On Sunday there were two lessons, just like on the previous days, within Identità New York at Eataly’s Scuola: Carlo Cracco and Matthew Lightner spoke about rice, Viviana Varese and Jeremy Bearman of cheese, in particular of ricotta and Grana Padano.
I like these lessons with two minds because you realise that absolute truth does not exist, and certainties are best left to those who are never touched by any doubt.
Lightner is the owner of
Atera, two
Michelin stars, in Manhattan. I don’t think this restaurant has any equal in Italy. Unlike 99% of restaurants in New York, there is nothing else except a tasting menu (195 dollars, plus wine, optional, and taxes, service and tips which are compulsory). This itself doesn’t make it unique (at
Daniel Humm’s great
Eleven Madison Park the formula is the same). What’s unique is the number of tables, which is nothing for this metropolis: they seat 18 people, a total of 36 per night. Open only in the evening (and only from Tuesday to Saturday) it has a first shift at 6 pm and a second at 9.30 pm. You can’t make it? We’re sorry, this is how it is. And it is also unusual for Manhattan because this timing covers an impossible range of time: usually from 11.30 to 4 pm and from 5.30 till when nobody turns up.
Matthew, who said “I feel ashamed, speaking of rice next to
Cracco”, pled for the Carolina Gold Rice, full of aroma and pleasant on the palate, prepared with the stock obtained by infusing the long leaves of another aromatic rice, a Thai variety called Pandan, which in this case was cultivated in Hawaii. This delicious dish was finished with garlic and king crab. Plus a white chrysanthemum. It was the best “plain” rice I’ve ever had.
Cracco surprised everyone with two totally unexpected and new preparations: the first was
Spaghetti alla chitarra made with a rice dough, cooked and seasoned with
Calvisius caviar, namely the oscietra and transmontano. Everybody was wondering what could that tool with plenty of very thin metal strings be. It was the largest mandolin I had ever seen. Had he brought it from Italy? No, he borrowed it from
Eataly’s shelves. This was followed by the a tribute to Rice with milk: “I come from Veneto and as a kid this was often our dinner since it curbed our hunger”. Forty grams of rice per one litre of cream: “In my family we used milk because cream was too expensive. However, it needs to be said that forty years ago there was only one type of milk and it was very rich”.
Cracco then seasoned and coloured the cream by adding some beetroot in the blender. And while his collaborators,
Luca Sacchi in primis, finished the dish so it could be served,
Carlo moved on to hi risotto with saffron. There’s always some magic in the gestures of those preparing this dish.
In the afternoon, it was the turn of
Viviana Varese and
Jeremy Bearman, to whom I’ll dedicate a piece of his own because his vision of quality food has little in common with that of other starred chefs around the globe. Thinking of
Pietro Leemann and
Joia in Milan may come natural, but
Rouge Tomate is not a vegan restaurant even though many think so, as they hear people speaking about healthy eating.
With cheese in the centre of the stage,
Varese proposed her contemporary parmigiana, de-structured with regards to shape, with carefully pan-fried aubergines, basil sauce, skinned and diced tomatoes put one on top of the other to form a red and charming cube just like the Grana Padano granita, poured on top, as if it were artificial snow on the ski slopes. In the palate, flavours blended with one another just like with the classic – often heavy – parmigiana. But with
Viviana it had so much extra-elegance.
