 |
Life outside the mechanical engineering lab:
Al Pisano, master chef
|
Served on colorful dishes imported from Deruta, Italy —
a town known for its ceramic dinnerware — Pisano’s
main course featured seared Ahi tuna finished off with a
ginger-garlic reduction, served with marinated tomato and
lemon garnish, polenta, and asparagus.
BART NAGEL PHOTO
|
The rich scent of Italian cooking wafts from Al Pisano’s
Danville kitchen. The mechanical engineering professor is massaging
thick steaks of Ahi tuna with extra virgin olive oil, working
the oil into the grain of the fish, preparing to sear the sushi-grade
steaks in a reduced sauce of ginger, garlic, capers, and port.
As he chops scallions, Pisano chats up his dinner guests, two
esteemed professors visiting from Georgia institute of Technology.
"We’re gonna thermal shock the living daylights out
of this tuna," says Pisano, who holds the prestigious FANUC
Chair of Mechanical Systems and is director of Berkeley’s
Electronics Research Laboratory.
Over appetizers of Gorgonzola cheese, marinated tomatoes in lemon,
and fresh baguette dipped in fine olive oil, the conversation
turns from the subtleties of olive oil to high-density generators,
micro-turbines, and heat transfer. A few minutes later, the tuna
is cooked to perfection, the asparagus artistically spread out
like a Chinese fan over the warm polenta — stems touching
together — and dinner is served.
Tonight’s gourmet taste of Southern Italy is the norm at
the Pisano home. Three or four times a week Pisano picks up his
8-year-old son Christopher from school and the two make their
rounds at one of the gourmet markets in the area. It’s in
their genes.
"Good cooking runs in my mother’s family," Pisano
says. "As a kid I noticed that the refrigerator and cupboards
could look empty, but if 12 people arrived, my grandmother would
have a feast ready in an hour."
This was the 1950s in Elizabeth, New Jersey — a time, Pisano
says, "when stubbing your cigarette out on your plate after
dinner was an accepted practice." During the Sunday family
dinners, Pisano’s grandmother, an immigrant from Calabria,
Italy, would frequently call her eldest grandson into the kitchen
and ask for his opinion on her tomato sauce.
|
|
Pisano
romanced
his second wife, Robin, by cooking for her book club early
in their relationship.
BART NAGEL PHOTO
|
"Of course, when you’re six, you think Grandma’s
sauce is always good," Pisano says. "But she’d
say, 'No, it needs more salt.' And then she’d add some salt
and ask me again if it was good. It seemed important to her that
I appreciated the quality of the food we ate."
But it wasn’t until 30 years later that Pisano committed
himself to the kitchen in earnest. It was a matter of survival,
he jokes.
"I got divorced," he says, laughing. "I had to
eat anyway and I decided that I wasn’t going to live on
TV dinners."
For ideas, he reaches deep into his memory. His grandmother, who
passed away almost a decade ago, never used a recipe.
"My grandmother would just say, 'You throw in some of this
and that and if it’s wrong, throw in this other thing,'"
Pisano says.
So that’s how he cooks too. Even his signature dishes —
pizzas from scratch, single malt scotch filet mignon, veal and
peppers "done the old Sicilian way" — are slightly
different each time he prepares them.
"I cook like I lecture," Pisano says. "The spirit
is always the same, but you have to find the balance between execution
and novelty. If there isn’t that innovation every time,
a guy who likes research loses interest."
|
|
FOREFRONT takes you into the
labs, classrooms, and lives of professors, students, and alumni
for an intimate look at the innovative research, teaching, and
campus life that define the College of Engineering at the University
of California, Berkeley.
Published three times a year by the Engineering Public Affairs
Office. Have a comment about Forefront? E-mail
your letter to the editor. Click here
to learn more about the magazine. |
|
