2016 dish by dish (4)

Massimiliano Poggi, Al Cambio, Bologna

Egg, asparagus and Parmigiano. Tradition, not only from Bologna but from Italy too. I start from tradition and transform the textures: the fried part is no longer the egg but the asparagus. A preview of the spring

Alessandro Panichi, Sotto l'Arco, Bologna

Squilla mantis, radicchio, bottarga and raspberry. Sweet, bitter, sour and savoury (photo by Bob Noto)

Isa Mazzocchi, La Palta, Borgonovo Valtidone (Piacenza)

Batarò with wild mustard, catfish and pancetta. A sort of squeezed bread, with some polenta, filled with cold cuts from Piacenza (it is mostly served in Val Tidone). Piacenza in a batarò

Alberto Faccani, Magnolia, Cesenatico (Forlì-Cesena)

Red mullet, amaretto, saffron and lemon. The sweetness and fatness of the red mullet, the alcoholic note of the almond liqueur, the depth of the saffron and the sourness of the lemon. A tribute to Italy and the Mediterranean Sea

Omar Casali, Marè, Cesenatico (Forlì-Cesena)

Bora Nera. Spaghettoni, squid ink, squid entrails, seaweeds and bergamot. A turbulent day on the pier in Cesenatico

Fabrizio Mantovani, Fm con gusto, Faenza (Ravenna)

Ratta potato, lentils and caviar. It’s a summary of my cuisine: a simple potato with lentils, enriched with a small spoon of caviar. A crème fraîche aromatised with saffron and lime zest. Aesthetics, instinct and rational simplicity

Massimiliano Mascia, San Domenico, Imola (Bologna)

Scampi, goletta and peas. I love the colours and the scents of the spring and I love mixing fish and meat

Luca Marchini, L'Erba del Re, Modena

Risotto with oyster, leek juice, rocket salad and rhubarb. The aromatic strength of the sea with the pseudo-sweetness of a creamy risotto

Massimo Bottura, Osteria Francescana, Modena

Sometimes maillard, sometimes partrige... even bollito in civèt sauce.

Irina Steccanella and Beppe Palmieri, Panino, Modena

Tortellini SuperPanna. Buying great ingredients to make great tortellini, and giving back value and quality to a home meal that degenerated over time

Gianluca Gorini, Le Giare, Montiano (Forlì-Cesena)

Cucumber, Varnelli liqueur and smoked fish roe. Vegetal, marine and smoky notes meet in a new take on cucumber, from the sprout to the flower

Riccardo Agostini, Il Piastrino, Pennabilli (Rimini)

Lamb entrails, milk and bay leaf extract. Unusual entrails, those from the lamb, without hiding their taste as usually the case and enhancing them with a concentrate of sheep’s milk strengthening their flavour

Terry Giacomello, Inkiostro, Parma

Pasta, our way. Warm tagliolini with egg white and a cream of Parmigiano matured 36 months, beaten egg yolk, truffle caviar and thyme leaves
 

Marco Parizzi, Parizzi, Parma

Consommé with potato peels, burnt onion and oyster with salmon anolini. The contrast of leftover and precious ingredients, the reassuring appearance of a typical recipe but with flavours completely turned upside down

Carla Aradelli, Riva, Ponte Dell'Olio (Piacenza)

Octopus, late radicchio, potato croquette and beetroot mayonnaise. A dish with an elegant simplicity: octopus and potatoes (tradition) and seasonal ingredients (late radicchio and beetroot)

Rino Duca, Il Grano di Pepe, Ravarino (Bologna)

Rice with almonds, red prawn and capers. In Sicily it was traditional to cook rice and not risotto. In my dish the elegance of almonds, the sapidity of capers and the depth of raw prawns meet

Matteo Salbaroli, Osteria L'Acciuga, Ravenna

Roasted octopus, Jerusalem artichoke cream and toasted hazelnuts. There’s more than octopus and potatoes

Gianni and Fulvia D'Amato, Caffè Arti e Mestieri, Reggiolo (Reggio Emilia)

Il viola della lingua. Tongue with salmì sauce, mousse of purple potatoes, sweet and sour purple cabbage, powdered dehydrated raspberries

