Dear {NOMEUTENTE}
When we Italians understand and take for granted that difference is made by work and not catchwords, it will never be too late (and clever). Who cares about ordinary artisan pasta passed off as excellent only because it is mixed with kilos of rhetoric? In many cases we still hold out on easy to sell myths. And when somebody takes the trouble to get information about Italian cooking, he finds the catch in it; Chinese pizzoccheri, South American bresaola (dried salt beef), chick-pea flour from Egypt, Turkish pistachios, fresh fish which isn’t certainly fresh from our sea, home-made ice cream which is close to the industrial one, truffle oil which has never seen a truffle, regenerated fresh-baked bread, artisan pasta made on commission…
More or less 97% of Italian pasta is produced industrially; is it possible that it is all simply “money”? Is it possible that in the world of spaghetti and macaroni the equivalent of the farmer’s wine is perfect by dogma? I have a lot of doubts. A kind of pasta is good… because it is good and not because a flyweight (at economic and quantitative level) has produced it. It would be like saying that all fish restaurants on the seaside serve wild fish, fished on the spot, only because they are facing the sea, the old tale of the trustworthy fisherman, the owned gozzo, the grandfather and the magic hook. Everybody is free to believe in it but not everybody is fool.
And this is not all: if on the one side niche producers have people dream on the other side the made-in-Italy is known in the world thanks to big industrial companies. The real worry should be to have many good industrial producers perfect to create the base of a really valuable pyramid where tastiness increases the more we climb it. Is a pushpin really interesting? What’s the sense, especially in this period, of taking care only of the success obtained by a 3% artisan production?
Paolo Marchi
Texts by Gabriele Zanatta
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Felicetti: on pilgrimage to Gragnano I’m just back from ‘A Pasta, an important moment and event for our whole sector. Relatively speaking, going to Gragnano to me has been like going to the Mecca for a Muslim. Because we in Predazzo have acquired 100 years of experience far from the cradle of pasta. And this is how I explain the metaphor of the pilgrimage: a travel to the origins of our world.
They have taken us to see the places where the culture of wheat can be breathed in every ravine: the streets once bordered by pasta factories, the valley of Mills, via Roma, piazza Marconi (in the picture by Gianni E. Cesariello). Narrow lanes that make us shudder when thinking of the logistic difficulties to go through them on horseback one century ago and by tractor-trailers later. At that time the makers of pasta used to share hard work, hot, presses, too hard or too soft mixtures. Details that have led me to feel like a natural brother in arms.
During these days I have breathed an enthusiastic attention towards tradition offered by fantastic people ready to welcome us to their laboratories and pasta factories to explain everything to us, quite unbelievable if we think that until a few years ago we all guarded our secrets jealousy. On the contrary, I found no envy or jealousy but co-operation, a desire to exchange precious information. The real will to create a movement through which communicating our extraordinary world.
In this sense I would like to thank Giuseppe Di Martino, chairman of the Consorzio Gragnano Città della Pasta, a wonderful person who, together with the other members, is giving a very personal mark to the movement, making the miracle: you should see us talking about shapes, extrusion pressures, drying diagrams, sizes of dies. Exchanges of opinions between people having different ideas and habits, such as the choice of more or less coarse semolina, the water mixing temperature, the quantity and quality of gluten. Details which make the difference. Or about dies with thicker discs than those used by us, boundary makers of pasta. They are the teachers of enthusiastic students who sometimes succeed in equaling their models. The important thing is never avoiding comparison.
Riccardo Felicetti |
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Mauro Uliassi prefers it dry and short No Gragnano? Ouch. It could be your last opportunity to taste the half rigatoni with salted mullet roe, pistachio and rosemary, a dish which has dazzled us at Uliassi last month (the picture is by Alla Casa del Pincio). Now it is no more in the menu. Actually the half rigatoni is still there but it is served according to a recipe from the regions Lazio and Marche: with stockfish tripe, cacio di fossa (cheese from the pit) and pepper. Who knows how the hundredth declination of a shape that drives the chef from Senigallia mad tastes to the palate.
