Published February 16, 2006

Frank Figone’s Leg of Lamb “recipe” goes like this: Poke holes in the lamb and insert slivers of fresh garlic. Marinate in olive oil with rosemary, garlic, and salt and pepper, and put in roasting pan with small red potatoes. Splash with white wine four minutes before finished. Cook at 350-400 degrees F for two hours. Sounds perfect!

Liana Figone’s Sugo di Carne (Meat Sauce) from her “Tastes of Tuscany” cookbook recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:
1/2 cup olive oil
2 onions, chopped
2 Tbs. parsley, chopped
1/4 lb. pancetta, chopped
1 chicken breast, whole, skinned,
and deboned
3 links Italian sausage, with meat removed from casings and crumbled
1 lb. pork, ground
Salt and pepper to taste
3/4 lb. fresh tomatoes, peeled
2 Tbs. tomato paste
2 cups beef broth
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated

Preparation:

Heat some olive oil in saucepan over medium heat. Combine onions, parsley and pancetta. Add more oil and sauté until ingredients are nicely colored, about 10 minutes.

Grind chicken breast coarsely in food processor. Add sausage, ground pork and chicken to the pan and season with salt and pepper. Sauté chicken and meats for about 15 minutes. Add wine and reduce for 10 minutes.

Puree tomatoes in food processor and add to pan along with tomato paste. Simmer for 20 minutes. Add beef broth to the pan, cover and cook for about 1 1/2 hours, using the remaining broth as needed so the sauce doesn’t dry out.

Pour sauce over prepared pasta. Add cheese and serve.

“Helpful Hint (from Mrs. Figone): If doorbell rings, add more wine to sauce.

As we think Italian for a while during the current Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, many of us are fantasizing about trips to Italy, foods and beverages from Italy that we can enjoy here at home, and, dare I say, taking Italian cooking classes, or even Italian language instruction.

Coinciding with the three-month-long Sonoma Valley Olive Festival, the Torino Olympics gives us an extra excuse to cook Italian. And who better to consult than expert olive grower and oil producer Frank Figone, whose family on both sides comes from the village of Pieve San Paulo in Tuscany.

A Petaluma resident, Figone currently grows hundreds of acres of olive trees, makes olive oil, and has served as olive oil consultant to the highly respected Nan McEvoy, B.R. Cohn, Bal di Luna in Glen Ellen, Arroyo Windmills and Olivina Ranch in Livermore, and Olive Leaf Ranch in Sebastopol. He also recently started Sonoma Olive Oil Company with Reynaldo Robledo, Jr. Figone’s farm roots grow deep.
Figone’s great-grandparents, Egidio and Enrichetta Franceschi arrived in the United States from near Lucca in 1928, when they bought an 85-acre ranch near Tracy, California. Egidio planted five or six olive trees and lots of asparagus, because he farmed asparagus in Tuscany and that’s what he knew how to do, and the couple lived both on the ranch and in San Francisco, where he started his own winery in the Barbary Coast (Jackson Square) area, barely south of North Beach.
On frequent trips back to Italy, the Franceschis left daughter Gemma to live with her grandparents, where she met and married Giuseppe Giovanninni in Pieve San Paulo, eventually moving to San Francisco where they could be nearer Gemma’s parents.

Giovanninni opened the Universe Restaurant at 467 Broadway during World War II, but decided to close it after the war. Instead he became maitre d’ at Alfred’s, just up the street beside the Broadway Tunnel, where he served and wooed customers for nearly 30 years. While doing all of this, Giovanninni also fished commercially in San Francisco Bay, bringing fresh fish into his restaurant.
Gemma and Giuseppe had a daughter, Liana, Frank Figone’s mother. A true San Franciscan, Liana grew up at Vallejo and Mason streets, commuted on the cable car to Notre Dame des Victoires High School, met Aldo P. Figone at the old Voltan’s Creamery at Vallejo and Stockton Streets, hung out weekly with him at Ott’s Drive-In, then a popular joint on North Beach’s Columbus Avenue, and married Figone at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church on the north side of Washington Square.

