Dear {NOMEUTENTE}
I will never be grateful enough to Riccardo Felicetti and Davide Scabin for creating, in the exhibiting area of Identità Milano 2013, a pasta eating-house which I could visit only on the occasion of the last supplementary shift of Tuesday afternoon, that is almost at the end of the event.
Those who know me a bit are aware of the fact that I’m not a faithful apostle of tradition intended as passive reverence of the past. I love great dishes, both old and new ones. I try to understand why a chef interpreted a recipe in a certain way rather than in another and in Scabin’s head I find the Treccani encyclopedia of cooking combined with the Manual of the inventor, history and future together.
On Monday 11 in the Auditorium he told us how he has been charged of thinking about the menu for the astronauts the NASA will send into orbit in June. Lasagna is among the dishes. Poetry and dream. A carrier rocket which launches a truly Italian menu into space, that the chef from Piedmont has studied with Moreno Cedroni in order to guarantee each dish a three-year-long life.
Lasagna is actually history, very well known by everybody, but how good and valuable is a cool beer given to the thirsty in the desert? The same is for Davide’s pasta eaten at thousands of kilometers from the planet Earth. The perspective is completely changed and it becomes absolute poetry.
Then Tuesday came with the last table at the eating-house and that tagliatelle with the butter curl on it. I was touched my way. In Italy we have demonized butter, but in some cases it exalts a recipe. Butter is mum, is comforting while oil is male, it lashes the spirit. We cannot respect one and ignore the other.
Paolo Marchi
Texts by Carlo Passera, pictures by Francesca Brambilla and Serena Serrani
|
| |
Riccardo Felicetti: fourth time lucky When, together with Paolo Marchi, we started thinking of devoting a day to pasta within the congress Identità Golose, we imagined a place where chefs could talk about and cook pasta in all its variations, without limits.
After attending the fourth edition I believe that our idea has become true and I like thinking that the participants to the congress may express themselves freely, interpreting one of the most important foods of our cuisine. I take this opportunity to thank Paolo and the whole organization of Identità Golose for the excellent work done, especially in the complex backstage. And last but not least I thank Eleonora Cozzella who for four editions has contributed to the success of Identità di Pasta with competent elegance.
Riccardo Felicetti
Pastificio Felicetti
(on the left in the picture with Davide Scabin)
|
| |
Baronetto, from Piedmont to Sicily Matteo Baronetto dedicated to his region a Raviolo stuffed with tongue and parsley mayonnaise, reference to the classical boiled tongue with green “bagnet” (sauce): meat is cooked in the classical way and the parsley mayonnaise is traditional too (whipped with sunflower seed oil), then a bit of toasted cumin to give a spicy scent and a small salted lemon (cooked in the syrup with salt it becomes almost candied giving sour and sweet notes) brunoise.
Then, other two dishes. We move to Sicily for The Leopard Timballo (“The burnished gold of the covering, the fragrance of sugar and cinnamon given by it were only prelude of the delicious sensation coming from inside when the knife was breaking through the crust…” etc. etc, the masterpiece by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa tells). Here, it also reveals touches from Cracco and Baronetto with the short pastry (aromatized with cinnamon, like a drizzle of custard giving sweetness and spicy notes to the stuffing) including also marinated egg puff-pastry, a classical element of the restaurant located in via Hugo and the greedy final touch of anchovy sauce to complete it.
Finally, a new proposal, only recently added to the menu: the rigatoni with red wine sauce shown in the picture, tribute to Gualtiero Marchesi: wine, port, carrots and shallot, when reduced add the meat sauce and serve with new peas and diced marrow: sourness, greasiness, and vegetables. |
| |
Christian Milone fil vert Christian Milone starts from the subject of the year at Identità Milano – respect – a concept flashes through his mind – peace and love – and therefore a color – green. Complicated? Frantic? Imagination to the power? Or simply a play? It doesn’t matter; what matters is the result at the table, the fil rouge becomes fil vert and following it the chef plates two inspired total green ideas.
