Identità Golose 2006

[albiston]

I've only been to Cedroni's place once, a couple of years ago. He wasn't fully into  his laboratory food yet and his cooking showed a mediocre amount of skill. What really turned me off was the green bread; seems to get me every time. What was this, Saint Patrick's day in Senigallia? Cedroni is not italian; he is Portuguese. Perhaps that is why he's confused about that famous Italian dessert "bounty di seppia” a chocolate covered cuttlefish-coconut ganache praline."

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I have to admit that, while I have never eaten at La Madonnina del Pescatore, I do find some of Cedroni's creations somewhat puzzling, at least on paper, and I cannot imagine how they would work at all. A friend that visits him at least twice a year, and is clearly a fan of his cooking, strongly insists that if you haven't tried them you should not judge: since you have, I will add your opinion to my suspicions. On the other hand there are a few dishes of his that sound very intriguing.

I don't get what you mean with Cedroni being Portuguese: as far as I knew he is from Senigallia and has spent most of his life there.

[albiston]

...

To summarize, I think Peskias is indeed one of the most talented chefs we have in Greece, but his talent will go to waste if he falls in the "show-business" trap. This is a very large trap in Greece, where people mostly go to the expensive restaurants like "48" to see and be seen and do not really care about the food and the wine.

My suggestion to any talented chef in Greece today would be to open a restaurant where people who like good food can go without having to spend more than they would in Arzak or Mugaritz!  There they should offer creative and inventive cuisine that is open to critique and public discourse, and not the domain of a small group of socialites and journalists.

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athinaeos, thank you for the feedback and the well put points. Taste differences aside, I am also suspicious of the show-biz side of restaurants when it becomes more important than the food itself: I like nice presentations as anyone else, but I am more ready to excuse a dish that looks bad but tastes good than the other way around. It is undeniable that show effects are on the rise, and I am curious to see if they are here to stay –will we be seeing Baroque creations a la Careme from molecular gastronomes soon?– or if it is just a fad.

What I am less sure about is your point on critique and public discourse, or rather only the latter. Critique is an integral part of the daily life of chefs, I imagine, yet I can hardly see a chef submitting himself freely to public discourse.

Well done again, Alberto. Thank you. Any idea how Cracco winds up with such thin slices of fish?

What sort of reaction did the Italians and Italian press have towards Wylie?

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I have really no clue about how Cracco produces those sheets, though I don't think it is done with Wylie's method. That one is pretty specific to proteins, while Cracco mentioned he is planning to do something similar with vegetables and even pastry ingredients. Also Cracco's fish sheets are, according to those who tasted them, very different, especially in texture, depending on the starting ingredient.

Living abroad I only get snippets of information about what appears on the Italian press, yet my impression is that the whole discussion on Adrià's 23 point manifesto obscured pretty much the rest of Identità Golose, not only Wylie. From what I have heard from those four or five people I know who attended, Wylie's dishes intrigued them or left them quite cold, depending on their position on today's culinary avant garde. Wylie does seem to be one of the best known US chefs though, after Keller, Trotter and Walters.

[fortedei]

I've only been to Cedroni's place once, a couple of years ago. He wasn't fully into  his laboratory food yet and his cooking showed a mediocre amount of skill. What really turned me off was the green bread; seems to get me every time. What was this, Saint Patrick's day in Senigallia? Cedroni is not italian; he is Portuguese. Perhaps that is why he's confused about that famous Italian dessert "bounty di seppia” a chocolate covered cuttlefish-coconut ganache praline."

←

I have to admit that, while I have never eaten at La Madonnina del Pescatore, I do find some of Cedroni's creations somewhat puzzling, at least on paper, and I cannot imagine how they would work at all. A friend that visits him at least twice a year, and is clearly a fan of his cooking, strongly insists that if you haven't tried them you should not judge: since you have, I will add your opinion to my suspicions. On the other hand there are a few dishes of his that sound very intriguing.

I don't get what you mean with Cedroni being Portuguese: as far as I knew he is from Senigallia and has spent most of his life there.

