Eel in carrozza and other stories: pasta disobedience

IDENTITA’ DI PASTA - THE MORNING LESSONS

Karime Lopez and Takahiko Kondo
What could be more disobedient than a Mexican and a Japanese giving a lesson on pasta? It is no coincidence then making their entrance at Identità Milano, on the subject of the most beloved and popular carbohydrate in Italy we have Karime Lopez and Kondo Takahiko, known to most as 'Taka', executive chefs at restaurant Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura. After chasing each other for years other between Modena and Lima, they now call Florence home, the city where together they’re serving New Memories. New Memories? It might sound like an oxymoron, yet these words mirror how traditions and memories always evolve and move into the future: Karime and Taka know where they were born and where they are now to the point of working Italian ingredients without nostalgia, without fear of changing the history of Italian cuisine. What is tradition and what is “contamination”? ‘In my language, the word contamination does not have a positive meaning. Here in Italy, I realised that contaminating, while respecting Italian cuisine, really means enriching. From the meeting of cultures, new cultures are born,’ says Karime excitedly.

While before arriving in Italy the couple had no idea what pasta was, today, when returning from any trip, the first dish they eat at home is pasta, whether with tomato sauce or seasoned with garlic, oil and a hint of chilli pepper. The title of the talk, ‘I primi saranno gli ultimi’, reveals the audacity of the two to serve pasta as a pre-dessert within the tasting menu. The two dishes served here are Anguilla in Carrozza, Taka's homage to the pumpkin tortello he learnt from Lidia Cristoni at Campazzo, and Non dire cassate, a cold pasta reminiscent of the famous Sicilian cassata. For the eel in carrozza, the classic pumpkin tortello is paired with eel lacquered with a toasted pumpkin reduction, flavoured with ginger and balsamic vinegar and topped with grated fresh horseradish reminiscent of Parmesan.

‘The first time I tasted Lidia's pumpkin tortello, I said 'wow'. I didn't understand how it could be so sweet. Even my grandmother used to make me sautéed rice with azuki beans as a child, a perfect combination of sweet and savoury that has remained in my memory,’ Taka recounts. ‘I don't like Sicilian desserts, they are too full of sugar,’ he continues while introducing Non dire cassate, a dish of cold spaghetti, a tribute to pasta dishes eaten at the end of a cheerful weekend evening, marinated in a dashi broth made from Parmesan crusts and mixed with a bright green pistachio and basil pesto. Candied citron, almond cream and a touch of grated salted ricotta, cold-marinated for a month with smoked Lapsang Souchong black tea, finish the dish. The dishes are served on stands, as if they were birthday cakes, a tribute to their young daughter, a serial devourer of pasta.

Alessandra Del Favero and Oliver Piras
He’s from Cagliari, she’s from Pieve di Cadore: Oliver Piras and Alessandra Del Favero are a couple at work and at heart, now at the helm, under the wing of the Cerea family, of Il Carpaccio at the Royal Monceau, an Italian gourmet restaurant established by the legendary Angelo Paracucchi inside one of the French capital's most prestigious hotels. Here, proud of being Italian and of their products and traditions, the two disobey the rules of Italian and French tradition. How so? They tell us in two dishes. In the first, nutritional disobedience is at play: who would ever dare cook carbohydrates, in this case linguine, in a roast focaccia broth? ‘Paying homage to Pascal Barbot and his Soupe de pain grillé, we exploit the leftover tomato focaccia we bake every day for our customers and extract a broth from it.’ This is how Alessandra describes the linguine which, once cooked in this deep red infusion, are creamed with smoked herring butter and Parmesan cheese, and served topped with a similar tartare of peeled and oven-dried San Marzano tomatoes. In the dining room, waiters finish the dish by sprinkling some Sicilian oregano from Cedric Casanova, an Italian-French exceptional producer of evo oil and oregano. The linguine is an important milestone in the couple's Parisian history as they learn about the French and their love of Italian cuisine. On the menu at Il Carpaccio, mirroring their life in France, pasta predominates, from tortello stuffed with rabbit alla cacciatora and kimchi to paccheri alla Vittorio.

