Batali-Cedroni: add some oil

«Moreno Cedroni is the fish whisperer. He knows raw fish and cooked fish very well, and uses the same approach with them. He recalls the original texture of each fish and when he cooks it, he proves he respects it fully». There couldn’t be any better presentation of Cedroni than the one Mario Batali, co-author of this second lesson at Identità New York, gave.

The chef from La Madonnina del Pescatore conveys two important messages, straight from Expo: «First, don’t waste food. You mustn’t throw away yesterday’s bread: what you don’t finish, you can reuse». The second announcement is coherent with his role as Expo Ambassador of an excellent Italian product: «Cook using extra virgin olive oil as often as you can, because it offers an elegant way of cooking, without producing smells. Most of all, don’t trust cheap extra virgin olive oil as it’s not good. Think about the person hand-picking the olives: his work is not worth 5 or 6 dollars per litre». The audience gets warm.

The same goes for the beautiful codfish cooked in oil and placed on a bread soup with a vinaigrette made with balsamic vinegar (produced by Massimo Bottura, who arrives at some point during the lesson, and his colleagues celebrate him on his birthday). «This is old bread becoming new. A tribute I make to my mother’s breakfast, when she would recuperate bread using orange juice, sugar and extra virgin olive oil. This is my breakfast of champions». Meanwhile, there’s a pil-pil cooking on a very low flame: «The collagen must come out, you remove the skin, then blend it and make a sauce that it’s like mayonnaise but without eggs». Another very interesting ingredient in the dish.

There’s also time for a last, interesting concept: «People always thought that with fish any temperature would do: nobody at a restaurant will ever ask you how cooked you want your fish, as with meat. Yet every fish has its cooking temperature». What arrives on the plates is simply the best codfish in our lives.

Mario Batali is a cinematographic chef: his Tortellini filled with caprino cheese with orange zest and fennel pollen are seasoned with a blues streak and overflowing charm. One statement above all: «Pasta is the food that gets the French pissed the most, as they really cannot do any simple cooking». Meanwhile he starts to work his way, he cuts out the fresh pasta and puts his finger in the cooking water to check the temperature (while Cedroni used thermometers earlier).

The filling of the tortelloni is 50% caprino cheese, 50% extra virgin olive oil (here the emblematic ingredient of the lecture returns). A filling that is a tribute to Bottura and a pair – pasta and oil – that is «so good it is hard to find anything as successful in the world».