Dear {NOMEUTENTE}
I know well that many will be scandalised when reading about the Spaghetti with meatballs I devoured with extreme pleasure a short while ago in New York, but I love full enjoyment, without any labels or flags. I don’t like those who create opposition between traditional and innovative recipes, as well as between dishes with a noble and ancient pedigree and others that sound like stepchildren that were born far away from home.
The greatness of our cuisine, which for example will be celebrated tomorrow in Buenos Aires, Argentina, passes also through these spaghetti soaked in tomato sauce, a sort of nest on which American paisà soon began the custom of placing some meatballs, as large as tennis balls, so big they could exorcise hunger.
And today, when we certainly don’t dine in Manhattan out of desperation, one should admit it is a luscious first course, which would deserve to be studied by someone like Scabin or Cannavacciuolo so that the taste of the tomato would not be exceedingly overwhelming and the pasta and meat could have a stronger flavour.
Paolo Marchi
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October and the pride of pasta in the world October is usually a very busy month for those in my industry. The evaluations of the raw materials are being consolidated; you can begin to state the quality impact on the final product; you can start, after the summer break, to go around the world to communicate (and sell) pasta. Identità New York surprised me for the capacity of improving and communicating pasta in a nation where trends, even food ones, are currently not very in favour of carbohydrates. Restating their centrality in Italian cuisine was essential.
Sial, the international food fair in Paris, made us face, once again, the difference there is between Italy, a country full of competent people full of initiative, but which acts in total autonomy, and the others that have joined forces with regards to food and are impressive in terms of capacity of sustaining and promoting products that have always been our own heritage (though now, however, we have to realise it is not an exclusive one). All this without big announcements or self-celebrations, but with a profound work of coordination that has created the conditions thanks to which, ever more often, there are cases in which Italian brands are bought by groups from the Mediterranean basin.
While I’m writing, in Torino the Salone del Gusto is taking place by I’m on a direct flight to Buenos Aires. On October 25th the World Pasta Day is being celebrated. The goal? Spreading the gastronomic, nutritional and environmental values of pasta across the world.
Riccardo Felicetti |
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Davide Scabin in New York/1: ravioli The photo by Brambilla/Serrani finely portrays the Ravioli with roasted chicken and potato cacciatora, the dish with which Davide Scabin charmed, once again, the audience inside the Scuola at Eataly New York, with his partner Mario Batali (read about the whole lesson here). It’s a fresh egg pasta for super food fans, a chameleonic pasta, «that changes every day». That is to say the plin filled with roast juice (in fact they are pinches, borrowing from the English term), only slightly bigger than the Piedmontese ones, «because in this way you can create a small bag that contains the sauce and doesn’t make it run away». And what is this sauce? «It’s a cacciatora, recalling a purely Italian preparation». With chanterelle mushrooms cut in halves, a sweet-savoury concentrated tomato sauce and a cream of burrata and 24 months Grana Padano processed in the mixer». Boom.
Gabriele Zanatta |
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Davide Scabin in New York/2: bomboloni The photo perfectly portraying Davide Scabin’s second devilish idea is also by the Brambilla/Serrani tandem. The chef based in Rivoli serves this at Mulino a Vino in New York, a brilliant cuisine chapter recently opened in the Big Apple. These are Bomboloni with cacio e pepe, a hand to hand assault. What about the pasta? It is indeed the pasta that gives substance to the bombolone. It is made with spaghetti cooked, blended and then... follow the recipe.
