Dear {NOMEUTENTE}
The author of the book The geometry of pasta, which I describe at the end of this newsletter, has included in it a couple of articles, one of which is taken from La Repubblica of last January 11. Title: "Fusilli, farfalle, trenette: a matter of geometry". Odd enough, it has noting to do with the volume published in Italy by Sperling & Kupfer. It rather deals with an essay entitled Pasta by design published by Thames&Hudson last fall and edited by George L. Legendre, an architect who starting from a dish of spaghetti oil and garlic prepared to him by a colleague arrived to study the different shapes of pasta under a mathematical point of view. He has found and published 92 of them, with even the mathematical equation and practical suggestions to make an attempt in the kitchen.
The article underlines that “Legendre has even invented a new kind of pasta - the Ioles - a sort of spiral going into a spin like a tube-shaped Möbius strip that he wanted to call like his daughter. However, it is likely that months are needed to manufacture the Ioles: Legendre is trying to produce the first fifty kilos even though the shape is turning out to be difficult to manufacture”.
It often happens, especially when people leave their authentic field of competence and engage in something that may be isn’t totally new for them however being different. In the field of food there is a riot of improvisers, a crowd of people pretending to cook and thinking that a good palate and a correct digestion are enough to be acclaimed chefs, gastronomists, critics, master kneaders... It is true that there are hundreds of different shapes of spaghetti & Co. but they come from a long time ago, while it may happen that architects and designers want to replace the professionals of food without possessing the typical sensitivity of those who steadily work with food. Too bad, because when there is agreement around a project the results are not missed, I think for instance to the Cintura di Orione cassolette by Alessi some decades ago. Why not trying again?
Paolo Marchi
Texts and pictures by Gabriele Zanatta |
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Marchesi-Felicetti, black & white meeting While sitting at the table of Gualtiero Marchesi’s restaurant in Erbusco, the big hands of the maître suddenly presented a squared dish. The black frame enclosed the white background. In the middle, the Taoist coloring is repeated with an interlacement of white and black spaghetti. «This is my black & white spaghetti, do you like it? » the Master presses. The impact is notable: it’s an expression of pureness, the pangs which devour the most recent thoughts of the chef from Milan. Soon beauty leaves the pace to taste with the cuttlefish ink at the bottom, a sort of emulsion pedestal ready to be turned topsy-turvy by the fork, quick on staining while mixing with the pasta above.
The spaghetti is by Felicetti and the liaison between Marchesi and the pasta-factory from Trentino is recent. Riccardo Felicetti tells it to us: «Last year in May the Master called our factory: ‘I like a lot your samples of cuttlefish pasta. I’d like to place an order’. After a few days I went to visit him. He had cooked it cold, with yoghourt cream and salmon eggs. A wonderful dish, exactly like the person». The supply went on over the following months: «A few days ago, after his birthday, he called me because he had to complete the white side of his two-color spaghetti. ‘Which one do you suggest?' I suggested one from our "special gastronomy" line having the same diameter of the cuttlefish one, 1mm and 75, produced with bran from kronos wheat». Both types of spaghetti are produced with Teflon dies: «which give brightness and keep the color. Needless to say that his dish has won me over». A mutual appreciation: «?How comes that I don’t know the history of your family? Now you sit here and tell me everything', he told me. A terrific day».
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Shiqin, the magician of the stuffed pasta from Langa The picture shows the Tortelli with grey rabbit from Carmagnola and artichokes from Albenga (creamed underneath and in flakes on top) which is really a traditional dish in the land of Langa. It has been signed on the Easter’s Sunday by a Chinese chef, Chen Shiqin from Shanghai, class 1980. He is at the helm of the restaurant La Rei of the Boscareto in Serralunga d’Alba, a resort which looks down on the best Barolo crus.
Shiqin was never interested in the dumpling, the Chinese stuffed flour pasta. Or rather, he hadn’t even the time to know the cuisine of his country because he has been in Italy for 12 years, a period of time during which he has long been a trainee of Giampiero Vivalda of the Antica Corona Reale in Cervere. «He has taught me how to close the Ravioli del plin – he tells – They shall contain 3 kinds of roasted meat: beef, pork and rabbit. Differently form Chinese dumplings, whose stuffing is raw, in Italy the stuffing of pasta is always already pre-cooked». A truth confirmed also during an important stage at the Santinis: «Everybody was doing everything in that kitchen», he recalls, «I learnt from the founder of their family Bruna that great stuffed pasta stands out because of details. For instance, their delicious pumpkin tortelli count on an ingredient much less mentioned compared to pumpkin and amaretti (almond cakes): home made white water-melon sweet pickle, which is fundamental because it gives a unique sharp tone».
