Dear {NOMEUTENTE}In the first article of this newsletter Riccardo Felicetti reminds us that the World Pasta Day is celebrated in Istanbul today . The pasta-maker from Trentino writes: “There are 130 pasta-factories all over Italy and 400 shapes of pasta”. Here is the secret of a real expert: go and find as many shapes as possible.
It could seem taken for granted since we are Italians but it isn’t at all: how many people know 30 shapes in detail? It isn’t even 10%, but I doubt that many could reply in one or two minutes. I think that, due mainly to laziness (we pass off as lack of time), we end up by eating three or four different types and then we moan about boredom at the table. It would be time for Italian chefs to offer more shapes in their menus, searching for the most suitable sauces to thrill their customers. Do I ask for what is impossible?
Paolo Marchi
Texts by Gabriele Zanatta |
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Istanbul, Aidepi and the World Pasta Day Last Friday October 25 the World Pasta Day was celebrated in Istanbul, Turkey. The event has taken place since 1995 and involves all the category associations of the main producing countries, with the aim of asserting the culture and global consumption of pasta in the world. I’m here in my quality of president of the pasta group of Aidepi, the Italian Association of Confectionery and Pasta Industries.
25% of eaten pasta in the world is manufactured in our Country, which is a top producer. Behind us the United States and Turkey. The USA that celebrates also the National pasta month, a full month dedicated to our food, will host the next edition in New York City. During the day we will analyze together the world market of pasta and durum wheat, our reference raw material. In spite of the rumors, the consumption of pasta is steadily increasing all over the world. And scientists confirm that its nutritional values, the balance between carbohydrates and vegetable proteins, and the glycemic index make it the ideal element for any kind of diet.
Today, Italian pasta-makers will mainly assert the uniqueness of the tradition and production of Italian pasta based on 600 years of history, passion, families, great capacities and technologies. We want to stress once again that pasta isn’t a commodity. On the contrary, it is a special product like a few others. There are 130 pasta- factories scattered around Italy and 400 shapes of pasta and this variety creates deep noticeable differences between one product and the other. This represents an endless wealth that leads us to defend Italian pasta in every possible occasion.
Riccardo Felicetti |
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All the pasta of Identità New York How much pasta at Identità New York ! Many shapes and a lot of knowledge, and also a surprise at the dinner on Saturday October 5, when Massimo Bottura presented spaghetti which had the shape of spaghetti but not its soul, given that it was obtained from « a potato which wanted to become a spaghetto”, after all achieving its purpose.
The pasta cacio&pepe (pasta with sheep’s milk cheese and pepper) of the Combal.zero was even more surprising. As Davide Scabin was obliged to remain in Italy due to a fractured leg, in Manhattan there was Beppe Rambaldi who at the end of the class given by Mario Batali (ravioli) and Cesare Battisti (penne with peppers) offered an unpredictable doughnut because it was salty and for its stuffing: the sauce of the typical Roman tonnarelli. And what about the pasta, Felicetti to be precise? Overcooked, worked and used instead of flour. A pleasant result, also for the lightness of the dough.
For the first dinner, on Friday 4, always Rambaldi prepared the Scarpetta. It isn’t a new shape of pasta, but the very Italian gesture of mopping up the sauce remained in the dish with a piece of bread. Great idea, with warm bagna cauda in the soup dish and a handful of conchiglie in a bowl, to be taken one by one by hand and dipped into the soup. A game which cheered everybody up, since at the table the less you drag your heels the better it is.
Finally durum wheat semolina spaghetti cooked by Sara Jenkins. The owner of the Porsena and the Porchetta, in a Tuscan mansion with its olive trees and oil, said two concepts to be underlined while she was preparing pasta with tomato sauce. The first one: “Those who don’t understand tomatoes cannot understand Italian cooking”. True. Then, while preparing sauce with six or seven different kinds of tomatoes she thought of her fellow-countrymen: “In America they love drowning pasta in the sauce, a portion shall be half pasta and half sauce but in the end you taste only the sauce. On the contrary, I think pasta shall remain prominent and when you eat it you shall taste it” This is true too, provided that it is of authentic quality.
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Scabin and the reproduction of Cacio e pepe We have widely written about the great class by Davide Scabin at Host (subject: “The technology which makes new generation eating-houses save”) here. We deferred to talk about pasta dishes.
The chef from Turin was waving precooked spaghetti, ready in the fridge at the right point of cooking, «but in this case the labor cost would be extremely high because there aren’t yet cheap machines suitable for this purpose». «I would like to whet you anyway», he said to the public, «because I have just compressed the same spaghetti in a tablet 4.5 cm wide and 2 cm high. Spaghetti tablets: you put them in the water in their bag and you get them well ordered as when they ware in the box».
Right, we are on the moon (may be with Luca Parmitano). But let’s go back to earth, to balance cash slips: «If you owner of an eating-house», here is the anathema, «buy glue, you will cook glue: important pasta shall not only be boiled, it shall be cooked. It shall mature without getting broken, spoiled or flaked. You will pay what you saved at the source with the empty seats in your eating-house. Cooking great spaghetti with clams to be repeatable for 300 people is possible. It’s enough to fear mass-cooking».
It is also possible to «Cook pasta Cacio e pepe without having the cheese thicken and the pasta become heavy indigestible food, a frequent problem if the portions to be prepared are even only more than 4. Doing what? Cooking by infusion: 2 minutes in the boiling water and 9 minutes in infusion. And using the Cacio e pepe squeeze, which borrows the same system of the McDonald’s ketch-up, a concept which hasn’t been invented by me but exists since when the club sandwiches appeared». It’s the Cacio Combal (in the picture by Stefania Ciocca), made with Spaghetti Monograno Felicetti, excellent sheep’s milk cheese and the unconventional endive, a dish conceived to make 5, 10, 100 portions of cacio e pepe without heavy cheese clusters. A project-dish good for all the enlightened eating-houses of the future.
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Milone, there’s cheese but it isn’t seen From the 18th to the 22nd Identità Golose concentrated a series of classes at Host, the International Exhibition of the Hospitality Industry. The leitmotiv? “Chefs twodotzero”, innovation brought to the kitchen thanks to all those more or less complex machines that every day allow chefs obtaining the best from the different cookings and preparations they apply to the same ingredients.
Pasta played an important role with Scabin (read above) but also with Christian Milone, chef at the Gastronavicella of the Trattoria Zappatori in Pinerolo (Turin). Former professional cyclist, he opened the way in the afternoon of the second day.
«I started when I was 25 but I really had to train to stay awake because before I either cycled or slept». Once I learned to stay up, I immediately decided to turn upside down the preparation of the Gnocchi with 4 cheeses of my parents, changing it into a good and tasty dish without being heavy as it used to be. Cheeses are all from cow’s milk: blue toma from Piedmont, 24 month seasoned Grana Padano and Seirass (the fourth will be added at the end: it’s the eliminated water) and they are vacuum packed for 2 hours (plus 5-6 hours rest) a trick which allows to extract the cheese taste while using tapioca flour to thicken.
What about the pasta shape? Rigatoni, for its great toughness and the possibility to mop up sauce. The Sichuan pepper completes well the dish while removing the fat from it and further cleaning it. A 2.0 dish that is «a dish which comes to the table and doesn’t puzzle you». Technique to the service of taste that in the end hides cheese as well as all the effort made. (Picture by Stefania Ciocca)
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Bologna, the Bottega dei Portici new opening The competing events in Bologna and Modena, which have opened again the debate on the paternity if an iconic recipe, weren’t enough. At the Portici too, the only starred restaurant of the Emilia regional capital, they decided to use the hands of their chef from Campania Agostino Iacobucci, always careful to the fusion gleams with Bologna, to offer pasta. This is how the Bottega dei Portici adjacent to the restaurant (picture by Stefano Rossi) was opened, which sells fresh tortellini with raw stuffing prepared by hand by 5 sfogline (persons who roll the dough) who work continuously and can be seen while working, together with bags of the classical broth and mini-portions to be taken away in heat containers (it is also possible to shop online at www.labottegadeiportici.com).
A parade of stars was present at the opening day, which took place during the celebrations for the five years of activity of the restaurant: beside Vito and Fausto Arrighi there was Massimo Bottura: «The essential thing is considering the past with a critical sense. Therefore Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, ham, a bit of mortadella and very little nutmeg that in the past was mainly used to cover defects. At the Francescana there are two sizes, the medium one loved by the natives of Modena and the little finger size, typical of downtown Bologna. A Japanese prepares them, on the basis of a recipe by Lidia Cristoni revised by my mother. And to those who ask me: ‘Raw or cooked?’, I answer: ‘It doesn’t matter, provided that it is good’»: the final corollary to Lévi-Strauss.
And Niko Romito: «In the Abruzzi we have a lot of recipes with broth and stuffed pasta I love: the essential thing is updating the software of Italian regional tradition», even with the antivirus of talent. The host Agostino Iacobucci explained: «When I arrived tortellini were bought from outside; to prepare them at home we asked for the help of the house cooks until we fully grasped the ideal recipe». Grand final with the sfogline under the porticoes and a pastry-board shaped cake for the sexiest belly-button of history.
Alessandra Meldolesi |
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The side-dish spaghetto by Luigi Taglienti The dish in the picture shows one of the odder food of an excellent dinner at the Trussardi alla Scala, the best restaurant offering “Ligurian cuisine” (with many inverted commas, we will go deep into it in the future) not only in Milan but also considering the many restaurants of the region of origin of its chef Luigi Taglienti, now afflicted by many dull restaurants which overshadow the work of increasingly scanty heroes.
It is called Conserva and we don’t remember a dish so neatly separating spaghetti from tomato. It is what remains from the live memory of a summer in the garden of the young Taglienti: the tomato of the perino kind, powerful to the nose and the sight (as soon as the dish arrives at the table, a pleasant scent of fresh tomato preserve and just grated Parmesan cheese can be smelled) cooks into a big pot at 50°C for one whole night («we take it out at noon the day after»). After so much heat it oddly maintains its original elongated shape.
What about spaghetti? It is cooked in current water, slightly oiled with Ligurian oil and sprinkled with fresh Parmesan cheese. It slides down like a side dish, almost even in the background compared to the basil leaf intentionally oxidized to remind that gesture of our mothers who, before closing the preserve jar, used to put the basil leaf by surprise «just in case». |
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Enrico Facco, crunchy Valdaosta Enrico Facco, 30 years old from Padua, an eclectic, kaleidoscopic cursus honorum, able to efficaciously sum up in one single menu traditional cues, middle-class revisions and a certain dose of creativity, ingredients which allowed him to create the gastronomical success of the Ad Gallias in Bard, Aosta. The pasta proposals follow the same path and represent a strong point: «We have recently bought a press to prepare maccheroncini, caserecce, bigoli and orecchiette maison», he explains.
The golden rules? «I most of all love fresh pasta obtained with many yolks, not only for a matter of taste but also of texture. I like to taste it almost… crunchy in my mouth». So tagliatelle (preferably with meat and/or vegetable sauces) or tagliolini (picture) which is better matched to fish as it is thinner. «We have it sauté, always white and expressly cooked, with a drizzle of scented oil to enhance the pure taste of flour and egg» before adding clams or raw scampi or amberjack carpaccio. Stuffed pasta is more carefully prepared («The one I love most? Pumpkin and castelmagno cheese tortelli, with a final grating of truffle. It is a sort of hymn to the characteristics of the Po Valley») but the more peculiar recipe is a very classical dish of this area, the chnèfflenè.
They come from the nearby Gressoney and are small buttons made with flour, eggs and milk, typical of the walser culture which has its unique enclave of the valley right in the area of Gressoney (in other areas of settlement of this ancient community of German origin they have other names, they can for instance be compared to the spätzle of the Italian and Austrian Eastern Alps).
It is a thick dish, «more tasty than elegant»: the dough is scented with nutmeg and pepper, seasoned with goat’s crottin, wrapped in speck, sprinkled with chive and whipped with Alpine butter, «the good one we find in this area when the cows have just finished cropping aromatic flowers and herbs». Instead of the crotten Facco he has also tried the castelmagno cheese, the pit sheep’s milk cheese, that from Pienza or Parmesan cheese: good, «but it isn’t the same thing», the dish has its tradition that has to be respected.
Carlo Passera |
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Massimo Mentasti: conchiglioni and memory We are in Gavi, in the Resort of Villa Sparina and in the fall menu of the restaurant La Gallina we discover a dish of pasta with ragout which is apparently banal but if we go deep into it we realize it is a real memory travel for any gourmet. The version from Piedmont of the Emilia sauce was tasted with the family, on Sunday, preparing it with an ancestral rite dating back to the Savoy families. The ragout by Massimo Mentasti is almost unstructured in its aspect, made lighter in calories and perfectly balanced in tastes in the dish.
Pasta is short and concave, the perfect shapes to harmonize scents and consistencies. The Conchiglioni Monograno Felicetti are the protagonists of the dish together with a reviewed version of the Fassone ragout, cooked at low temperature. Together with the meats, carrot, spring onion and celery take the lead, which will be cooked separately in the pan and placed in the dish in a scientific manner to allow tasting each mouthful in its integrity.
