Dear {NOMEUTENTE} This issue of Identità di Pasta, newsletter number 39, is truly special. There are neither news nor recipes, but a concrete, meaty interview with Riccardo Felicetti, who recently became the world’s president of pasta producers, a dialogue with Gabriele Zanatta that is rich of stimuli because when people are intelligent, they are never banal. I will just pick a sentence: “We would like people to understand that it is not just a question of chemicals or calories but it is also a source of great pleasure”.
Indeed, sometimes, being too busy to chase news or counting the extra seconds in the cooking of spaghetti, we forget that a dish, in the end, needs to please the palate of a client and contribute to fill a restaurant. I write this because sometimes you have the doubt that, in Italy, the smallest and more empty a place is, the more interesting it is, for some.
Paolo Marchi |
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INTERVIEW WITH RICCARDO FELICETTI On October 24th in Buenos Aires, Riccardo Felicetti was nominated the new president of the IPO, the International Pasta Organisation, an association to which 10 pasta associations from around the world (including Italian Aidepi), 2 European organizations and 11 producers belong, representing 18 producing countries. It is a sort of “United Nations of Pasta”, which for the first time since it was founded (on October 25th 2005) it is guided by an Italian representative. Felicetti follows Brazilian Claudio Zanao and Venezuelan Simon Nobile Olivo. An excellent reason for an interview with the pasta producer from Trentino. We cover his new institutional role and the future of pasta, including the one in fine dining. A wide-ranging chat.
Italy is the largest producer of pasta in the world. How come only now does the IPO elect an Italian president?
Because it was preferred to give space to representatives from nations and continents in which pasta still has a growing margin, in terms of production and popularity. This year it was decided that it would be our turn. I was elected by acclamation, something that honours me and most of all urges me to act.
What challenges await you?
I would like to have a less institutional approach and be more operating than my predecessors. The biggest challenge is to react to the attack of the North American “carbophobic” current that is amplified by mass media. Opinion makers demonise carbohydrates perhaps after having fought fats since the Sixties, launching the low fat trend. The fact that in the following decades obesity has increased disproportionally makes them say “what if the fault is that of carbohydrates and therefore pasta, the queen of this chemical element?’.
Is it for this reason that we recently read in many articles, on Time, for instance, about a nouvelle vague of proteins and butter?
Indeed. In the last few years, the international consumption of pasta has grown double digits, while that of meat has undergone the opposite trend. So some people try to balance this trend by demonising carbohydrates, praising the benefits of the so-called low carb life. If you publish a book by the title “Thumbs up for pasta” you will undoubtedly have less readers than those, as it’s been the case, who present hundreds of recipes that polemically avoid the use of pasta. The problem with obesity, however, is connected with our lifestyle, certainly not with the intake of carbohydrates. |
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 What do you mean?
We should give the fault to the gradual reduction of physical education in schools. To the culture according to which playing with a play station is cooler than running in the park. As people say in the US, the right message we should convey is “Eat less and move your ass”, not “stop eating pasta or you’ll get fat”.
After all the world consumption of pasta has reached it’s all time high.
Indeed, this trend is growing double digits, as we said. But these opinions slow down this growth. This is the reason why during my mandate I would like to turn things into a positive sense: pasta is a healthy product, it is natural, sustainable, accessible, easy to store and to prepare. It is the most crossover product in world cuisine: let’s think, for instance, about the infinite number of formats available and about its great versatility and practicality. This is why an increasing number of countries are starting to produce it. Countries you would have never thought of, until a few years ago, such as Russia, Iran or Somalia.
What is the next big event for the IPO?
The world pasta congress, which will take place within the Expo in Milan, on the last week of October 2015. We will speak about technologies, raw materials’ evolution, diet and how each one of us sees pasta. We would like to convey scientific information regarding this food in the most simple and effective way. Meanwhile, we would like people to understand that it is not just a question of chemicals or calories but it is also a source of great pleasure. Which is, after all, one of the goals behind the almost 5 years of this Identità di pasta newsletter.
