Dear {NOMEUTENTE}Nine lessons this year, on Tuesday 10th February, to be precise. It has never happened for an event organised inside one of the two blue rooms to have so many, but when there’s an abundance of ideas, it is always difficult to forsake something by postponing it to the following year. So we preferred to buy time and space to make sure that the day to be opened by Marianna Vitale will end with Massimo Bottura.
It had never happened that a chef would be a speaker on three different days. It happens today, with the chef from Modena, thanks to the Milano food&wine festival which will see him on stage, on Sunday night, with the dish created for Expo. Followed by the Auditorium on Monday and pasta on Tuesday.
I’m personally very interested in the lecture by the Costardi brothers. Christian and Manuel, among the greatest interpreters of risotto in Italy (and thus in the world), will present their interpretation of pasta, escaping, therefore, their golden cage. Indeed it is a cage because if you cook only pasta nobody will ever have a chance to complain, it is basically a rule for us Italians. But if, on the contrary, you dedicate yourself to rice and risotto, sooner or later someone will say you have limitations. In football this happens to those who are left-handed, often branded as someone who only has one foot to play. As if those who used their right foot had two.
Paolo Marchi, content by Gabriele Zanatta |
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Pasta’s maturity in 6 editions  On Tuesday 10th February in Sala Blu 2, the sixth edition of Identità di Pasta will be held. 9 more lectures which will be added to the 40 already part of the recent history of this format, with the involvement of dozens of chefs from North and South and with some visits from famous foreign chefs.
This can only make me happy. Especially when considering that since the first edition, the global perception has changed: in 2010 it was almost as if we were asking chefs a favour. We had to explain that we wanted to see new and different interpretations. That pasta had to be once again on the centre of the stage, outside the old sad role of a channel for sauce.
Today there’s little to be explained because people are much more sensitive to this theme. There’s (almost) no fine dining restaurant that doesn’t offer at least a dish made with dried pasta. And, in the meanwhile, the number of producers who have understood how important it is to invest in research and quality on a product that for too long was debased because of imprecision and a slapdash attitude increases.
This year’s Identità di pasta will host male and female, sea and mountain, Italian and overseas chefs. Chefs that are traditionally talented with rice or with fresh pasta who decided, spontaneously, to challenge themselves with a genre that is distant from their traditions and customs. Putting oneself to the test is always a demonstration of maturity.
Riccardo Felicetti |
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Marianna Vitale prefers Mischiato Delicato It is Marianna Vitale from Quarto who has the task of being the first to pull the cart of durum wheat pasta (the lesson starts at 10.15). She’s not the only woman and she isn’t the only one from Campania either, however, as towards the end it will be the turn of Viviana Varese also from Campania.
The chef of the year according to Identità Golose, as explained by Valentina Santonastaso, has an exceptional passion for carbohydrates, so much so that if she travels to far away places, where she’s not sure she’ll be able to find them, she brings lots in her suitcase. In the menu of her restaurant there’s only dried pasta because according to Marianna fresh pasta is not pasta: it doesn’t have the same indefinable nerve of the pasta from Gragnano she grew up with and it isn’t part of her reference food universe. She is also distant from rice, even though less so, because, as she admits, she does eat it, even though she preferably first makes a ball of it and then fries it.
For her everyday meals, which she has at 11 am or at 5 pm, she favours dishes characterised by a minimalistic luxury: pasta is long, smooth and made with bronze and is matched with a maximum of two ingredients, such as clams or anchovies. The ideal pasta is first half cooked in boiling water, then the cooking is finished in the pan. It also needs to rest in the pan: a little time is required to lower the service temperature by a few degrees, so the dish and the pasta itself can become more enjoyable.
Mischiato Delicato is the choice Marianna made for one of the two dishes she will present at Identità di Pasta: L’Impepata. A dish that in a mouthful recalls the sea, the summer, the rocks and throws the taste buds into the typical Mussel and lemon soup enjoyed by the entire town. An intense flavour, with an explosive acidity, broken by the sweetness of peppers and sea urchins, purposely without balance and capable of triggering a pressing mechanism thanks to which one spoonful leads to the other. |
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Costardi, pasta in the kingdom of rice  Brothers Manuel and Christian Costardi from Vercelli choose a 100% Scabinian refrain: «Who said that pasta is a first course?». It would be too easy for them, born in Vercelli, says Carlo Passera – just to cook some pasta as if it were risotto: «Today it is very trendy, our mother, however, was using this technique 15 years ago, already, we believe she was one of the first…».
Regardless of this, the two guys (at 11.10) will answer the above rhetorical question with a clear no: «Pasta is not only a first course because it has a large unexplored potential». Not by them, the readers of Identità di pasta will recall their durum wheat cannolo, a pacchero first cooked for 12 minutes in a broth made with orange zest and vanilla pods, then cooled and fried twice in oil. Better than the traditional Sicilian wafer.
The Costardi will also present a concept of dessert halfway between our tradition and the oriental one, keeping an eye to the East: it will be a sort of ramen, with noodles in a chocolate broth. Besides, it will be a pure divertissement: spaghetti cooked in infusion with garlic, chilli pepper and herbs, fried and served crispy in a paper cone, «as if they were fries or popcorn to munch in a cinema». |
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Luca Fantin, pasta for the Japanese  The 2015 edition will also be reminded for the debut of a chef who will surely have a long future (in fact, he’s already got a “past” for us at Identità who have just crowned him as “chef of the year”), Luca Fantin, since 2009 the chef at the Bulgari Ginza Tower in Tokyo, a 5 star hotel, a team of 10 people.
In a panorama outside of Italy that has no great interpreters of durum wheat, it will be a pleasure to hear the experience of a young man (at 12.05) whose guests are 95% Japanese, «careful, sophisticated guests, who spend a lot but do it in the right way». «I no longer have a menu», he said a few weeks ago, «I only have two tasting menus. And without discounts: at first I would cook pasta and rice a little longer, to second local taste, now they’re always al dente».
Two are the dishes in the holster of the Venetian chef born in 1979, both linked together by the title of the lecture: Territory. The first, he says via email, will be «Linguine with semolina cooked in salted lettuce, with cream and smoked oyster. A dish inspired by the Japanese territory in which pasta helps me to enhance the oyster, the main ingredient. A landscape-dish we will show».
The second will be «Stewed and non stewed meat with cabbage and maltagliati, an idea born by looking at an Italian classic, once again adapted to the Japanese public. The braised meat is served in two parts: a rich stew underneath, the maltagliati on top. A sort of pasta in two steps». |
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Berton by the sea: rigatoni and conchiglie Even Andrea Berton, as many colleagues, was struck on the way to dried pasta: «Until recently, I favoured fresh or filled pasta, yet now the odds are for durum wheat: when a dish is well prepared it gives lots of satisfaction».
The first solution of the lesson (at 2 pm): Pasta with seafood, a great classic that is hardly classic in this case, of course. It’s a Felicetti rigatone in a stable balance between clams, mussels and smooth clams “in coppa”, a pasta you can sense on the palate. A straightforward, natural taste with a touch of earthiness/sandiness given by dehydrated powdered leeks, «a grilled effect», he reveals, «as if all the seafood was chargrilled». Second dish: Conchiglie with pepper and sea snails with sprouted lentils, «Sprouted because in this way they have a softer, not so encompassing or pervasive flavour. But don’t ask me to say more».
All right, let’s change topic and move to an interesting detail: in summer, in the menu in Viale Liberazione there’s always Spaghetti with tomatoes, a commendable gesture that all the great restaurants in Italy should imitate, because you cannot bluff with this dish. «In my version, spaghetti are hot while the sauce is cold. It is a cream of date tomatoes, blended with extra virgin olive oil, fresh basil cut into strips and a cream of taggiasche olives. For me, the most important principle is that tomatoes should not be cooked». We’ll anxiously wait for the summer. |
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Croatti, from Romagna to the mountain tops  It’s the very first time also for Enrico Croatti (at 2.45 pm) of Dolomieu, a restaurant inside the DV Chalet hotel in Madonna di Campiglio. The chef from Rimini, born in 1982, chose as his title “Bare handed towards infinity”, a tribute to Paul Preuss, a great early 19th century Alpine climber from Austria, who recovered from poliomyelitis by climbing the mountains to fight his disease (he had already reached 300 tops by the time he was 11!).
Croatti’s “infinity” will have two shapes: the first will be a very hard dish, Pasta with sea urchins and bull carpaccio, «A tribute to my master Gino Angelini», he says, «who transferred me his great craziness and culinary knowledge. I adore being able to discover, understand and use my technique with unusual ingredients, yet of high value. In this case, bull testicles».
Climb number two: Memory of a village-style rabbit. «It’s a tribute to Anna Lucia and Carlo Alberto Bauer, who forty years ago began their passionate and competent work, collecting traditional recipes from Trentino’s cuisine. They were driven by love for their land and their culture, represented in flavours and aromas, in the ancient bond with products and food. They were completely aware of the richness of that culture, of the precious heritage they were analysing». Like Croatti, an explorer of Trentino’s peak and of Romagna’s plain. |
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Davide Scabin, the calm before the storm  It is virtually impossible to anticipate anything from Davide Scabin’s lesson (at 3.30 pm). As in every edition, his creations are wrapped in secrecy, a void that every time has the effect of a tornado after the little less than an hour spent in Sala Blu 2.
The readers of this newsletter know very well the dried pasta revolution the chef from Rivoli started. A motion that began in 2008, when Scabin crossed Riccardo Felicetti, the pasta producer from Predazzo in Trentino. «He gave me the keys to his Ferrari», the Piedmontese today gratefully recalls.
And what did he do? Before getting on board, he started to scrutinize it with a perspectival tilted look: «It took me two months to understand what I wanted from pasta. Until then it was a dish that my mum would prepare at home. Full stop. I had long ended my phase tied with the designing and packaging of different formats but pasta was leading me once again, with violence, to that dimension. After all, do you know any other product that is more design-oriented than spaghetti or conchiglioni?».
No, indeed not. Hence dried pasta was finally accepted in fine dining menus and burst into European congresses through the main entrance, influencing generations of chefs. If today you can find so many restaurants offering filled conchiglioni or durum wheat as the sudden star in a dessert in their menus, it is all based on this initial movement. A movement which every year is enriched with numerous and important postulates: Pasta Combal Sushi, Spaghetti Pizza Margherita, Black is Black, Pasta and Salad, Pasta Squeeze, Fusillone Wrapped… As for the next name, this Tuesday. |
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Tony Mantuano’s feeling for gluten free We left Tony Mantuano in Chicago in October, during a lesson with Ugo Alciati. The dean-chef of Spiaggia, the 30-year-old most famous and prestigious establishment in the Illinois metropolis, had left us with a philologically “unfair” watering mouth.
That beautiful raviolo in the shape of a small trunk was not orthodox, Federico De Cesare Viola wrote, for at least 3 reasons: «the pasta was cooked before composing the raviolo (which in fact, despite the –etto ending, was indeed oversize), the crescenza filling was made in Dallas and finally, and most importantly, it was gluten free».
Keeping company to the solitary pasta leaf there were some fresh porcini mushrooms, pan fried with brown butter, a little freshly grated Grana Padano. A vigorous and opulent dish, entirely founded on the quality of raw materials. «Because» – Mantuano underlined – «one of the things that most makes Italians get mad is when abroad one looses control of the quality and authenticity of the products from your regions».
The dish will be prepared once again in Sala Blu 2 (at 4.15 pm) for the Italian audience. The gluten free dish will be followed by a second one made with Spelt linguine. Two different ways to explore pasta’s personality, at last and everywhere acknowledged as superior to the matching sauce. |
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Viviana Varese’s fecond folly Pasta has always played a central role in the doodles drawn by Viviana Varese (in the photo by Irene Voltlini), first in via Adige and now on the second floor of Eataly Smeraldo. A menu that is still rich, while she quickly and easily moves from the classic Superspaghettino with smoked broth and squid julienne to new inspirations, such as Pasta with potatoes, basil extract, pecorino and mini-squids or the super-opulent Tortello filled with roast meat with pumpkin cream, grana padano mousse, black truffle and chestnuts, sky-rocketing flavours.
The lesson in Milan (at 5 pm), the second last that day, will be a eulogy to folly. Yet craziness in Steve Jobs’ way, in the Erasmus from Rotterdam way, according to which the best ideas are not the result of a thought that is regulated by reason, but of gestures that come from a clear-headed and visionary folly. Because, as Einstein confirmed«only those who are crazy enough to think they will change they world, will truly change it».Stay hungry, stay foolish, that is to say.
«I’m crazy but in good company», the cook anticipates on a freezing night at the end of January. Here’s why during the lesson in Sala Blu 2 at one point all the 34 members of the Alice team, a big squad we saw parading in the pages of “Alice e i nati per soffriggere”, a text in which each one of them signs a recipe. The two pasta dishes for the lecture (which, if there’s time, will become three) will be tagliatelle with chickpea flour (100% gluten free) and spaghettini blended like a couscous which will be happily joined by broccoli, cob included. The rest will be a surprise. |
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Bottura, the Picasso of (dried) pasta Paolo Terzi’s photo depicts Massimo Bottura at the beginning of an incisive article, published in Artspace. The title, The Picasso of Pasta? is open. For sure, one can easily remove the question mark when thinking about the extraordinary series of fresh and filled pasta the chef from Modena compiled over the decades. On Tuesday (at 5.45 pm) Bottura for the first time will be on this stage splitting the hair over dried pasta. The title is promising: "The spaghetto that wants to become a lasagna". Will this be the consecration? |
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