«The sauce», Uliassi tells us, « enters very well into the cylinder of the half rigatoni made of pasta from Gragnano as it would fill also a pipetta or a ciabattone. Closed short pasta is perfect to contain while the long one needs a liquid to soak it from outside». To the chef, the competition between dry and fresh pasta doesn’t exist: «Fresh pasta is difficult to become overdone. However, to me it isn’t pasta in the real sense of the word: Italians like spaghetti with tomato sauce because it seems chewable». The dish you have missed (unless you start imploring unceasingly there) «originated at home: I had some salted mullet roe from Sicily. I have prepared pasta with garlic, oil and chili pepper, added basil to refresh and mainly rosemary tops that I grow here outside: fresh one is balmier than the cooked one, it increases the resin and wooded sense which is good for this kind of dish». The pistachio is missing, «which actually shall be added in the end: I had a bit on the radiator at home. My wife is crazy about it. So I decided to add it in extremis. But don’t forget, it shall be really crunchy».
If on the contrary you are crazy about fresh pasta and game (the latter, a real passion to Uliassi, has never been enough shown off by us) you can try the Potato ravioli with game financière sauce and caramelized hazelnuts. It is still on page 5 of the menu of the restaurant in Banchina di Levante. |
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7 macaroni in the pre-dessert by Scarello 7 flavors around one macaroni. They have been prepared by Emanuele Scarello (picture by Joel Duran) when closing the gala dinner of the S.Pellegrino Cooking Cup 2012. Did you say closing? Yesss, it is a dessert despite or better, thanks to the macaroni, carbohydrate with a perfect crunchiness to combine the different flavors contained in it, that is coffee Namelaka , jivara chocolate cream, Sfusato Amalfitano lemon cream, sponge and lime, peas and mint… «I have preferred milk-tones», the chef from the restaurant Amici in Udine explains «because they are more suitable than fondants to the hot weather of these days. I have also played with a ragout of semi-candied fruits and vegetables – for instance celery, carrot, and cucumber – to give crunchiness to the whole dish». The macaroni, cooked in the sugar syrup (14 minutes instead of the “standard” 11 minutes in water) and then cooled in the hazelnut oil by Pariani, is served as a pre-dessert at the restaurant in Udine.
The experiments on durum wheat by the big chef, already well known to us pasta weirds five years ago for his “illusions of pasta”, do not end here: «We are working hard on “impregnations” of pasta with the most varied tastes. We shut in aromas». Waiting for further developments, enjoy the Burnt wheat tagliolini with raw oyster and lemon peel now in the menu: «It is cooked in the oyster water. On the table we add a soup of extra-virgin olive oil: it is perfect to bind the oyster iodine, the citric refreshing lemon and the smoky note of pasta obtained from this wonderful flour from Apulia».
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The fish lasagna by Cedroni: naked or jeweled? We know everything about the Clandestino in Portonovo, province of Ancona. And also that this year the dinner sushi menu is Fiaboloso, that is inspired by fairy tales. And that it includes, for instance, The Ugly Duckling. However, the kiosk is open also for lunch, the right moment to taste a delicious sandwich prepared by the sous-chef Federico Zanasi while salt makes itch under the swimsuit: Eggs e bacon with tuna ham and eggs and ginger sauce; Baccala with stockfish salad and stockfish skin mayonnaise or with swordfish bresaola, salad and mustard sauce. Just to mention three of them, after which no more itch.
It is mainly the moment to read the hundredth tasty chapter of the saga, lasting many decades, where Moreno Cedroni prepares well known meat dishes using fish: the gnocchi with ragout is served with a sauce of cheese, pepper and crayfish; the cutlet is made of turbot and the matriciana is prepared with fish sauce. And the lasagna in the picture, different from the “classical” one made with tomato, mozzarella cheese, and basil with Grana Padano fondue that Cedroni has just cooked for the thousand guests of Un anno contro lo spreco. Fish lasagna, which reflects the bather who plunges into the sea in front of the Clandestino: almost naked.
It is certainly easier than the designer and jeweled version that can be found at the Madonnina del Pescatore not so far: «Made with crayfish and cuttlefish but also coconut sauce and parsley at the base», Cedroni sums up for us. «And raw squids and red crayfish on top. Then, a grating of lime and a cuttlefish ink sauce to give strong color shades. Black stains which makes it aggressive». As it is suited to a femme fatale.
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To Girasoli pasta is... a pizza The restaurant Butterfly in Lucca, telephone +39.0583 307573, expresses a brilliant example of spirit of modernity insisting on tradition, a continuous and amusing comparison between seafood and meat, a mixture of styles and suggestions that perfectly bind in a happy and gluttonous contamination. The chef Fabrizio Girasoli is good because he doesn’t fear to try new dishes and unusual matches in a geographical background where being pioneers isn’t easy. But what a satisfaction to be the first one to express a different way of cooking!
