Dear {NOMEUTENTE}
there is nothing to do: when abroad, the visit card of us Italians is pasta. Sure, we are the masters of first courses since they exist almost only in our cuisine after the entrée and before the main dish that in Italy is announced by pasta or ravioli or risotto. Risotto, however, is less immediate and finds it difficult to make its way and become popular while pizza is an absolute totem having very special circuits and lives. This is why Identità New York was characterized by even more pasta recipes and classes, with the Americans extremely careful to every step and bite of preparations signed not only by Italian chefs such as Cracco and Scabin, but also by French ones as Alain Ducasse and Sylvain Portay and by an Italo-American like Mario Batali.
And every time the al dente (underdone) cooking has to be explained. From the astonished faces you understand that it is a bit like explaining a miracle: either you believe in it or not. As it happens with rice, other peoples love rice and pasta that are overdone to us. It is difficult to make understand the idea that tastiness and enjoyment of a certain first course are due not only to the taste of the sauce but also to the consistency of pasta and that the latter is more important than the sauce. A poor or ordinary sauce can be forgiven while overdone spaghetti can not. But to many foreigners it is good also overdone, because they are used to eat it this way.
Final note: Pasta with Salad by Scabin will be a milestone for future Italian summers.
Paolo Marchi
Texts by Gabriele Zanatta. Pictures from New York by Francesca Brambilla and Serena Serrani |
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Meyer, the Maialino and a pasta-based Sunday The Maialino in New York City offers an outstanding breakfast at 2 Lexington Avenue, which means the Gramercy Park Hotel. A pearl in the necklace of Danny Meyer, it basically is a Rome-style heating house offering some digressions such as Bolognese Fettuccine, Grilled Trout and Trenette with more or less pesto. Meyer is a monster of skill in understanding what the public asks for; we don’t remember that he missed a restaurant also because if one starts with difficulties from the beginning he closes it within one month to plunge into another project.
Italian restaurant owners, those who also have an Italian identity card, are ready for war against those like him who have embraced Italian cuisine (Meyer, class 1958, knows Rome very well since he has studied and worked there as a tourist guide and our cuisine as well since he has attended cooking stages) adapting it to their palate, which after all is the palate of the Americans. And this is not all: they meet with the critics’ approval – this is the charge – because journals, magazines and the web are full of Americans exactly like kitchens and restaurants. They speak the same language and they understand each other at once.
However, it is also true that places like the Maialino are real war machines with dozens of covers almost any time of the day thanks also to a greatly varied offer and very little snooty attitude. Generally speaking, everybody there helps those who sit at the table and not vice versa.
And now I come to pasta. In the Sunday menu, letting aside entrées, first and second courses with side dishes, charcuterie and cheeses, all written in Italian with following English translation, a pasta-based tasting menu stands out: “Sunday Pasta Tasting”, 55 dollars and 30 more for the matching wines. Four recipes: Spaghetti with cabbage and prickly lettuce pesto, Trenette with cod, tomato and basil, Black Tagliolini with mussels and chili pepper from Calabria and finally Garganelli with rabbit and olive ragout; as a dessert the Torta della Nonna (Grandma Pie). What about the executive chef? Nick Anderer. Ladies and gentlemen, dinner’s ready!
pmar
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New York, four authors around pasta To me Identità New York 3 has been a great edition because I have seen four chefs interpreting pasta in a completely different manner from how we are used to. Each one the result of extremely personal horizons: Mario Batali has cooked a perfect ravioli for the American taste, having quite a thick dough and a stuffing full of strong tastes, oriented to the taste of the natives.
At the beginning of the class by Davide Scabin I was almost worried about him going on twirling his tagliatelle. But during the lesson he showed a great mastery of the raw material resulted in a perfect dish, Pasta and salad. The day after, he drew the public crazy at Eataly with a provoking and charming Mac and cheese, Monograno fusillo and Grana Padano cheese cream: we have counted 270 people run up in 40 minutes!
I have appreciated a lot also the dish by Carlo Cracco, extraordinary in proposing again Pickled egg tagliolini, a classical dish seen from a surprising perspective for the American public. What about the class by a master as Alain Ducasse? See our fusilli accompanied by 6 different sauces all hand-made using an old mortar reminded me some simple Japanese restaurants where people placed a bowl of spaghetti in the middle of the table and 7-8 sauces around it to dip it in. Another idea which has always thrilled me.
Riccardo Felicetti
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Mario Batali, ravioli stuffed with Italy Those who read about Identità New York have certainly noticed the specific weight of pasta on the overall food in the third edition of the event, held last October at Eataly. Dominating. It couldn’t be otherwise for this Italian food which, more than many others, is undergoing galloping growth rates abroad.
Mario Batali was the chef who opened the third edition. Or «the man worth two ministries», to say it as Scabin. Letting aside his profile on twitter, with over 360 thousand followers, he has chosen to base his performance exactly on that symbol, taking the second way at the crossroads between dry and stuffed pasta, as many Italian and similar Italian chefs in New York do since they are still little used to experiment with dry pasta.
The Ravioli stuffed with red beets and ricotta cheese, black chick-peas and black garlic by Batali were hiding a background concept, summa of the chef thought: «The importance of the shopping», he started off in a crowded Scuola, «because we have to choose explosive ingredients erupting freshness». To be more specific: «The ricotta cheese shall be made really last minute, like the one we can find next door at the Union Square Market which has a great lactic acidity. The ravioli shall not be gummy as a cheesecake, as we/you Americans like it, but well cooked. And the stuffing shall not have liquid residues. ».
Most important of all «Do what I do, don't do what I say». Letting people understand that in the process of making pasta and afterwards inserting the stuffing it is crucial to observe the gesture more than listen to the words of the author. Watching carefully all the actions of the chef who cuts, slices, and stuffs. In this way a grating of Grana Padano cheese, the careful finishing in the pot with basil, tomato and black garlic («fermented like the Korean kimtchi ») sauce and even the showy slicing of thistle on Scabin’s back, an improvised chopping-board, make sense.
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Davide Scabin: the devil wears pasta Davide Scabin pasta king. In fact, there is already a collection of anecdotes about the chef from Rivoli and the sum of its chapters would be enough for the draft of a book: «The devil wears pasta». New York is the last explanatory note of the fertile relationship Scabin-Felicetti, a way to see pasta from a filter that didn’t exist before.
Who has never tried the Maccheroni shake? It is difficult that one of our readers could answer «me». It’s easy, on the contrary, that the American public has never heard of it. Before the 13 of October, however, when swarms of boys (and girls) have suddenly thronged the booth of the pasta factory in Predazzo at Eataly to listen to the quadripartite instructions given by an unbridled Mister Combal: «Open it, pour it, shake the fusilli, eat it! ».
The day before Scabin fascinated everybody with its Pasta and salad, a dish which puts an end to «tidy chefs, driven by hi-tech and lasers: let’s get back to unforeseeable events, the pleasure not to know the final result. Let’s have an end to studied gastronomical performances: today I want to do like those who open the fridge to prepare pasta, without having the slightest idea of what they are going to find or how it will turn out in the end».
And how did it come out? Excellent according to a chef from Miami, onlooker among onlookers: «I never ate anything so delicious». That is concentrated veal gravy with slowly melting butter. Vinaigrette whipped with garlic «that luckily here in America you don’t reject like we Italians do» and onion. Then a bouquet of strong herbs: thyme, marjoram, rosemary, garlic, sage, spinaches. All in a salad-bowl with Felicetti egg tagliatelle, the addition of black truffle caviar and Grana Padano cheese dehydrated before going on the plane. «Real Italian fast food» Scabin declared slyly in the end «a pasta dish that can be prepared in 12 minutes, the time needed to make a disaster but also a masterpiece». Judging by the psychedelic look of the fellow-guests, we wouldn’t talk about a disaster at all. |
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Prickling the egg of tagliolini: Carlo Cracco In the endless dualism between dry and fresh pasta there is a tertium which is datur: pasta which actually isn’t pasta. That is all those solutions which take the design from the countless shapes of Italian tradition even though they have nothing to do with wheat, emmer or “pure and simple” egg. Pasta which isn’t pasta and doesn’t share its substance, but rather its idea.
In New York the third way was covered by the adventurer Carlo Cracco on board of his Egg yolk tagliolini, a masterpiece but only to us who have known it for some time now within our domestic borders. Here Egg yolk is that renowned prickled egg created 10 years ago and then also “fit” in the book.
«A dish» the chef from Vicenza has stated at Eataly «that I have created to turn upside-down the place of the egg, since then no longer a complementary element but the body bolster of a dish, the icon of my cuisine». The prickling is preceded by the separation of the white from the yolk and it lasts 7 hours among coarse salt, sugar and bean purée.
A war-horse among the more pawing of contemporary Italian cuisine, that day of fall tasted with the surplus of white truffle from Alba, which wasn’t what people could imagine but «a precious potato that we have dehydrated» to isolate the famous aroma. A dish of dry “pasta” to be eaten by hands because it has no seasoning which stains. A meal which alternates clearness and depth of thought, the marks of our chef.
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The fusillo and Ducasse’s “habileté manuelle” Single Felicetti fusilli laid down in 6 containers, each one with a different sauce patiently prepared with mortar and pestle by Alain Ducasse and the executive chef Sylvain Portay of the Adour at the St. Regis in New York. A micro Mediterranean hexacompound in a sauce made of olives, edible boletus, white beans, tomatoes and Sicilian tastes, anchovies, cherry vinegars. «Ah, l'habileté manuelle!»exclaimed the Master upon completion of the dish. |
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Alessandro Dal Degan: between cool and cold The dish in the picture is created around the eternal idea of cold spaghetti and come directly from La Tana in Asiago (Vicenza). We let to the chef Alessandro Dal Degan to explain the origin of the idea and its execution: «The original plan», he tells «was to prepare a fresh, summery, and typically Mediterranean pasta dish.
Actually our intentions passed directly from fresh to cold. So a very thin spaghettino, to be cooked very quickly and instantaneously cooled off, was created. We dress it with mint oil, basil and ginger and then with hand-cut dattero tomatoes. To give grit a powder of dried capers, a few olives from Taggia, flakes and cream of Parmesan cheese. To end up we add iced emulsion of water, oil, and anchovies». Every bite a different taste.
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Rotondo: the escaped fish is back The Salad of paccheri and European lobster by Michele Rotondo from the Masseria Petrino in Palagianello (Taranto). The dish dignifies a very poor tradition of the lower Ionian Sea, the Apulian pasta with escaped fish: those who couldn’t afford fish used to cook pasta placing a sea stone covered with seeds in the cooking water, to give an idea of fish. Rotondo reproduced the stratagem but at the end of cooking he added a noble ingredient, raw European lobster cut into strips, spiced with marjoram, thyme and lemon peel in infusion at 30°C. Outstanding simplicity. (picture by Antonio Vasile) |
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RECIPE/ Pasta Marshmallows by Gilmozzi Pasta marshmallows by Alessandro Gilmozzi, a clever sweet snack signed by the chef of the El Molin in Cavalese (Trento) Alessandro Gilmozzi.
Recipe for 6 persons
for the pasta
500 g Felicetti pennoni
100 g acacia honey for each liter of water
peanut oil to taste
Cook pasta for 25 minutes then dry it in the oven at 50°C for 5 hours. Cool and fry in peanut oil. Dry oil from it and stuff.
for the marshmallows
500 g sugar
3,5 dl water
30 g liquid glucose
30 g fish glue (soften in cold water)
2 whites of egg whipped to a froth
Icing sugar
Maize starch (or dried blackberry powder)
Flour of candied emmer spaghetto to get the marshmallow aroma
Procedure
In a small pot have the sugar melt with glucose and water. Bring the mixture to 120°C. Add the fish glue with the help of an electric whisk or a planetary mixer and white of eggs whipped to froth until it seems a gummy meringue. Add the aroma. Stuff the pennoni.
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