Monograno Felicetti

Dear {NOMEUTENTE}
On Tuesday 8th March, the third and final day of Identità Golose 2016, the Sala Blu 1 will host the day dedicated to Identità di Pasta, with eight speakers. Some will debut at the congress, as with Nicola Fossaceca from Abruzzo who will open the afternoon session, others are veterans that have been enlightening the congress from the start, as with Carlo Cracco, the first to speak in the morning.

After the Masterchef par excellence, it will be the turn of Riccardo Camanini and Matias Perdomo. And after lunchtime, and Fossaceca, a high quality poker formed by Cristina Bowerman, Peppe Guida, Ciccio Sultano and Davide Scabin. If I think of the programme as a whole, I can notice with pleasure that the 12th edition of Identità Milano is included in a rainbow that starts with Scabin, he will be the one to open in the Auditorium on Sunday 6th March, and ends with him again, capable every year of inventing new shapes of pasta. Last year he surprised everyone with his Amatriciana cooked in the pressure cooker with out any extra fat such as oil or butter, just the traditional pork jowl. In two and half months he will surprise us once again.

Paolo Marchi
 

Cristina Bowerman and all the umami of Apulia

«This dish», its creator, Cristina Bowerman of Glass Hostaria in Rome, one of the speakers at Identità di Pasta on Tuesday 8th March in Milan, goes straight to the point «is born from the desire to unite two passions that are seemingly different but in fact, in my opinion, identical: umami and Apulia. I’ve always thought that all over the world, flavour profiles always have a shared element and that every profile can recall “home”, if seen from a special point of view. Umami and Apulia, in my opinion, cannot be separated. The sea, the salt, the iodine, the raw or fermented, cooked or smoked fish are flavours that don’t take me to Japan, as one may think, but to Apulia, straight to a particular beach or restaurant. This dish is a celebration of a seeming diversity that ends up being assimilated with everything else».

Then the details: «Durum wheat pasta filled with ricotta, my mother’s favourite one (she always says «sheep milk ricotta indeed has character!»), which can balance the large eel. The fat fish is fried, a seeming contradiction though fried catfish is a popular dish in Texas. The kombu seaweed instead reminds me of the saltiness of the sea in Apulia. And then there’s the acid note, my favourite one, which is in the shape of a powder adding freshness, just like a seaside breeze».

Rigatoni, mignonette and large eel

Recipe for 4 people

Ingredients
200 g rigatoni
100 g sheep milk ricotta
20 g finely chopped fresh herbs
160 g large eel
1/2 tablespoon of powdered white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon smoked black pepper
powdered parsley

for the mignonette
1/2 dl red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons red wine
4 scallions
2 tablespoons lemon juice
salt
4 gr lecithin
Peel the scallions and chop them finely, put them into a bowl with lemon juice, vinegar and wine; mix, cover and leave to rest for 30 minutes in a cool place. Then strain and add the lecithin.

for the sauce
3 egg yolks
20 g dulse seaweed
200 g dashi (prepared with 250 g water, 10 g bonito flakes and 20 g kombu seaweed)

Work the seaweed depending on the form in which you got it (soak it if preserved in water, fresh, or dry, etc.). Put it into an infusion with hot water. Prepare the custard with the egg yolks and the dashi. Soak the dulse seaweed.

Precook the rigatoni. Strain the ricotta. Add the herbs and season with salt and pepper. Put it into a pastry bag and fill the rigatoni – previously brushed with olive oil. Roll the eel in flour and fry it. As soon as you remove it from the oil, dry it and sprinkle some powdered vinegar on top. Create a mignonette foam using a hand blender.

Dishing out
Put the dashi custard, the dulse seaweed and the stuffed rigatoni on a plate. Place the large eel and the mignonette foam on the rigatoni. Decorate with smoked pepper and powdered parsley.
 

Diego Rossi of Trippa: Christmas ditalini

«No more ravioli with capon this Christmas, I’m fed up», irrupts Diego Rossi of Trippa, one of the most successful new establishments in Milan, «I’d fancy some Ditalini with salted codfish, turnip tops and pressed ciccioli. Salted cod, because it’s a poor, traditional fish, and given the times, it’s best to put caviar and Champagne aside. Turnip tops, the winter vegetable par excellence, delicately bitter is in contrast with the sweetness of the fish. Pressed ciccioli because December is the month when pigs are slaughtered. So in December one should eat pork in all possible ways. And we use pressed ciccioli, a sort of salami mostly produced in Emilia (my father is from Modena). Finally, some powdered Monte Veronese. In other ways, there’s my origins, a touch of Veneto and a touch of Emilia. When I eat this dish I feel at home».

How about ditalini? «As a child, my mother often prepared pasta and beans for me, but with this format of pasta, so...».

Ditalini with turnip tops, salted cod and ciccioli

Recipe for 4 people

Ingredients
320 g ditalini
160 g turnip tops
120 g desalted salted cod
120 g sliced pressed ciccioli
60g grated Monte Veronese
3 anchovy filets
10 g lemon juice
Extra virgin olive oil, rosemary, salt and Sarawak pepper

Method
Prepare a sauce by blanching the stalks of the turnip tops and then browning them with oil, garlic and anchovies. Blend them in the bimby food processor. Blanch the flowers from the turnip tops and keep warm. Cook the salted cod in oil, garlic and rosemary at around 70°C. Cook the ditalini al dente in salted water and toss them in the pan with the sauce, the flakes of salted codfish and a handful of grated Monte Veronese. Mix with the cooking oil used for the salted cod and with lemon juice to add acidity. Finish the dish with the pressed ciccioli cut into thin slices and lots of Sarawak pepper. Enjoy.
 

From Treviso, Francesco Brutto’s Spanettone

Spanettone, that is to say spaghetti turned into panettone. This brilliant idea belongs to Francesco Brutto, 27-year-old chef from Undicesimo Vineria in Treviso, a real promise. «During the Christmas holidays», says the young man, «at the end of a menu with 12 courses I’m used to serve this dish, a real provocation. It’s a Spaghettone Cavalieri creamed with butter aromatised with spices, the same I use to make panettone, turned and dried mother yeast, and a powder made with bergamot zest. What I really like is that when it is served, it comes with the aroma of panettone, a soft and fat cake; but when you eat it, it is extremely bitter and sour. This creates a strong sense of disorientation because people think it’s a well-known cake placed in the moment that usually belongs to the pre-dessert».

Spanettone

Ingredients
Spaghettoni Benedetto Cavalieri
Butter
Sweet Marsala 5 anni
Spices: pepper from Malabar, mace, cinnamon, cloves, green cardamom, black cardamom, liquorice, bitter orange, pepper from Selim, pepper from Timut, vanilla, sansho, lemon balm, nutmeg, verbena, stevia, tarragon, pelargonium citrosum, Argentine mint, green anise, star anise.
bergamot zest
mother yeast

Method
Powder the spices together and strain them until you obtain a very thin powder. Whisk the butter with the reduced Marsala and then stir in the powdered spices. Dry the bergamot zest and then blend them. Let the yeast turn in the open air and then dry it in the oven. Blend it so as to make a powder. Finally cook the spaghetti for 15 minutes in unsalted water, drain and toss them into a pan and continue to cook only with water and salt. Finally add butter and spices and toss. Serve and sprinkle some powdered bergamot (just a little, it’s bitter!) and the powdered yeast.
 

Spaghetti, liver and capon by Davide Del Duca

This dish by Davide Del Duca, chef at Osteria Fernanda in Rome is inspired, as often the case, by his childhood memories. «It’s an updated take on a dish my grandmother used to make at Christmas, always paired with lasagne. Half from Rome and half from Ciociaria, she always cooked spaghetti with a sauce made with sweetbreads, with or without tomato. I liked the texture of the liver very much, in a sauce made with chicken stock and tomato. I made them creamy, keeping a small part as a whole, to give some texture. The capon jus takes the place of the old broth».

Spaghetto Monograno Felicetti, capon jus, liver and burnt onion

Recipe for 4 people

for the capon jus
1 kg capon
3 carrots
2 golden onions
1 celery stick
2 Jerusalem artichoke
50 g celeriac peel

Method
Eviscerate the capon and keep the liver to a side, then rinse both under running water for about twenty minutes. Take the capon, cut it into around four pieces and place it on a baking tin together with the previously cleaned vegetables. Bake at 180°C until it is perfectly toasted (around 25 minutes).

Remove the baking tin from the oven and move the capon and vegetables into a casserole tin (paying attention not to pour out the fat that came out during the toasting), cover with iced water and leave to simmer for around 5 hours adding water every time the level will go below that of the meat.

After 5 hours have passed, strain the jus and let it reduce until it is as thick as a sauce. Keep to a side.

for the liver cream
300 g capon liver
3 bay leaves
2 scallions
100 ml sweet wine (Sauternes)
150 g clarified butter
1 g liquorice
5 g Maldon salt
Extra virgin olive oil

Method
Over a high heat, warm up a non stick pan, add a little oil, the bay leaves, the chopped scallion and sauté for a few seconds, then add the kidney and leave it to brown over a very high heat for around 3 minutes. Add some white wine and continue to cook until the wine has completely evaporated.

Put the liver (keeping some to a side) into a blender, add the other ingredients and process until you obtain a smooth cream, then strain and keep to a side.

for the burnt onion
3 medium sized golden onions

Method
Clean the onions removing the outside peel, divide them into slices removing the inner peel. Using a non stick pan, burn the onions over a high heat, put them into a baking tin and leave them to dry in the oven for 1 hour at 80°C. Now take the onions and powder them with a blender. Keep to a side.

for the Spaghetti
320 g spaghetti Felicetti
1 garlic clove
150 g capon jus
fresh oregano
wild fennel

Final method
In a rather large pan, sauté the garlic clove. Meanwhile, cook the pasta in lots of salted water, drain and toss it into the pan adding a ladle of water, the capon jus and some salt. Dish out putting on the base of the plate a tablespoon of liver cream, spreading it with the back of the spoon, then a nest of spaghetti (use a fork and a ladle), the herbs, a few pieces of liver and finally the powdered onion.
 

Purptiell affugat by Faby Scarica

Being proud of her origins from Campania, Faby Scarica of Villa Chiara in Vico Equense (Naples) chose a dish that tells the story of many of her paesanij: Linguine in a sauce of "purptiell affugat". «I learnt to make this dish when I was around 20 with the help of Peppe Di Martino, sous chef at Gennaro Esposito’s Torre del Saracino. It encloses Naples, the sea, the sun and octopus, which is typical at Christmas. Compared to the classic, there’s a variation: I add the zest of lemons from Sorrento and clams from Rovigliano, two emblematic dishes in my cooking and in my life».

Linguine di Gragnano with a sauce made with octopus “affogati”, zest of lemons from Sorrento and clam water

Recipe for 4 people

280 gr linguine di Gragnano (if you’re like me, even 400 gr will do)
8 octopuses weighing 100 g each
1 garlic clove
2 stalks of celery
1 chilli pepper
parsley leaves
extra virgin olive oil
salt
350 g peeled tomatoes
1 lemon
250 g wild clams

Method
for the octopus and the clams

Clean the octopus paying attention to remove all the non edible parts, eyes and beak. Rinse them and keep them to a side. Clean the clams so that any sand that may be inside comes out. Rinse them and open them as usual. In order to preserve their tactile and taste characteristics you could chill them quickly. (We will only use the water so you already know what to prepare the following day).

for the jus
In a pan, add oil, garlic, chilli pepper and the celery stalks which you’ll remove as they start to brown. Add the water from the clams and leave it to concentrate a little. This addition serves to give extra freshness to the dish, which, after the prolonged cooking, has very intense flavours. In this way the aroma of the sea appears to be even more direct.

Remove the pan from the stove, let the temperature fall then add the octopus, the chopped parsley and the peeled tomatoes (previous squashed with a fork). Cook over a low heat with the lid on, for about 35-45 minutes depending on the heat. As a point of reference, check the tenderness and the texture of the sauce, which in the endshould be dense and meaty. Only when the final minutes of cooking will be left, grate some lemon zest into the sauce, and cover with the lid so as that all the aromas are well mixed.

Finishing the dish
Bring lots of salted water to the boil and add the linguine. Cook them al dente, then toss them into the pan with the octopus sauce. This pasta doesn’t necessary need to be tossed a lot because the sauce already has the necessary structure to stick to the pasta. Mix so that it is “coloured” and then dish out following your creativity.
 

The aroma of De Luca’s Malcandrino in Lecce

«For me, Christmas time smells of salted cod. The olive harvest, of the celline variety, is almost over, the first citrus fruits and the famous subbra taula [crudité] dilate time and it’s already nighttime. We part after a holiday meal... this is how my tubetti are born». A nice explanation from the author of this pasta, Alfredo De Luca of restaurant Malcandrino, on the Strada Provinciale Lecce-Monteroni, tel. +39.342.3124240

Tubetti Benedetto Cavalieri risotto style with salted codfish, puntarelle, celline olives and lemon

Recipe for 4 people

Ingredients
200 g tubetti Benedetto Cavalieri
400 g desalted salted codfish
1 Catalogna chicory
100 g celline olives
1 lemon
1 l vegetable stock
2 scallion
2 garlic clove
Salt and pepper to taste
Wild oregano to taste
Extra virgin olive oil from Cellina di Nardò
20 g grated Pecorino Romano

Method
for the salted codfish

Remove the skin and any bones and roughly cut the salted codfish filet into cubes and put to a side. Keep the skin and any wastes and sauté the garlic and scallion with the oil in a pan, then add the vegetable stock, bring to a boil and strain.


for the chicory
Carefully clean the puntarelle, slice them and keep them in iced water.

for the olives
Remove the bones and cut them roughly, keep to a side. In a pan, brown the garlic and scallion lightly, add a ladle of stock, bring to the boil and add the tubetti, cook them gradually adding the broth as in a risotto. When the cooking is almost finished, add the salted codfish. Mix with extra virgin olive oil, a pinch of pecorino, salt and pepper. Spread on a plate and finish with the puntarelle, olives, some grated lemon and the wild oregano.