Dear {NOMEUTENTE}The last news in this summery newsletter for 2016 takes us to Milan, between Porta Garibaldi and Piazza della Repubblica where Andrea Berton opened his restaurant while waiting to open on Lake Como too, in September, and double the Dry establishment in Via Solferino with a new one in Porta Venezia.
Berton at lunchtime offers the so called Insolite Insalate [Unusual Salads] where the key word is unusual. Should the chef’s story not be enough to understand, it helps to know that this is not the usual mix of leaves, tomatoes, seeds, cherry mozzarella, dices of who knows what cheese, scales of tuna, balsamic vinegar that’s never traditional.
While the latter word refers to salads including fruit matched with vegetables, the former refers to Italy, 100%: Salad of tomato spaghetti, basil and olives. If there’s a dish that’s typical of the summer even when it should deserve to be in the rubbish, that’s rice salad. Everyone likes it, everywhere. There’s not a recipe to be inspired from because everyone makes it to their liking, and in the end this is ok though I still dream of chefs thinking this recipe over.
On the contrary, it’s really hard to find a salad made with pasta. I recall a vegetable one by Davide Scabin, with fresh tomato, hard ricotta and little more. Pasta doesn’t seem to have the same flexibility rice has. And, in general, cold pasta or rice don’t seem to satisfy chefs. Are they too simple? Whatever the reason, the Pasta Salad made by Berton is a very respectable dish. |
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The finger and the moon metaphor for 100% Italian pasta For a few years now, a famous organization of farmers hasn’t missed a chance to state that every food company in Italy should only use 100% Italian raw materials.
For small and large pasta producers, sourcing only Italian durum wheat would be a great result. Today, it could rationally only be achieved by some of us. Indeed, raw materials are lacking, both in terms of quality and quantity. Unfortunately in the last two decades the productive deficit (30-40% on average) has forced pasta producers to add durum wheat of equal quality from abroad too in order to guarantee we continue to give our clients the best possible pasta.
Of course, in the best possible world, it would be nice for all the pasta produced in Italy to be made from wheat and raw materials entirely cultivated in our country. Yet this happens for many reasons that have nothing to do with the producers’ will. Instead, it’s because of the structural limits of our agriculture. For instance, think of the fragmentation of the productive areas, the disorganization of the cultivation, the lack of harvesting and storing centres. These criticalities impose somersaults and lowering the prices of our products, against the will of producers who try to work in an honest and autonomous way.
Indeed we need to look at the causes of the problem, or else we will keep pointing at the moon and but watching our finger instead.
Riccardo Felicetti
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Camanini’s very fresh fusilloni  «Eating tomatoes in the summer, seasoned with a little Parmigiano», says Riccardo Camanini, chef at Lido 84 in Gardone Riviera (Brescia), «is a rather common habit. My idea starts from this and the thought that at the end everyone can’t wait to scoop the left over Parmigiano emulsion with some bread. Then there’s the Marinda tomatoes, now at the end of their season: I love them because they’re nicely ribbed, rather crispy and with a good acid taste. They have a tasty juice and require little seasoning. Pistachios on the other hand are the nuts with the strongest herbaceous note. The resulting pesto is rather light and perfectly paired with the sweetness of the tomato. It’s a refreshing summer dish, straightforward and easy to make in every home». How about the fusilloni? «I chose this format because the elicoidal shape collects the sauce better than others. Pesto has an enveloping taste which best expresses itself with a pasta you have to chew at length». Serve warm.
Fusilloni with pistachio and Marinda green tomato pesto
Ingredients
400 g Marinda green tomato water
10 g grated Parmigiano Reggiano
150 g peeled pistachios from Bronte
3 g salt
Method
Process in the Bimby, at maximum speed, for 7 minutes without heat. Away from the heat, mix the pasta with the Marinda tomato and pistachio pesto. Add a few leaves of Greek basil. Serve warm.
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Zazzeri’s mix of raw and classic-style cooked seafood  «This dish», says Luciano Zazzeri of Pineta in Bibbona (Livorno), was born from the desire to make some classic seafood spaghetti. Yet I needed something fresh too: one of the most popular dishes in our restaurant is Crudo di mare, so I tried to combine the idea of cold pasta with raw and cooked seafood».