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Don't understand about what you don't get about Cedroni being Portuguese? It is quite simple. Cedroni is from Portugal. I don't believe the info you have is correct. Cedroni is not from Sengallia and has not spent most of his life there.

[albiston]

Don't understand about what you don't  get about Cedroni being Portuguese? It is quite simple. Cedroni is from Portugal.  I don't believe the info you have is correct. Cedroni is not from Sengallia and has not spent most of his life there.

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Might be that I am wrong, but all the sources I have found say he is from Le Marche, born in 1964 in Ancona, that he attended the nautical school there, graduating in 1983, and that he opened La Madonnina, at the time a simple pizzeria ristorante, in 1984. There's no mention of Portugal whatsoever anywhere I looked... that's what I don't get.

But maybe Cedroni is trying to hide his murky Portugese past , so I was trying to find out on which information you base your claim.

[docsconz]

I've only been to Cedroni's place once, a couple of years ago. He wasn't fully into  his laboratory food yet and his cooking showed a mediocre amount of skill. What really turned me off was the green bread; seems to get me every time. What was this, Saint Patrick's day in Senigallia? Cedroni is not italian; he is Portuguese. Perhaps that is why he's confused about that famous Italian dessert "bounty di seppia” a chocolate covered cuttlefish-coconut ganache praline."

←

I have to admit that, while I have never eaten at La Madonnina del Pescatore, I do find some of Cedroni's creations somewhat puzzling, at least on paper, and I cannot imagine how they would work at all. A friend that visits him at least twice a year, and is clearly a fan of his cooking, strongly insists that if you haven't tried them you should not judge: since you have, I will add your opinion to my suspicions. On the other hand there are a few dishes of his that sound very intriguing.

I don't get what you mean with Cedroni being Portuguese: as far as I knew he is from Senigallia and has spent most of his life there.

←

Don't understand about what you don't get about Cedroni being Portuguese? It is quite simple. Cedroni is from Portugal. I don't believe the info you have is correct. Cedroni is not from Sengallia and has not spent most of his life there.

←

Interesting, if true, in that Portugal is even more culinarily conservative than Italy. Do you have any references or links to confirm your assertion?

[fortedei]

I've only been to Cedroni's place once, a couple of years ago. He wasn't fully into  his laboratory food yet and his cooking showed a mediocre amount of skill. What really turned me off was the green bread; seems to get me every time. What was this, Saint Patrick's day in Senigallia? Cedroni is not italian; he is Portuguese. Perhaps that is why he's confused about that famous Italian dessert "bounty di seppia” a chocolate covered cuttlefish-coconut ganache praline."

←

I have to admit that, while I have never eaten at La Madonnina del Pescatore, I do find some of Cedroni's creations somewhat puzzling, at least on paper, and I cannot imagine how they would work at all. A friend that visits him at least twice a year, and is clearly a fan of his cooking, strongly insists that if you haven't tried them you should not judge: since you have, I will add your opinion to my suspicions. On the other hand there are a few dishes of his that sound very intriguing.

I don't get what you mean with Cedroni being Portuguese: as far as I knew he is from Senigallia and has spent most of his life there.

←

Don't understand about what you don't get about Cedroni being Portuguese? It is quite simple. Cedroni is from Portugal. I don't believe the info you have is correct. Cedroni is not from Sengallia and has not spent most of his life there.

←

Interesting, if true, in that Portugal is even more culinarily conservative than Italy. Do you have any references or links to confirm your assertion?

←

Your post and Albiston's are interesting. We went to Cedroni's place because a good friend of ours (who, in our mind, has the best skills of any chef in Italy... notice I didn't say the best chef, nor the best restaurant... we say that this guy has the technical skills of a Frenchman, he was trained in France for a period of time, but the soul of an Italian; what a combination, but I digress, but do you want to take guesses as to whom I refer) who is a very good friend Cedroni. So, on the night we went to his restaurant, we were treated like royalty. We talked during the service, both with him and his wife (both extremely charming) and then talked at length after the service was over (he showed us his new building projects and it was clear he wanted to go to another level). It was during this conversation that he told us that he was Portuguese and told us the differences he saw between cooking in Portugal and cooking in Italy. His wife is Italian.

