11-09-2017

Gilmozzi: 25 years, 23 dishes

The chef celebrates a quarter of a century working at El Molin in Cavalese. And serves an unforgettable dinner...

Alessandro Gilmozzi foraging in the woods

Our dinner at El Molin, in the photos by Tanio Liotta. Meanwhile, chef Alessandro Gilmozzi...

We start with the appetizers: White chocolate wafer, almonds, red fruits and oyster

Photogallery

Our dinner at El Molin, in the photos by Tanio Liotta. Meanwhile, chef Alessandro Gilmozzi...

We start with the appetizers: White chocolate wafer, almonds, red fruits and oyster

Pasta wafer, scallop, vinegar, rosemary and peach

Crust of steamed bread, Arctic char roe, mountain butter. Appetizers are paired with dolomitic tea aromatized with porcini

Cold zabaglione aromatized with hay, potatoes and watercress wafer. Paired with ginger ale & sambuca

Raw venison, pistachios from Bronte, sea urchin, cardoon oil

Four dishes called Miniature Wild. The first: Vele di Marzemino with pesto and pine sprouts, served on a pine cone

Miniature Wild 2: Zigher aromatized with lichens and pine vinegar. «Zigher is a cheese from the Dolomites. I have a dairyman make it, and then I mature it with pine lichen»

Miniature Wild 3: Apple and celery wafer, herring reduction

Miniature Wild 4: Salad with 20 herbs, flowers and sprouts, with ice cream of freshwater sardines and bread, mousse of watercress, spheres of sugar and oil

L'uovo delle Dolomiti: egg on a cream of plantain, candied beech, white lichen, porcini reduction

A historic dish, Arctic char marinated with lemons, distilled raspberry water, wild garlic ice cream, sprouts and pesto

Carp with mauve and calendola flowers. «Carp [whose traditional marinade inspired the name of carpione had disappeared. We’ve now recuperated it thanks to Fondazione Mach»

Riso with Gilbach Gin: it’s Acquerello 7 anni rice with Parmigiano, aromatized with juniper, wild plums, oil emulsion, pollen, ivy and gin processed with liquid nitrogen. Delicious

Valentino Felicetti, mountain butter, goat taleggio, powdered beetroot and beech. Another delicious classic

Raw grayling, beech, wood sorrel. Beautiful and good

Another classic: Lake tench, thyme, sweet fern and pasta brittle. The tench is marinated in Tanqueray

Tradizioni di caccia: dehydrated venison heart, cream of red potatoes, wood sorrel, black garlic ice cream. A fascinating dish we covered here

Seared Grigio Alpina beef, leek in raspberry water, mushrooms, red clover and achillea. Grigio alpina is a «local breed of cattle, from km 1.5 away! We prepare it as if it were speck, then we sear it and cook it at low temperature»

Rhubarb and camomile. Various versions of rhubarb (candied, in mousse, powdered), plus powdered camomile and candied peas

Il Fiore mieloso (it’s based on a herb tea: in the shape of ice cream, candied and as a biscuit). For the ice cream the chef uses edelweiss stalks, which he grows for this reason (harvesting wild edelweiss is forbidden)

Icy corteccia: bark ice cream, crumble with the aromas of the bush. A fantastic dessert. The ice cream is based on cream, aromatized with resin extract made by toasting the bark at high temperature

Border-line (a dessert made with resin, ice cream, brittle, cream): resin ice cream, gel of Jerusalem artichoke, white dried and candied lichen, «I got the inspiration from the days when I’d go collecting resin with my grandfather»

Pàche Felicetti cooked in blueberry juice, yogurt mousse, silver powder, pea sprouts and stevia. Then finally there’s Pin Tonic, a gin tonic with pines (first processed at 4°C to separate the oil, then in nitrogen to break the molecules, finally in water and Nosiola yeast for the fermentation, at 9°C, «this results in a slightly sparkling resinous liquid»)

«I remember when, I believe it was 1995, Edoardo Raspelli tore me to pieces: “That chef serves wood”, he wrote. An almost final sentence. He referred to lichens, but I was recuperating an ancient local tradition, something our grandparents used to do. There were entire villages here that lived on edible Icelandic lichens. I went on with determination. Then a decade later or so René Redzepi legitimized them, and all of the sudden it looked like I was following a trend».

Getting inside El Molin – mulino is the Italian word for mill, and of course the restaurant is located inside a beautiful ancient mill, the only one left of the 48 that used to be on Rio Gambis

Sometimes, being too much ahead leads to sarcastic results, but Alessandro Gilmozzi smiles, calmly. Among many talentless careers, his great talent allowed him a career below his merits, but long and successful nonetheless: a quarter of a century in Cavalese, this year. «El Molin opened in 1990, but I was at Ducasse's at the time. I arrived two years later». It adds up. We say, brutally: “Don’t you think you would have deserved more?”. The chef is intelligent: «Perhaps. But I took a difficult road. Plus I’m reserved, calm, I’ve never looked for the spotlight». Sometimes, others look for him, «I’ve been invited to a congress in Bratislava, on the 23rd October. I’ll cook with Gert de Mangeleer [the young three-starred chef at restaurant Hertog Jan, in the suburbs of Bruges, in Belgium]. It will be nice».

Gilmozzi has a serenity full of charm. You can tell he’s a man used to the soothing silence of the woods, from which he draws inspiration for his recipes. He accepted his peripheral role with awareness – peripheral not just geographically, but culturally (in culinary terms, that is): in the Paese d’ ‘o sole, he has always worked with resin and mountain herbs; with plenty of German tourists who look for pummarola and babà as soon as they cross the border, he chose his Dolomitic cuisine which is so similar to that of northern Europe it seems inspired by it.

To think that he hates imitations! «The other day I was thinking of a recipe with black grouse. I immediately called Magnus Nilsson (of restaurant Fäviken, in the remote forests of northern Sweden). I thought I recalled he was also working with the same ingredient, and I didn’t want it to look like I was copying him. “No, don’t worry, I use grouse”, he told me. So I felt better. It is a fact, however, that with a guy like him, there are many similarities: same territorial identity, same ingredients».

So, 25 years, «I’m working on a book, with Montura». Twenty-five years without getting tired of enhancing his territory, so that in 2017 he has one of the best fine dining places in Italy, as proven by our beautiful dinner, illustrated by Tanio Liotta. He has also added a wine bar/bistro and a pizzeria, all under the El Molin brand, in the centre of Cavalese; and then there are many projects that have already started – like Gilbach gin: this year he’ll produce 4,000 bottles, he’s already received an order for 1,000 from Japan – and many more are in progress, like beer, «the fermentation strains are from musk, then I used camomile, rye, hop, white and Icelandic lichens». We tasted it: it’s thick, nice, very aromatic.

Because now that wood, resin and lichens don’t scare anyone, Gilmozzi continues to present endless ideas enriching a fresh, contemporary, elegant cuisine. Of unquestionable value. And if you ask him what makes him proud – whether it’s the small empire he has silently created, or the rigorous coherence with which he’s continued his career, or the rewards he’s received… - he says: «Terre Altre». That is to say the cooperative dedicated to young physically challenged people that he helped create and grow, with two hectares of land cultivated with beans, carrots, hemp… Following biodynamic agriculture: «the first five years, I would buy everything. They are now independent, they have their market. And they’ve created the first experimental vegetable garden».

Alessandro Gilmozzi from Cavalese, born in 1965, with experience with Adrià and Ducasse, and a very well deserved Michelin star since 2007, is this too. On top of being a great chef, he’s also a very humble and deliciously humane person.
Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso