few ingredients in my dishes, and I want each ingredient to shine of its own light.
We’re finalizing the gnocchi alla Norcina with our signature mushroom ragu.
And the star is not the noodle, the pasta, the gnocchi.
The star are the quality of the mushrooms.
We extrude our own pastas, we make our own ravioli.
We butcher our own meats in the house, so it’s that.
It’s that connection with the ingredients, so people can find something they can really relate to.
The beauty of going walking in the morning, going down in my backyard and getting, sourcing my own, harvesting my zucchini, my tomatoes, my basil, and then cooking at night with those ingredients, that’s something that is priceless, priceless.
So I was grandfathered a figure on the farm by the name of Tom Horsley, which is my farmer.
Phenomenal human being, a great, great farmer, so he helped me out a lot in transitioning out of a truck operation to a farm-to-table, backyard-to-table operation.
The connection between chef and farmer, especially in my case here, specifically in my case, when the farmer comes and dines in the restaurant, so he knows what the menu is about, because there is, most of the times, a disconnect in between farmers and chefs.
There’s a– but him coming here, living the property, living the menu, living the restaurant is a game-changer.
– Hi, I’m Tom Horsley.
I’m the head gardener here.
This is my third year here.
Before that, I was at Hidden Acres for eight years.
It’s a great project.
Grow for the restaurant and made the switch this year from Wickman House and their type of cuisine to the Italian cuisine, so it’s keeping it interesting, you know, it’s been great.
And they take my humble ingredients and do these exquisite dishes with them, and I get to eat them, so that part’s great.
– Robin: This is for the ravioli that we’re gonna do in the kitchen.
[gentle music] – Luke, how’s it going?
– Luke: Robin, good to see you.
– Pleasure’s all mine.
How are you?
– I’m great.
– Long time, no see.
– Yeah, likewise.
Hey, Tom.
– Hey, Luke.
– Good to see you again.
– Yeah, nice.
– Thanks, been a while.
– Yeah.
– This is beautiful!
– Robin: It is.
– Tom: It is great.
– Luke: Oh, man.
– Robin: It’s a game-changer.
-Luke: Seriously, I’m getting in the, like, I mean, the aromatics of walking through the garden.
Like, I came in through the tomatoes, we’ve got the Genovese.
– Robin: Yep.
– Luke: The tulsi over here.
It’s just, it’s so fragrant.
It’s making me hungry.
– Tom: Here.
– Luke: Thank you.
– So this is how I like it’s prepared.
– Luke: Yeah, this has gotta shape the way you cook.
– Robin: That’s correct.
I mean, that’s in the DNA of our menu.
Not my menu, our menu.
We’re so lucky to have Tom on board and, I mean, you wouldn’t believe.
– This is a dream, I mean… – Robin: Yep.
– Luke: The chef’s pantry, all laid out in front of you, you know, I can see things kind of coming into season.
And I just know, given the way that you cook and how you approach food, this has gotta drive everything.
– It does.
– Is there anything I can do to help you today?
– Robin: Definitely.
– Yeah?
– I need to run a couple chores, we need to go and pick up some whitefish, and then I got some ravioli to make.
Ravioli with buffalo mozzarella, tomatoes from the farm, and basil.
Very simple, very easy, very refreshing.
– Luke: Perfect.
That sounds like a great way to spend a summer day.
– Robin: Absolutely, let’s go.
– Luke: Awesome.
– Robin: Let’s go and eat.
Off we go to see Uncle Charlie.
So, we’re here picking up one of my main ingredients for my menu: whitefish.
– Luke: Sure.
– Robin: You can’t be in Door County and not have whitefish, no matter what cuisine you’re running.
– Charlie, good morning!
– Charlie Henriksen: Hey, Robin.
– How’s it going?
– Glad you’re here.
– Yeah, nice seeing you.
– Nice to see you.
– Hey, Charlie, I’m Luke.
– Yeah, Luke.
Nice to see you, Luke.
– Nice to see you, too.
– Yeah, yeah.
– Thanks.
– Thanks for stopping.
So, you’re selling some fish, huh?
– I’m selling some fish, yeah, a little too much.
Can’t keep up with that, so it’s a good problem to have.
– It’s not too much.
– Robin: Never too much.
– Never see it.
– Robin: Don’t challenge me.