Gianpaolo Raschi, Guido, Rimini

Fish pancotto. My marine and farmer origins, a long tradition founded on the concept of reusing raw materials (photo by Giorgio Salvatori)

Franco Cimini, Antica Osteria del Mirasole, San Giovanni in Persiceto (Bologna)

Tagliatelle with old-style courtyard meat sauce. An ancient recipe from the countryside around Bologna which includes the less noble parts of courtyard animals (giblets) including crest, gizzard, liver and embryo eggs
 

Aurora Mazzucchelli, Marconi, Sasso Marconi (Bologna)

Mallard meets an anchovy. The tale of a mallard’s migration. The clash of sea and earth, the meeting of sapidity and game

Piergiorgio Parini, Povero Diavolo, Torriana (Parma)

Braised «narce» (anagram for "carne", meat, also known as "the animal that wasn’t there"). The dish recalls the opulence and structure of stew, both in terms of appearance and palate, but it is only made with vegetables: the base is a kiwi, glazed with a jus of vegetables, fermented sauces and red wine, powdered with balsamic herbs (photo credits Passione Gourmet)

Alberto Degl'Innocenti, Tirabusciò, Bibbiena (Arezzo)

Verna bread gnocchetti with scallion, ribollita sauce, diced crispy bread with black cabbage and a wafer of Parmigiano. My interpretation of a Tuscan classic

Fabrizio Girasoli, Butterfly, Capannori (Lucca)

Evolution of red prawns. From marinated to fried, passing through a pan and some steam, with fruit and vegetable connections, in the morning fog

Andrea Mattei, Meo Modo a Borgo San Pietro, Chiusdino (Siena)

Smoked chicken liver, eel and nettles. The tradition from Tuscany’s inland meets the sea

Gaetano Trovato, Arnolfo, Colle Val D'Elsa (Siena)
Pigeon: breast, thigh stuffed with its liver, chestnuts and spices. My favourite dish, constantly evolving since the early Eighties

Peter Brunel, Borgo San Jacopo, Florence

My Tuscan vegetable garden (moving into a jar during the winter). It’s my memory of vegetables, which towards the end of the autumn loose their hydration in the vegetable garden, hence the idea of preserving them in a jar...  when they’re waning

Annie Féolde, Riccardo Monco, Alessandro Della Tommasina. Enoteca Pinchiorri, Florence

Bread pici with clams, cream of burrata and chives. The interesting element in this recipe is the dough for the pici: we use whole-wheat bread with natural leavening and mother yeast
 

Enrico Panero, Da Vinci a Eataly, Florence

Risotto with milk and anchovies, sweetbreads with marsala and powdered onion and lemon. “A Piedmontese in Tuscany" recalling the tradition of cooking rice in milk as a basis for sweets or as a poor evening meal
 

Simone Cipriani, previously chef at Santo Graal, Florence

Lasagna 2D. Two very thin layers of dehydrated tomato with a layer of egg pasta inside with mornay sauce and meat sauce. They’re slightly burnt on the outside, using a torch, and with some Parmigiano au gratin. You can find all of Italy, concentrated and bi-dimensional, in two millimetres

Vito Mollica, Il Palagio del Four Seasons, Florence

Celery, carrot, onion stuffed with a parfait of pheasant, almond sauce and sweet garlic. These are the foundations of our cooking but never the main characters in a dish
 

Marco Stabile, Ora d'Aria, Florence

If a meteor were to fall on Tuscany: a universal vision of bruschetta. A special way (with a vision of the universe) to interpret Tuscan bruschetta, with beans, black cabbage and Tuscan oil
 

Cristoforo Trapani, Magnolia dell'hotel Byron, Forte dei Marmi (Lucca)

Roasted artichoke. It’s a symbol of feast in all the houses in Campania but most of all it is only made by illegal sellers in the streets. The smoke arising, the aroma of the artichoke peel burning on the embers...
 