In these years we have published hundreds of posts on a way of conceiving pasta that is a little sacrilegious when compared to tradition. Is it important to distance oneself from some of these models?
It is crucial, despite preserving a profound respect for our history and tradition. We have gone far beyond the habits that dominated some twenty years ago, when dry pasta was the protagonist in the kitchens of 99% of the families in Italy but was totally absent from fine dining kitchens. People would go to a luxury restaurant to taste special products: lobster and foie gras; not a dish of spaghetti. This would be what you would prepare at home to fill you up, and that’s it. If things have changed, we owe it in particular to this historic moment: today, there’s much more culture around products. But we also need to thank the increasingly serious and articulated work of many pasta producers. And that of many chefs who have been able to change the image of pasta with an unprecedented approach. |
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 Davide Scabin (photo), whose work has been connected with your pasta factory for years, was a master in this.
During these years he’s done a marvellous job in researching the potential of our Monograno range, in every direction. If today pasta is no longer intended by many people as an accessory to sauce, the merit goes most of all to him and his way of conceiving it as a real raw material. It is also thanks to him that many chefs now have the habit of thinking about pasta also as an appetizer, a snack or even a dessert. Because, in the words of the very chef from Rivoli, ‘pasta can also be a first course’.
Scabin also says that you need great raw materials to do so.
Indeed, and I’m grateful for this. Monograno is a project that began in 2000 and was presented in October 2004. Ten years have gone by during which we have never stopped confronting ourselves with farmers and millers. We’re lucky in that we were able to continue the development without being affected by – the very high – costs.
Of all the dishes that were conceived thanks to your partnership, which one do you recall most eagerly?
There are many. Spaghettoni with carbonara squeeze are the first that come to my mind. Purely delicious. But perhaps he reached the top with Black is black, a masterpiece. I also hold more recent dishes very dear, such as the very recent Pasta nuda because, for the first time, it expresses the possibility of tasting a pure product, without seasoning. One can assess not the parameters of cooking resistance – something that is subjective - but all the characteristics that usually drown under generous quantities of condiment: colour, taste and aroma.
These are all avantgarde dishes for pasta.
Indeed, however, when one thinks it through, it is a beautiful movement that reinterprets hyper-traditional dishes with today’s logic. For instance, I’m delighted by Tagliatella al ragù that Davide has in the menu of all of his 3 restaurants [Combal.zero in Rivoli, Blupum in Ivrea and Mulino a Vino in New York]. On top of the dish, when serving it at the table, the waiter rolls 3 small curls of butter. It’s the same emotion from my childhood. My grandmother used to do the same in Bellamonte, on top of baking tins full of cold pasta. |
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 Are there any pasta dishes by Scabin that have never seen the light of the dining room?
Yes, and they are many. I remember a Sweet cannolo made with egg tagliatelle, filled with the custard cream that only his sister Barbara knows how to make so delicious. Or the semi-cooked kamut rigatone grilled with mullet, squid and tomato.
How about the best first course you have tasted elsewhere?
There’s plenty. For instance Cold black spaghetti with yogurt cream and salmon eggs by Gualtiero Marchesi. Or Alfio Ghezzi’s Insolito Trentino at Locanda Margon in Trento, a startling dish. I was enthusiastic about the Spaghetti with red pepper and salted anchovies, a unique dish with a double signature: Carlo Cracco and Matteo Baronetto (in the photo). The Spaghettoni with cream, butter and anchovies by Massimo Bottura, a dish from 2011 that opened up a new world to me. A magical first course.
Are there cooks that give value to pasta abroad too?
There are many that start to work well. For instance there’s Francesco Mazzei of restaurant L’Anima in London. Or other establishments in the Far East: in Japan it happened to me in at least 3 places. In Hong Kong, Italians Umberto Bombana and Pino Lavarra know the art of first courses perfectly.
How about foreign chefs?
There are already some excellent interpreters around the world and their number can only increase.
Gabriele Zanatta |
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