Monograno Felicetti

Dear {NOMEUTENTE}
During the second gala dinner at Identità New York, on Friday 2nd October, Davide Scabin reminded me of what was written at Boing’s reception in Seattle: “Given its shape, wing dimension and body weight, a bumblebee could never fly. Yet he doesn’t know it and so he flies”. Indeed, when the Piedmontese chef confirmed he was to prepare tagliatelle alla bolognese for 150 people, everyone thought him mad. Mistaking cooking time, service, everything was easy. Yet he didn’t think about it and flew high and high.

Scabin always takes risks that go against every logic. Not that his colleagues didn’t give their best shot without using a safety net, but when you’re playing away from home, it’s always best to avoid three strikers and opt for an extra defender at first. There’s always time to change. Not Davide, he attacks right away. There’s nothing you can do about it, it’s in his nature.

He once made a huge mistake. One afternoon in Finland, he decided to cook salmon in a hole in the earth, under burning embers, the filets wrapped in a cover, with earth and leaves on top covering everything. Unfortunately he didn’t guess the cooking time and the fish was almost raw. I told Albert Adrià, who was also above the Arctic Circle, I was sorry for Scabin, and the Catalan chef said: “This is Davide, he won’t make a soup”. Indeed, he goes for the impossible. And this is why I admire him.

Paolo Marchi, content by Carlo Passera, Valeria Senigaglia and Gabriele Zanatta
 

World Pasta Day & Congress 2015

On 25th October at Expo Milano we will celebrate the World Pasta Day; on 26th and 27th the world pasta congress, organised by the International Pasta Organization. It will be three important days for all of us pasta makers because we will reaffirm the truth about pasta which was recently questioned by a series of fake myths (for instance: pasta makes you fat, pasta was born in China, gluten in pasta bloats and is bad for you…) blurring the extraordinary characteristics of this product.

During the 3-day event famous authorities from institutions, science and cuisine will speak. Massimo Bottura, who will describe his vision of this important ingredient in Italian diet, between tradition and future, will also participate. There will be a dinner on the terrace of the Italian pavilion directed by Italian-American chef Bruno Serato, who will try to prove how pasta can be an important solution to find a balance between hunger and obesity.

On 26th and 27th October there will be very many sessions with important speakers on the themes of environment, innovation and nutrition. We will understand that every day pasta answers the main challenge of Expo “Feeding the planet”. We will understand how much is produced, distributed and eaten every day. Which are the emerging markets, the dynamics of wheat and much more. Follow us to contribute in reaffirming all the truths of this extraordinary product. For info on how to participate in the World Pasta Day & Congress 2015, click here.

Riccardo Felicetti, president of the International Pasta Organization

(In the photo, taken at Identità New York, left to right, Massimo Bottura, Paolo Marchi, Michael White, Paula Perlis, Gennaro Pecchia, Riccardo Felicetti and Davide Di Fabio)
 

New York/1: Bottura’s autumn in New York

Autumn in New York, Passatelli risotto-style in a “broth with everything" by Massimo Bottura, chef at Osteria Francescana in Modena. The dish was the focus of the second beautiful lesson held at Identità New York. Here’s the complete report. (photo by Brambilla/Serrani)
 

New York/2: Scabin’s prêt-à-porter pasta

Davide Scabin, chef at Combal.zero in Rivoli (Torino) serves Amatriciana straight from the pressure cooker with Elisabetta Serraiotto of Grana Padano and Paolo Marchi of Identità Golose. It’s the end of the lesson by the Piedmontese chef at Eataly New York, the usual hurricane turning the world of pasta upside-down. We summed up everything on Identità’s website. (photo by Brambilla/Serrani)
 

New York/3: Super tagliatelle with a cube

Davide Scabin’s highly applauded Tagliatelle alla Bolognese, the first course served during the second dinner at Identità New York, inside Birreria Eataly. The chef from Combal.zero wanted to serve them with the traditional butter curl on top, a childhood memory, but since there was no butter curler, he had to make do with a cube. (photo by Brambilla/Serrani)
 

New York/4: Fortunato Nicotra’s soup

Soup cooked in a broth with lobster and prawns, the dish presented in New York by Fortunato Nicotra, Lidia Bastianich’s chef. These are Monograno Felicetti Spaghettoni Kamut, cooked after breaking them, «You can also use some good short pasta», the chef explained. The cooking is like with risotto, with the same broth/pasta ratio, perhaps with a little extra liquid as pasta usually absorbs more. The dish is completed with a king prawn with a crumble made with toasted bread and almonds adding crispiness to the dish.
 