Perhaps he was joking around with us, ala the green bread in the bread basket, but he made no pretense that he was Italian. Moreno, his Christian name, is not an Italian name.

Now I'm curious as to what the real story is.

[albiston]

The afternoon's session of Identità Golose opened with a thematic session on Friuli, with talks from three of the region's most interesting young chefs on the revisitation of tradition.

Andrea Canton, first speaker of the afternoon, is the chef of La Primula, near Pordenone, a restaurant which has been in the hands of Canton's family since the late XIX century. Like his colleagues, Canton concentrated on one particular side of Friuli's traditional cuisine: spices in his case, introduced to the local cuisine through the historic mittel-european connections of the region.

Canton gave a personal twist to the traditional plum dumpling, covering it in an incredibly fine julienne of cinnamon flavoured dough, frying it and then serving on potato pureé. Pan fried goose liver was paired to a sauce of mulled wine and to brovade (fermented turnips). Finally Canton discussed how to steam distill spices to obtain aromas ideally used in fonds and sauces.

Emanuele Scarello's restaurant Agli Amici, in Godia near Udine, is considered by many as the best destination in Friuli. Scarello is also the most creative and playful chef in the area, always ready to test new uses for long known ingredients and yet still respectful of tradition: next to his creative menu diners can find a traditional selection of classics, adapted to today's tastes.

For his appearance at Identità Golose, Scarello revisited to classics. His frico is destructured and reassembled, to preserve the individual contribution of each ingredient: dried onion, to improve its digestibility, potato soup, as carrier of flavours, and cheese enclosed into ravioli. For the classic buzara, a traditional fish soup of the area, Scarello decided to highlight the freshness of his ingredients laving the scampi raw, serving the tomatoes as jelly and the peppers as sorbet.

The small incursion into Friuli's revisited culinary tradition finished with Attias Tarlao, the young chef of All'Androna in Grado. Tarlao started extremely young yet his career is still at its beginning, though very promising ones at that. The menu at Androna is very much centred on the fish available every day at the local market, an ingredient for which this young chef feels a clear affection.

Not surprisingly, the three dishes proposed at Identità Golose were focused on this ingredient. First the brodetto: in the classical version this fish "soup" is served with white polenta. Tarlao changed the presentation, turning the dish into a sort of Easter egg. The polenta is dried into hemispheres and used to form a "pod" enclosing the fish brodetto. The equally classic soles "in savor" keep their essence in their new presentation (above): served as filets with a picolit sauce and a "coffee shot" of toasted pinoli. The tuna tonnato, a play on the more traditional veal tonnato, was cooked with a blowtorch on one side only, holding rosemary branches between fish and flame, to obtain an aromatic and slightly smoked flavour.

After Friuli it was time for a visit to nearby Slovenia with chef Tomas Kavcic of Gostisce Pri Lojzetu in Vipavaska. Salt was the real star of this talk, with Kavcic discussing the use of a variety of flavoured salts and a method which permits to use salt slabs to cook "a la plancha". Through this method food gets seasoned while cooking, as demonstrated through "trip to Pirano" where the salt of the local quarries is used as cooking tool and seasoning for the ingredients of the area, such as squid, bacon and sardines.

The day's talks culminated with Jordi Herrera of Manairò in Barcelona. Herrera is known for his technical cooking "tricks", sometimes at the cost of people forgetting his real ultimate goal as a cook: perfecting cooking methods through new tools and methods.

For his appearance at Identità Golose, Scarello revisited to classics. His frico is destructured and reassembled, to preserve the individual contribution of each ingredient: dried onion, to improve its digestibility, potato soup, as carrier of flavours, and cheese enclosed into ravioli. For the classic buzara, a traditional fish soup of the area, Scarello decided to highlight the freshness of his ingredients laving the scampi raw, serving the tomatoes as jelly and the peppers as sorbet.

The small incursion into Friuli's revisited culinary tradition finished with Attias Tarlao, the young chef of All'Androna in Grado. Tarlao started extremely young yet his career is still at its beginning, though very promising ones at that. The menu at Androna is very much centred on the fish available every day at the local market, an ingredient for which this young chef feels a clear affection.

