Ontalia Puts Italian Roots in Local Soil

Written by Tod Stewart | 01 July 2009

Italian Marries Canadian

You’re a young ragazzo growing up in Castellamare di Stabia near Naples, Italy. In the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, surrounded by vineyards and olive groves, you spend the days watching your mother tend the family garden, raise a small flotilla of farm animals and prepare regional dishes from handfuls of fresh local ingredients. And though her talent in the kitchen has earned her a spot as chef for a noble family, she never wavers in her approach to food: simple, fresh, local ingredients cooked in a manner that showcases rather than overwhelms the individual ingredients.

Cut ahead 20-odd years and you’ve been transplanted to Toronto. Mamma still tends vegetables in the backyard garden and cooks traditional dishes that fill the house with aromas from the past. In the meantime, you train as a cabinetmaker while expanding your knowledge and passion for wine and food. You work in all aspects of the furniture industry, but inevitably the siren song of your true passion calls and you follow into a life of oenology and gastronomy. It’s everything that pops your cork. But still something is missing. The food scene is full of fusion, confusion and, distressingly, disillusion. You crave simplicity, purity and what you remember as a kid. What do you do? Simple, really. Bring home your old home. Put “Italian Roots in Local Soil.”

enter ontalia

Before you go screeching off in a state proclaiming, “But Sangiovese won’t grow here!” consider, if you will, Ontalia, a company — and concept — that aims to bring an Italian sense of place (a concept that also happens to embrace the tenets of the Italian-born Slow Food Condotte, but we’ll get to that) to Ontario-centric cuisine. The mind behind Ontalia is Angelo Bean (no, not Mr. Bean; it’s pronounced Beh-an), whose life is encapsulated in the paragraphs above.

“I have always tried to make authentic Italian dishes using ingredients seasonally imported from Italy,” Bean explains, “but the true artisan products and the ingredients needed to make them are rarely exported. Also, the distance these products have to travel compromises their freshness as well as their environmental sustainability. So I came up with the idea of following traditional Italian cooking methods but using locally sourced, sustainable ingredients.”

up to speed on slow food

In fact, the notion of “good, clean and fair” that guides Bean’s gastronomic foray is also (not surprisingly) the motto of the Slow Food movement, of which Bean is a member through the Toronto Convivium organization. Contrary to common misconception, Slow Food speaks to a certain mindset as to how food is sourced and enjoyed rather than the speed at which things are cooked — though the movement actively works to combat the creeping onslaught of fast food.

Ontalia’s flagship product is salsiccia ubriaca or drunken sausage. And though he has laced his delicacies with all manner of intoxicating liquors (including single malt scotch — “highland hotdogs,” anyone?), the most attention has been paid to, and the most accolades heaped on, his VQA wine-infused numbers.

“I cook with wine — sometimes I even add it to the dish…”

“Italians commonly add wine to their sausages,” Bean notes. My personal experience suggests that Italians commonly add wine to pretty much everything, including each  other. “But in my sausages you get to recognize the flavours of the wine. The flavour comes from the quality and concentration. It’s not just the usual splash we are used to when cooking with wine.”

In keeping with the Slow Food conventions, Bean’s creations use the simplest ingredients. “Pork, wine, salt and pepper,” he reveals. “That’s it.” However, as alluded to, it’s the quality of these ingredients that give the sausages their award-winning flavour. “I am using the best possible meat available in Ontario. Berkshire pork — the ‘kobi beef of pork’ — and VQA Ontario wine, usually Baco Noir and Riesling.” Baco, concedes Bean, “… is the best way to represent the concept of local terroir. It is the ultimate local soil ambassador.”