The chef expresses an extraordinary passion for pasta. Winning choices which are never banal and accessible also to less trained palates. And also amusing because they disarrange the apparent order of tastes and the fancy of the person sitting at the table who finds, in his/her mouth, the thought of the chef as well as the essence of the dish.
The dish in the picture (by Claudio Mollo) is called Like a Pizza, a fusillo sautéed with anchovy sauce, crunchy bread-crumbs and a smell of garlic; the pasta is then placed (not sautéed together) on top of a whipped sauce of tomato and basil and dressed with drops of milky buffalo cheese. A good example of his creativity which involves in particular stuffed pasta such as the Cappelletti... Bread and Mortadella: traditional Bologna sausage, pistachios from Bronte and squacquerone cheese fondue, a melting-pot of very well balanced tastes. Or again the little soup of shellfish turned upside down: Shellfish ravioli, little squids cooked in a pan and bread cooked over charcoal.
However, the real love of Fabrizio Girasoli is durum wheat pasta that he chooses personally, looking curiously for it also when he goes to other restaurants: «Pasta», the chef explains, «shall always be the core of a dish and not simply a support or an element to give consistency: it is a fundamental part, its taste shall stand out and it shall be the protagonist. The shapes I prefer? Short sleeves, spaghetti and, paccheri». To sum up, now and ever W pasta: «An excellent product which costs only a few cents. The world is finally realizing it».
Valeria Carbone |
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How to hop amatriciana pasta P&B, pizza and beer, are not necessarily a theorem especially since Birra Moretti has announced the Premio Birra Moretti Grand Cru for young chefs and sous-chefs under 35 and the candidates have all answered with pasta.
With the help of the theme of the first edition, that is dishes from Italian tradition, the first phase was characterized by a real flood of recipes where one of the beers of the Moretti family was deliciously matched to the queen of carbohydrates. From pasta and beans to the more renowned Amatriciana pasta no one of these versions, from the most traditional to the most creative one, has failed in expectations.
This year that the contest is at its second edition the challenge is open because no limits are set to the talent of the young chefs. The Italian first course may find many different interpretations given the free theme of recipes, with the only need to have beer as ingredient and match.
To stimulate those undecided we take the example of the Hopped Amatriciana which has guaranteed access to the following phase of the contest to Marco Mengoni, chef of the restaurant Opera 22 in Prato. Spaghetti is cooked in the Grand Cru and gets those bitter notes which are dissolved by the sweetness of the updated traditional sauce, that is onion, tomato wafer and Mora Romagnola pig’s cheek.
Claudia Orlandi |
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And calamarata (squid shaped pasta) became a beer In the brewing slang the collaboration beers are special beers made from two or more brewers who combine strengths and ideas to create recipes which are usually quite original and creative. This is also the origin of the last recipe of the Birreria, the brewpub (with annexed micro-brewery) on the last floor of the building hosting Eataly New York, conceived on the occasion of the visit by Andrea Lecchini, head brewer of the artisan Brewery Birra del Borgo in Latium.
Andrea and Peter Hepp (the resident brewer who has recently replaced Brooks Carretta who came back to Italy for the opening of Eataly Roma) decided to make an India Pale Ale (Anglo-Saxon type, high hop content, once destined to export to India for the consumption of the British citizens) extremely scented but with a fuller body than usual obtained adding “unusual” ingredients: Belgian yeast for the fermentation and unmalted durum wheat to give more complexity and a little acidity to smell.
Since the last ingredient wasn’t available they thought to replace it with something where durum wheat is a protagonist, that is...pasta! So they went for shopping among the shelves of Eataly choosing an artisan pasta rich in starch but with a low content of proteins to avoid excessive foam (in fact proteins are responsible for the foam in the beer). The choice was the calamarata (squid shaped pasta) of the pasta-factory Afeltra in Gragnano(picture by Giovanna Palleschi).
Pasta – 2 kilos every 500 liters of beer but a “double brew” method was used for a total of one thousand liters – was first boiled as usual (for the second brew the two have decided to add salt to give more taste!), to allow to better extract starch and the enzymes able to transform and absorb it, and then added to malt with its cooking water. The result is an unusual Italian wheat beer called Giuseppina to follow the tradition of female Christian nouns for the beers of Eataly NY, or grandma beer to do homage to Lecchini’s grandmother.
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RECIPE 1/(Half-cold) pasta and beans by Giorgio Nava Many smiling faces and good mod at the Academia Barilla in Parma for the meeting of the Itchefs-Gvci, Gruppo Virtuale di Cuochi Italiani, a day that we widely related on our website.
The first edition of the Pasta World Championship was the core of the event, a competition won by the Japanese Yoshi Yamada author of the very classical dish Bavette with clams, mussels, squids and prawns. However, according to the technical jury (not the popular one, which was decisive in the end) another dish should have been the winner, the Pasta beans and mussels by Giorgio Nava from the Keerom 95 in Capetown, South Africa, the dish shown in the picture and conceived together with his friend-colleague Cesare Battisti from the Ratanà in Milan.
According to Andrea Grignaffini, creative director of Spirito Di Vino who was overworked by the 24 very hot tastings (in the sense of the temperature in the kitchen, stage of the competition), the dish by Nava, «with a little expense and perfectly using a mix of herbs succeeded in recovering a taste, refreshing also thanks to the lukewarm serving temperature, able to lighten and make desirable an apparently thick dish. It actually becomes smooth and gluttonous in the mouth, with the salty taste of mussels adding iodine to the legumes. A poor but rich dish. And contemporary». Here is how to prepare it.
Recipe for 6 persons
Ingredients
1 small potato
1 onion
1 carrot
2 celery stalks with leaves
500 g fresh beans
500 g fresh mussels
1 glass of white wine
2 peeled San Marzano tomatoes
fresh thyme
fresh oregano with its flowers
fresh chopped wild spinach (cut not too thin)
dandelion
leaves from the heart of catalogna chicory
wild rocket salad
silene vulgaris
fresh basil
extra-virgin olive oil
salt pepper
250 g f small shaped pasta (ditali or ditalini)
Procedure
Cut potato, carrot, celery, onion and cook in a medium pot with a good quantity of oil. Soften the lightly fried herbs, add beans and tomato, mix and add hot water as if you were cooking a risotto for 30-35 minutes. Keep aside 2 spoons of whole beans. Whip everything with the remaining peeled tomato and olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste. In the meantime make the well washed mussels open with white wine and a bit of chopped fresh herbs. Shell them and keep some of them aside with the shell to decorate the dish; cook the pasta “al dente” (underdone) in salted water. Add fresh herbs, basil, thyme, oregano, mussels and pasta. Mix and serve.
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RECIPE 2/ Spaghetti with vacuum mussel by Koyfalas Spaghetti with mussels: if mussels are quickly vacuum treated the dish is even more delicious. Angelo Koyfalas, chef from Bergamo and Greece at the head of the restaurant Del Vuoto, +39.02.94555592 for a few weeks explains everything. One name, one program. A cooking program. Complete name of the recipe: Spaghetti Cavaliere Cocco with mussels, fresh oregano and toasted bread.
Recipe for 4 persons.
Ingredients
360 g rough spaghetti Cavaliere Cocco
1 kg mussels
100 g parsley
25 g fresh oregano
200 g stale rye bread
Preparation
for the mussels
Clean the mussels and vacuum pack them; boil for 4 minutes, cool in water and ice. Shell the mussels and keep them in their filtered water.
for the parsley sauce
Turn the parsley white in salted water, drain and cool in water and ice. Whisk and sieve.
for the toasted bread
Cut the bread into small pieces and toast it in a pan with plenty olive oil and a clove of garlic. When it is completely dry, chop thinly.
Final procedure
Cook spaghetti, drain it and whip in a pan with extra-virgin olive oil and, in sequence, the mussel water, the toasted bread, the oregano leaves, the mussels and the parsley sauce. Decorate with other oregano leaves.
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Burnt wheat fagottini by Felice Sgarra Burnt wheat fagottini on a bisque and tartare of Gallipoli red crawfish scented with dill, a dish presented by Felice Sgarra from the restaurant Umami in Andria at the Ratanà in Milan during the 100% Puglia dinner conceived with Antonio Di Nunno from the Locanda Di Nunno, Fabio Pisani from the Luogo di Aimo e Nadia and Pietro Zito from Antichi Sapori (picture by Lydia Capasso). |
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