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Antidote to Chef's Night: my Perfect Menu with Esposito, Cedroni and Tax
Antidote to Chef's Night: my Perfect Menu with Esposito, Cedroni and Tax

Video: Antidote to Chef's Night: my Perfect Menu with Esposito, Cedroni and Tax

Video: Antidote to Chef's Night: my Perfect Menu with Esposito, Cedroni and Tax
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After the recent close encounter with an alienating number of television programs on cooks, I honestly feel a bit dazed. My two souls have awakened at the same time and are fighting. On the one hand there is the tolerant Me, the one who says: come on, these are fun programs, don't be a snob, after all who cares if haute cuisine is swerving left and right, follow Sara Porro's liveblog and go 'na laugh “. And there is the other part, the more severe and passionate one, the one that still gets excited by the magical-alchemical abilities of the cooks, who fears being abandoned in a desert of contents, torn away by a river of applause on command and suffocated in a sea of nonsense without a single white asparagus to be the top for salvation.

Here, that's how I feel.

So I just have to go back to basics, to the barre for the dancer, to the exercises for the third high school exam: me, a white tablecloth and my personal, unique, gourmet experience.

The protagonists of my recovery exercise, the construction of the Perfect Menu, are:

1) Gennaro Esposito

He is the creator of the dishes at the Torre del Saracino in Vico Equense, already famous and now unknown to all Italians thanks to the recent broadcast on Canale 5, The Chef's Night. It has a creative cuisine that is double-linked to the flavors of its territory, which it treats with a reverential respect that is sometimes moving.

2) Moreno Cedroni

An imaginative, intelligent, colorful and refined man like the dishes he offers in his restaurant in the Marche region, the Madonnina del Pescatore. He has a marked sensitivity, an aesthetic taste comparable to a few others and over twenty years as a protagonist of Italian cuisine on his shoulders. He works in Senigallia next to the house where he was born.

3) Salvatore Tassa

Genius and recklessness, a pinch of madness and a lot of technique. Tassa has amazed with its creations for more than two decades and leaves something absolutely unforgettable on each visit. A tireless cook, he almost never leaves the stove and never stops developing new concepts to be tested at his Colline Ciociare di Acuto, in the province of Frosinone.

APPETIZERS

Sensory Path - Salvatore Tassa
Sensory Path - Salvatore Tassa

In Salvatore Tassa's sensory journey, food is not solid, neither consistent nor satisfying. Rather it is pure essence, scents of the earth, memories to be fished out one by one and called by name. It is the promise of an emotion that is yet to come and that awakens all the senses available, so, dear Tassa, I think yours is the perfect appetizer: Toasted pine nut dumplings in an aromatic rosemary broth; Steamed Maritozzo with hints of mushrooms and dried pine powder served with an infusion of chestnut wood, wild berry distillate and mint (in the photo); Carrot cream flavored with ginger and lime with mushroom and aromatic herb sauce.

Octopus - Moreno Cedroni
Octopus - Moreno Cedroni

By Moreno Cedroni this bright, captivating, colorful, very balanced dish. The softness of the octopus borders on indecency, here in a more erotic guise than ever. Cedroni has a sensual, soft, voluptuous hand like Crepax's designs. I am struck by the colors it puts on the plate and the ability to transform an ingredient into something sublime, just like this Octopus, bread and vinegar jelly, its mayonnaise.

Pickled anchovies with cabbage and broad beans - Esposito
Pickled anchovies with cabbage and broad beans - Esposito

Those who have had the opportunity to visit at least one of the vegetable gardens of the Amalfi Coast, do not forget the extraordinary beauty wedged between the rocks, on the slopes overlooking the sea, in a land where you grow well but to grow you have to fight, and the flavors are not not mentioned at all, they are violent, robust, with a wide spectrum but perfectly balanced as in this small appetizer by Gennaro Esposito: Anchovies in carpione with Cabbage and Fave, mint pesto, anchovy and saffron colatura.

FIRST

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Salvatore Tassa takes us for a walk in a wheat field, listening to the wind that brings with it the unmistakable scents of a nearby forest, leads us into a liquid immersion of a single concept because inside and outside the ravioli, it is only wheat.. His first is monographic, captivating and extremely Tassiano: Liquid wheat ravioli, infused with wood. In this phase, the chef from Lazio asks us to dedicate a profound reflection to each dish intended to impress the olfactory and gustatory sensations in the mind so that they become part of our archive of flavors and smells.

Risotto - Gennaro Esposito
Risotto - Gennaro Esposito

A punch straight in the face for Gennaro Esposito's risotto, a concert of tasty and aromatic components that play together perfectly tuned. However, it is not a question of classical music from children to the school rehearsal, rather a complex and catchy jazz piece at the same time, extremely dynamic, enjoyable from the first to the last note: Risotto with coppery montoro cream, smoked white saurian, crispy seaweed with lemon and chilli pepper scent.

SECONDS

Scampi - Tax
Scampi - Tax

What you see is actually an appetizer but it brings with it the dignity of a great second. I therefore include it in my Perfect Menu in this item: Adriatic scampi, turnips, mozzarella water, by Salvatore Tassa. There is no geographical or territorial identity in this dish, but there is a strong complicity between different flavors, it should be said, where you least expect it. It is part of that touch of amused inconsistency present on the menu at the Ciociare Hills, as is the burnt Juniper Beef in which La Granda from Piedmont goes away to the Lazio woods for an interesting and borderless game. This time there is nothing to think about, only to eat.

Mixed grill - Moreno Cedroni
Mixed grill - Moreno Cedroni

It is a very famous dish that I had never had the opportunity to taste: Grilled fish with crispy breadcrumbs and lettuce sauce ten years later, by Moreno Cedroni. It is the big binge, the Christmas dinner, a fun way to put your hands in the plate and eat, suck, savor licking your fingers full of spices and aromas and for a moment forget you are in one of those places where the dishes are small, where the elbows go off the table and where the legs are not kept crossed. Rebel and nonconformist, like its creator.

SWEET

Vicana - Gennaro Esposito walk
Vicana - Gennaro Esposito walk

I, who don't like sweets, have a crush on Gennaro Esposito's Passeggiata Vicana, if it's a sweet treat. Rather, it looks like a delicate immersion between lemons and walnuts and olive oil from which a wave of flavor arises that rolls up and stretches between the sensitive ends of the tongue. Really a nice way to finish the meal and therefore the chosen closing for my Perfect Menu.

Well, it was therapeutic. You can do it too, you know. It exorcizes the fear of losing something that many of us are really fond of: the dignity of food and deep respect for those who know how to excite us, even and above all, without makeup and cameras.

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