One of the most beautiful things about the cuisine of Tuscany is the simplicity. Natural flavors are never covered up but instead complimented or enhanced by the addition of one or two other ingredients. While living and working as a Chef in San Gimignano Italy, I was able to experience this on a daily basis. Huge 2-4 lb Porterhouse Steaks grilled over hot coals with just a drizzle of fragrant Tuscan extra virgin olive oil and coarse salt, handmade pasta with nothing more than fresh herbs and butter, wood roasted whole fish with fresh lemon and simple green salads with nothing more than vinegar and olive oil. It is truly a cuisine where less is more. It is also a cuisine that requires the absolute freshest and highest quality ingredients available. Here at Siena this is our goal, to re-create an authentic Tuscan dining experience in an atmosphere that will transport our patrons from the rolling green hills of Central Texas to the rolling green hills of Tuscany. Buon Appetito – Chef Harvey, Siena

Above: If you ask for “passato di pomodoro” without “preservativi” you might be greeted with a a funny stare…

We want you to be able to speak like an Italian, but we must warn you that there are some pretty easy ways to stick your foot in your mouth if you’re not careful.

Today’s Italian lesson is on false cognates, or “false friends.”

Cognates are words that basically sound the same in both languages in question. For example, there’s intelligente (intelligent) and farmacia (you guessed it, pharmacy). But don’t get caught asking for pepperoni on your pizza if what you want is cured sausage because what you’ll end up with is bell peppers. This is why it’s called a false cognate.

We don’t want you to get caught in a sticky situation where either hilarity or calamity can ensue, so here’s our top ten list of false friends:

1. Sensibile: it means sensitive, not sensible.

2. Preservativi: condoms (Watch out for this one! You don’t want to have a conversation about why condoms are bad for human consumption. Conservanti are preservatives in Italian.)

3. Baldo: courageous (You can describe to the local authorities that the taxi driver who ripped you off is baldo, but you won’t be referring to his head.)

4. Collegio: boarding school or dormitory (Explaining your educational background might make your new Italian friends think that you are very rich.)

5. Morbido: soft (Your little brother’s obsession with horror movies is… soft? I don’t understand!)

6. Genitori: This means parents. Get your mind out of the gutter.

7. Fabbrica: factory (Farm is fattoria and fabric is tessuto. Confused yet?)

8. Camera: room (Want to take a picture with your… room? Instead, make sure and ask for the macchina fotografica.)

9. Romanzo: novel (No, you do not want to have a great novel on your vacation, you want a storia d’amore.)

10. Educato: polite (Telling someone that their children are so educated when you mean polite is not an insult, but it may be confusing when referring to a toddler.)

“One of the things I’ll never forget about the years that I lived, worked, and cooked in Italy,” says Siena executive chef Harvey Harris, “is how every restaurateur and every chef and cook had her or his own vegetable garden in the back of the restaurant. In the winter, that meant fresh lettuce and root vegetables in the fall. But in the summer… man, in the summer… the best tomatoes and basil you’ve ever had in your life!”

Many of our guests do not realize that chef Harvey grows a lot of the produce used in the restaurant himself.

And not only is it grown without the use of chemicals or machines, it’s grown with the love, passion, and care that only a chef can give.

Chef Harvey’s homegrown tomatoes and basil are featured in Siena’s Insalata Caprese this week at the restaurant…

Here at Siena, we love a good Super Tuscan wine. And when that wine is also a great value, we want to share it with everyone!

When the Frescobaldi family joined forces with Robert Mondavi in 1995, they created the Luce della Vite (Light of the Vines) winery. Two wines with an unparalleled pedigree were born: Luce and Lucente.

Our wine of the week, Lucente, is one of Stan’s favorites and has had a long and successful history on the wine list. A blend of Sangiovese, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon, it strikes the eye with a deep purple hue that let’s you know it means business.

This is a wine of depth, boasting notes of blackberry jam and plums alongside hints of chocolate and toasty vanilla oak. Smooth, rich tannins round out the total package for a wine that packs a real whollop.

Lucente means “shining,” and this star of a wine definitely shines for us!

Above: Abruzzo remains one of Italy’s most rugged and pristine regions. And it’s quickly becoming known as one of the greatest producers of fine wine (photo via Agriturismo Abruzzo).

From the hills of rustic Abruzzo, we have been given the Montepulciano grape. Always juicy and dark, the wines of the appellation Montepluciano d’Abruzzo DOC are tailor-made for our hearty Tuscan food.

