13-03-2017
A dish from Angelo Sabatelli, one of the speakers at Identità di Mare. Andrea Cuomo is the author of this piece
Five seaside postcards. The first was the one with Angelo Sabatelli [in the photo with the author of the article, Andrea Cuomo] of the homonymous restaurant which, after leaving Monopoli, he’s about to open again in Putignano
Sabatelli draws from his experience in the Far East (Jacarta, Hong Kong, Shanghai) and starts updating the programme with two quotes from Apulia and the east: Squid with almonds and lemon (in the photo), Broad beans and chicory with warm oyster and dry tuna and Prawn from Santo Spirito, dry scallops and toasted almonds. Ahoy!
Two chefs tried to make fish “meatier” without betraying it. By translating it at most. The first was Tony Lo Coco, a debut on the stage of Identità
The Sicilian chef from I Pupi in Bagheria (Palermo), self-trained, interprets two traditional dishes from Palermo: baked anelletti, which he puts in line like soldiers, forming some small cannoli on a rectangular base of tuna sauce; and stigghiola, a Sicilian street food skewer, in which he uses red tuna instead of the lamb
The journey by sea of Paolo Casagrande, the Venetian chef who first brought three stars to Barcelona, at Lasarte, one of Martìn Berasategui’s breath taking restaurants
Speaking Italian with a Spanish accent, Casagrande designs a Warm, lightly marinated oyster with green shiso granita and pastinaca, wrapped in a foam of sea and Champagne (the tasting seduces the audience) and Red tuna belly, kaffir lime, crescent and kalamansi with fennel and piment d’Espelette (photo). A demanding journey starting from the name
Moreno Cedroni lives on the beach. And with his tour operator he schedules a trip on the Via della Seta to which he dedicates a menu at Madonnina del Pescatore and at Clandestino in Senigallia
He presents three stops (with tasting) in Teheran (Salted codfish, purée and sesame milk), Samarcanda (Squid dumpling, mussel broth and cumin, in the photo) and Kashgar in China (Meatballs with prawns, spices Uiguri spices, cold red prawn). An exercise of balance between textures, flavours, temperatures. And purely Cedroni’s style show
Giulio Terrinoni of Per Me in Rome, closing the series, is daring enough as to use some seafood “offal”
He takes a beautiful monkfish, uses the entrails to make headcheese and tripe (cooked in a broth of pecorino, that’s right) which – especially in the second case – really lack nothing compared to the original. And there’s also a final Diplomatico: sweet, almost. Or perhaps not
The sea unites and separates, nourishes and threatens. The sea is a huge liquid motorway on which ingredients have travelled for centuries, from one continent to the other, sometimes changing the food geography of the place where they landed (think of tomatoes, coffee, cocoa). Hence the sea, as a material and intellectual experience, had to have a specific section within Identità Golose in Milan, the 2017 edition being dedicated to travel. Throughout the afternoon of Monday 6th March, Italian chefs who interpret seafood in their personal way, tracing sometimes mental, sometimes visionary itineraries, spoke in turn.
Tradition, provocation, imagination. Poor and rich ingredients, with a theme appearing multiple times throughout the afternoon: the need to anchor fish, a very rich and complex raw material, to the ground, with the idea of ruining the freshness and delicateness as little as possible. But fine dining elaborates, sublimates, colours. It escapes the idea of simple stylizations, or it keeps the ingredients recognisable. (All the lessons in the photo gallery by Brambilla-Serrani; translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso)
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Roman, now living in Milan, sommelier, he's reporter of Il Giornale. He's been writing about taste for years