Béchamel is made only with milk aromatized with nutmeg and Parmesan cheese. Once pasta is cooked, Mentasti places a quenelle of ragout sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and baked for a soft grating, inside each conchiglione. Very important, he will drip béchamel, celery sauce, and tomato sauce with a slight spicy note on the bottom of the dish together with crunchy dices of carrot, spring onion and celery to close the vegetable circle. A jump into the taste memory.
Cinzia Benzi |
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Fabio Sgrò, the grit of the Marcelin What is a boy who, at 22, said to the owner of the restaurant where he was working and is now partner and chef "may be in a few years I’ll buy your restaurant" made of? Fabio Sgrò, chef at the Marcelin in Montà d'Alba (Cuneo) is not tall but has nothing to envy as regards decision.
Fabio embraced the saying by Bottura "food isn’t only fuel for the body" even though not before attending the school of two amazing grandmothers, especially in the kitchen, who taught him the central role of pasta in feeding.
It all started with his grandmothers but also with his first teacher Massimo Camia who enchanted him with his "bronze dies" through which he extruded durum wheat pasta for his restaurant. The teacher made experiments with pasta and the pupil still do it, even if he shows an opposite trend to the classicism from Piedmont which foresees pasta rich in egg and very tasty stuffing. "For a period I had in my menu a cannellone made with rice pasta, stuffed with European lobster and spinaches and served with cream of potato, mullet roe and Balik salmon caviar, a dish also thought for celiacs".
Fabio Sgrò sets his tables to communicate his territory. When he digresses, the territory comes out anyway. The same is true for pasta, obtained from the flours of a biological mill of La Morra. A dish of pasta is enough. In the dish which made Fabio "great" for the first time and which has been present in the menu for three years now upon request of his fans, Fabio extruded common sense and created a dish to eat pasta, cheese, meat and fruit all together. After being overwhelmed by laughs in the kitchen, he took himself seriously and created Kamut pasta tortelli stuffed with duck, bottom of raschera cheese and bilberries. A recipe showing the balance that can lay over a moment of madness.
Martino Lapini |
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RECIPE/ Big Agnolotti by Lidia Alciati On Sunday October 27 Identità Golose organizeD at the Opera San Francesco in Milan a charitable lunch on the subject Piedmont meets Argentina at the table out of regard for Pope Francesco (100 euro minimum donation, reservations at the number 02.49455885). Among the dishes in the menu signed by Cesare Battisti, Mauro Brun and Bruno Rebuffi, Davide Scabin, Emiliano Lopez, Gianluca Fusto and Andrea Besuschio there was one of the most famous first courses of Italy: the Agnolotti by Lidia Alciati. Her son Ugo Alciati, chef at the Guido, now in the estate Fontanafredda of Serralunga d’Alba (Cuneo) will prepare them.
The agnolotti by Lidia
Recipe for 6 persons
for the stuffing
1 carrot
1 onion
150 g pork loin
100 g sausage
200 g veal shoulder chuck roast
200 g green endive
100 g spinaches
4 eggs
50 g Grana cheese
20 g butter
50 cl extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
for the dough
500 g flour
11 yolks
10 g extra-virgin olive oil
3 g salt
80-100 g cold water
a bit of semolina
Procedure
for the stuffing
Brown the diced carrot and onion in oil. Add the pork loin having it fry until golden brown over the high heat and then roast it over the low heat. Around half cooking add the shoulder chuck roast, the endive and the spinaches. Cover and cook for at least 2 hours. Let it cool. In the meantime thicken the cooking gravy, filter it and keep it aside in a small pot. Chop the meats thinly. Add eggs and grated grana cheese to the mixture adjusting salt and pepper.
for the dough
Sift flour on the pastry-board, create a hole and put yolks and water inside. Knead energetically until obtaining smooth and homogeneous dough. Cover it with a wet cloth and let it rest for about half an hour. This time elapsed, remove one piece and pass it through the pasta-making machine starting from the higher thickness to the thinner and lower one.
When the pasta stripe is ready, lay it over the board and start placing small heaps of stuffing on one side of the stripe, at a distance of 2-3 cm one from the other. Cover with the free end of pasta and have it adhere well.
Using the pastry cutter, cut the row of obtained agnolotti in the direction of length and then separate each of them. Bind each agnolotti with a pinch, the famous “plin”. While waiting before cooking them, place them over a cloth slightly sparkled with semolina.
Cook the agnolotti in salty boiling water for about three and a half minutes, drain them and sauté them in the roast sauce you kept aside, with butter.
They can be served in a napkin or in a dish with a napkin, simply cooked in the meat broth and drained.
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