Vanessa Markey
Leek and bacon croissantsby Andrea Menichetti
In cantina Vigne Cappato: lunga vita al Vermentino
Stefania, wife of the late coffee roaster Gianni Frasi, Massimiliano Alajmo and Corrado Assenza at Identità Milano 2021 on Sunday morning. Photo Brambilla/Serrani
The first thing you think when you see them on stage, one next to the other is: look at them. One is the pastry chef from Noto, short and dishevelled, white-haired like a line from Petrarca. The other, the three-starred chef from Sermeola di Rubano, is tall and thin like a comic strip from Paz. Two different profiles stand out in the auditorium, looking even a bit funny, so close to one another. But you don't need to know the background of each other to guess the relationship between Corrado Assenza and Massimiliano Alajmo. It's a match of looks. They walk towards each other; hug one another with the contained abandonment of manly embraces. Their gestures confirm their familiarity, their elemental need to be close, both having participated in the difficult tribute to the late Andrea Paternoster, the shepherd of bees from Mieli Thun. Alajmo: I'm a cook, he's a pastry chef. Assenza: is there a difference? Alajmo: no, there's not. The gestures become words that bounce with complicity. They smile at each other. Then Assenza comes up with a “I candy and I scan”. The calembour lifts the heavy hearts in the audience from the previous tribute. But it's only a moment of truce. The theme of the congress, for the first time emancipated from its primary function, is work. The two give two different approaches. Assenza: taste is inside people. Alajmo: we find great truths inside artisans, and from that moment on the dialogues develops in the first of two solos, Alajmo takes a step back and leaves the scene to the maestro from Noto. And then vice versa.
Massimiliano Alajmo, Le Calandre, Rubano (Padova)
Corrado Assenza, Caffè Sicilia, Noto (Siracusa)
The truth inside artisans. Massimiliano Alajmo continues with the theme, separating the weeds from the wheat, work from profession. He speaks of maestri and workforce. Of all the stories that can be told in front or behind a coffee. For sure Gianni Frasi knew all these stories and told them with the voice of a bluesman with a vocation for coffee roasting. “One of my dearest friends. I've discussed this ingredient so often and in depth with him. I continue this experience with Simone Fumagalli who has taken over Giamaica Caffè”. Now.
Risotto with coffee and capers from Pantelleria, Massimiliano Alajmo
Gabriele Zanatta, Corrado Assenza, Massimiliano Alajmo, Paolo Marchi
Fragments of humanity candied and scanned between a coffee bean and a rice grain.
Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso
A journalist by profession, curious by vocation, she applies her attitude to investigative reports and food features. She's author for Repubblica, Gambero Rosso, Dispensa