The first one: Parsley gnocchi with clams (picture), revenge of the humiliated aromatic herb belonging to the family of the Umbellifers («The most mistreated and misused herb in modern cuisine») which plays the main role under the shape of juice, meeting potatoes to obtain green gnocchi without flour, bound with methylcellulose. It marries the clams cooked in the microwave oven for a few seconds, a little water obtained from the shellfish when it opens is the base of the dish together with a drizzle of oil aromatized with garlic and anchovies, cross-reference from Piedmont. A bit of grated Grana Padano cheese et voilà.
Second proposal, Green tagliatelle with geranium juice: the dough, without eggs, is mixed with centrifuged purslane, a weed we will end by loving; when whipped, it gets a gluey consistency which binds well with flour, very much like the made in Japan “udon”. |
| |
Scabin, the lasagna astronaut The series of three chefs from Piedmont ends up with the talent of Davide Scabin, who presents common lasagna… even though spatial: it’s the Combal space lasagna (dehydrated and aluminum vacuum packed) created for the astronauts of the Iss, International Space Station. The chef from Rivoli starts talking about sterilization, storage... even though the goal will have also the common gourmand smile and not only some executives at NASA: creating high quality low cost food which can be mass-produced in order to lift the cross-bar of our daily diet.
The lasagna (but it works also for other delicacies Scabin presents duly packed: risotto with Genoese pesto, egg-plant parmigiana, vegetable caponata, tiramisù) is rehydrated directly on the bag placed into the steam oven at 70°C for five minutes; it can be preserved for 36 months and is totally “salt free, organic, ready to lunch”. To sum up the announcement of a revolution made without using the guillotine but with top quality raw materials.
He then talks about another project too; 25 great chefs cooking at the canteen of the University of Pollenzo for one week each. Because Scabin’s aim is always the same: making everyday food become a healthy pleasure. Deserved applauses and rightful thanks.
|
| |
Roberto Petza: insular carbohydrates However, there isn’t only Piedmont; the carbohydrate mosaic of the Peninsula leads us, for instance, to Roberto Petza’s Sardinia, who is the tributary of pasta also for his location: Casa Puddu, which hosts his restaurant S'Apposentu takes its name from the family who founded the artisan pasta-factory Puddu, closed after almost fifty years of life in 1996 in Siddi, the heart of the Marmilla region.
While waiting for the line of dry pasta which will bear his mark – it will come out very soon in four shapes: spaghetti, penne, malloreddus and tacconi, a sort of maltagliati, all manufactured with a blend of local autochthonous stone ground durum wheat – the chef proposes the above mentioned Tacconi with cold bisque of raw prawns (marinated in a juice of lime and honey, their heads whipped with ice, shallot and basil to obtain a gourmand sauce) and wild asparagus to give a bitter scent.
Then he turns to the sweet with pasta reinterpreting the seadas; he cooks the usual maltagliato, made crunchy because it has been cooked (or better overcooked) in water and then into the burning oven, in a “broth” of honey aromatized with orange; it shall be served with fresh ewe’s-milk cheese ice cream over a bed of fruit and vegetables.
|
| |
Rizzuti: burnt wheat and triple turnip «I want to give voice to the South with simplicity, from my point of view that is from the town of Potenza» is the plain program statement by Frank Rizzuti, who represents well his cooking made of raw material and territory well combined with the best techniques. We are in the Basilicata region and here are the burnt wheat strascinati (picture), a poor dish with a dressing that is a real hymn to Southern Italy: dry tomato, buffalo cow’s mozzarella from Campania, anchovies from Cetara, capers, oregano…
The water from the mozzarella isn’t thrown away but it is used to sauté pasta in the frying pan. «I want to celebrate the great products of my land, make a sort of “summary of Southern Italy”»he says and in the hall his mission seems to be accomplished.