Upon their death, the Franceschis left the Tracy farmland to their daughter, Gemma, who tried to manage it with Liana. Thirty-two years ago Frank Figone and his brothers, Peter and Joseph, went to their mother and asked her if they could plant a couple of acres of olive trees. Frank planted about 400 trees, primarily Manzanillo olives, although the original trees his great-grandfather planted were Mission olives and one Tuscan variety the family is still trying to identify. Frank will take olives from this tree to Spain in March to have DNA tests done to establish the tree’s identity.

The success of Frank Figone’s first two-acre planting inspired him to plant more olive trees, and he has now acquired a total of 150 acres from Madera and Fresno to Oroville, and Valley Springs in the Sierra foothills, where his orchards include Frantoio, Leccino, Pendolino, and some southern Italian olives.
Figone’s bright idea light went on in 1991 when he was having lunch at St. Helena’s Tra Vigne restaurant’s bar, and the bartender offered him some olive oil to taste, saying it was “Mission olive oil.” Figone thought he meant that was the name of the producer, but the bartender said Tra Vigne was making the olive oil in the back alleyway and that he would show it all to him after he ate his lunch.
“I couldn’t eat fast enough,” Figone remembers. “I thought if they can do this, I can do it. The olives are really dear to me!”

Figone soon took off for Italy and bought a Cravero olive press in Torino and brought it home to his great-grandfather’s old asparagus packing shed, going through the extensive permit processes, and opened a frontoio — the Italian word for mill, as well as the name of an olive variety. This all led to Figone’s of California Olive Oil Company, which now makes about 3,000 gallons of olive oil a year, all in slim, sexy looking bottles and all sold only through Figone’s website, www.figoneoliveoil.com.

Figone sells his estate-grown olive oil for $10-$20 a bottle. “I haven’t had a price change in years. I can’t do that to my clients!” He still works as a consultant to olive growers and oil millers and teaches everything olive at Napa Community College’s northern campus in St. Helena.

“My love for olive oil comes from growing up in an Italian household around food. I think my first love is for food. As a child I would come home from school, smell food, ask mom ‘what’s for dinner,’ and there would be this big pot of spaghetti sauce.”

Like many of us, Figone said, “After I moved away from Mom I had to cook on my own. Growing up I never consciously thought that I need to learn how to cook. I just gained acquired knowledge from her a minute or two at a time.
“Now I always cook for friends, family, food to take to parties, and I always cooked hearty Italian food, with Figone olive oil, of course!” A single father of daughters Francesca, almost nine, and Sofia, four, Figone says everything he cooks is in his mother’s wonderful cookbook, “Tastes of Tuscany,” which is also available ($19.95) on the Figone olive oil website. The book’s subtitle is “Treasured Family Recipes and Vignettes from the Heartland of Italy,” which is an understatement.

Mother Liana has been hugely active in Italian-American groups, serving several times as president of the Italian Catholic Federation and as president of the Women of the Motion Picture Industry. Mrs. Figone received the honor of Cavaliere from the Republic of Italy in 1976 and the Gold Medal from the City of Lucca for her philanthropic work. The book itself is packed with easy and excellent recipes, along with loads of photos of the countryside surrounding Lucca and market scenes to drool over.

Daughter Francesca Figone is “in love with olives and olive oil manufacturing,” according to her father. “She goes into the orchards with me. I teach her about the soil, the olives, the trees, all the techniques, and she loves it. I made business cards for her.” When asked what her title is on the business cards, Figone responded: “Vice President. That’s what she is!” And the family tradition beats on.

Kathleen Hill is co-author of six guidebooks to the West Coast, including “Sonoma Valley—The Secret Wine Country” and “Napa Valley—Land of Golden Vines.” Catch her “The Kathleen Hill Show” on KSVY-91.3 FM Mondays at 3:00 p.m. Send tidbits to hilltopub@aol.com.