– Yeah!
[laughing] – Don’t challenge me, Charlie.
– It’s really inspiring for me, being from the other side of Wisconsin, to see chefs like this guy coming in and finding ways to honor these ingredients that, you know, you’ve built your family’s story and your history around.
– Charlie: Right.
– Luke: Finding ways to reinterpret those, to keep diners excited and coming to Door County and, you know, living part of their dream because this is their vacation for a lot of folks.
– Right, right.
– You know, it’s an honor.
– I’ll go get your order.
– Robin: Okay.
– Okay?
I’ll bring it right back.
– Robin: Great.
– Charlie: Yeah, all right, I got this.
Things going okay, guys?
– Oh, yeah.
– Oh, yeah, all right.
You got your fish, sir.
– Luke: Nice!
– Got my fish!
– You through?
– This gets me through a night.
– Don’t forget my love letter, too.
– No.
[Luke laughing] Oh, my God.
– Luke: The legacy love letter.
[laughing] – Robin: Appreciate it, Charlie, everything that you do.
– Always good.
– Thank you, sir.
– Good to see you.
– So good to meet you.
– Nice to see you.
– Yeah, yeah, thank you.
– Charlie: All right, guys.
– Luke: All right, take care.
Have a good day.
– Charlie: Thank you very much.
– Robin: Thank you, let’s go at the restaurant today, ristorante.
[gentle music] – Luke: Yeah, so what are we doing here?
– So this is one of the staple dishes that we’ve been running here in Osteria Tre Tassi.
These are buffalo ricotta and burrata ravioli.
– Okay.
– That we use a seasonal tomato sauce with, obviously, with this treasure cache of cherry tomatoes and Juliet tomatoes from the farm.
That’s gonna be featured as our sauce.
– Sure.
– Robin: So the old way, using the old little machine, “la nonna pavara.”
That’s how it’s called in Italian, “nonna pavara.”
– Which means?
– Which means, “grandmother duck,” I mean, that’s the translation.
[Luke laughing] I don’t know the– if we have a term here in English for that, though.
– Yeah, okay, okay.
– That’s how it’s called, “nonna pavara.”
– Luke: So each time we pass this through… – Robin: Yeah.
– Luke: It works that gluten chain in there, correct?
– Robin: Absolutely, yeah.
– And it makes it more strong.
– It makes it more strong because, as I was telling you, we want this a little bit al dente, so we want that bite to the pasta.
You don’t want the noodle, the pasta sheet to be too thick because it gets too chewy.
But you want the right thickness and the right al dente.
Marjoram from the garden.
– Luke: Yep.
– Buffalo mozzarella that we processed with the food processor with a little bit of heavy whipping cream.
– Mm-hmm.
– Burrata, the Pecorino Romano, Parmigiano.
– That’s the squeeze of experience right there.
– That’s a squeeze of experience, yes, sir.
So you– with the ravioli, you want to get all the air out.
– Luke: Mm-hmm.
– Robin: All the air out.
All right, right in the middle.
– Luke: Right in the middle.
– Robin: Yes, sir.
– Do a little punch?
– Yeah, and a little punch.
– I think it’s really important to note, so when Robin was squeezing that filling in, this is almost the exact, perfect proportion of filling that you want on the inside of that ravioli.
And in Italian tradition, when would you normally see ravioli?
– Ravioli, it’s a Sunday or a big happening, so these ravioli are an iteration of ravioli alla caprese.
They would usually be served either on Christmas Day or a big happening.
– Sure.
– Not something you do all every day, and– – Luke: It’s food for people you love.
– Robin: It’s– correct, 100%, it’s an act of love because it’s an act of love making fresh pasta in the house, and we’re very lucky here that we do make our fresh pasta in the house on a daily basis.
And let’s move on and let’s start the sauce.
– Luke: Okay.
– Robin: Little harvest today.
We have some purple garlic from the farm that we deveined, peeled and deveined.
Tomatoes, we got Juliet tomatoes from our farm and cherry tomatoes.
It’s all good Italian sauces.
We want to start with the best olive oil– extra virgin olive oil– you can source.
And always, as an Italian, always go generous.
[Luke laughing] You want to cover.
We call this “imfundo di olio.”
It means to cover the bottom of the pan with olive oil.
– Okay.