A bunch of courgette flowers by Ceraudo

Caterina Ceraudo, a very young chef from Calabria, celebrated her birthday at Identità Expo S. Pellegrino cooking Spaghetti with courgette flowers. Young, from Calabria and holding a star, she works in the family restaurant Dattilo in Strongoli. Her dishes have few ingredients, Caterina’s cuisine is essential and light, counterposed to the traditional opulence of Calabria. Yet there’s an ingredient that is always present, lemons, as in this recipe presented at Expo.

Essential doesn’t mean banal. She cooks the courgette flowers in a pan with a little olive oil, produced by the Ceraudo family, of course, then chills and blends them with a Paco Jet so as to make a cream that preserves all the aroma and colours of the fresh flower. The bitter and vegetal taste of courgette flowers blends with the acid note of spaghetti, cooked in water aromatised with lemon and white wine, but very little salt, to create an elegant umami flavour.

As usual, details make the difference: lemons are organic ones, produced by their farm, and the wine, Grisara, is made with pecorella grapes, an authoctonous grape variety from Calabria usually used for “blends” which her dad recuperated a long time ago and vinified by itself. It has a full and sapid taste thanks also to the final toss of the spaghetti with a “sauce” made with anchovies, garlic, lemon zest, chilli pepper and water from the courgette flowers. «The ingredients themselves tell me how to enhance them» says Ceraudo, who chose anchovies because the cream of courgette flowers already reminds her of anchovies preserved in salt.

This concentrate of aromas from the South meets the North with the Grana Padano grated on top at the end, giving it a “milky” note. The dish, in the restaurant’s menu, is a new take on the classic soup made with potatoes and courgette flowers, a recipe beloved by the chef’s aunt who often prepares it. In this case, however, the starch in the tuber is substituted by the pasta, served lukewarm.
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Di Gennaro: Spaghettone from Gallipoli

A huge fan of red prawns from Gallipoli, Stefano di Gennaro of restaurant Quintessenza in Trani presents spaghetti Felicetti that seem to embrace Apulia. There’s only one dominating ingredient the chef fully enhances without wasting a single antenna. The carcasses are toasted, cooled in ice and then half of them goes in a pot. Half of them become a bisque, following the traditional French recipe, the rest are used to make an orange oil aromatised with crustaceans. The red prawn, raw, appears at the end on a nest made of spaghettoni finished in the broth of prawns.

From the coast we then move inland, with the fried bread (the inside part of the bread) aromatised with Femminiello lemon zest and fresh herbs and finally sprinkled on the pasta to give a crispy touch, together with the aromatic oil to finish the dish. It’s like a reunion of regional denominations with bread from Altamura, “four seasons” lemon (picked five times a year) from Gargano and of course prawns from Gallipoli, all this to season pasta which already has Apulia in its soul, in that it is partly made with wheat from the same region as the chef.

Stefano Di Gennaro’s first experience on stage is a success thanks to the organization with which he works and the tasty recipe, full of reassuring flavours recalling the sumptuous dishes of Sunday meals at home. Family is an important element for the chef, proud of his farmer parents who taught him to enhance every product, something he shares everyday with his three brothers, of whom one is in the kitchen and two in the dining room.

The name of the restaurant, Quintessenza, recalls the soul of the ingredients and a simple cooking, which enhances the excellences of the territory without overdoing it with procedures. «My idea of cooking is based on giving the highest value to ingredients with flavours that are not in contrast but can be understood by everyone» says Di Gennaro, who continues «I haven’t had any “starred” experience, I interpret my own idea of restaurant service, for better or for worse; I agree with Niko Romito when he says: it is a luck to make mistakes by oneself without external influences».
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At Camanini’s pasta is the filling

Riccardo Camanini, chef at Lido 84 in Gardone Riviera (Brescia), had a great success with an unusual dish: not filled pasta, but pasta as the filling. «I often run and carbohydrates are always part of my diet, seasoned only with a drop of oil – said the chef – In this case we decided to present at Identità Pasta, potatoes and squid, a recent recipe that is also part of the Oscillazioni menu, which includes our latest dishes. I owe Marchesi very much, he taught me to respect products and simplicity. We try to remain very faithful to ingredients and their taste, so what I present is a distillate of what I’ve seen, studied, eaten. But it derives from practice, from tasting, I almost never plan».