Igles Corelli, Atman, Lamporecchio (Pistoia)

Il Maiale va al mare. Il maiale dei mille abbinamenti in questo caso si sposa alla perfezione col calamaro

Cristiano Tomei, L'Imbuto, Lucca

Il Tutto e il Niente. Ovvero: Cialda di grano arso sotto seppia, il suo nero e cervella fritte. E' la sintesi di un panino gourmet. Grande concetto e grande sapore (foto di Lido Vannucchi)

Damiano Donati, Punto Officina del Gusto, Lucca

Green tagliolini with vegetal sea. These tagliolini are made with durum wheat semolina, kneaded with dried seaweeds and served with oil
 

Valeria Piccini, Da Caino, Montemerano (Grosseto)

Maremma: wild boar and territory. The scents we can smell during a walk in the woods in the late autumn/winter. We use the boar’s belly, together with wild chicory, roots, mushrooms, snails and cane apples, a sauce and a hot drink as a pairing. They release incredible notes of toasted acorns, roasted chestnuts, wild apples, mushrooms and blueberries

Dario Cecchini, Solociccia, Panzano in Chianti (Siena)

To beef or not to beef. Sandwich with steak and steak sauce. It will be the top sandwich in my new project, Cecchini Panini, a meat-focused fast-food place in Panzano in Chianti, that is to say at my place. As carnivore as it gets...

Deborah Corsi, La Perla del Mare, San Vincenzo (Livorno)

The courtyard, the brush and the sea. A dish in which the aromas of my territory unite: earth meeting the sea

Nicola Damiani, Osteria di Passignano, Tavarnelle val di Pesa (Florence)

Nettle pudding with a fondant of Parmigiano, crispy egg and drops of tomato water. It’s a new take on the sunny side up egg with wild herbs and parmesan

Paolo Trippini, Trippini, Baschi (Terni)

Soft egg, carrots, hazelnuts and truffle. A classic in Umbria, enriched with the sweetness of carrots and the fragrance of hazelnuts

Giancarlo Polito, La Locanda del Capitano, Montone (Perugia)

Cream of asparagus, poached egg with truffle and flathead grey mullet bottarga. Umbria with the sun from the South

Emanuele Mazzella, Vespasia di Palazzo Seneca, Norcia (Perugia)

Ricotta, spelt and oranges. A new take on pastiera napoletana, a classic in my region of origin that moves to Norcia shortly: instead of the wheat, I use spelt, which is abundant over here

Anna Rita Simoncini, I Sette Consoli, Orvieto (Terni)

Vineyard snails with wild herbs and chestnut and Jerusalem artichoke sauce. A local classic with the scents of herbs and earths; the chestnuts and Jerusalem artichoke sauce gives sweetness and freshness

Danilo Bei, Emilio, Fermo

A warm welcome. That is to say hot chicken stock, a button with chestnut and clams
 

Errico Recanati, Andreina, Loreto (Ancona)

Duck, tamarind and cocoa beans. Duck, which has always been an ingredient in our restaurant, with Asian influences: I’ve always been passionate about Asian cuisine (I often visited China and Thailand in recent years). Photo by Emanuela Ercoli

Stefano Ciotti, Nostrano, Pesaro

La Palla di Pomodoro. That is to say a small burrata, warm and glazed with tomato, with Parmesan whey and truffle, cream of bread and anchovies. It’s a homage to the city of Pesaro, inspired by Arnaldo Pomodoro’s sculpture “La Grande Sfera”, the emblem of the city

Sabrina Tuzi, Degusteria del Gigante, San Benedetto del Tronto (Ascoli Piceno) 

Oyster, sea water, countryside vegetables, sorbet with oil of tenera ascolana olives and barley malt. This dish unites a noble product of the sea with the poorest ones from the countryside: poverty and nobleness

Moreno Cedroni, La Madonnina del Pescatore, Senigallia (Ancona)

Pigeon breast with raguse in porchetta and mixed aromatic salad leaves. It’s the newborn among my meat dishes: perhaps everyone knows I’m a fish specialist, this is why I like to surprise. I united sea and earth: as I child I lived next-door to the Madonnina, and my grandmother raised courtyard animals and pigeons in the back garden. The sea had its fruits and raguse (purple dye murex) represent one of my favourite gastropods: uniting them with the aromatic herbs they have in common was easy. Wild fennel, first of all, was the one to seal the union (photo by Andrea Di Lorenzo)

Mauro Uliassi, Uliassi, Senigallia (Ancona)

Welcome to the sea. A hot broth of clam water, with squid liver, seaweed juice and plankton