His reflection on cooking method started from grilled sardines (above). The inspiration came after tasting an extremely aromatic but overcooked version of the dish, followed after a short interval by one prepared Japanese style, perfect in texture. To mix the virtues of the tow methods Herrera cooks his fish with a blowtorch through a screen of thyme which gives the fish a particular aroma. He went on to demonstrate his "internal heat" method injecting steam through a probe directly into a lobster, for example. The speed and neutral taste obtained through this technique allow to maintain a particular aromatic purity of the ingredioent. Finally Herrera demonstrated how his “nail barbecue” can be used, together with a blowtorch, to transmit heat in a uniform way to the ingredient, a beef filet in this case.

[albiston]

Your post and Albiston's are interesting. We went to Cedroni's place because a good friend of ours... who is a very good friend Cedroni. So, on the night we went to his restaurant, we were treated like royalty. We talked during the service, both with him and his wife (both extremely charming) and then talked at length after the service was over (he showed us his new building projects and it was clear he wanted to go to another level). It was during this conversation that he told us that he was Portuguese and told us the differences he saw between cooking in Portugal and cooking in Italy. His wife is Italian.

Perhaps he was joking around with us, ala the green bread in the bread basket, but he made no pretense that he was Italian. Moreno, his Christian name, is not an Italian name.

Now I'm curious as to what the real story is.

←

Intriguing story. So much so, that I went on and asked a few of my friends and contacts working in the Italian gastronomic scene about what they though. All of them told me that to their knowledge Cedroni is 100% Marchigiano; no one had ever heard anything about Portugal before.

I am somewhat puzzled.

[docsconz]

Could it be he may have been pulling someone's leg?

[fortedei]

Your post and Albiston's are interesting. We went to Cedroni's place because a good friend of ours... who is a very good friend Cedroni. So, on the night we went to his restaurant, we were treated like royalty. We talked during the service, both with him and his wife (both extremely charming) and then talked at length after the service was over (he showed us his new building projects and it was clear he wanted to go to another level). It was during this conversation that he told us that he was Portuguese and told us the differences he saw between cooking in Portugal and cooking in Italy. His wife is Italian.

Perhaps he was joking around with us, ala the green bread in the bread basket, but he made no pretense that he was Italian. Moreno, his Christian name, is not an Italian name.

Now I'm curious as to what the real story is.

←

Intriguing story. So much so, that I went on and asked a few of my friends and contacts working in the Italian gastronomic scene about what they though. All of them told me that to their knowledge Cedroni is 100% Marchigiano; no one had ever heard anything about Portugal before.

I am somewhat puzzled.

←

Well. perhaps their knowledge is correct. Perhaps not. Have they ever spoken with Cedroni? Why is his Christian name Moreno? Perhaps as docsconz says in the next post, perhaps he was pulling my leg. I doubt it. Have either of you ever eaten there? If so, what did you think?

[Pontormo]

For his appearance at Identità Golose, Scarello revisited to classics. His frico is destructured and reassembled, to preserve the individual contribution of each ingredient: dried onion, to improve its digestibility, potato soup, as carrier of flavours, and cheese enclosed into ravioli.

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"Destructured," Alberto?

Has gastronomy gone to bed with de Saussure and Roland Barthes?

Meaning? After grating and cooking the Montasio, the frico is then chopped and mixed with other ingredients stuffed into the ravioli?

[albiston]

For his appearance at Identità Golose, Scarello revisited to classics. His frico is destructured and reassembled, to preserve the individual contribution of each ingredient: dried onion, to improve its digestibility, potato soup, as carrier of flavours, and cheese enclosed into ravioli.

←

"Destructured," Alberto?

Has gastronomy gone to bed with de Saussure and Roland Barthes?

Meaning? After grating and cooking the Montasio, the frico is then chopped and mixed with other ingredients stuffed into the ravioli?

←

Hey, don't complain with me , that's the way Scarello calls his frico! Actually I think the term has been abused by Italian chefs in the past... and still is, it would seem. Maybe deconstructed would give a much better feeling of the idea.