INGREDIENTS
for the dough
500 g Monograno Felicetti spaghetti
2 l water
15 g salt
for the bomboloni
250 g dough
290 g manitoba flour
410 g flour
60 g butter
20 g yeast
180 g milk
3 g sugar
5 g salt
5 egg yolks
for the cacio e pepe sauce
90 g onion
50 g extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove
400 g (browned) bacon
1 l cream
1 l milk
600 g pecorino
Roux to taste
Pepper to taste
METHOD
for the dough
Overcook 500 g spaghetti Monograno Felicetti in 2 l of water and 15 g of salt, and then process in a blender.
for the bomboloni
mix the two types of flour and the dough in the planetary processor, add the milk with the yeast and the sugar, then the egg yolks and the butter and process it finely, creating the gluten structure as much as possible. Add salt and process further. Remove from the planetary processor and knead with your hands adding flour. Put into a bowl and cover with cling film (it must not touch the dough), and place in the fridge for one hour. Roll out with a rolling pin so it is about 1 cm thick, sprinkle some semolina on a baking tin, cut out some disks (with a 7 cm diameter), put on the baking tin and cover, then place again in the fridge for about 2 hours. Fry in oil at 180°C.
for the cacio e pepe sauce
blend all the ingredients together (preferably with a Bimby, which homogenises), then strain in a Chinese-sieve. Fill the bomboloni. |
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Mantuano’s gluten-free ravioletto in Chicago Ravioletto in the shape of a small trunk by Tony Mantuano, chef-patron at restaurant Spiaggia, in the most fomous metropolis in Illinois. The dish was presented at Identità Chicago during the lesson held together with Ugo Alciati.
His interpretation of fresh egg pasta is called “ravioletto” and – as he himself admits – it is not philologically correct at least for three reasons: the pasta is cooked before composing the ravioletto (which in fact is an oversize raviolo), the filling is made with crescenza cheese (produced in Dallas) and finally, and most importantly, it is gluten-free. This is not a mannerism but is based on the necessity of satisfying the ever growing demand of the celiac audience in his restaurant on Magnificent Mile, a few steps from lake Michigan.
Paired with the solitary napkin of pasta, some sautéed fresh porcini, fried with brown butter, some freshly grated Grana Padano and – of course – some more truffle. A vigorous and opulent dish, totally based on the quality of raw materials. Because – as underlined by Mantuano – “one of the things that makes Italians angrier is when people abroad lose control of the quality and the authenticity of the products from your regions”. Hardly true, in light of the endless and undisputed ransacking of our food made in Italy across the world.
Federico De Cesare Viola |
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Spaghetti with meatballs, pure Italian enjoyment  There are many Italian dishes scattered from one side of the globe to the other, that make us Italians smile because we don’t see them as such. Still, people like them, and they like them a lot. The typical case of Italian indignation is given by Spaghetti with meatballs, a now centennial expression of Italians in America. To them, pushed across the ocean by the darkest desperation, it didn’t seem true that they could count on meat, no matter if of second or third choice, in such quantities, so they united their/our passion for carbohydrates with the all Yankee passion for proteins.
When judging these spaghetti, one first of all needs to respect their history and then avoid saying silly things, such as the fact they don’t exist in our tradition. It is not true that meat and pasta is an unknown blend across our peninsula. Let’s put filled pasta, lasagne and ragout to aside, let’s forget of all the pasta cooked in the oven with meatballs inside, how about the pasta alla chitarra in Abruzzo, with pallottine? A masterpiece, fresh egg pasta with small meatballs. You could never stop eating them. And when they finish, you’re free to dip some bread in the sauce as this is always plentiful.
So here I am having lunch in New York, at 55 East Houston Street, on the corner with Mott Street, at Emilio’s Ballato, tel. +1-212-274-8881. The place is a show in its own sake, a place from the past that a time machine has brought to our time. You go there for Spaghetti with meatballs, an authentic luscious delicacy that is not indicated in the menu: “It’s the day’s special”. That is to say, every day of the year, everyone knows this. Regardless of what us Italians in Italy might think. |
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Matias Perdomo: Gastronomika’s ponencia /1 Pasta is so intertwined in the Italians’ DNA that we tend to give it for granted. Except for when it is not there: if they take it away from our plate, then we do notice it indeed and we miss it. The analysis and research of Matias Perdomo starts from this assumption. The chef from Uruguay runs the kitchen at Pont de Ferr, the “avantgarde osteria” created by Maida Mercuri in the Navigli area.
Here, Matias presents a cuisine that mixes tradition and experiments, but on two different tracks along which he and his staff try to direct the clients, because, as the chef explained with a successful metaphor, «if you go to the cinema to watch a romantic film and after half the show you move to another room where there’s a horror film, in the end you have not seen a thing». The final goal: play together, have fun certainly not behind the back but together with those who choose to sit at their table, in «an extremely intimate gesture».
All this is also behind one of the most successful ponencias of the San Sebastiàn Gastronomika congress, where Perdomo was among the very few to choose pasta as his subject, «a dish that represents Italy the most but presented in a new way». By reflecting together with those who work following ancient traditions – and «with great respect», he underlined – the chef analysed a research to «extract its soul, its essence» and play with its “absence” in dishes where the volume that usually characterises a first course is missing, «in Italy it is the symbol of abundance and after the war it had to feed people with little», but gives back its taste: «The gesture of opening a pack of pasta and throwing it in boiling water for many is automatic; we stopped one moment earlier, and began to think carefully about what is in that pack».
«Usually pasta is seen especially as the basis for other flavours, as if it were a “lift” that brings sauce from the plate to the mouth. What happens, instead, if we treat pasta itself, the high quality one, of course, as a true ingredient, with its aromas and facets, and we work with it in a different way?».
In the first “game” (photo) Perdomo had fun creating «a conflict between what you know and what is new» extracting the flavour of a very traditional Risotto alla milanese (“squeezing” the creaminess and leaving rice to a side) and transforming it into the filling for some ravioli served on a sheet of gold, as an Omaggio (tribute, the name of the dish) to the great Gualtiero Marchesi. «Are you eating rice or pasta?». (continues right below)
Luciana Squadrilli |
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Matias Perdomo: Gastronomika’s ponencia /2 In Pasta Parmigiano Matias Perdomo then inverted the role of sauce and pasta transforming the latter – blanched in water with parmesan crust in infusion, so it opens its pores, rehydrated slowly in a vacuum pack at 63°C for 17 minutes until it changes its structure and then placing it in a mould – in a slice to be grated at the table on the sauce, as if it were cheese, a gesture that is «both reassuring and crazy».
In the Panino alla puttanesca (photo) too, the raw material – artisanal dried pasta made with first choice durum wheat, slowly dried – is hydrated at cold temperature for 24 hours in water, the inverse process than when it was made, acquiring a new texture and workability so much so that it then can be transformed – adding yeast – into a soft panino that holds the puttanesca sauce, another symbol of popular and “easy” Italian cuisine; a further consideration on the advance of fast food, invading family cuisine, so much so that Perdomo asked himself: «How can we cook the best food in the world if we no longer have time?».
Using the same technique, he also prepared the base for his Carbon-ara, a dish inspired by one of the many stories on the birth of this recipe according to which the humble carbonai, during their work break would prepare pasta with what they had: eggs, cheese, pepper and guanciale. The emulsified mix is cooled down in a mould while with the “hydrated” pasta a very elastic and resistant batter is made, coloured and aromatised with squid ink and onion ashes, to recall the colour and aroma of charcoal, which wraps the sauce; when frying it, it melts down but it doesn’t come out.
In the end, the time for È-senza arrived, an extreme gesture: getting to the essence of pasta, removing its soul and its “chewability” in a dish in which pasta is not present but you can taste it. The chef prepared a traditional Sicilian pasta with sardines with raisins, pine nuts and wild fennel, and then cooked the pasta as a risotto, overcooking it. At this point he squeezed everything, added some agar-agar to thicken it and strained it in a special silicone mould in the shape of penne rigate. Once solidified, they tasted like pasta with sardines but the carbohydrate was absent. This is precisely what Matias means when he says that Italian cuisine should be founded on tradition «while looking at the future and living in the present». (The videos of all of Perdomo’s recipes can be found on buongusto.tv).