In his case, the raw materials to monitor for the stuffing come from Liguria, a primary reservoir to all chefs from Southern Piedmont (see the scorpion fish which accompanies his mezzi paccheri), who have to look far away from their little garden especially in the hottest seasons «because the cuisine from Langhe is good mainly in fall and winter». This is how typically Italian amazing solutions may originate: tortelli and ravioli closed with the precision typical of the Langhe and stuffed with ingredients from the South such as burrata from Battipaglia or almonds from Sicily. The dough also is the result of an important trick: «Adding about 10% of duck egg yolk. It gives more taste and consistency than hen eggs».
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Whipped spaghetti with cauliflower by Mancino In the picture the Spaghetti by Mancini with mullet roe, cauliflower and orange an extremely elegant dish signed by Giuseppe Mancino, a just 32 years old chef who has spent the last 7 at the head of the Piccolo Principe, on the last floor with gorgeous roof garden of the Hotel Principe di Piemonte in Viareggio (Lucca), one Michelin star since 2006. It is a very successful example of whipped pasta, with the spaghetti cooked like a risotto, a trick used by crafty fellows in the kitchen to keep the starch, which generally comes out from the holes of the colander, thus obtaining a much more creamy sauce.
In this case, Mancino doesn’t simply use broth to cook spaghetti but cauliflower water, a stratagem which recalls the tomato water used by Heinz Beck to cook his spaghetti with clams and tomato without tomato. The chef from Sarno, in the Salerno area, boils the cauliflowers, passes them with the Greenstar (kitchen robot to extract the juice) and then whips it with butter and iced oil. Then the orange arrives to enhance the cauliflower and the mullet roe enriches the range of tastes with a metal flavor. A great dish to eat in a couple of forkfuls and ask for an encore, this time trying the Spaghetti with broad bean water and then pecorino cheese and dried pork cheek another arrow in the quiver of whipped pastas by this big boy. Who however doesn’t disdain fresh stuffed pasta too, that he proposes starting from his unforgettable inland of Campania: the Ravioli stuffed with turnip-tops (the friarielli of his origins), Buffalo mozzarella mousse and baked little tomatoes are full of brightness. Lively coloring at least like the vivacity of tastes.
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Enrico Bartolini and a book to eat The fans of this newsletter have certainly already seized the news: Enrico Bartolini chef of the Devero in Cavenago Brianza – and recently also of the Tuscan eating house Perillà in the Orcia Valley – has signed a book that is simply entitled “Pasta” (published by Reed Gourmet, 288 pages, 62 euro), the first one of the collection Mono which will count a second book very soon (it will be “Rice” by the Cerea brothers). The book Pasta by Bartolini gathers 120 recipes with beautiful pictures divided into 3 categories: fresh, stuffed and dry pasta. They are traditional dishes and also recipes fruit of the solid whim of the boy from Pistoia, class 1979 and a crystal-clear talent nobody can doubt about.
«We wanted to propose a path about preparations and bases for the different categories», Bartolini explains «They are all dishes I eat with pleasure, which I prepare with techniques selected according to my point of view and a great attention to ingredients». Each recipe is accompanied by a key detail: «In the recipe of the Spaghetto all’amatriciana (with dried pork cheek, tomato and pecorino) for instance, I carefully explain the kind of pork cheek to select (the Senese pig from the Podere Forte, editor’s note) and the temperature to melt it in order to obtain a good result. On the contrary, for a most creative dish like the Buttons of oil and lime with cacciucco sauce I show the kind of flour necessary to obtain elastic dough, suitable to contain an oily emulsion stuffing like this one. I also talk at length about obtaining the best from the fish in the cacciucco (Tuscan fish-soup)». Important secrets accompanied by precise notes on dough, stuffing, time and way to cook and dry. |
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RECIPE 1/The pea pasta by Francesco Sposito The Pea Pasta by Francesco Sposito of the Taverna Estia in Brusciano, Naples, a dish presented at Identità Milano 2012 (picture Brambilla/Serrani). The pasta is actually made with peas because the noodles are 35% made of dehydrated legume flour while the rest are common wheat and bran flours.
Recipe for four persons
For the noodles
160 g flour
40 g bran
100 g pea flour
3 egg yolks
3 whole eggs
Clean the peas, parboil them in water for 1 minute and dry them in the oven at 60°C for 4 hours. Then put them in the blender to obtain the flour.
In the cutter, mix first the flours and then the eggs at the highest speed for 15 seconds. Shape some homogeneous spheres and vacuum pack them to eliminate air from the dough.
For the baked shallot
12 shallots
1 l extra-virgin olive oil
Put the shallots in a pan and cover them with oil, bring it to 70°C and cook for 5 hours.