He simply means that all the ingredients are prepared separately and reassembled on the dish to create the feeling-taste of frico. The idea being that of offering cleaner tastes for each single ingredient: I cannot say that I tasted many examples where this really seems to work.

Forte, as I had mentioned before I never dined at Cedroni's place: Senigallia was not exactly close nor on my usual tracks when I was living in Italy, and it is even further now that I moved. Also, I feel ambivalent whenever I read Cedroni's menu, which I do from time to time: some dishes sound incredibly inviting, others way the opposite.

Edited April 28, 2006 by albiston (log)

[albiston]

With a little guilty delay on my part, we get to the final day of Identità Golose, divided between a morning session dedicated to savory dishes and an afternoon one on desserts, this being the culminating session of the parallel event Dossier Dessert.

After so much virtual dough, the fevered Davide Scabin, of Combal.zero in Rivoli (Torino), proposed a take on the classical Piemontese ravioli –egg yolk and flour pasta dough, stuffed with meat– and dressed with a sauce made of butter and rosemary. The choice might seem somewhat puzzling coming from a chef with Scabin's reputation for creativity and "modern" cooking. At Combal.zero Scabin serves both a menu of revisited Piemontese classics and a highly creative one, yet he is mainly known (maybe unjustly so) for the latter. This menu is a combination of playful food-games and avant-garde methods, which have won him many fans and a few enemies.

His take on ravioli is both classic and technically modern, cunning (three types of butter, noisette , melted and iced mixed with a strict timing) and playful: shacked ravioli. The audience received a plastic glass full of hot mignon ravioli – each single raviolo weighing less than than one gram - to which they added the sauce contained in another small glass and shacked it all, as the cook would have done sauteeing. This allows to serve a perfect express dish during a banqueting context, a kind of service often loathed by chefs, but something Scabin is clearly interested to: “Today cooking is too much unbalanced towards over-intellectualism and competitiveness, but I’m not interested in being a phenomenon for 4 people. My challenge is to keep a high quality standard even with great numbers, going on exciting”, he stated.

Massimo Bottura followed Scabin on stage, fresh from the second Michelin’s star and the prize won in San Sebastian (during Lo Mejor de la Gastronomia) for the best extra virgin olive oil dish. Chef of La Francescana in Modena, Bottura's cooking is in constant evolution. In the past the influence of his experiences with the likes of Adrià, George Cogny and Alain Ducasse was quite clear in his dishes, yet his cooking now managed to evolve into a personal and mature style. While the avant-garde influences are undeniable, Bottura nonetheless manages to keep his culinary roots in clear view (for example wth his parmesan four ways entree) and is not afraid to serve "simple" and unadorned selected salumi as appetiser.

He led the public into the meanders of a cook’s mind, showing how a jumble of impressions can generate a great dish. Inspired by Jamaican jerked chicken he explained how he evolved his take on the popular bird. The final dish (above) is a composition of jerked breast meat, accompanied by a mango and papaya mayonnaise, a torchon of smoked chicken livers decorated by sous-vide crests and a Basmati rice cappuccino sauce made foamy using lecithin. The chicken was paired to "Caesar salad"... Emilia Romagna style, where, among other details, the lettuce of the classic recipe was substituted with the local misticanza, a mix of wild salads, herbs and flowers. “My cooking is evocative, it makes ideas concrete through products and techniques, on the basis of the emotions kept in our memory”, was Bottura's remark.

After Adrià, the Spanish culinary avant-garde came anew on stage with Dani Garcia, a very young chef from Marbella and the best cook of Spain in 2006 according to Lo mejor de la Gastronomia. Garcia has been on the radar of gourmets and critics alike since 2001, when he was awarded his first Michelin star, at only 25, for his work at Tragabuches in Ronda. Since his move to Calima, restaurant of the luxury Gran Meliá Don Pepe Hotel, the expectations and attention Garcia recieves have if anything grown.

His speech was focused on the use of liquid nitrogen as culinary "cooking" method. “Diffidence is still high – Dani declared – but nitrogen is commonly used at industrial level and we all breath it 14 times per minute”. To start there was a sort of impalpable Andalusian olive oil granita, which many in the audience could try. One of the comments: “It has an unusual consistency, because it doesn’t go from solid to liquid state like an ice-cream, but makes flavors burst in the mouth. Many people think that cold spoils tastes and flavors, but it isn’t always so”. Then, it was the turn of “pop corn” (above) obtained siphoning a mix of tomato water and olive oil into liquid nitrogen. In this case too, after tasting comments were keen. His intervention ended up showing two cold soups: a reviewed Andalusian gazpacho, with cherries and cheese mousse and a new version of ajo blanco.

Mauro Uliassi (bio info only in Italian sadly), the last salty chef to take the floor in the morning session, shares the honour with Moreno Cedroni of having put Senigallia on the map of Italian gourmets: his homonymous restaurant is considered one of the most interesting destinations by many critics. Those who follow this forum might have seen some discussion cooking of Uliassi in the past, here.

Uliassi started introducing his team, and then illustrated his cooking philosophy. “The cook should be a database of his clients’ tastes and to do so he should constantly train his palate. We Italians are privileged because, thanks to the richness in microclimates and products, we are steadily in practice”.

The dishes prepared and offered to the public gave a nice impression of Uliassi's style: salt cod with orange peel, acid cream and Tropea onion, a fresh example of an “uncooked cooking” to pay homage to Vissani; tuna fish with fried dried Calabrian peppers, quince jam (presented wittingly as prepared according to “the study of a cook’s mother”) and a sprinkling of Bottura’s balsamic vinegar (above); “beccafico”, that is salt cod with figs and olives.

[docsconz]

I am happy to see that Bottura was a participant and his work has been acknowledged with a second Michelin star. I very much enjoyed my meal at his restaurant back in 2003. His cuisine, while modern, was certainly reflective of tradition.

[albiston]

In a congress dedicated to the interplay of sweet and savory foods it is perhaps ironic that sweets came last (but not least), just as the classic restaurant service would have. Nonetheless, the afternoon session of the final day of Identità Golose offered a chance to hear some of the most interesting pastry chefs in Italy and Spain talking about their work and to have a peek at their creations.

The opening talk was given by Angelo Corvitto, Italian master ice-cream maker working in Spain since the mid 60s, now running Gelatiere in Torroella del Mongri where people can savour the full range of his ice flavors. He demonstrated his technique for cold maceration, making evident, if needed, that the certainties of yesterday's cooking methods (hot maceration in this case) are being refuted in the eye of today's scientific analysis.

While heat allows to shorten the infusion times of liquids, it also extracts bitter flavors and alters the taste of ingredients, which are on the contrary fully preserved if macerated for several days at 4-6°. This simple but revolutionary technique can be successfully applied to teas, aromatic herbs, spices and coffee to prepare ice-creams and sherbets, but also mousses and salty dishes, so much that in Spanish restaurants it has become the de rigeur thing: “ice cream needs restaurant to evolve, where strong flavors can be tried even with valued ingredients”, Corvitto stated.

To those who follow our Spanish forum El Celler de Can Roca in Girona is no stranger (discussion about the restaurant on our Spain forum here), as are the three Roca brothers, respectively chef, sommelier, and Jordi, the youngest, pastry-chef. Jordi has received a number of awards throughout the past few years, like Lo Mejor de la Gastronomia's 2003 prize as best Spanish pastry chef, and his perfume-inspired desserts have broken new grounds in modern pastry art.

The first dessert prepared by Jordi was an Havana cigar, similar at first sight to children chocolate cigarettes (above). He first insufflated some cigar smoke with a pipe through the cream, then shaped this like a cigar, chocolate coated it and laid it on a bed of sweet coal on a false ash-tray, to be served with a revisited mojito in an homage to Cuba. For his work on fragrances, Roca chooses fruity and spicy scents rather than floral ones, breaks them up into their basic aromas and assembles these again under in edible form, using different techniques to give each scent off in the right sequence; at the end, the customer receives a small cardboard soaked in the original perfume, to quickly compare the sensations felt. Hypnotic Poison by Christian Dior, for example, became a mixture of vanilla cream, rose jam, strawberry jelly, Tonka purée and caramelized petals. Roca finished his demo with an very technical dessert: an ethereal ball of pulled sugar (obtained with sugar, glucose, isomalt and citric acid), filled with smoke and served on a bed of ceps carpaccio and ceps ice-cream.

