Published September 22, 2005

As we walked into the kitchen of a friend’s home, we instantly inhaled the fine aroma of a probably perfectly roasted chicken in the oven, garlic-rosemary roasted potatoes, and just-sliced fresh yellow, orange, and red peppers.
Keith Sadko and L.A. King were house-sitting while friends were away, which is a very smart thing to do when considering changing one’s place of residence. M.F.K. Fisher believed in living in a place for a whole year before making that next “permanent” move, and such a transitional tryout is a good idea before making such a big commitment and subjecting oneself or one’s family to the monstrous effort of moving household and home.

Now living in Iowa but hoping to move here, Keith and L.A. have spent lots of time there reading Frances Mayes’s books on Tuscany and Marcella Hazan cookbooks. He is a devotee of Italian cuisine, and could fool almost anyone that he is an Italian cook.
A Canadian who grew up just outside Montreal, Keith first started to cook as a child. His mother, Mary Kozak, and father, Czeslaw Vitold Sadko, grew up on opposite sides of the same block, and served a lot of cabbage rolls and sauerkraut, but Keith began to cook by making cookies he liked to eat.

Keith also wanted to play music, was fascinated by the organ at church, and was told by his parents that he could study the accordion. He sang in the Lachine High School chorus, and when school officials established a new band program Keith asked if there were any extra instruments available in the band. He was offered the tuba, which he gladly accepted because he was anxious to play music with other people.
Keith finally got a chance to play the piano at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, and on his second day on campus met the college organist and got to try out a Canadian mechanical action organ, and thought he had arrived when the organist let him turn pages while he played. The organist accepted Keith as his student after only one year of piano, which led Keith to switch majors from math to music, and eventually transfer to McGill University in Montreal, where he earned both his Bachelors and Masters degrees in music.

While studying at McGill, Keith took a summer course in Pistoia, Italy, and asked if anyone might need an organist, particularly at St. James Episcopal Church in Florence. They did, and he did, living in an apartment at the church in Florence and teaching in Pistoia. He waxes ecstatic about the supremacy of Italian organs and food, saying they “are like none other.”

After five years, Keith moved to the U.S. to do more graduate study at Harvard. At a pre-concert dinner party Keith attended at the home of Bill Porter, a music faculty member at Eastman School of Music and at Yale, one of Porter’s choir members knocked on the door early because she had found a parking place more easily than usual. The visitor was L.A. King, then a medieval church PhD. candidate at Boston University.
A few weeks after they started to date, Keith proposed to L.A. Eventually the couple moved to St. Petersburg, Florida where Keith taught at Eckerd College, from which he just happened to take student trips abroad to—guess where—Florence! L.A., her sister, Sonoma resident Mary Evelyn Arnold and the late Sonoman Dorene Musilli occasionally accompanied the student groups.

Since then L.A., now an Anglican priest, has substituted for the minister at that same St. John’s Episcopal Church in Florence, and each visit just deepens the couple’s devotion to Italian cooking.

According to Keith, “Every meal is an occasion, a mini-festival, a big deal! The Italian method is really the California method, and the Alice Waters-Chez Panisse method: really fresh local ingredients dealt with really simply. Many Italians still go home for lunch, which Mom has been working on all morning, after her 7 a.m. visit to the market.” Keith used to cook occasionally for his choir members, who came to think they were possibly in the best restaurant in town.

The couple’s current favorite cookbook is Lorenza De’Medici’s Italy: The Beautiful Cookbook.

Julia Child used to consider the best meal in the world to be a perfectly roasted chicken. While opinions vary on what that might be, Keith’s arrived at that pinnacle.
First he browned the whole chicken on all sides in olive oil in a pan that also could go in the oven on top of the stove, inserted one whole lemon with ends and skin intact into the chicken’s cavity (not pierced or cut), and added a little rosemary salt, and pepper inside. Then he trussed (tied with string) the chicken together and sprinkled a little more salt, pepper, and fresh rosemary around the chicken’s outside.

For the rosemary garlic potatoes, Keith and L.A., who happily serves as “sous chef,” cut unpeeled Russet potatoes in bite-size chunks, tossed them in olive oil, salt, pepper and rosemary, and then roasted them in the oven at 350-375 degrees for about an hour. Roast longer if you prefer crispier potatoes.

The red, yellow and orange peppers were simply sautéed lightly in olive oil. The delightfully simple main course was followed by sliced heirloom tomatoes and mascarpone cheese in a light vinaigrette, and a dessert of fresh local strawberries over vanilla yogurt flavored with a splash of Courvoisier.

As it happens, Keith Sadko also makes a mean thin-crust pizza, another holdover from his time in Italy. Let’s hope Keith Sadko and L.A. King move here permanently!

Kathleen Hill is co-author of Sonoma Valley-The Secret Wine Country and Napa Valley-Land of Golden Vines. Kathleen is also the host of The Kathleen Hill Show, Mondays from 3 to 4 pm on KSVY- 91.3 You may reach Kathleen at hilltopub@aol.com.