Pasta and potatoes is a daily classic in Naples, and the chef’s touch reinvents it with a very personal take: «I use pasta Felicetti because it has little starch, and in this case I already have the potato’s starch». The spaghetti Felicetti with squid ink («An excellent artisanal product»), are cooked and then left to cool in a sort of roll: this way they stick together, «this would usually be a bad mistake in the kitchen». Yet Camanini’s is not an error: the spaghetti roll becomes the filling for a sort of cannellone made with boiled potatoes which are then cut with a tsumapuro, a Chinese mandolin knife, which can make very thin slices, the fake pasta enclosing the spaghetti filling. «I use potatoes from Rovetta in Bergamo because they keep their texture after slicing them but will not loose their sweetness».

For the sauce: extra virgin olive oil, 40 grams of other potatoes, 200 grams of mussel cooking water, salt, 5 grams of raw scallion, 50 grams of raw squid, a touch of its ink, 15 grams of fermented Indian black garlic, «it concentrates the sugar part, so much so they use it for desserts in Japan. It is very delicate but adds a touch of acidity to the recipe. By tradition, we eat pasta focusing on one sole tone, this causes inurement in the palate; a touch of acidity, instead, stimulates the taste buds without changing the final flavour». The cannellone is cooked in butter (the creamy and elegant one produced by Beppino Occelli) and then seasoned with the sauce, «we worked on a synthesis, we wanted to pair the various elements in an aesthetically pleasing way».
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Paolo Trippini: autumn’s invasion

The dish presented by Paolo Trippini – restaurant Trippini in Civitella del Lago (Terni) - at Identità Expo S.Pellegrino in partnership with Monograno Felicetti is a picture of the autumn: Felicetti spelt spaghetti, carrots, chestnuts, paté and truffles. «We brought the chestnuts with us», says Paolo, «they’re the first in the seaons, they’re still a little tart and have a tannic and vegetal note: we dice them when raw and put them inside. The truffles are from Val Tiberina, they’re the ones that convince me the most. We cook part of them with oil, garlic and thyme and grate part of them still raw at the end, the classic way».

This recipe includes influences from Lazio and Tuscany, which are very close to Civitella del Lago. But most of all, an emblem that is most typical of Umbria stands out, chicken liver and heart paté: «We brown them very well with a garlic clove, a slice of lemon, rosemary and sage. Once dark, we add two parts of white wine and one of vinegar. When the alcohol has evaporated, we blend and strain the mixture».

Carrots are the other fundamental element in the recipe: «We extract their sweet juice, boil it in water until it is overcooked, the ratio is one litre of water per 500 grams of carrots. We then blend it in the Bimby processor, strain it, keep refridgerated overnight. We dry another part of the carrots, then boil and roll them on a silpat in the oven at 80°C». All the ingredients are prepared separately, with a very low use of salt «because we want flavours to remain unchanged, even once they are put together».

Meanwhile we cook Felicetti spelt spaghetti, «We use spelt because it is one of the most important foods in our territory. My favourite cooking? Neither overcooked nor al dente: I drain them ‘al giusto'». Once the cooking is completed, I toss them in the pan with the carrot juice and a little oil and then dish them as a pasta nest with the paté on top. Great notes that prepare for the autumn, on a day that is still quite summery hot.
GZ
 

Linguine, potateos and mussels: Agostino Iacobucci

A culinary journey across Italy with Agostino Iacobucci who at Identità di Pasta at Expo presents a dish rich in regional influences. Born by the sea, the chef shows his origins by chosing mussels from Campania and then pays a tribute to the city where he now lives using potatoes from Bologna POD. The pasta is made in the north with southern wheat and the Tuscan pecorino completes the map.

The recipe was created for Identità Expo S.Pellegrino but has already been successfully tested in his restaurant I Portici in Bologna. One could say it is a meeting of starch: the linguine are cooked with the potatoes which later disappear from the final result. The pasta, instead, is tossed in the pan at the end with its cooking water and part of the mussels’ cooking water – they are cooked at 92°C for 6 minutes. The pecorino, a young cheese so as not to be too invasive, is melted with a drop of cream in the Bimby at 50°C to create a sauce, but is also added cold when mixing everything. The mayonnaise, made with the yellow part of the mussels and aromatised with tarragon completes a super creamy pasta, made fresher thanks to some grated lemon zest at the end.

The chef’s passion for pasta is palpable: «in the South we love pasta, on Sundays we’d prepare paccheri with Neapolitan ragù (a sauce I have in the menu but use to season tortelli with parmesan cream) but we cannot lose our identity to follow what’s trendy, we need to cook what runs in our blood – says the chef who continues – experiments are very important but 1950s Vespa will never go out of fashion». Iacobucci’s style is celebrated in “100 chef X 10 anni”, the book by Identità Golose celebrating 10 years of the fine dining congress.
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Deidda: Sardinia and penne

Monograno Felicetti smooth penne, prickly pears, saffron, bottarga, sheep milk ricotta, smoked prawn and aromatic herbs are the delicious ingredients composing the dish presented by Stefano Deidda, chef at Corsaro in Cagliari, at Identità di Pasta at Expo, a cold pasta composition.

The classic penne meet Sardinian biodiversity in a harmonious way. The homely choice of smooth penne is not made by chance: «Pasta is not just something to collect the sauce, but fully influences the texture and taste of the dish you make and penne finely "react" to this sauce», says the chef.

The other main characters, on top of the pasta, are other culinary excellences from the island of nuraghi, from POD saffron from San Gavino to prickly pears that make you dream of the sea. The latter is also recalled by the sapidity of the prawns and the bottarga di muggine, a true local delicacy, which is «the bigger, the better, because the maturation must be slow and so you need a large piece to have the right ratio of product and salt» explains Deidda, and continues: «For us it is important that bottarga is processed within one hour from the catch, otherwise the stagnant blood will compromise the maturation and give a bitter note to the palate».

The dish is a walk around the Sardinian "garden" starting with the pasta, cooked and cooled, to which he adds raw scallion and grated lemon zest, sheep milk ricotta and raw prawns marinated with smoked salt. The POD saffron from San Gavino and the prickly pears are there but you can’t see them because he makes an infusion at 60°C and then process them to have a nice intense orange colour. Finally there are drops of (prawn) coral mayonnaise and scales of bottarga to complete the mosaic giving sweetness and sapidity to the dish. A harmony of flavours and colours with which you can play with with the pairings: prawn and pasta, gel and ricotta, or all together in the perfect mouthful.

The prickly pair and saffron are almost sweet and sour and don’t dominate the lightness of the sheep cheese, the Mediterranean scrub herbs add freshness to the dish and the smoky notes of the marinated prawn whet the palate. The complex flavours suggest an interesting wine pairing reconciling the Sardinian soul with the French flavour of a young Sauternes.
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Colombo: spaghetti with juice of Sicily

«I love pasta, I eat it every day, I can’t live without it» said Antonio Colombo, pastry chef at Locanda Gulfi in Chiaramonte Gulfi (Rg). And nothing recalls summer better than the pairing of friends-sea urchins-bread dipped in the sauce, of course with a great pasta «especially spaghetti, which have everyone agree from North to South. How lovely, joyful when someone suggests midnight spaghetti!».

Colombo has the soul of a pastry chef but he’s a complete chef who comes from a family of butchers (and pastry chef uncles) and wants to be a full chef dedicated to the sweet and savoury. He trained in numerous places, acquired experience in every role in the kitchen and even worked in a bakery. His place is however in pastry making yet with this motto: "There’s no sweet without a pinch of salt".

At Identità Expo S.Pellegrino he took off the pastry chef uniform and presented a simple, tasty and easy to replicate at home recipe which is however full of taste and of love for traditional pasta «for me it’s the classic one, destroying it would be like putting tar over the Colosseum».

Spaghetti with durum wheat were born in Sicily so the chef matched the rustic flavour of Monograno Felicetti kamut with the marine taste of sea urchins presented in two textures and at two temperatures: hot, browned with a brunoise of violina pumpkin, with garlic and parsley, to mix with the sauce; and raw, added at the end. Drops of regal oil, coming from the Iblei mountains, surround the spaghetti, gracefully placed on a cream of tenerumi and covered with a soft mousse of buffalo milk mozzarella (the original recipe requires ricotta). The sweet soul of the chef peeps out with the candied lemon with butter mixed at the end. Slices of yellow and red date tomatoes complete the chromatic range.

The taste is as soft as a pillow yet intense; the sweetness of the mozzarella is perfectly matched by the minerality of the sea urchins and the citrus notes of the lemon. You can find the aroma of Sicily and of the sea in a mouthful.
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Sea urchins, vegetables and lime: Bartolini

«I’ll make boiled, well seasoned spaghetti». Enrico Bartolini of Devero in Cavenago Brianza debuts with a smile. «Fresh or dry? When I was younger, I was part of the current of Italian chefs who preferred filled fresh egg pasta, because dry pasta seemed to me to offer less possibilities for the chef’s creativity whos constantly looking for craveable and refined food. I was prejudiced». This concept was stressed again a little later: «I regret I didn’t continue to make traditional dishes, because they are good and have a place in people’s heart. Yet I was coming from a starred career and thought I had to respect certain expectations by offering innovative recipes».

An ode to simplicity? «Carbonara is famouse because it has a memorable name and a craveable taste, spaghetti with tomato sauce pair two ingredients that are easy to find and so on. When you always eat the same thing, you wish to do it in a new way; but elaboration is never necessary unless it adds something extra». Everyone cheers. The story between Bartolini and pasta was then mediated by childhood memories: «as a student, I was the last to arrive home and always found overcooked pasta because it had been prepared for other members of the family who had already finished their meal. I decided to become a cook because I was fed up with eating it like that», he smiles.

Today too, he overcooks pasta, then blends it and mixes it with egg yolk, then wild boar sauce, and then puts it in a chiller to create a sort of bonbon: Carbonara inside the egg. The same goes for pasta with tomato: the creamy filling is enclosed in a gellified juice of tomato. But let’s go back to the concept of “boiled, well seasoned spaghetti”: «When they’re al dente we season them with oil and that’s it, to give the highest value to pasta, and let the high quality of the flour emerge», in this case these are Spaghettoni Monograno Matt Felicetti: high in proteins and with an excellent gluten structure, thus very tenacious. They just won’t become overcooked.

The richer version, which Bartolini prepared in front of the numerous audience, is the new version of a dish he also serves at Devero: Spaghetti on sea urchins, that is to say with the corals from the sea urchins on the bottom, «they have the perfect texture for a seasoning». On top of the pasta, instead, he puts some finely chopped raw vegetables and herbs (green peppers, cucumbers, wild fennel, dill, chervil), oil and salt. Finally, finger lime, «that is to say small balls that look like caviar, with an almost resinous flavour, which remind of pink pepper». At Devero, the same recipe has vegetables marinated in the chartreuse and scampi instead of the sea urchins.
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Simone Cipriani’s cone with ribollita

Simone Cipriani plays at Identità di Pasta, at Expo, insipired by Davide Scabin who, in collaboration with Pastificio Felicetti, guides the army of Italian chefs building a “new Italian regional cuisine”. In this case we’re in Tuscany, the sustainability is given by poor ingredients of which nothing is wasted, and then there’s the surprise element in the dish of the young chef from restaurant Santo Graal in Florence. His delicious Cone with cold ribollita soup is an en plein, «I thought of recuperating a traditional recipe in which ingredients are prior even to the discovery of America. I then reinterpreted it in a fun way with a modern touch of red tomato». Yet his real – declared – inspiration comes from Scabin, «his input on pasta play-dough is fantastic» admits Cipriani.

His dish is beautiful: a cone of pasta, wrapped in dehydrated black cabbage giving colour and sapidity, filled with a soup of onion and a mousse of ribollita prepared with black cabbage, vegetables and beans. «The best part of the classic ice cone, in my opinion, is the tip at the end, with the chocolate, because it’s the last mouthful, the one that makes you want to get another one and start again. In this case, I use a very concentrated onion soup at the end, which has a sweet and creamy taste, and then I fill it with the mousse», he explains.

The ice cream on top of the cone is a nest of spaghettini cooked in the cooking water of the black cabbage, shaped and covered with a gel of ribollita which literally melts in the mouth, «starch, from 60°C upwards creates a gel which, if left to rest, keeps its shape» says Cipriani. No ice cream is complete without the necessary decorations, hence the fried onion rings and the sprinkled overcooked, fried pasta with the dry tomato (a sort of Italian chips) evoking a 1950s soul. The final touch of whipped cream infused in grana and covered with puffed parmesan crust, cooked in a vacuum and then puffed in the pan, is purely delicious.
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Baldessari and pasta with tomato

Born in 1977 in Valsugana, Trentino – in Roncegno Terme to be precise - Giuliano Baldessari from restaurant Aqua Crua prepared Spaghettone Matt Felicetti with tomato. The recipe is a little bizzarre: while the title is traditional, the rest is not. For instance, there’s no trace of tomato: «I wanted a different dish, the first tomatoes arrived in Italy were yellow, this is why it is called “pomo d’oro” [in Italian]. Hence I wanted to provoke with a simple preparation expressing a concept I love». This is a preview for Identità di Pasta, «the dish will soon be in the menu at Aqua Crua». It includes no tomato but «pomo d’oro», that is to say apples from San Giovanni, in northern Lazio, whose season is from late June till August.

The chef uses a cold extractor to get their juice. Meanwhile he cooks the pasta in salted water and turmeric. He prepares the sauce on the side. It includes the apple extract, a paste made with blended and very hot chilli peppers (Baldessari says: «They’re “very bad”. I often use hot spices, they add aroma and help digestion»), soy sauce without glutamate, grape syrup, «we’ve abolished sucrose and use this instead, it is totally natural, fantastic». Then oil with garlic, lemon juice, fermented basil.

The chef mixes everything with dehydrated and fried crumbs of bread made with Timilia, a wheat from Sicily, «excellent. It adds an aroma of cinnamon». Dishing out and final applause, because the spaghettoni are lovely and complex, first sweet, then they give you acid notes and finally spicy ones. There’s all the range of flavours, as if it were growing from childhood to maturity.
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Ajo e ojo? As long as it’s Monosilio style

Luciano Monosilio of Pipero al Rex is an expert on pasta, «it’s part of our daily life. My brother and I grew up on fettuccine», he says. At Identità Expo he presented another recipe though, classic “aglio olio e peperoncino”, that is to say “vermicelli borbonici”, as this historic specialty used to be called in Neapolitan tradition. Spaghetti, following tradition? No, rigatoni Felicetti. «Why Khorasan? Because it has a delicately bitter aroma, it recalls a vegetal flavour similar to parsley», which is in fact an ingredient in this recipe, in three ways at least.

The first, powdered: washed, dried and dehydrated, «as if it were Matcha tea, it even has a similar aroma». Then some stalks are immersed in the cooking water for the pasta to add some herbaceous and acid notes (parsley containes ascorbic acid which is only released above 60°C). Finally, part of it is also fried. Another essential component is powdered chilli pepper. It’s a blend of sweet red peppers and hot powdered chilli pepper; they are roasted, peeled, dehydrated and mixed in the same quantities, then lightly smoked. The result recalls the extraordinary pimenton de la Vera and adds a good dose of energy to the dish.

Monosilio also prepares a little cream with young pecorino romano. The same cheese is used to create an infusion: 1 litre of water, 200 grams of pecorino, 100 of grana padano and straight on the stove at 70°C; he then filters this and it becomes the liquid in which the rigatoni are cooked after they are partially cooked in normal, unsalted water. They are then moved to the pan with this infusion (500 grams per 700 grams of pasta) seasoned with a little hot chilli pepper: they are kept there a few minutes, gradually adding oil, in separate moments.

Only one element is still missing from the classic recipe: garlic. It’s in the shape of a cream: it is blanched 5 times, always draining it (make sure the garlic is young); it is then cooked and creamed in milk, adding 50 grams of cream every 300 grams of reduction, and finally adding 5 grams of gelatine sheet, salt and pepper. The chef surprises the audience with the final addition: slices of guanciale produced by his friends at Re Norcino near Ascoli. Thin slices, with some powdered parsley on top, to season the pasta.
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