For the bacon
100 g sliced bacon
Place the slices of bacon in a baking-pan, put it in the oven and let them dry for 30 minutes at 80°C, then chop them coarsely.
For the clam broth
1 kg clams
2 celery ribs
30 g parsley
30 g sea lettuce
4 l water
Oil and garlic
Pre-heat oil and garlic and then add the herbs and clams. Have them brown and pour the water, when it boils filtering and chilling.
To plate
Clean and cut the shallots, add them to 4 tablespoons of cooking oil and warm them up. Cook the pasta, drain it and whip it with the broth and a drizzle of shallot oil. Add the crunchy bacon and a sprinkling of well seasoned Podolic caciocavallo cheese.
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RECIPE 2/ The noodles ice-cream by Alessandro Gilmozzi The Kamut noodles ice-cream with butter, cardamom and emmer by Alessandro Gilmozzi of the restaurant El Molin in Cavalese, Trento (picture Brambilla/Serrani). The noodles are first cooked and then whipped in the mixer.
Recipe for 4 persons
For the ice-cream
4 whole eggs
100 g sugar
4 grains of crushed cardamom
20 g butter
Warm whip the eggs with the sugar without exceeding 65°C. Melt the butter in a souté, add the cardamom and the noodles previously cooked for 9 minutes. Blend with an immersion blender and place in a Pacojet.
For the emmer cream
300 g emmer spaghetti
3 l water
30 g fir honeydew
100 g milk
10-15 g icing sugar
Put water and honeydew in a pot, bring to boil and cook the spaghetti for 2 minutes at the maximum boiling point. Then let in infusion for 7 minutes to allow for a slight candying of the pasta. Drain and whip with the Bimby adding 200 g of cooking water. Place in the Pacojet container and deep freeze. Pacotize and sift, adding milk and icing sugar until obtaining a creamy consistency.
For the calendula and chamomile wafer
1 l water
5 g chamomile
5 g calendula
50 g maize starch
Bring the water to boil and add chamomile and calendula in infusion for 10 minutes. Then thicken with the maize starch, lay a silpat and dry in the oven at 60°C for 7 hours. |
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Massimo Bottura: tagliatelle al ragout revisited Two forkfuls of Tagliatelle al ragù by Massimo Bottura have now become a rite at the Osteria Francescana, among a Balsamic vinegar lacquered eel and a Compression of pasta and beans. In the preparation of the chef from Modena the dough breaks with tradition because of the higher percentage of yolks and the use of embryonic eggs, the so called "ballotte", which give the dough a more hardened aspect. The ragout preparation is summed up by the maître-sommelier Giuseppe Palmieri: «30% of the ragout is pork sausage, cooked in a pan without greases. The rest is cheek, belly, tail and tongue vacuum cooked separately, beaten with a knife and thickened with bone marrow that replaces butter». Bravo! |
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And the Dripping became a dessert (of mixed pasta) The Pasta Dripping by Gualtiero Marchesi in Erbusco, Brescia. The dish, served as dessert, is a development of the well-known Fish Dripping by Marchesi, homage to the American painter Jackson Pollock. In this case, the dish is focused on mixed pasta «a product that has always fascinated me» the Master explains. It is cooked in water without salt, cooled and laid on a layer of custard upon which drops of raspberry, mint and hot chocolate sauce are poured. The dish is completed adding caramelized pistachios. |
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The book: The geometry of pasta Caz Hildebrand is a renowned graphic designer who signs the book La geometria della pasta, (The geometry of pasta) published in Italy by Sperling & Kupfer (picture taken from the blog Gorgelous.com) with Jacob Kenedy (one single n) chef and co-owner of the restaurant Bocca di Lupo in London, SoHo district, representing almost the perfection of Italian cuisine in the British Capital City according to the Times.
“Perfect shape – perfect sauce”, is the half-title on the cover of an intriguing volume an idea from her, cultivated for a decade until involving a cooking mind to better match shapes and dressings, as she was struck by reading Pellegrino Artusi and he was fascinated by “centuries of Italian creativity, industrial and agricultural activity, and hunger and politics”, all the time needed to create “a multitude of shapes and tastes of pasta”. With an important remark: “A few kinds are the result of one single hand and mind and the same is true for the sauces accompanying them. (…) The surprising diversity we admire in nature is reflected in the microcosm of pasta”
We start with a few useful information, salt, greases, quantities, cooking, then some basic information about semolina or egg pasta, three different types of tomato sauces, then green fire to 270 pages of “Pasta from A to Z”, from Agnolotti to Ziti, all well explained recipes, clear, illustrated with essential black and white drawings, a book that is easy to read going beyond the simple book of recipes because there is cleverness and it’s a pleasure to know that such an effort comes from London, where certainly pasta isn’t a gospel truth like in Italy.
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