Many of Chef Charles Draghi's conversations about food end with the phrase, "just the way my uncles in Piedmonte do it."

Draghi, the chef owner of Erbaluce in Boston, is a Connecticut-bred Italian, but his Old World family meals with his aunts and uncles in Italy are never far from his mind. He reminds us, often, that in his Piedmontese home village, his family is identified as the "beekeeper Draghis" and that's just one of the reasons he uses honey and other natural sweeteners instead of sugar.

He's a classically trained French chef who eschews butter, cream and almost anything else that interrupts the "bright focus" of his dishes with flavors that are "compact and clean." Draghi is also a man who cares about words. In between his love affairs with food, he was a playwright and actor.

Erbaluce is a tiny Italian restaurant tucked into a one-way, one-block street in downtown Boston. Local food-eratis hesitate to suggest it to their casual friends because it is their own precious find, too perfect to be spoiled by the wayfarers from the suburbs. Despite their efforts, Draghi and Erbaluce hover near the top of any best-of-Boston lists.

Draghi was a farm-to-table evangelist before anyone heard of a CSA or knew what to do with kohlrabi. Twenty years ago, when he was the hired-gun chef at an Italian joint tucked on a side street in Boston's north end, Draghi was drying his own mushrooms and herbs on the rickety, dark cellar steps, and distilling his own vanilla extract and vinegars. In 1986, just as Draghi was getting settled into Boston, his brother gave him a gift certificate to a hotel restaurant, Le Marquis de Lafayette. The French chef was supposed to be good, but no one could pronounce his name "Vongerichten? Vongeracheten?" It didn't even sound French.

'My mind exploded'

"Everybody in town was talking about this guy. I was already a little jaded. I'd worked at great restaurants in New York. I'd eaten in great restaurants all over the world. I was young, but I was asking myself, 'How much more is there to learn?'

"At that point in culinary history, everyone was judging food by what I called 'the more and more' standard -- more elaborate technique and presentation.

"The dinner was a revelation. Jean-Georges Vongerichten made a simple roasted lamb loin, with three lines of sauce, colors so bright they might have been drawn with a crayon. The first was red -- bell pepper and star anise. The second was green -- zucchini and thyme. The third was orange -- carrot and Thai basil.

"So you were supposed to fork a piece of the lamb and touch a tine of your fork into a drop of each flavor. The green, for example, was the most intense zucchini flavor, but you never lost the taste of the lamb. The whole meal went like that. My mind exploded. No one else was doing French-Asian fusion, and clearly no one else had Jean-Georges' finesse. Or his energy and curiosity about food and flavor.

"That meal changed my whole thought process about food and flavor. I thought about the Korean families I grew up with in my neighborhood, and how I'd always been fascinated by the idea of appetizers based on Korean appetizers, but I hadn't really done anything about it. After this first meal by Jean-Georges, I went back to the French restaurant where I was working and rethought my whole approach to flavor.

An inspired 'mosto'

"Late one afternoon last year, Jean-Georges appeared unannounced at my restaurant. I was doing pre-meal in my polo shirt and jeans. I tried not to get nervous, told myself not to do anything special, just to be careful not to spill anything on the table. He said he only had time for a quick salad before running for his plane, but I couldn't resist making him a few dishes to taste. In the end he forgot about the flight. You can imagine how I felt.

"A dish that's more or less a staple on my menu is roasted meat with 'mosto.' Mosto is simply crushed fruit that is allowed to sit, and oxidize and ferment. My mosto is kind of an homage to Jean-Georges, but it is also inspired by my uncles who were hunters in the Piedmonte. Simple, intense, flavorful, colorful.

"My uncles will come home with a rabbit or a pheasant, and make a fruit-based sauce to offset the savory meat. The traditional way to make a fruit sauce is based on sugar, but I didn't want it to be sweet. I wanted an intense fruit flavor like the aroma you inhale when you walk through a winery. One of my fall favorites I make with wild Concord grapes that I ferment and let run through a food mill with lavender, and then I swirl the liquid puree with a little drizzle of olive oil.

"Another favorite is a puree of fermented strawberries and rhubarb, [with a touch of sugar or honey]. I leave it out for a half a day to get the yeast for the fermentation going, and then I let it continue developing in the walk-in [cooler]. I serve it with quail or chicken."

Quick Mosto of Strawberries and Rhubarb With Roasted Chicken Breast

Ingredients

For the sauce:

For the chicken:

Directions

For the sauce:

1. Finely mince the strawberries and rhubarb, and add into a bowl with the wine, sugar and herbs.
2. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature over night.

For the chicken:

1. Season the chicken liver with salt and pepper, and then sear the liver in a hot pan. Cook until medium rare, and then set aside in a refrigerator to cool.
2. With a sharp knife, cut a large pocket through the middle of each of the chicken breast halves, and season the meat with salt and pepper.
3. Fill the pockets in the chicken breast meat with small cut pieces of the seared liver, some whole strawberries, a few leaves of arugula, and the herb leaves.
4. In a medium-hot frying pan, with a drizzle of olive oil, saute the stuffed chicken breast halves, skin side down, until the fat renders and the skin is golden brown.
5. Place a lid over the pan and reduce the heat to low, and continue to cook until the chicken is just cooked through, but still moist (about 7 minutes).
6. Remove from heat, and let the chicken rest in the pan for 5 minutes before serving.
7. The chicken breasts, sliced into 1-inch sections, are turned on their side to display the filling.
8. Sauce liberally with the strawberry-rhubarb mosto, and a drizzle of olive oil.
9. Garnish with the arugula leaves and more fresh strawberries.

(This dish is also delicious served with cannellini beans.)

Zester Daily contributor Louisa Kasdon is a Boston-based food writer, former restaurant owner and founder of letstalkaboutfood.com. She is a columnist for the Boston Phoenix, the food editor for Stuff Magazine and has contributed to Fortune, MORE, Cooking Light, the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine and the Christian Science Monitor, among others.

Photos, from top:

Chef Charles Draghi. Credit: Courtesy of Charles Draghi

Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Credit: Courtesy of Jean-Georges Vongerichten

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