Aurora Mazzucchelli

Aurora, just like her name which in Italian means dawn, emerged right from the start, when, in 2000, together with her brother Massimo, the soul of the dining hall and the sommelier, she took the family restaurant in Sasso Marconi in her own hands, immediately raising the stakes. By the metaphorical noon, at the Mazzucchelli's there's already an explosion of maturity and light. A clearness adds new colours to the usually slightly faded universe of female cuisine.

Why, how is a woman chef usually considered? The common idea is mostly associated with a minus: in technique, creativity, thought and most of all in freedom, since she's tightly leashed to memory. As if the critic and the gourmet were looking for some kind of transfer towards Oedipus childhood female figures. Well, Aurora is everything but this. A saucy, determined young woman, she's probably the most advanced female toque in Italy. Hers is a signature kitchen, which finds it hard to find its special square inside our mental schemes. Once Gaetano Trovato's apprentice, a Pygmalion who has inoculated her with self assurance and love for true products, she now runs around, without any prejudice, on the grounds of contemporaneity, between grunting piglets and bleating lambs of the Corniglio breed, chasing away techniques and scents. Her hands sink deep in the seeds of the trusted farmer, before rotating any high-tech knob.

And with food, she shows a femininity different from men's stereotype of the vestal of the home. Her's is almost a genre-culinary art which tightly recalls Lilith's materiality, following Hélène Cixous's approach. Stuffing, breading, enclosing in the golden blanket of ravioli. The conception of the ingredient behind the pass is a gesture of love and protection. It preludes an emancipation of the recipe, once in the dining room, and, finding its birth in the body of the chef, it becomes a surprise