– Robin: I like to remove the garlic for this dish.
Again, I like to have all the oils, all the essential oils from the garlic, just spend as much time as possible in the saut pan, but then I like to remove the garlic.
And I like getting a little bit of basil at this step.
– Okay.
– We’re here.
Just without a knife, or else it oxidizes.
I just rip it with my hand.
– Luke: Sure.
– Robin: All this basil from the farm, and now it’s a little wait game here now.
– Luke: Sure.
– Couple more seconds on this side.
– Yeah.
– Robin: This, we save.
We puree, we don’t throw anything away.
– Luke: Sure.
– So we start with cherry tomatoes.
Red cherry tomatoes.
[sizzling] You want that– need to sizzle like that.
– I love this, like, the simplicity with which these ingredients have that opportunity to just be so incredible.
It doesn’t take much.
It really doesn’t.
– And I will just add just a little bit of the Juliet, but again, knowing that these are the tomatoes that we picked half an hour ago from the farm.
– And that is so creamy.
– Yeah.
– Sweet, mild.
There’s no, like, inherent acidity that really pushes your palate to a different place.
It’s very, very comfortable.
– Robin: This is the moment of truth.
– Luke: The moment of truth!
Into the water.
– Into the water.
You don’t want a hard boil.
You just want a nice simmer.
– Luke: Little bit of a roll.
[gentle music] – Robin: You want a little bit of water from the, in which the pasta is being blanched, full of starches.
It’s gonna help us tie the dish.
– Luke: Sure.
Yeah!
– Robin: Perfetto.
And now, what we want, we want the sauce to get, to season the noodle.
– Luke: Mm-hmm.
How much of, like, growing up in Italy, like, did pasta mean to you?
– Robin: A lot.
– Luke: A lot.
– Robin: A lot, oh, yeah, a whole lot.
Pizza, pasta, cheese, fish.
These are all things– they’re part of my diet, you know?
And they live on with me, and that’s how I like to eat.
– Luke: It’s great that you’re here in Door County because all of those things are, well, now– – Robin: Available.
– Luke: Very prevalent.
– Robin: Available, yeah.
We like that I love to show up their face.
– Luke: Yeah, sunny side up!
– Robin: The sunny side up.
[gentle music] And now Joey is gonna help us out with a little bit of grated Pecorino on top, just to give it a final touch.
All right, so here’s the dish, the ravioli della casa.
Means “ravioli of the house.”
– Luke: Si.
– Robin: Perfetto, so now enjoy it, dig in.
If you don’t like it, I don’t care.
[Luke laughing] No, I’m just– – Already cutting through it, I can feel, like, there’s a textural difference in the ravioli.
Oh, my gosh, that filling is like heaven.
– I know.
– But the ricotta with the buffalo mozzarella, it’s, like– – Comes together?
– Oh, my gosh!
– I forgot to mention another ingredient inside the filling– little bit of lemon zest.
– Lemon zest, sure.
– You get that– – Acidity, mm-hmm.
– Yep.
– Luke: It’s very bright.
It works with all the sweetness inherent to the tomato.
Look at that bite.
– Robin: And then that Pecorino Romano.
– Like, really brings it together.
– Yep.
– Punches up.
That is delicious.
– It’s a yes?
– Mmm.
– Okay.
– I would eat this every day of my life.
This is truly, truly fantastic.
– Thank you.
– Mmm!
[hands slapping] – Robin: Good job.
– Luke: Dream team, here we go.
Man, that was good!
– Robin: That is good.
– Luke: I’d drive six hours for that plate, honestly.
– Robin: Good.
– Luke: Delicious!
– Robin: Whitefish piccata.
Whitefish just brought in from Charlie.
– Luke: This is gorgeous fish.
– Robin: Look at that.
– And why whitefish?
– Robin: Because we’re in Door County, and Door County is whitefish.
– Luke: You don’t get fish much fresher than this in Wisconsin.
– No.
– This was probably caught this morning?
– By 5:00 a.m., 6:00 a.m. by Charlie, yeah, and his crew, yeah.
– And to think that this morning, this was still swimming.
– Robin: Swimming, yes.
– Luke: Yeah.
– Robin: We add a little bit of 00 flour.
– Luke: Okay.
– Robin: Inside, I like using 00 flour for the texture that it gives you to the dish.