LS |
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Fronduti: the man who shot at spaghetti Milanese Matteo Fronduti, chef and patron at restaurant Manna, loves pasta. To prove this there’s also the memory of a special menu he entirely dedicated to it a few months ago, from starter to cake, in collaboration with Felicetti. When he speaks about it, one can understand that for him it is an essential element: «I believe it is the first thing that most of us associate with being hungry. Pasta is feeling full, is the material satisfaction of chewing. This is why I want my dishes to by satisfying and cheerful».
In order to respect this goal, it is essential to follow a few rules, first of all the balance in cooking: «There’s nothing more discouraging and repelling than overcooked pasta, but even exaggerating with raw pasta, which perhaps is a little too fashionable, seems to me only a self-harming attitude. It has to be al dente, there has to be texture, but pasta should not be hostile».
Matteo Fronduti’s dishes often stand out for their (only apparent) simplicity, such as spaghetti with tomato sauce – a dish called Banalissimo – which every year returns in the menu. Its presentation is also essential, but in the mouth it is capable of unveiling its secret, thanks to the fact the tomatoes are only dried in the oven, then blended and super-strained so as to concentrate their flavour, thanks to the spiciness of the chilli pepper infused in a very delicate syrup, thanks to the freshness of the raw lemon zest.
One of his most recent dishes, here illustrated by the photo taken by the chef himself, is on the contrary inspired by the famous Raw hare which Yoshihiro Narisawa presented at Cook it Raw in 2010. While the Japanese used a sauce of red berries to recall the shot that had killed the animal, Fronduti shot spaghetti. The pasta is first cooked in a stock made with prosciutto and then creamed with extra virgin olive oil. It is then thrown on the dish as if it had just died, decorated with raw scallops, dried prosciutto and a reduction of the cooking stock, coloured with the little beetroot necessary to finish a tasty mise-en-scene.
Niccolò Vecchia |
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Eugenio Boer, a treasure chest of fresh pasta  Eugenio Boer, today at the helm of the kitchen of the Fishbar de Milan and of the new-born twin Meatbar de Milan, in order to face the pasta-theme, starts from his origins. Also, and most of all, to be able to say «despite being Dutch-Italian, I strongly believe in pasta. And in pasta al dente: I personally eat it almost raw!». Speaking of dried pasta Boer’s biggest worry is the quality of the products that end up in the supermarkets: «There are truly too many pastas that end up in the supermarkets and are made with wheat that is not Italian. This is a ridiculous paradox, because such an emblematic symbol of Italian gastronomy should be better safeguarded».
Since the Italian half of his origins is profoundly from Liguria, Eugenio Boer’s passion for pasta had to start from fresh pasta: «My first meeting with the kitchen happened when I was three, and indeed with fresh pasta: when my Italian grandmother was widowed she moved to the Netherlands but arrived there with a rolling pin and an Imperia, the historic pasta machine. My grandmother used to make pasta on Thursdays, which we would then eat on Fridays. So, being a good catholic, she always made it di magro, using ricotta and the classic Ligurian prebuggiun, to make her pansotti».
Some childhood memories then forge our character and our choices. So it is not by chance that one of the pasta dishes that Boer recalls with the greatest love, from his time at Milanese restaurant Enocratia, are indeed pansotti: «It was quite a simple dish: even my pansotti were made with ricotta and prebuggiun and garnished with walnuts and pears, to mirror a rather classic flavour pairing, that of cheese, pears and nuts». But in a dish like this, the filling is not the only thing that counts: «Stuffed fresh pasta is a treasure chest, with a surprise. But you need to taste and bite this treasure chest, it needs to have structure, texture, it cannot be too thin. For me, even fresh pasta needs to be served al dente».
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