Light bourbon sauce ties together dish
Tasty discovery: Pollo rustico
Destination: The Vinyards Trattoria and Pizzeria
Cost: $ 16.99 on the dinner menu
Hours: Mondays through Thursdays10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. lunch, 5-9 p.m. dinner; Fridays10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. lunch, 5-10 p.m. dinner; Saturdays 5-10 p.m. for dinner.
Closed Sundays.
Info: 757-874-0114 or thevineyardstrattoria.com
Anthony Calero is Salvadoran, but he learned to cook — and to love cooking — from an old gentleman who didn’t know anything but fine Italian cuisine. The man didn’t like to have any sweet elements to his entrees, except for occasionally constructing a flavorful bourbon sauce out of a Marsala wine that always caught his guests’ attention.
All these years later, Calero operates The Vinyard Trattoria and Pizzeria in Newport News, and his brother runs an identical establishment in Florida. (In Italian culinary parlance, a trattoria is a relatively casual dining establishment, less expensive than a formal ristorante.) And when he was looking for a dish to add to his dinner menu, he thought back to that man’s sauce.
The resulting dish — pollo rustico — quickly became a house favorite at Vinyards, and the sauce turned out good enough that it will frequently find its way into nightly spe
cials as well. Guests ask about the sauce, and he will only grin and tell them that its base is a combination of Marsala and beef broth.
“A lot of places use flour to thicken the sauce, but I don’t like to do that,” Calero said. “I try to make it as fresh as possible for each order, and I try to let it simmer just a little bit longer to get it to just the right thickness.”
On the pollo rustico dish, he uses the sauce plentifully to tie the various elements together. The heart of the entree is a pair of breaded chicken cutlets topped with thick, firm asparagus spears and melted mozzarella. The whole thing sits atop a good portion of mashed red bliss potatoes containing a healthy dose of garlic.
The bourbon sauce goes on top and flows underneath to flavor the potatoes as well. The final touch? Dried cherries and caramelized onions to add a zing of sweetness.