Jordi Butron from Espai Sucre (meaning sweet space) in Barcelona completed the Spanish section of the afternoon. Butron's is the first dessert's restaurant in the world: not a pastry shop, but a real restaurant serving testing menus of desserts (some discussion about it hereonthe Spain forum). His approach to dessert was gradual, involving experiences with Christophe Felder, Chef pâtissier of the Carillon hotel in Paris, Michel Bras and Pierre Gagnaire, plus Jean Luc Figueras in Barcelona. Butron's philosophy of dessert, even though equally sophisticated and involving, is against excessive experimentation and technological determination: “I do not like “show” desserts that you never know how to eat”, he declared, and again: “technique shall not be the end, as often happens, but the means to maximize taste.”

His demo began by considering the pear, a tiresome ingredient in pastry-making because it is watery and granular. After looking at the elective pairings for this fruit (fats and nuts), he chose three; butter, pine-nuts and cracklings to avoid obvious solutions. Butron then considered that sweetness wouldn’t be balanced without a digestive, balsamic and weighing up note, given in this case by aniseed and fennel. The following step was the choice of how to plate this conceptual description: the pear was served in a pie wholly made of its pulp, the scraps of pork fat in a pâte brisée, pine-seeds as ice-cream, the whole sprinkled with fennel and caraway sprouts.

In a time where chefs look at the methods and ideas used by pastry chefs, there are pastry chefs too that look at what line chefs are doing for inspiration: like Corrado Assenza (bio only in Italian unfortunately) from Caffè Sicilia in Noto (Sicily). Assenza's work in Noto started in 1985 when he took over Caffè Sicilia together with his future wife and his brother, leaving an academic career (he is a graduate in agricultural studies) which nonetheless left him with a particular attachment to honey as pastry ingredient. His work focuses on emotions and his terroir, as creations such as his oregano-infused cream ice with Bronte pistachios show: "People are increasingly careful about what they eat; we have turned back to being hunters, but this time we're hunting emotions. The emotion I want to transmit is the uniqueness of this Baroque country (i.e. Noto and surroundings) through the language of cooking."

His first dessert was devoted to ricotta, trying to recreate the feelings aroused by the breakfast his mother used to prepare when he was a child, mixing the cheese with cinnamon and sugar. A Sicilian ricotta pie was served with vanilla and Sichuan pepper lasagna boiled in water, salt and honey, stuffed with almond cream(to imitate Béchamel sauce) and with all the special jams of Caffè Sicilia as side dish. The second dish converted the classical orange and fennel salad Sicilian farm laborers are used to eat for lunch into a sweet (above): anchovies were pickled in honey, bread was replaced by a spicy pastry, the dried tomato became sweet as well as the grilled pepper. To further underline the Sicilian origin of the dishes Assenza used local thickeners such as carob flour and almond powder in his dishes.

A part of the history of Italian confectionery came on the stage with Iginio Massari, of Pasticceria Veneto in Brescia, representing those who work in pastry shops rather than restaurants. If Gualtiero Marchesi is the dean of Italian chefs, as Veronelli was that of Italian food journalists, then Massari earns a similar position in the Italian pastry scene. Sine opening his shop in 1971, Massari has made a name as a perfectionist with regards to both technique and ingredients as shown by his sweets and his books.

He showed the complex preparation of the “Bengodi” (land of plenty, but also a reference to Boccaccio) cake, the dessert of his dreams. It is made of a "fake amaretto" of coconut meringue, layered with mango cream, pineapple and rum ice-cream and mousse and coated with Italian meringue flavoured with vanilla and lemon. His speech, focused on classical techniques, was characterized by Massari's humor and jokes, such as that about dietetic dishes: “The sins of gluttony should be committed to the very end, without decreasing the richness of preparations. Dietetic sweets and meals are dietetic because I never succeed in finishing them. Because they taste bad."

The next guest on stage, Enrico Cerea of Da Vittorio in Busaporto near Bergamo,received the prize “Lombard excellence in cooking” from the hands of Viviana Beccalossi, vice-governor of the Lombard Region and councilor for agriculture. He devoted it to the memory of his recently deceased father Vittorio with heartfelt words. Enrico has taken up the leadership of the restaurant after the sad event although the whole Cerea family works together to make this one of the most unique dining destinations in Italy (plus running the Cavour pastry shop in Bergamo). I can say without fear of being corrected that da Vittorio is also a favourite of my co-host Robert Brown: you can read his reports (and more) here.

The chef brought on stage a touch of clever realism, showing the possibilities available to propose creative desserts in banqueting contexts, an professional opportunity few chefs can afford to dismiss today, especially in Italy. The first theme was Carnival, which in Italy means foremost fried foods. For this festivity Cerea created a cocoa bean caramelized fritter, stuffed with mandarin cream with torrone mousse and mandarin sherbet. Similarly, strudel was also proposed in a fried version and shaped as a Sicilian cannolo (above): filled with strudel mousse, it was laid on a bed of apples sautéed with pine nuts, cinnamon custard and cardamom ice-cream.

Late in the evening, the young Loretta Fanella took stage for the closing talk of Identità Golose's second edition. Loretta, who is 25 , is now pursuing her own career, after a long experience at Carlo Cracco of Cracco-Peck in Milan, and a season at el Bulli with Albert and Ferran Adrià.

On the stage she showed two original personal creations. The first dessert allowed to show the cold maceration technique: raw fruit is vacuum sealed with a liquid, where an osmosis is created which produces a metamorphosis of tastes. In this case the apple was "turned into" a raspberry (above), yet retaining its crunchy texture; a similar method can be used with pears and coffee, or to infuse a fruit with sugar or liquor syrups. The dessert was completed with a lavender mousse and lavender sticks covered with kappa jelly, to be sucked as lollipops. The final dish combining persimmon and liquorice was described as surprisingly appealing by the lucky few who got a taste.

This concludes the look at the 2006 edition of Identità Golose, but not this thread: there is plenty of room for discussion.

[docsconz]

Wow Alberto! Thank you so much for putting this report together. It must have been an amazing experience to have been there. The dessert portion of the conference was every bit as fascinating if not more so than the savories. The last entry with the metamorphases looks particularly intriguing. If the flavors of that apple and raspberry dish are anywhere near half as good as the plated dessert they would be awesome indeed. Her concept is very interesting. I can't say that I have seen or heard of that before.

[albiston]

The last entry with the metamorphases looks particularly intriguing. If the flavors of that apple and raspberry dish are anywhere near half as good as the plated dessert they would be awesome indeed. Her concept is very interesting. I can't say that I have seen or heard of that before.

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I can't say that either. Laura Fanella is a nice addition to the exciting (but small) new generation of excellent Italian pastry chefs, which I only see as a good thing given that sometimes the desserts one often finds in Italian restaurants can range from depressing to merely inoffensive. It remains to be seen if she'll continue to work in restaurant kitchens or decide to open a pastry shop, like some of her talented colleagues. One thing is sure, she captured the attention of those who met her: Paolo Marchi (the guy who organised IG) was so enthusiastic about her talk that in his Italian newsletter he dedicated a small article to her under the header "A star is born".

[docsconz]

The last entry with the metamorphases looks particularly intriguing. If the flavors of that apple and raspberry dish are anywhere near half as good as the plated dessert they would be awesome indeed. Her concept is very interesting. I can't say that I have seen or heard of that before.

←

I can't say that either. Laura Fanella is a nice addition to the exciting (but small) new generation of excellent Italian pastry chefs, which I only see as a good thing given that sometimes the desserts one often finds in Italian restaurants can range from depressing to merely inoffensive. It remains to be seen if she'll continue to work in restaurant kitchens or decide to open a pastry shop, like some of her talented colleagues. One thing is sure, she captured the attention of those who met her: Paolo Marchi (the guy who organised IG) was so enthusiastic about her talk that in his Italian newsletter he dedicated a small article to her under the header "A star is born".

←

Hers is a name I will keep an eye on. I would love to sample her work someday.