12-10-2017
To the sides, Virgilio Martinez, Central in Lima (Peru) and Roberto Cerea aka Bobo from Da Vittorio in Brusaporto (Bergamo), East Lombardy’s testimonial. In the middle, Bolognese Lorenzo Dal Bo, who recently left Cerea’s restaurant to work with Virgilio (photo Brambilla/Serrani)
High Altitude grains. This was the title of Virgilio Martinez’s lesson at Identità New York. The number one chef in Latin America and Peru with Central, held a lesson at Eataly Flatiron with Lorenzo Dal Bo, the promising Bolognese chef whom we bumped into two years ago in the Faroe islands, and is now working in Lima (in between, he worked at Da Vittorio in Brusaporto). «Being on this stage comes very natural, because all I do with Mater Iniciativa has to do with identity. We’re interested in the stories of producers and their products. Peruvian local is gradually becoming global». An increased popularity which we also owe to Virgilio’s vertical gastronomy: «Our menu is a sum of altitudes. It draws from the Amazon forest and the Andes. We can find coffee, potatoes, cocoa and quinoa in the same small piece of land. We have 180 varieties of corn». Today’s small piece of land is the Plateau around Puno, the most important city overlooking the banks of Lake Titicaca. «They use plants to cure and colour themselves: they paint their face with seeds. Of course we’re interested in the gastronomic value of these ingredients». And then he shows the content of the boxes placed on the counter: red cactus roots. Avocado (which later becomes a delicious cream on the bottom of the grains). Black quinoa. Canihua seeds. Aromatic plant huacatay. Six types of indigenous wheat varieties.
Hig altitude garins by Virgilio Martinez
Casoncelli with polenta and rabbit by Bobo Cerea
Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso
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born in Milan, 1973, freelance journalist, coordinator of Identità Golose World restaurant guidebook since 2007, he is a contributor for several magazines and teaches History of gastronomy and Culinary global trends into universities and institutes. twitter @gabrielezanatt instagram @gabrielezanatt