Dear {NOMEUTENTE}one day of two years ago at the Salone del Gusto in Turin – today the opening of the eighth edition - while talking of Italian cuisine in New York City Lidia Bastianich, who represents the Italian tricolor in Manhattan, told me that however good the American chefs cooking Italian style may be, they still lack that special touch with pasta, a difficult thing because if the moment when it is underdone is not seized it becomes overdone in the twinkling of an eye. Nothing so serious also because the great majority of clients, who are in their turn American, don’t see the problem given that their palates speak the same language of the chefs. Which after all happens in Italy too because in Naples, regardless of the restaurant where you ask for a dish of spaghetti, they have certainly a greater strength and soul compared to those in the rest of Italy.
We don’t have to be surprised if the Americans have a different consistency for pasta than ours. People in all countries make foreign cuisines closer to their mind and palate, trying to tame them. We do so, why shouldn’t the others do the same? I think that what we should really care for is not the faithfulness of the others to our reference points , which are a lot and well different among each others even only for spaghetti, macaroni and fusilli, but rather the fact that our recipes are made with ingredients of authentic Italian quality, sauce from real sun ripened tomato instead of plastic balls which never become wrinkly, artisan pasta from durum wheat semolina, Italian extra-virgin olive oil which shall be good not only on the label but also in the bottle, certainly real cheeses and portions refined with expert hands in the pan and without cream, the killer of any taste.
Paolo Marchi
Texts by Gabriele Zanatta |
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Identità New York: too easy making pastasciutta It would have been a good provocation to present ourselves at the outset of Identità in New York City proposing Pasta with tomato sauce and Pizza Margherita; we would have taken no risks but it wasn’t exactly what we had in mind. Ten chefs and one pastry-chef, Cristina Bowerman, Pino Cuttaia, Davide Scabin, Massimo Bottura, Gennaro Esposito, Ugo Alciati, Pietro Zito, Niko Romito,Moreno Cedroni, Emanuele Scarello and Luca Montersino, with proposals that intended to offer a panorama of Italian contemporary cuisine setting free from stereotypes. It was as if we took off the net under the trapeze. Our intention was to propose a display of today’s haute cuisine in Italy through the know-how of the above mentioned chefs. With a question: to us they are great or even excellent but would have they been the same for the public in New York City? What would have been the effect of the Smoked cod by Cuttaia? And what about the Absolute simplicity by Romito, which isn’t certainly a spectacular dish?
The smiles on everybody’s face have been many green lights even if we had given up the most renowned and historical features of our cuisine. We are gone to celebrate them later. From October 12 to 14 pasta peeped in the name of the dish by Bottura, his Bean and pasta soup in a balance between past and present, between history and the Compression of bean and pasta soup with an outstanding note: “To be clear: between Robuchon and Adrià there is my grandma Ancella”. Then the infinity of stuffed pasta thanks to Ugo Alciati with his Agnolotti, an absolute model for those who wish to engage in this enterprise. Warning: “Twenty ingredients for the stuffing. And only two brought from Italy”.
So classical pasta, not even with tomato sauce and not even of the same shape, got into the program of Identità New York thanks to Gennaro Esposito and his well-known Mixed Gragnano pasta with shellfish and small fish, shown in the picture. When I eat it, it acts on me as a reassuring drug.
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Sydney Food Festival and the huge noodle universe While in Italy people were quarrelling about Taste of Milano and Le Grand Fooding, in Sydney we enjoyed a pacific outdoor show: it is called Night Noodle Market (picture by Zanatta) and is part of the event held in October and named Sydney Food Festival directed by the Australian collaborator of IG, Joanna Savill. In the very central Hyde Park, for three days there have been dozens of Asian cuisine mini-booths, excellent in this country because of the swarms of migrating Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai who have crowded the most beautiful metropolitan town of Australia for decades. Very close to the Opera House, every night from 6.00 pm (9.00 o’ clock in the morning in Italy), the tables in the park were besieged by those clerks who, at lunch time, take away their tie to wear the surfer wet suit.
At night, no surfing at Bondi Beach: there was noodle to tame, “the Asian pasta”, an unsuitable definition as the European matrix nudel shows, an archaic German noun which generically indicates any kind and shape of pasta: from corn or rice flour, long or short, fresh or dry. Waiting to understand, from a philosophical point of view, which came first between noodle and pasta, let’s review the best ones tasted side by side to Sydney clerks. The stir-fried prevailed, those sautéed in the wok according to the two techniques of Chinese tradition: chǎo and bào (to know more, read here). The Malaysian-Singaporean char kway teow could be eaten in quintals, rice and egg stir-fried noodle, excellent in the version with garlic, eggs, bean sprouts and chive. There were the delicious Vietnamese red Banh da do, obtained from Hai Phong red rice and here served with little slices of crabs from the Tasman Sea. Not to mention the Thai noodle soups like the classical one with tofu, chicken, coconut milk, chili pepper and lemongrass. An incredibly huge universe of street-food, that sooner or later we will have to sum up in a digest.
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Felicetti and the words of pasta: drying In the genesis of pasta, the process of drying is one of the more important and «is the consequence of a very simple concept», Riccardo Felicetti of the Felicetti pasta factory in Predazzo (Tn) explains to us, «remove damp from pasta so that it can be preserved in time. That is, it hinders the processes of fermentation and decomposition so that the product can be eaten even after years».
The origins of drying date back to long long ago: «The first witnesses go back to the Sixteenth Century: in the area of Naples pasta was put to dry under the light of sun. First it was exposed in courtyards and balconies then it was moved to damp rooms to avoid the formation of cracks in the surface. At the end, there was the final drying with the exposure of the pasta to air currents regulated by the simple cyclic opening of the windows».
At the beginning of last century the process started to become increasingly more mechanical, by considerably broadening the manufacturing latitudes to places where natural drying was actually impossible: «Today», Felicetti sums up, «there are many variables at stake. To make it easier, we can say that there are two main drying techniques: a static one, which reproduces the processes of acceleration and stabilization of pasta with constant air puffs in a closed room. And a dynamic technique, which repeats the procedure several times with some pauses». Which is the best method? «There is no best or worst method, it only depends on the goals and the consumption target of the pasta factory».
Apart from technicality, besides needing a great skill the process of drying also has a great poetical value: «It is extraordinary to me to see the ability of pasta makers to extract 30% of damp from a mixture of flour and water without changing it and allowing it, when put in boiling water after months or years, not to lose any of its properties.».
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The Geometry of Pasta: a size for each sauce Yes, it is true, if you visit the website the soundtrack is the hyper-stereotyped Funiculì Funiculà. However, the author Jacob Kemedy chef-owner of the Bocca di Lupo in London, a restaurant that the journalist of the Guardian Jasper Gerard supports warmly in the last edition of the IG Restaurant Guide, vouches for The Geometry of Pasta, one of the most celebrated food books of the English publishing industry over the last few months. Together with its illustrator Caz Hildebrand already creator of the “gherkin” image of the Gin Hendrick’s, a designer who in this case draws with the abstractionist example of Kazimir Malevič well impressed in his head.
Even without going deep into the background of the two authors, the reading of the book is pleasant because it reviews the dozens of pasta sizes of our tradition, in a metaphysical version: from taiarin to ruote, from manicotti to mafaldine, from cappellacci to very fine vermicelli, with a series of recipes presented according to an important principle. Perfect pasta is the sum of only two addends: the right size and the most suitable sauce. Because, for instance, the Amatriciana cannot be prepared with orecchiette which are not suitable at all. And if you are trying to prepare the Puttanesca, why choosing the thin spaghetti while it can be prepared with several sizes of pasta from bigolo to tortiglione? An alphabet to learn to avoid sauces which match with pasta sizes like tomato with tiramisu.
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RECIPE 1/ Farnese tortelli by Chiappini Dattilo The Farnese tortelli (picture by Brambilla/Serrani) so named because they were very diffused on the noble tables of Piacenza. «They are shaped like a plait obtained from a square twisted on a diagonal», Filippo Chiappini Dattilo, chef of the Antica Osteria del Teatro in Piacenza explains, «the stuffing inside is reduced otherwise it would “soil” the dough».
Instructions for preparation:
The dough
500 g semolina
500 g 00 flour
600 g yolk
12 g salt
20 g extra-virgin olive oil
Mix the flours in the stewing-pot of the kneading machine and add the yolks beaten with salt and oil. Work with the hook. If the dough is crumbled, add some yolks. Vacuum-pack and let to rest for 2 hours.
The stuffing
1200 g ricotta from Piacenza (if it is lean add 250 g of mascarpone (mild creamy cheese))
400 g grated Grana Padano cheese Osteria del Teatro 30 months selection (from milk of the High Nure Valley)
600 g spinach cooked with butter and chopped with a knife
nutmeg qs.
2 whole eggs + 2 yolks
Work all the ingredients in the kneading machine with the leaf for very little time. Finish the stuffing with the spatula.
The Tortelli
Roll out the dough with the desired thickness. Using the pastry pocket, put little quantities of the stuffing at a distance of 5 cm one from the other and having a weight of about 18-22 g. Refold the dough, press the parts around the stuffing and cut with the suitable coxcomb mould. Using your fingers, press on the indented side. To better preserve, pasteurize and put the tortelli in the blast chiller. Cook the tortelli in plentiful salty water and, at the end of cooking, serve them with melt butter spiced with fresh sage and a good sprinkling of grated Grana Padano cheese.
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RECIPE 2/ Macaroni with anchovies, beans and tripe by TaglientiThe macaroni with anchovy filtering, Pigna beans and Piedmont fassona meat tripe by Luigi Taglienti, chef of the Delle Antiche Contrade in Cuneo and winner of the prize Birra in cucina in the last edition of the Guida ai Ristoranti di Italia, Europa e Mondo di Identità Golose (picture by Brambilla/Serrani).
Recipe for 4 persons
The Pasta
160 g macaroni
30 g filtering of anchovies
15 g candied peel of lemon from Cervo
4 cl. extra-virgin monocultivar oil from Taggia olives
2 l boiling water without salt
1 unpeeled garlic clove from Vessalico
In a high saucepan have the macaroni cook in boiling water for 10 minutes. Drain them and place them with care in a small pan with the oil flavored with the fresh garlic, add the lemon peel, the filtering of anchovies and cook for 2 minutes.
The Beans from Pigna
100 g dry beans from Pigna revived in 500 ml of cold water
2 l coking water flavored with 50 g of carrot, 40 g of onion and 35 g of celery
35 g salt
15 g stems of parsley
2 g Jamaica pepper
In a low saucepan have the beans cook on a low flame for 45 minutes, taking care to keep them crunchy inside.
Piedmont fassona tripe
120 g of esophagus
1.5 l of salty boiling water in a ratio of 30 g/liter
Scald the esophagus in boiling water for 8 minutes and cool.
Serving
Place a bit of veal thick gravy on the bottom of the dish, arrange the macaroni and finish with the esophagus, a bit of raw pressed Marmande tomato puree, a few leaves of basil from Prà and again a bit of veal gravy.
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Spaghetti with clams and pendolini tomatoes by Mauro Uliassi
Smoked spaghetti, clams and grilled pendolini tomatoes by Mauro Uliassi of the Ristorante Uliassi in Senigallia in the province of Ancona, a dish presented at the Milan congress of Identità Golose in January 2010 (picture by Brambilla/Serrani).
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