Cold spaghettini freddi with seafood and sauce of raw tomato, basil pesto, raw fish carpaccio and bottarga di muggine
Recipe for 4 people
Ingredients
400 g spaghettini capellini
50 g shelled wild clams
50 g shelled mussels
4 shelled prawns
4 small shelled scampi
50 g calamaretti
1 garlic clove
½ chilli pepper
1 small bunch of parsley
extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
basil
tomatoes
bottarga di muggine to taste
100 g carpaccio filets of fish (tub gurnard, tuna, Atlantic bonito, turbot, etc. ... )
Method
Scald the tomatoes in boiling water for one minute, then peel them, remove the seeds and blend with the salt. Prepare a little pesto by blending the basil with the oil. Clean and shell the seafood, baby calamari and crustaceans. Scald all the ingredients in boiling water for 2 minutes. Put them in a bowl and season with oil, salt, pepper, finely chopped chilli pepper and garlic, and chopped parsley. Put the bowl in the fridge for 5 minutes so as to cool the ingredients. Cook the pasta, cool it with water in a colander, add it to the bowl with the seafood. Mix well, then add a rich seasoning of oil and salt to taste.
Dishing out
On a plate, place the fresh tomato sauce on the base, roll the spaghetti and put them in the centre. Add the seafood and create some dots with the basil pesto. Place the carpaccio on top of the spaghetti and sprinkle some bottarga di muggine on top.
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Apreda reinterprets pasta with sardines «We started from the desire to give a new take on a great classic such as pasta with sardines», says Francesco Apreda, Neapolitan chef at Imago inside hotel Hassler in Rome, one Michelin star, «and hence came immediately the idea of making a fresh pasta with coarse wheat so as to give some toasted notes to the intense flavour of the sardines. Thus came the buckwheat tagliolini with buckwheat flour as well as burnt wheat flour».
«Hence the drive to include my origins and experiences, resulting in a Neapolitan-style sauce of endive, a great classic, plus nori seaweeds, from my Japan, creating the right saline bridge with the sardines and a strong visual impact. The dish is completed with the freshness of the anise in the sauce, the powdered seaweeds and the wild fennel leaves adding a further strong point to an intense and sapid dish such as the very classic pasta with sardines».
Buckwheat tagliolini with sardines, endive and nori seaweeds
for the buckwheat pasta
200 g buckwheat flour
150g semolina
100 g 00 flour
50 g burnt wheat flour
125 g egg yolks
125 g eggs
Blend the buckwheat flour and add it to the rest of the flour. Put all the ingredients in a planetary mixer and mix with the dough hook. The mixture will be dry and non homogenous but once put in the vacuum bag and keep in the fridge for at least 6 hours, it will be homogeneous and compact, so that the resulting tagliolini will be dry and ready to be cooked.
for the endive cream
50 g Neapolitan curly endive
50 g potatoes
40 g sultanas
40 g pine nuts
1 g anise seeds
Clean the endive and cut it into thin slices. Peel the potatoes and slice them. Brown the endive and potatoes in a pan, add salt and cover them with boiling water. Once they’re cooked, blend with the Bimby processor adding sultanas, pine nuts, anise seeds and then strain with a small sieve.
for the sardine broth
1 kg sardines
1 lemongrass twig
1 small fresh chilli pepper
2 sprigs of parsley
100 g date tomatoes
Clean and eviscerate the sardines. Place them on a baking tin with the other ingredients and cover with tin foil. Bake at 180°C for 30 minutes. Place the toasted sardines in a pot with 3 litres of cold water, simmer for around 1 hour. Strain the broth first with a sieve and then with a cloth.
for the sardines in brine
400 g sardines
1,250 ml water
162 g salt
Dill, parsley, basil
Pepper corns, orange and lemon zest
Prepare an infusion with 250 ml of water, herbs, pepper, orange and lemon zest and leave to cool. On the side, mix the remaining water with the salt and blend with a hand blender until the salt is perfectly mixed. Add the cold infusion to the salted water and submerge the deboned sardine filets. Leave to marinate in brine in the fridge for around 30 minutes. Drain the filets and dry them well, then keep them in the fridge, closed in baking paper.
for the tomato paté
500 g date tomatoes
18 g salt
15 g sugar
basil, parsley and garlic
Clean and cut the date tomatoes into halves. Season them with the other ingredients and place them in a baking tin lined with baking paper. Dry them in the oven at 52°C without humidity for around 10 hours. Blend them so as to obtain a homogeneous paté.
Garnishing
8 sheets of nori seaweed
Blanched turnip cubes
Oil aromatised with garlic and chilli pepper
Wild fennel leaves
Powdered seaweeds
Final steps
In a pan, reduce the sardine broth with the tomato paté, add the tagliolini blanched in lots of salted water and finish their cooking. Mix the pasta with a drop of aromatised oil and place it on a sheet of nori seaweed previously dampened with the cooking water from the pasta. Add the endive sauce and the cream made by mixing the tagliolini and garnish with turnip cubes, sardine filets in brine, powdered seaweeds and a few sprigs of wild fennel leaves.
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Peppe Guida, the lemon spaghetti man  «Few people remember this», says Peppe Guida, chef at Antica Osteria Nonna Rosa in Vico Equense (Naples) introducing the dish, «but spaghetti with lemon were popular over here already in the Eighties. I remember tasting them in Capri. At the time they were made with a base of margarine, lemon zest and mixed with a little cream. In the latest edition of Identità Milano I presented it in a more refined and lighter version: the spaghetti are mixed with a drop of olive oil after the cooking and some provolone del Monaco. It’s becoming so popular, in the restaurant and elsewhere, that people now identify me with this dish. And I’m extremely glad».
Spaghettini with lemon water, oil and provolone del monaco
Recipe for 4 people
Ingredients
280 g Spaghettini
3 untreated lemons (preferably from the Amalfi Coast)
1/2 litre of water
100 g young provolone del Monaco
Light fruity extra virgin olive oil
Black pepper
Thyme, lemon, powered green lemon for garnishing
Very little salt
Method
Start one day ahead. Macerate the lemon zest in water you’ll bring to 80°C, for 12 hours. Then drain them and move the liquid into a large and shallow pan. Bring to the boil and add the spaghettini and a little oil. Cook mixing often, add water if necessary. Finally mix with the grated cheese and finish the dish with some pepper and a drop of oil. Garnish with thyme and the powdered lemon and serve.
Notes
The water is enough for a “risotto” style cooking: don’t boil the pasta but cook it in a little water so that it releases the starch and acquires creaminess. Add very little salt: the provolone added at the end would end up making the dish too salty.
(in collaboration with Teresa De Masi, Scatti Golosi)
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Trentacosti’s Pasta alla Norma is with snapper and mango «The key to good cooking», says Carmelo Trentacosti of Cuvée du Jour at Villa Igiea in Palermo, «is in tradition. Since our land is very rich of it, we’ve just recreated a dish that recalls the shape and colour of the classic pasta alla Norma. The variation is based on the fact this version is made with fish, and is much lighter and impressive. Plus the mango pennette of course lead you to think about pasta. Then there’s the watermelon juice for the tomato, the aubergine caviar and the grated mandorla pizzuta di Avola almonds on top, instead of the fantastic ricotta salata which everyone adores».
Fake Norma
Recipe for 4 people
Ingredients
1 very ripe mango
100 g snapper
40 g extra virgin olive oil
130 g sweet watermelon
5 g lemon juice
1 g wild fennel
100 g aubergines
4 pea sprouts
400 g vegetable broth
20 g biancolilla olive oil
3 g peeled almond from Avola
gluco to taste
algin to taste
salt and pepper to taste
Method
for the mango pennette
Peel the mango and slice it with a slicing maching, place the slices on a cloth and insert the snapper tartare richly seasoned with wild fennel, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper and roll and cut into the shape of the classic pennette.
for the watermelon juice
Centrefuge the watermelon and season the juice with salt, pepper and a little lemon juice.
for the aubergine caviar
Peel the aubergines and dice them. Fry in olive oil, blend them with the vegetable broth and season to taste. Add the same quantity of Algin and leave to rest for 24 hours. After this time, create a calcium bath with the Gluco and make the caviar.
Composing the dish
Place the pennette as in the photo of the dish, add the aubergine caviar, the pea sprout, grate the almond on top as if it were ricotta salata, and finally add the watermelon juice with a drop of extra virgin olive oil.
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Sicilian pride: Peppe Barone’s tortelli «A cult dish from the early days of this restaurant», says Peppe Barone of Fattoria delle Torri in Modica (Ragusa) introducing the recipe, «with sweet and sour rabbit and diced vegetables. A dish to be eaten warm, during the hot summer months. The vegetables in this case become sauces, and the rabbit is the filling for the crest shaped tortelli. These can be easily kept standing, a metaphor of being Sicilian».
Rooster crests alla stimpirata
Recipe for 4 people
Ingredients
for the filling
250 g rabbit meat
50 g white onion
1 garlic clove
30 g deboned green olives
10 g rosemary needles
10 g white wine vinegar
300 g vegetable broth
200 g white wine
salt extra virgin olive oil to taste
for the fresh pasta
150 g semolina
150 g 00 flour
130 g egg yolk
for the carrot and ginger sauce
100 g carrots
15 g white onion
10 g fresh ginger
vegetable broth, salt and extra virgin olive oil to taste
for the sauce with wild
200 g chard leaves
15 g white onion
15 g raisins from Pantelleria
vegetable broth
salt, extra virgin olive oil and chilli pepper to taste
for the celery sauce
80 g celery
20 g boiled potato
water, salt and extra virgin olive oil to taste
for the caprino cream
30 g caprino curdled with figs
10 g fresh cream
for the chopped baked black olives
30 g black olives
for the rabbit jus
Rabbit bones, celery, carrots and onions, tomato extract, red wine, ice and water.
Method
For the stuffing, stew the onions and garlic. On the side, toast the meat of the rabbit, add the white wine vinegar, salt and cook with the wine, broth, rosemary and olives. Leave to cook and mince with the cutter. For the pasta, mix the flour and knead with the eggs. Leave to rest for around half an hour, then create very thin discs and fill them. Close the discs in a half moon shape and from the crests, plissé the free side.
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Spaghetti curdle and anchovies by Deidda «It’s a seemingly simple dish», says Stefano Deidda of Dal Corsaro in Cagliari, one Michelin star, «made of delicate balances and few frills. It unites the aromas of a primordial Sardinia with essential aesthetics. The texture of the spaghetti, the crispiness of the anchovies and the creaminess of the curdle sauce come with strong yet balanced flavours. To put it simple, it’s straightforward, just like our cooking».
Spaghetti curdle and anchovies
Recipe for 4 people
Ingredients
250 g spaghetti Senatore Cappelli
40 g goat curdle
16 anchovy filets
300 g Civraxiu (Sardinian bread, typical of Sanluri)
20 g artisanal butter
Method
Remove the crust from the Civraxiu bread, dice it and leave it in the oven at 130°C for about 25 minutes. Put the dry white part of the bread in a cutter together with 16 filets of anchovies and mix so as to ground it coarsely. Bake again at 150 °C for 10 minutes. Break the anchovy fillets and melt them in the pan with the goat curdle, so as to make a smooth cream. Cook the spaghettin in boiling salted water, drain them al dente and mix them with the curdle and anchovy cream and a knob of butter.
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Berton’s surprise: Tomato Spaghetti salad  Since mid July, Andrea Berton enriched the offer of the restaurant named after him in Milan with particular attention to lunch. A card indicates eight recipes under the «Unusual salads» category. In the metropolis to which we owe the concept of insalatona [large salad] the chef from Friuli interpreted everything with practical genius. It’s not a tasting menu. It is instead a new way of considering one of the most classic single-course dishes, without debasing it. In fact, making it more precious.
In the photo, the Tomato spaghetti salad with basil and olives appears just a little warm. It’s the only recipe that is not that close to the classic concept of salad, even though cold pasta dishes do exist, and so do spaghetti. It’s not blasphemy. It’s a very delicious dish of egg chitarra pasta. Worth trying.
Yesterday I started with the Green salad with guacamole, crispy amaranth and balsamic vinegar; then the pasta, followed by a delicious sapid Salad of mussels with courgettes from Liguria and saffron, and an intense Salad with tomato, buffalo milk mozzarella, aubergines and capers. Finally, Fruit and vegetable salad with strawberry sorbet.
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