The Vico twins

Originally there’s Cosentino. But don’t worry, I’m talking about professor Enrico Cosentino, the inventor of the scialatiello at the Caravella in Amalfi and a reference point for all the young people who were born in the Sorrento Peninsula and are seriously committed in the kitchen. He’s a teacher at the catering institute Antonino Cannavacciuolo and Gennaro Esposito attended, but most of all he’s a master of life, always willing to open his door to give some advice, a direction.

There’s a partly humanistic, partly Southern transmission of knowledge and passion behind the determination and ambition of these two great chefs of the New Italian Cuisine, as Enzo Vizzari, editor of the Espresso’s Guides defines them. They used to dive in that sea beloved by rich Romans as much as by the decadent Romantic travellers of mid Nineteenth century, until that great “pervert”, Norman Dougles, charmed by the vivacity and vitality of the young men, with such dark eyes and hair, and so thin due to hunger. On the rocky sea bottom they would pick sea urchins and limpets and when they returned back to surface, they found Vesuvius and the city of Naples, lasciviously placed between Vomero and Posillipo, the most beautiful and inimitable skyline in the world. And then, after Seiano, there was Sorrento, with its hotels and foreign tourists, with the hydrofoils roaring towards Capri.

And at home, there’s the unknown South, the one where you use lard because olive oil is little and precious, with the kitchen garden, the breeding of goats and cows calmly grazing at Punta Campanella like the ones of the sun, devoured by those idiot companions of Ulysses, an excellent metaphor for hardly forward-looking administrators and constructors, who have devastated the nearby Castellammare, transforming it into a grey cement platform that steals the colour from the sky and sea.

Here Antonino and Gennaro were born. They were teenagers in the Eighties, the difficult and horrible years of post-earthquake Campania; both decided to cook greatly when they grew up. And they’ve managed, I believe, without chauvinist, pretended feminist rhetoric, thanks to Cinzia and Vittoria, their dynamite always stacked with ideas and strength to go on with so many sacrifices, constant investments and lots of courage. Something which is possible, in life, only when you have the right person beside you.

Cinzia, Vittoria, Cosentino, Vico Equense: this is where you need to look for the secrets of the Vico twins and their neoclassic cuisine, rich in technique, ideas and references to tradition, capable of eavesdropping on new trends without ever becoming a caricature, paying attention to the evolving taste that today is completely different, I’d say certainly better from a gourmet point of view, and absolutely worse when it comes to the daily mass consumption of food, in comparison to twenty years ago.

Like all great creative people, what strikes about them is their intuitive rapidity and simplicity. These characteristics, on closer inspection, perhaps better than any other contribute in making their dishes full of personality and at the same time readable by those who don’t have a profound knowledge of Neapolitan and Italian tradition.
 They are two friends, and it is this profound feeling that ties them, the real dish to be enjoyed in the gastronomic duet organised in the next edition of Identità Milano.