Raw daurade and black pizzas

The second lesson on Saturday 11th takes off with the gentle voice and the British accent of April Bloomfield, an Englishwoman in New York since 10 years ago, when she left the River Cafè in the UK for the Californian Chez Panisse. Today she’s at the helm of the Spotted Pig but also of the Breslin Bar & Dining Room and the John Dory Oyster Bar. And she recently crossed the border of the New York State too, with Tosca in San Francisco.

The dish presented was a Raw daurade marinated in pistachio oil and lemon, with toasted pistachios chopped in a mortar, and slices of figs marinated in ginger, anise, juniper and vinegar. A dish that forces us once again to look elsewhere, at the Mediterranean Sea, and at Indian latitudes too, a memory of her childhood in London. The acidities asre perfectly round, gentle, signed by a determined woman of whom we will hear again. April’s recipes are included in “A Girl and her pig”, a perfect collection of animals cooked from nose to tail and seasonal products prepared with a rare sensitivity.

With Vitantonio Lombardo, instead, we visit Locanda Severino in Caggiano, the last village in Campania before entering Basilicata, a hamlet in which this job has certainly a higher level of difficulty given it is located inland and not on the shiny Amalfi Coast, like the establishments of many colleagues. A Campania that expresses mushrooms, meat and truffles from Vallo di Diano, available 365 days a year.

The dish is the result of a collaboration with his dear friend Davide Scabin, the notorious author of Black is black, the most famous bend of spaghetti in Italy. Pizza in Black is a small fried pizza (the diameter is 13 cm) with a unique content, namely vegetal charcoal, which adds an interesting black colour.

The truffle sauce you will find on the base is made with Porto, scallion, potatoes, butter, black pepper and vegetable stock. But the truffle, in the end, appears in as many as 3 textures: as a sauce, indeed, fresh and as caviar (centrifuged and then thickened with agar agar). The pizza is leavened for 24 hours at 7°C, fried in oil for 40 seconds per side, placed on the sauce and on ricotta with Grana Padano and fresh cream. A total black that tells of a territory that deserves attention.