01-12-2014
Massimo Bottura prepares the Historic Compromise, that is to say Tortellini with cream, a sacrilege that the ultra-orthodox tortellino-in-stock fans in Emilia would enjoy. The photo (by Brambilla-Serrani) was taken yesterday at the Roma Food&Wine Festival, in the morning, which also saw Daniele Usai of Il Tino in Ostia and Enrico Panero of Da Vinci in Florence at work
And on Sunday, the Rome Food&Wine Festival played its aces. At lunchtime Massimo Bottura, for supper Niko Romito. With them, chefs that are all but supporting: at one, Lele Usai of Il Tino in Ostia, with a brand new Michelin star, and Enrico Panero, chef at restaurant Da Vinci at Eataly Firenze, a young man with a guaranteed future. In the evening, Agostino Iacobucci, Neapolitan working at I Portici in Bologna and his “fellow citizen” Massimiliano Mascia, the guy who is writing the future of the historic San Domenico in Imola.
CRISPY PESTO. The special Trenette with pesto and potatoes by Enrico Panero: fried fresh pasta to be broken into pieces inside a “soup” (photo by Annalisa Bianchi)
Usai also applied this principle and he was very talented in re-writing a fish soup with his Pliny soup (the Young, who thousands of years ago stayed on the coast around Ostia) and that is to say raw amberjack, red prawns, razor clams, mussels and clams falling in a battle with an aromatised oil with a cream of alpine pine and pine nuts. A walk full of aromas and iodine in the pine-forest that precedes the sea. Enrico Panero, the third ace at lunchtime, presented his Trenette with pesto and potatoes. But only with regards to their name: the fresh pasta was previously fried in seed oil and then immersed in a potato fondue with taggiasca olive oil, powdered pine nuts and a pesto of basil from Bra. Not a first course but a single course. Full of taste and skill.
Massimiliano Mascia, Agostino Iacobucci and Niko Romito
Massimiliano Mascia is instead the nephew of Valentino Marcattilii, a great protagonist in Italian cuisine. Despite being only 31, this chef has already travelled at length, in Italy and abroad, to learn, to understand. And to return to his “mother restaurant”, the historic San Domenico in Imola. Now he champs at re-actualising the history of this establishment but in the meantime he’s at work to reproduce the dish that has been the emblem of the restaurant (and of the Italian cuisine of the past 30 years), namely Egg in raviolo with mountain butter, Grana Padano Riserva and white truffle. A timeless gem.
BABAMANIA. Agostino Iacobucci's babas