The second disobedience is in the serving of cold Spaghetti, Marchesi style, seasoned like sushi with aged rice vinegar, sugar and wasabi oil. The Asian contamination is no mistake: Paris is home to the largest Japanese community and hides an Épicerie, Nishikidori, to die for. It sounds a lot but that's not all: to they season the cold spaghetti in a Japanese style with Breton sea urchins, orange zest and grape seed oil. But how do you create a dish in pairs? Is there mutual disobedience? ‘If a dish goes on the menu, it means we both agree, but it is up to the customer to make the final decision. Between the two of us in general, Oliver is more creative, I am more structured. We compensate each other,’ Alessandra concludes.

Daniele Lippi
‘I never take myself too seriously, I take cooking very seriously.’  With this quote, Eleonora Cozzella introduces Daniele Lippi, chef of two-Michelin-starred Acquolina in Rome. Born in 1990, with important experience behind him, is representative of a neo-Mediterranean cuisine, made up of different influences, immediate flavours and dynamism. Daniele remembers with pride and great emotion his friend and colleague Alessandro Narducci, with whom he shared years in the kitchen and five years ago the same stage at Identità Milano before the bad accident. And today, mature and more than deserving of his success, he recounts his disobedience. ‘My first disobedience was leaving computer engineering to enrol in a cookery course. I still remember how mum widened her eyes in disbelief. She thought it was impossible. I’m a pragmatic person, I like using my hands. University held me too still. I had to change.’ Lippi tells us that on stage he is ready to throw a dig at tradition. ‘Tradition unconsciously disobeys seasons and local products when it pushes us to cook aubergine parmigiana and spaghetti al pomodoro all year round. So today I am disobeying tradition to obey the rhythm of the season. How so? By providing an alternative to tomato in winter,’ says Daniele, surprising the audience.

His Spaghettino alla marinara di rose has no trace of tomato inside. The pasta is cooked in an extract of rosehips, harvested in winter when the fruit is still soft and not very leathery, flavoured with sautéed  garlic, red onion, basil, oil and white balsamic vinegar. The notes of roasted tomato at the base, enriched with balsamic vinegar are a clear homage to Lippi's first master, Angelo Troiani, who years ago first disobeyed Amatriciana by proposing it with balsamic vinegar and crispy guanciale. The spaghettino is mixed with a sort of cold-temperature marmalade of roses and mixed-flower honey, anchovy colatura and served with marinated anchovies, capers from Pantelleria preserved in oil, oregano and wild fennel.

Andrea Aprea
‘Small (or big) acts of freedom or disobedience are acts of arbitrariness, small gestures of daily anarchy, licences and abuses that do not worry those in power’ - Corrado Augias. Eleonora Cozzella could not have used better words to introduce the last speaker of Identità di Pasta, Andrea Aprea, the Neapolitan-born chef who, just 16 months after opening the restaurant that bears his name in Milan, has (re)won 2 Michelin stars. Disobeying is served, this is the title of the gastronomic show staged by Aprea at the conference. For him, creativity requires an act of disobedience, particularly on the subject of pasta. In a contemporary-Mediterranean vein, the chef presents two dishes together with Antonio Sena, his chef de cuisine for 10 years: Che Cavolo di Pasta and Pasta e Ceci? Sì, ma non troppo. With Che Cavolo di Pasta, Aprea emphasises how disobedience is a necessary act in the creative process: ‘Ten years ago, at the congress, I presented a similar dish, made with purple cabbage. Here I am today, stimulated to take a step forward and disobey.’ I cook the Fusilli Spiralotti Felicetti in a clarified extract of 4 cabbages (white, black, Romanesco and cauliflower) and served together with candied pompìa (a citrus fruit endemic to Sardinia) freshly marinated in its juice, Savoy cabbage in oil, buffalo milk cream and, to cover it all, a film of cauliflower vegetation water and liquorice powder. Bitterness, acidity and sweetness chase each other in this first course where the extract of cabbage takes possession of the pasta just mixed with pecorino romano cheese, and the liquorice gives identity to the dish, linking it to the chef's childhood in Rossano Calabro.

The other dish presented is an exponential disobedience, where sweet and savoury revert and the same do pasta and chickpeas. The pasta is not pasta but a custard made from chickpea flour, frozen in special moulds in the shape of mixed pasta, from sedanino to mafalda, while the chickpea cream is not made of chickpeas but it’s a mousse of pasta cooking water and almond milk. Chickpea toffee, rosemary sour gel, chickpea crumble, caramelised chickpeas, white chocolate and rosemary ice cream, meringue made from chickpea aquafaba and rosemary flowers finish the perfectly acidic creation.

Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso