11-09-2017
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
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
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».
An outdoor trip or a journey to the other side of the planet? One thing is for sure: the destination is delicious, by Carlo Passera
by
journalist born in 1974, for many years he has covered politics, mostly, and food in his free time. Today he does exactly the opposite and this makes him very happy. As soon as he can, he dives into travels and good food. Identità Golose's editor in chief