Second dish a new interpretation of the classical Pasta with turnips, which becomes ravioli made of (and with) turnips, because the centrifuged turnips are part of the dough; then their tips are sautéed and put into the stuffing with garlic and anchovies, and at the end used to dress the whole dish. In short, a triple turnip. The garnish is made with powder of pepper from Siena and bread crumb soaked in the anchovy water.
|
| |
Genovese strolling around Asia We go to Rome with Anthony Genovese and Luciano Monosilio. The first one presents a different interpretation of the subject and therefore instead of pasta he introduces three version of puff pastry (crunchy, with red miso and with parsley) which goes with snails cooked in butter together with a miso zabaione obtained with a reduction of vinegar, white wine, shallot, and egg yolk to which miso is added, coming from the 24 month fermentation of soya beans, and another reduction made with citruses (bergamot, red grapefruit and lemon) with a garlic sauce.
Then the chef specialized in Italian products with Asian spices plates a dim sum of Chinese inspiration with a stuffing of quince and speck accompanied by lacquered roe, blackberry caviar and smoked chestnuts (picture). The quince is slowly cooked for 4 hours in a syrup made with port (1/3), red wine (2/3), bergamot, Jerez vinegar, cinnamon, black pepper and cloves; the roe is lacquered with bitter-sweet caramel (blackberries, bilberries, lime, cardamom, cinnamon and cloves, add sherry and reduce), its bones are used also for a well reduced broth with spices and fruit and vegetable brunoise. The dim is first steamed and then sautéed in the pan to make it crunchy.
|
| |
Monosilio: carbonara today and tomorrow The cooking of Luciano Monosilio, chef at the Pipero al Rex in the homonymous hotel in Rome, is Roman-style too: with his “Carbonara today and tomorrow” he plays between past and future. He celebrates the classical version («Which comprises all techniques: smoking, boiling, marinating...») by whipping the spaghetti with eggs first and then dressing it with a salty zabaione (one egg yolk each 50 g of pasta, ewe’s-milk cheese and Parmesan cheese, pepper). It is a recipe which made him famous, “a marketing plate” he confesses.
Then he compares this newly interpreted tradition with a creative proposal which includes: egg yolk marinated in the miso; topinambur sauce recalling the “pulp” inside the cheek while the dehydrated peels recall the crunchy part; powder of licorice roots to give a balsamic aroma instead of pepper; chamomile aromatized rye bread crumble; smoked green tea powder to obtain a barbecued scent; candied lemon zest to help chewing; daikon sprouts to give a spicy flavor given that there is no pepper. Final spraying of ethyl alcohol and cheek grease, pasta is diced and cold, basically a second lead. |
| |
Gilmozzi: pasta on the high seas The class from the gifted Monosilio was preceded by a final Nordic halt, destination the region Trentino with Alessandro Gilmozzi. He proposes Kamut tagliatelle dressed with dehydrated flower smoked Alpine butter, musk sprouts passed through the pacojet with source water and sheep’s sorrel, caviar of barbecued carrots, then centrifuged and spherified; it will look like trout caviar while the real one is whipped with peanuts oil, thickened and placed in the siphon as if it were a very light mayonnaise; finally, deer popcorn to garnish the plate (meat ripened for 21 days then put into the microwave oven) and give a crunchy sensation.
Dulcis in fundo here is Pasta fruit, a sort of rumtopf, a preparation-dessert from the German tradition consisting of fruit soaked in a syrup of rum and sugar and preserved into jars. Pasta replaces the fruit and is vacuum preserved with elder juice for several days; it is served with a sorbet of apple-potato (Granny Smith apple from the Val di Non, red potatoes from the Val di Fiemme: they are cooked and then passed through the pacojet), dehydrated orange, raspberries, sheep’s sorrel to give a sour taste and an orchid essence oil.
|
| |
Pasta with oil, garlic and pepper by Taglienti A durum wheat parenthesis also during the long marathon of Identità Naturali: Luigi Taglienti works on the extraction of tastes through water and interprets in a new manner an extremely popular dish: Spaghetti with oil and garlic. The garlic peels are vacuum cooked (6 hours at 65°C) with one part of Maldon salt. A cold squeeze of well ripened olives from Taggia is used instead of oil. Spaghetti is cooked in the garlic peels water (from which the smell of lightly fried onions and garlic) with no salt, sautéed into the olive squeeze, which gives a chromatic and winey component, and finally garnished with one parsley leaf.
Federico De Cesare Viola
|
| |
|
