30-10-2021
Massimo Bottura on the stage of the Brain Food forum organised by the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy
What is creativity in the kitchen? Or better still: what is creativity, applied to the attempt of imagining a cuisine that is more and more no waste? «Creativity is a banana peel», says Massimo Bottura, guest of honour at the first Brain Food forum organised by the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy on the day of the prize giving ceremony at the Megawatt Court in Milan.
A banana peel? To explain the concept, the chef from Modena went back to the days of Expo 2015, also in Milan: «everyone was asking me to participate in countless events, but none of these was focused on the theme of the Expo, that is to say "Feed the planet". I started to think about it and arrived to the conclusion that to "feed the planet" you first of all need to fight food waste», where it is estimated that around one third – some 1.3 billion tons – of all the food produced is wasted or lost each year, around 14% (of global food, and up to 40% in some markets) deteriorates even before it reaches retailers, all this while over 800 million people on the planet suffer from hunger.
That's where the idea came from, as the chef says "always keep a door open to the unexpected". You must always use your mind, knowledge, conscience, culture, imagination and sense of responsibility to cook with what's available». Bottura must prepare Carbonara for 200 people, and the guanciale has just finished... So he puts the banana peel in salted water, and then toasts it in the oven. He cuts some of the left over guanciale in very thin slices, places it on the toasted peels, puts them back in the oven so the meat blends with the scraps of fruits. Finally, he smokes the resulting product, cuts it in cubes and here is the guanciale-non-guanciale ready to season the Carbonara, «and nobody noticed!».
Bottura with host Ryan King
Bottura and his brigade give new life, in a different shape, to some historic dishes. Among these, Carbonara, or rather Gianfranco Vissani's Zuppa fredda di Carbonara, «we wanted to turn it into a dessert. We tried 22 times, but were never satisfied. In the end I remembered of Rio de Janeiro, of the banana peels...». And here comes the Crema inglese al pepe, guanciale, banana, gelato di pecorino, caviale, "a crazy, impossible, extraordinary dish", that's how we described it. «We start from the banana peel, toast it so it becomes a crispy cone. Then we add a base of banana cream with pecorino gelato and custard with vanilla and pecorino – which hints at the carbonara – with cubes of toasted guanciale [incredible!] which show all their sapidity. The cones look like those from ceramic artist Giorgio Di Palma at Casa Maria Luigia». And finally the touch of Vissani: a spoon of caviar at the bottom of the cone, as if it were the chocolate at the bottom of industrial ice cream cones. And, of course, pepper on top.
Crema inglese with pepper, guanciale, banana, pecorino, caviar from Massimo Bottura
Virgilio Martinez
Members of the Grand Jury
Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso
Reviews, recommendations and trends from Italy, signed by all the authors of Identità Golose
by
journalist born in 1974, for many years he has covered politics, mostly, and food in his free time. Today he does exactly the opposite and this makes him very happy. As soon as he can, he dives into travels and good food. Identità Golose's editor in chief
Massimo Bottura's video from Los Angeles screened at Identità Milano 2024
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On stage in the Auditorium, Paolo Marchi and Gabriele Zanatta (who moderated the talk) together with the protagonists of Identità Talk: Giorgio Locatelli, Massimo Bottura, Brian McGinn and, remotely, David Gelb. All photos are by Brambilla-Serrani.