All-purpose, it’s a little bit too thick of a grind.
I prefer a finer grind like 00.
First step, skin up.
– Luke: Skin up?
– Robin: Yeah.
in the olive oil.
In Italy, this would be called “remove the capers,” [speaking Italian].
We usually use this recipe with Dover sole.
That’s how we make it back home, so I started playing on that a little bit before getting in the idea of having a piccata on my menu.
– Luke: Sure.
– Because “piccata” actually is a term utilized by Italian-Americans, and if you go into Italy and say, “Hey, can you make me a veal piccata?”
They don’t even know what that is.
“Scaloppina.”
– Luke: Scaloppina.
– Robin: Scaloppina.
– Luke: Sure.
– Robin: That’s how they go.
I like seasoning it right now.
– Luke: Okay.
– Because I’m gonna remove it from the pan eventually.
– Okay.
– Add a little bit of parsley.
– Luke: So, again, with that parsley, you’re just adding that to that warm oil, that slightly hot oil.
You’re getting some of the juices that’ll come off of here, but because you want that fish nice and moist.
– Yep.
– You’re not gonna overcook it ’til it leaches out into the pan.
– Correct, yep.
– That parsley adds that little note of freshness and almost the essence of the art.
– Robin: Yes, the essence, yep.
At this point, I’m gonna add just the capers.
– Luke: So capers into the pan.
Did you soak those capers in anything?
Are those– – Robin: Yeah, those are kept in vinegar.
– Luke: In vinegar, okay.
– Robin: All right.
Fish is done.
[sizzling] I remove the fish.
We start building the sauce.
– Little white wine?
– Robin: Yep.
– Luke: Nice.
– Robin: Voil .
[bright music] – I mean, even just by cutting into it, I can tell that this is extremely moist, flaky, delicious.
– Robin: It’s a good fish.
– Luke: Oh, my gosh.
– Robin: Poor fish.
– Luke: That is banging, dude.
– Robin: Wow.
– Luke: I mean, the fact– – Robin: This is what you want.
When you can peel it, when it peels off so easily and still nice and moist?
– Luke: Robin, that sauce.
– Robin: Wow.
– It, like, has all the points going for it, right?
Little bit of salinity.
– Robin: Yep.
– Luke: Acidity.
You get the freshness from the parsley.
Richness from the butter.
– Robin: Whoa.
– Luke: What a monster.
My goodness.
– Charlie Henriksen, not me.
– Oh.
I don’t know if I’ve ever had a better piece of whitefish.
The fact that it was still swimming this morning in Lake Michigan.
And you approaching these ingredients with your Italian background, your extensive training, and coming into the Door County peninsula and cooking exactly as you would in Italy, but with the ingredients of here, you’re using the ingredients of this place as the foundation to go nowhere but up.
You, my brother, are the real deal.
I’ll keep coming back for the bites of fish.
– Very good.
– Whoo!
[chuckling] That’s lovely!
[gentle music] We’re gonna get loco in DoCo!
[chuckling] I love it!
– Where’s my wine?
Oh!
[crashing] Freddie said he wants to have a microphone and speak.
If you do that, he’s gonna buy the dinner.
Am I right?
No?
So you’re lucky, because I pulled my back two days ago.
I’m gonna throw to the camera.
I can walk, finally.
[laughing] I can’t remember what I was saying, so… [gentle music] – Did you know Organic Valley protects over 400,000 acres of organic farmland?
So, are we an organic food cooperative that protects land, or land conservationists who make delicious food?
Yes; yes, we are.
Organic Valley.
– Twenty-minute commutes.
Weekends on the lake.
Warm welcomes and exciting career opportunities.
Not to mention all the great food!
There’s a lot to look forward to in Wisconsin.
Learn more at InWisconsin.com.
– 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.
– As part of the seventh generation at Jones Dairy Farm, being part of the leadership at our company is extremely important.
I’m really fortunate that I have a lot of the sixth generation family leaders that I can look up to.
– The Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers are proud underwriters of Wisconsin Foodie.
It takes love of the land and generations of farming know-how to nurture a quality potato crop.
Ask any potato farmer and they’ll tell you, there’s a lot of satisfaction in healthy-grown crops.
– With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore.
From local animal sourcing to on-site, 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.
– Also with the support of the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.