Dear {NOMEUTENTE}
I’d like to reassure Riccardo Felicetti who in the news below wonders "What could the speakers ever do, next year?”, given the extraordinary quality of the lectures held during Identità di Pasta 2014. The theme being dried pasta.
It’s always the same: when the level of an event is extraordinary, it is difficult to imagine something better, in the spur of the moment. Later, however, after all the clamour has gone and the various moments and all the feelings have been metabolized, you start thinking about the future scenarios, about new horizons and paths that will lead those who are interested in a certain topic into a new orbit.
It will be the case this time too, because when you speak about pasta, you’re are only on the edge of a world that is not limited to dried formats. Not counting that we are not always facing a first course and that it is important to study the relation between pasta and sauce too. The sky is the limit.
Paolo Marchi, content by Andrea Cuomo, photo by Francesca Brambilla and Serena Serrani |
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Felicetti: beyond the Italian style first course At the end of every edition of Identità di Pasta I happen to sum up what happened and ask myself: "What could the speakers ever do,next year?”. The growing enthusiasm shown by the chefs who have alternated themselves on stage and of the many people who attended the lessons this year made me think that it is necessary to give new honour and dignity to dried pasta, on all the tables, in Italy and around the world.
What was created in front of us goes beyond the concept of “Italian style first course”, it doesn’t mortify it, in fact it highlights its cultural and traditional value, but demonstrates that if the roots of traditions are deep and solid, the branches of research can move further without losing contact. Thank you, Paolo, thank you all at Identità Golose, thank you Eleonora Cozzella but above all, I must thank the fantastic 8 speakers who allowed us to spend a great day dedicated to pasta: when the fruit of one’s work is glorified in this way, you can only be happy.
Riccardo Felicetti
(in the photo, next to the signature of all the speakers during the fifth edition of Identità di Pasta). |
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Mauro Uliassi, when the wheat gets tough... The “Scabinian” truth is now proved: pasta can also be a first course. And please note: also. After all, on the stage of Sala Blu 1 during the fifth edition of Identità di Pasta, within the tenth edition of Identità Golose, we’ve seen pasta in all courses: starters, second courses, desserts. The event, organised as always in collaboration with producers Felicetti from Trentino, had no borders nor limits, except the desire to to rehabilitate dried pasta once and for all, despite many people would think it is less suitable than fresh pasta for high cuisine. Another commonplace that collapsed during this long Tuesday in Milan.
The manifesto for durum wheat pasta was given, straight away, by Mauro Uliassi, the protagonist of the first lecture. The chef from Senigallia confessed his favour for this raw material, despite the fact that when compared to fresh pasta, it has the defect of a prolonged cooking-time, multiplying the chances for a mistake. However, when the pasta gets tough, the tough start to fight, and Uliassi adores its chewability.
Once given the basic rules (1 litre of water and 10 grams of salt for 100 grams of pasta; and the cooking being half traditional and half in the pan, with a “liquid” sauce) here comes the Smoked potato soup with roasted fish, in which pasta in fact is only an extra. It then becomes the protagonist in Linguine Antonio Mattei, dedicated to a late friend, a travel companion during the historic trip to Polynesia in which Uliassi’s koinè coloured itself, once and for all, with exoticness: and in fact here we can find the aroma of lime and coconut, and a European spider crab taking the part of the crabe de cocotier, a sort of earth lobster.
And then there’s the Fusillone with squid liver, sea urchins, blended chicory and chopped sorrel, wood sorrel and rhubarb, a miraculous balance between different flavours. And again another acrobatic act, namely the Mezzo rigatone with salted anchovies, black truffle and ciauscolo (photo). Speaking of getting off with a good start. |
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Sasajima, we’re all umamists  Thing is, however, that as Italians it is hard for us to think of pasta as a truly universal dish, given all the diffidence with which we value those who try to interpret it in an open minded way. You need courage and curiosity in order to accept the “umamist” version of pasta given by Yasuhiro Sasajima, chef at Italian restaurant Ghiottone in Kyoto. Someone who confesses, while sniggering, that his two-year-old son loves spaghetti “muuuuuch” more than rice.
Umamist, we said. Indeed, as Sasajima is convinced that the typically Oriental fifth flavour can be perfectly matched with the sweetish flavour of the Italian style carbohydrate. This is how the maccheroncini that Sasajima cooks in a chicken stock with seaweed is born, filled with minced chicken, scallion, chives, salt and then fried in a little oil and then served as a side for a chicken and leek purée and an egg cooked in thermal water (at 63°C, the dish in the photo).
Of course, some people in the room pull a face when hearing about Grana Padano served with red prawns, soft turnip meringue and yuzu, a Japanese citrus fruit, in the following linguine. The tasting, however, removes any doubt and leaves us with a little less prejudgement. And thus more free. Thank you, Yasuhiro. |
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Bartolini, tradition is easier said than done  The return to tradition (though up to a certain point) is celebrated with 100% Tuscan Enrico Bartolini who now moves deftly under the fogs of Brianza, at Devero in Cavenago Brianza. The author of a book with a definitive title (“Pasta”. What else?), Bartolini floors everyone by breaking every rule regarding recipes that are the ABC of home cooking, despite preserving their essence.
Pasta aglio, olio e peperoncino (garlic, oil and chilli pepper) – an around-midnight classic – ends up enclosed in a biscuit which unsettles, amuses and finally satisfies (photo). The transgression of the most quoted and popular first courses, namely Carbonara, is even more courageous: he makes a backup of this by eliminating the difficult mastication and summing up the ingredients in an egg yolk with surprise. Another step forward and the most ancestral taboo of Italian cuisine is also challenged: over cooked pasta.
In the tomato&basil, pasta is only evoked in the shape of the starch released by the over cooked pasta and used to thicken the tomato sauce which then appears in the shape of a gelatine. The end is more comfortable: the Spaghetto with eel fills Sala Blu1 with an irresistible smokiness. |
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Alija, caserecce made in Bilbao A vertigo. This is what you feel when attending Josean Alija’s show, someone who brings the avantgarde of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, where his Nerua is located, into our mouth. Alija is a “muina” chanter, a Basque word summing up the concept of nucleus, essence. This was the title he gave to his book.
And in the name of muina he makes pasta noble just by taking it into consideration, and philosophically highlighing its simplicity, emotion, its capacity of telling itself from a historic and geographic point of view, and its necessity of a few and defined ingredients. And then there are the more physical aspects, such as texture, tactile looks, the wheat flavour that perhaps is second only to bread crust.
His Caserecce with Anglet pepper and salted codfish is a misleadingly simple dish, hiding a rainbow of flavours thanks to the cooking of the pasta in three differently aromatised stocks. Later, the Caserecce with sea urchins, eucalyptus and black pepper transmit a hieratic emotion. Finally, Carbonara is back as Carbonara in the Franck O. Gehry version: turnip spaghetti, egg yolk, Iberian pancetta stripes and nutmeg. |
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Giuseppe Iannotti, Sannio superstar There are places that are near and very far. Places that exist less than others, placed in atlases printed with an invisible link. One of this is Sannio, one of the many “Far South” places in Italy that never make the headline news. Giuseppe Iannotti of Kresios in Telese Terme, the first starred restaurant in the history of the province of Benevento, says that some time ago a lady arrived to his restaurant: after reading the good news in the paper, she had travelled for 25 km in order to see that star in person. An anecdote that makes you smile but most of all shows how Iannotti’s homeland is far from the gourmet empyrean.
Let’s not consider the case when someone from Campania as him, gets the idea of interpreting pasta as a starter (Penne&Salmon quoting a popular dish in the 70s with a philological rigour that redeems the pop provocation), as a first course (the Beans&Oysters in the photo, summing up his “few ingredients, many attributes” philosophy) and even as a dessert (tagliolino in a cannolo shape which becomes an encyclopaedia of flavours from Sannio: annurche apples, hazelnuts and Strega Alberti). Full steam ahead! |
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Scabin’s naked pasta  Davide Scabin, chef at Combal.zero in Rivoli, near Torino, presents his risqué temptation, namely naked pasta. Dresses are available, and they’re sexy too. But they are kept aside, piled up in a corner, like after lovemaking. The idea, therefore, is that of presenting pasta – as long as it is from great firms and in large formats – in its bare form, next to food that are not a simple condiment. In the same way as pasta is not just a side dish, as in a debatable German tradition.
Another theorem, that of pasta served with two pieces of cutlery. Why not? With chopsticks, as in “street food” with the salad (and not in the salad), where the use of sticks has an ontological meaning, forcing people to reflect on what is happening in the large cup they hold in their hands. Another, slightly junk-food hint is given by the nachos served on a Piedmontese bagnacauda sauce in which they need to be dipped, in what we could call a “Felicetti dipping”.
Finally, pasta can become a paste to be modelled in the shape of arancini and sofficini, to be filled according to one’s liking. The dream, however, is that of a Spaghetto with tomato and basil. It looks simple. «I never included it in the menu – unrestrained Scabin confesses – because for me it’s like the top of the mountain. Perhaps it is with this that I will finish my career». In other words, the first and last (course). |
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Niederkofler, high-flying Carbonara  The high-flying pasta is that served by Norbert Niederkofler, mountain climber and gentleman. A person who doesn’t like shortcuts: the last extreme project at Rosa Alpina’s St Hubertus in San Cassiano is to offer only dishes created with products from the nearby mountains. Facing spaghetti and rigatoni becomes a Dolomitic climb: of course, it can be done, but you need to be very good.
This is why NN encourages the return of wheat cultivation in Alpine valleys, which has risked zero degrees. His Felicetti kamut linguine finish their cooking in a veal sauce enriched with local smoked ricotta, milk chips, oil-preserved mushrooms and an emulsion of chives and parsley. Niederkofler goes against the current and rejects the idea of pasta being used throughout the meal: for him, it is and will be a first course.
To confirm this, he proposes his idea of a Carbonara from Alto Adige: guanciale becomes speck, pecorino is replaced by the Graukaese (a very low-fat cheese), the eggs are quail ones. After all, we’ve seen more shameless versions. But we have not eaten much tastier ones. |
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Klugmann, charmed by starch  The fifth edition of Identità di Pasta ends with the show of a tenacious chef, namely Antonia Klugmann, originally from Friuli, now landed in the Venetian lagoon (Venissa, on the island of Mazzorbo). The petite chef – who works by subtraction even in her own way – almost confesses she is obsessed by this mysterious almost alchemical element, «never equal to itself but in fact capable of changing in many ways during the cooking process».
Antonia dishes out all the inspirations and the grammar of the borderland represented by Trieste in her Spaghettone Cavalieri with toasted and boiled chestnuts, watercress (in the photo), the beloved French butter from Isigny for which she throws any suspicion of exclusive use of local produce away, into the lagoon, and a mixture of spices that she composes herself, by hanging out in various markets (her favourite? The one in Ljubljana).
Another melting-pot dish to enjoy, her Tubetti with blanched black cabbage, powdered black cabbage and a horseradish mousse. It is so true: there’s no longer and more meandering road than the one that leads you to absolute simplicity. Isn’t it so, Antonia? |
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Crippa, Mancini and the dried pasta advance  The fact dried pasta is experiencing an unprecedented nouvelle vague is shown by the arising of pasta producers who have been working better and better in regions that have never been pasta-oriented historically speaking. With “artisanal” methods, we’d say, were not this adjective be subject to a series of misunderstandings, which we will try to solve in the future issues of this newsletter.
One week ago, Enrico Crippa and the Ceretto family, hosted a group of journalists at Piazza Duomo in Alba on the occasion of a dinner organised together with Massimo Mancini, pasta producer in Monte San Pietrangeli, in the hinterland of Marche. The official name of the dish in the photo is Spaghetti with ragù sauce but if you go into depth it turns out the meat sauce is made with fassona minced meat and the red is not given by tomatoes but by Senise peppers, a solanacea which is a source of pride in the distant latitudes of Basilicata.
How about the spaghetto? It is a spaghettone: same length but with a 2.6 mm diameter, 4 extra mm. The interesting fact is its identity card: it is made with durum wheat of the turanico variety (for fanatics, this is a Latin taxonomy, Triticum turgidum turanicum, the same as the Kamut brand) and it is originally produced in the region of Khorasan, in North-East Iran, with ancient uses in Italy and the Mediterranean area. The peculiarities of the 17 and 38 lines, those selected by the agronomists of Pasta Mancini, is that gluten is not aggressive, and therefore it is highly digestible even by those suffering from food related illnesses. Plus the have a pleasant chewable texture.
This is an expression of craveable intelligence, in other words, one which moreover, after the Felicetti/Scabin pair, barges once again into a region (Piedmont, that is) that has always been strongly tied to the tradition of fresh egg pasta. Not that fresh and dried pasta necessarily have to compete, they can very well coexist, in the same way as they very well do so in many menus. The advance of the latter, however, will be faster and faster if driven by producers who are increasingly more aware of the products they draw.
GZ |
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