To the Grape Born

Oh no, not another coffee table book with luscious photographs and fussy, impossible recipes.

That was my first thought on seeing the handsome grape-purple and wine-red cover of “Seasons of the Vineyard” from the Robert Mondavi Winery (Simon & Schuster, $40). This is, after all, the outfit that once staged extravagant weeks with great chefs at $3,000 a participant.

Robert Mondavi, who founded the Napa Valley winery in 1966, is an industry legend. His wife, Margrit Biever Mondavi, is the winery’s director of cultural affairs. Their life is a round of wine festivals, art exhibits, music programs, entertaining and community activities.

Yes, the book contains luscious photographs, as well as drawings by Margrit Mondavi. They will make you wish that you, too, had been born to the grape. But no, it does not foist off on home cooks complex dishes that only great chefs can prepare.

Instead, you get Christmas cookies for the kids, a Mexican barbecue menu, old fashioned Mom-style Italian cooking, fried chicken, pizza, blueberry pie and lots of other things you might really make. Carolyn Dille, the Mondavis’ co-author, helped winnow through masses of recipes from their families and from winery chefs to decide which best tell the story of a year at the winery, starting with harvest.

Although several great chefs recipes made the final cut, the book is really family-oriented. It is dedicated to Robert Mondavi’s mother, Rosa, who died in 1976. “My mother cooked so beautifully,” Mondavi recalls. “It was natural, so fresh. We always had the best.”

Unfortunately, it never occurred to Rosa Mondavi to write down a recipe. Those in the book have been reconstructed from family memories. No color photos of Rosa exist either. Black-and-white shots had to be colorized for the book.

The senior Mondavis got into the food business early. Emigrating from Italy to Minnesota in 1910, Cesare and Rosa ran a boardinghouse for other immigrants and started a market and restaurant. They moved to Lodi, Calif., in 1923 and to the Napa Valley in 1943.

Margrit Mondavi also looks back on great food at home. “My mother could have been a chef,” she says. “Her style was a little more French than Bob’s mother.” (The family lived in the Italian part of Switzerland, while the Mondavis came from Sassoferrato in the eastern part of central Italy.) So intense was family interest in food that the topic of lunch conversation was dinner, she says.

Margrit Mondavi is an avid cook who plans to redo her kitchen to make room for a table large enough to seat 12. She is making balsamic vinegar with a group of friends and hopes to house that project in the kitchen.

That means finding a spot for six imported Italian casks ranging in size from 12 to 60 liters. Each cask is made from a different wood--oak, cherry, ash, acacia, mulberry and chestnut--to flavor the vinegar as it passes from one to another. “The whole process takes 20 years, but you can use it after four or five,” she says. The first bottling will take place this fall.

She also makes red wine vinegar, using the dregs of Mondavi reserve wines. “It’s fabulous,” she says. “I don’t have to wood-age it because the wine was wood-aged.”

The Mondavi winery is such a large-scale operation that it employs several chefs, all of whom have contributed to the book. Annie Roberts, who leads off with a Mexican barbecue lunch, is Margrit Mondavi’s daughter. Roberts’ menu includes guacamole; shrimp and jicama salad; grilled chicken with Mexican spices; black beans with jalapen~os; rice with tomatoes, and cinnamon ice cream with fresh tropical fruit. It was served to winery employees and vineyard owners following the annual blessing of the grapes at harvest time.

Which wines to serve with Mexican food? Roberts suggests sangria with the guacamole, white Zinfandel with the salad, either Chardonnay or Pinot Noir with the chicken and Moscato d’Oro with the ice cream.

Other recipes come from Michael Chipchase, chef of the Vineyard Room, which is used for entertaining, and Gary Jenanyan, who works with the Great Chefs program. Inaugurated in 1975 as Great Chefs of France, the program has dwindled from a week to a weekend, held three or four times a year. It’s still just as costly--$1,550 for three-day weekends, the next of which will take place Nov. 15-17, featuring Pierre Gagnaire, who owned the three-star restaurant of the same name.

High-flying weekends may still draw an audience, but Robert Mondavi says wines are losing their draw as status symbols. “Americans have much more confidence in drinking wine,” he says. “Once they took pride in buying rare, expensive wines. Now they want a good bottle at a good price.”

The same is true of food. “Americans now want to eat more simply, more casually,” he says. Thus, the winery turns out an accessible cookbook rather than one you page through a couple of times, then add to the stack on the coffee table.

SWISS CHARD WITH POTATOES

This dish from Rosa Mondavi can be served as an appetizer or, with a dash of vinegar added, as a salad.

1/4 pound pancetta, sliced thin

5 tablespoons olive oil

3 cloves garlic, lightly crushed

2 pounds red or white boiling potatoes

3 pounds Swiss chard

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon wine vinegar, optional

Dice pancetta slices and render over low heat until crisp and all fat has melted. Drain pancetta on paper towels. Pour off all but 1 tablespoon fat from pan. Add olive oil and garlic to pan and reserve.

Scrub potatoes well and cut in half. Cook in lightly salted water until just done, about 15 minutes. Drain, then peel while warm, if desired.

Trim and clean chard and separate stems and leaves. Cut stems into 1-inch pieces. Cut leaves crosswise into 1-inch shreds. Cook stems in lightly salted boiling water until just crisp-tender, about 3 minutes. Add leaves and cook about 1 1/2 minutes longer, until chard is just cooked through. Drain well and transfer to serving dish large enough to hold chard and potatoes.

Cut potatoes into bite-size pieces and add to chard. Heat reserved oil and garlic over low heat until garlic is golden. Discard garlic and toss oil with pancetta, chard and potatoes. Season well with salt and pepper. Add wine vinegar, if desired, and toss well. Serve warm.

Makes 8 to 10 servings.

Each of 8 servings contains about:

213 calories; 564 mg sodium; 8 mg cholesterol; 10 grams fat; 26 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams protein; 1.75 grams fiber.

GRILLED CHICKEN WITH MEXICAN SPICES

2 (2 1/2- to 2 3/4-pound) chickens

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves, preferably Mexican

1 tablespoon coriander seeds

3 cloves garlic

1 to 2 tablespoons lime juice

1 teaspoon salt

Split chickens in half along breast and backbone, rinse well and pat dry. Lightly toast cumin, oregano and coriander in separate batches in small skillet. Grind cumin and coriander. Crumble oregano. Combine in small bowl. Press garlic into bowl, or mince fine and add to bowl. Add enough lime juice to make medium-dense paste. Stir in salt.

Loosen chicken skin and rub spice mixture between skin and flesh. Marinate 1 hour at cool room temperature or up to 4 hours in refrigerator. Remove chicken from refrigerator 30 minutes before grilling. Prepare medium-hot grill. Grill chicken skin-side up 5 minutes. Turn and grill skin-side down 5 minutes. When chicken is golden brown and marked with grill, place in 400-degree oven 15 to 20 minutes, or until juices run clear. Or finish chicken on grill, turning frequently, until juices run clear. Let stand 10 to 15 minutes before cutting pieces in half and serving.

Makes 8 servings.

Each serving contains about:

162 calories; 347 mg sodium; 54 mg cholesterol; 11 grams fat; 1 gram carbohydrates; 14 grams protein; 0.28 gram fiber.

GRANDMA’S POUND CAKE

Margrit Mondavi likes to serve this cake with a salad of finely cut fruit such as apples, bananas, oranges, pears or tangerines tossed with juice of a Meyer lemon and 1 teaspoon sugar, if needed. The recipe came from her grandmother.

1 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

6 eggs, at warm room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Grated peel of 1 lemon

2 tablespoons Cognac or brandy

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups sifted unbleached flour

Cream butter in large bowl of electric mixer about 5 minutes. Add sugar and continue beating until very light and fluffy, 5 to 8 more minutes. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping bottom and sides of bowl. Add vanilla, grated lemon peel, Cognac and salt and beat well. Fold flour into mixture in 4 additions.

Pour batter into buttered, lightly floured 2-quart bundt pan or 9x5-inch loaf pan. Bake at 325 degrees until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 60 to 80 minutes. Cool cake in pan on rack 20 minutes. Turn out and serve warm or at room temperature.

Makes 8 to 10 servings.

Each serving contains about:

516 calories; 430 mg sodium; 221 mg cholesterol; 27 grams fat; 60 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams protein; 0.09 gram fiber.