La Valentina winery is dedicated to the practice of sustainable viticulture. They grow grapes in vineyards that Mother Nature herself would be proud of! They believe that this method of farming “leaves the mark of the vine on the grape,” and we believe that their philosophy shines through in their beautiful La Valentina Spelt.

Made from 100% Montepulciano grapes grown on 27+ year-old vines, the wine is a true testament to gifts of maturity that an old vine can give. From its brilliant garnet color, to the earthy dark fruit with hints of cocoa and spice, La Valentina Spelt is a pure crowd pleaser and a truly smooth operator.

Traditionally, this would be paired with lamb or game, but we know that it pays a perfect complement to any of Chef Harvey’s heartier fare.

From mushrooms all the way to our Tagliata or Bistecca Fiorentina, this natural beauty will make every dish sing!

Although today the expression is used to denote a wide variety of red wines from Tuscany, the moniker Super Tuscan was originally adopted by English-language wine writers as an unofficial descriptor to describe fine wines that had been classified by the Italian government as vino da tavola (table wine).

International grape varieties — like Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Merlot — have been cultivated in Italy for centuries. But when the Italian appellation system was created in the 1960s, it did not account for many wines made with these grapes. As a result, some of the greatest wines of Italy were classified simply as table wines when, in fact, they were world-class wines that often commanded high prices and the attention of the world’s top wine writers.

In the 1980s, Italian officials created the IGT classification (Indicazione Geografica Tipica or Typical Geographic Indication) so that these wines would no longer be referred to as mere table wines in official documentation.

It’s difficult to overestimate the impact that Lidia Bastianich has had on gastronomic culture in the United States and on the renaissance of Italian cuisine throughout the world.

She is to our generation what Julia Child and James Beard were to my mother’s generation (my mother was a James Beard devotee, for the record).

And to her credit, she has never wavered from her devotion to regional Italian cuisine. Long before “peasant” food (what an awful and despicable term!), “rustico” cuisine, or even “Northern vs. Southern” Italian cooking ever appeared in the American gastronomic lexicon, Lidia championed regional culinary traditions from Italy, first in the Croatian neighborhood in Queens where she and her family got their start and then later at Felidia in Manhattan (a restaurant where I used to regularly take my mother during the decade that I lived in New York).

In 1998 — the year that Babbo opened and the year that “regional Italian” became bywords of food culture in America — Lidia launched her first cooking show, “Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen” on PBS. To this day, Tracie P’s Saturday morning ritual is not complete without watching a DVR’d episode.

I asked Lidia to share her thoughts about the renaissance of Italian gastronomy and her role in Italy’s culinary conquest of the U.S. palate and hedonist imagination.

Her response, I must say, surprised and inspired me.

“When you look at the great beauty of Italy,” she said. “It’s easy to understand why the Italians are such creative people. From the [historic] Renaissance to this day, Italians have made so many contributions to the arts and culture. It was only natural that Italian cooking would do the same.”

“I don’t know if I’ve been an architect of the Italian culinary renaissance as you put it,” she added graciously. “But when I am surrounded by this beauty and the goodness of the ingredients I find here, I know that I am inspired by them.”

Lidia also told me that she has been asked to be the madrina (i.e., the grand marshal) of the first-ever “Biennial of Cuisine” in Venice. I wasn’t surprised by this news: her celebrity and her contributions to the dissemination of Italian cuisine and culture in the U.S. is not lost on Italians — at least, gauging from my Italian colleagues and counterparts.

“But it’s really Joe [Bastianich, her son] who’s become a celebrity here,” she told me. His appearances on “MasterChef Italia” (the number-one rated show in Italy this year, I was told by a journalist at our luncheon) have made him a megawatt star there.

“Just the other day, we were stopped by school children in Venice who wanted his autograph,” she said.

Whether or not her celebrity is or will be eclipsed by her son’s is irrelevant, really. After all, if it weren’t for Lidia, there would be no Joe, would there?

As a proud new father myself, I couldn’t resist the urge to share a photo of Georgia P with Lidia.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “but she’s a prettier version of you.”

Words only a mother could utter.

Di mamme, ce n’è una sola… You only have one mother…

Here’s a link to some photos of what Lidia made us for lunch that day.

—Jeremy Parzen

Click image below for printable (PDF) version.