The best Italian chefs
Italy is famous all around the world for its culture, beauty and cuisine. Weeks ago, we spoke about the popular Mediterranean diet and its benefits in our every day life. Today we will speak about famous Italian chef.
Today, when we write about Massimo Bottura, we all must keep in mind what writer Alessandra Meldolesi knows and writes well on the pages of “6 (sei)”, a vital book for those who are interested in deepening the Nuova cucina italiana movement, born on the first decade of this millennium. That is: «At the beginning, in 1987, it was the trattoria in Campazzo. Here Bottura conceived himself as a owner. But gradually he lost hold of it and found himself trapped into the art of Lidia Cristoni. She was his first teacher, soon followed by Georges Cogny , the classic cuisine priest from Nonantola and Alain Ducasse , who took him with himself to Louis XV in Monaco. Here the chef learned how to cook clean, concentrated and organized, three principles we would never forget».
Three years after the birth of his Osteria Francescana, the chef met Ferran Adrià : it’s 1999, a year that switched off a century, a millennium just like we realize today how influent was the first decade of this millenium, modeled by key figures just like Bottura. There’s still a very long way to go, to make the world realize that the cucina italiana intended as pizza, pasta, risotto and smiles, is a folkloristic stereotype that can be erased through excellent products and chefs like this one. Bottura is somehow scary because he breaks past without stopping being italianissimo.
Before speaking about tradition (by the way, is tradition a static monolith or is it the sum of a thousand different non-stop winning ideas?) or talking about molecular cuisine, mistaking a technique with a course, we should make one step behind and head to Modena to taste his Compressed pasta e fagioli or the Bollito non bollito. We’d understand that this is a contemporary sum of centuries of cucina italiana, a movement that has gone traveling around the world and comes back to the Buon Paese to get new vital lifeblood. A trip led by a guy who got, in 2011, 3 Michelin stars and uncountable awards. (2011)
Here is the chef-enfant prodige of the world highest cuisine scene, Massimiliano Alajmo! Side by side with his brother Raffaele, he’s prolonging a triumphant march in the history of cuisine. Of course, it’s not easy to go beyond the three Michelin stars, received when he was almost a kid, but… On march 19 1994, when father Erminio and mum Rita Chimetto left them the keys of their restaurant (one-starred at that age) they couldn’t expect the creative disorder and the glorious jump that Massimiliano and Raffaele would switch on soon. Rita was the chef’s first teacher («he’s a cake sculptress», he likes to say) while Erminio teached the maître Raffaele how to handle a restaurant with care, irony and savoir faire.
But Massimiliano was not satisfied with the family teachings and went soon to France to cook with Michel Guérard and Marc Veyrat , from whom he learned how to move with very precise and clear neatness, an ability furtherly improved by frequent escapades gourmands to the high cuisine French and Spanish sanctuaries. Awarded with the second star when he was just 22, he got the third at 28, being the youngest 3-starred chef in the history of Michelin ever. His nicknamed “Mozart of high cuisine” comes from his precociousness but also from the culinary depth that hides under his brilliant, free and easy surface.
To speak to Massimiliano means to experiment the seriousness of a game, philosophical and even religious issues that expressive decency and esthetical transfiguration metamorphosise into flashes of very simple pleasures. That is, the metaphysics of a tomato or a fish filet ruled by technique and strictness. Massi’s cuisine is very modern but loved even by kids, neither banal or conceptual, between tradition and avant-garde. That is, beyond definition. A rope-dancer on a perfect balance.
«What you believe being a piece of meat, actually is a sea turtle filet. And, look, this is not a stuffed pig but a dolphin liver. That’s because my chef is very clever at preserving ocean’s products. Taste these foods: here you are a holoturia marmalade, an absolutely unbeatable recipe for Malaysians people. And, here you are milk cream from cetacean’s udders and sugar from North Sea’s big fuci. And, finally, please let me offer you this anemone marmalade, not worse than those made with more tasteful fruits…». Those words are from Moreno Cedroni, the singer of the mosthidden Adriatic ravines. Fish salamis, calamari hot dogs, turbot chops, fish chitterlings: Senigallia sea doesn’t have to do with just beaches, pedalò boats and beach umbrellas.
At the beginning, Moreno dreamed of a career in the navy. But it was just a whim: as soon as he started sailing, he made up his mind purchasing a dismissed place on the Lungomare Italia. Soon it became a restaurant centered on a banal menu, with a corpulent woman in the kitchen: they used to prepare fried fishes, sea salads and even pizza. Some years later those recipes wowould be totally capsized through a virtuous man’s techniques and calembours worth of a great humorist.
In the middle, two important moments: in 1990 he migrates to the kitchen, with the first birth of some complex recipes and, in 1995, he meets the great maestro Ferran Adrià, the engine of his repentine conversion: «before him», says Moreno, «we were all just bigots».
Registers in Moreno’s philosophy are several: irony, for instance, meets meets one of the most successful Italian expressions inside Madonnina del Pescatore’s menu. But also inside all other restaurants signed by Cedroni: Clandestino - a light blue gazebo inside the park of Conero -; Anikò - a kiosk in the center of Senigallia and Officina - a shop-laboratory with small boxes and weird fish delicatessen. All these projects lean on the sweet shoulders of Mariella, maestro’s maîtresse and wife.
©2014 Emina Ristovic, The Italian Heritage Magazine
Today, when we write about Massimo Bottura, we all must keep in mind what writer Alessandra Meldolesi knows and writes well on the pages of “6 (sei)”, a vital book for those who are interested in deepening the Nuova cucina italiana movement, born on the first decade of this millennium. That is: «At the beginning, in 1987, it was the trattoria in Campazzo. Here Bottura conceived himself as a owner. But gradually he lost hold of it and found himself trapped into the art of Lidia Cristoni. She was his first teacher, soon followed by Georges Cogny , the classic cuisine priest from Nonantola and Alain Ducasse , who took him with himself to Louis XV in Monaco. Here the chef learned how to cook clean, concentrated and organized, three principles we would never forget».
Three years after the birth of his Osteria Francescana, the chef met Ferran Adrià : it’s 1999, a year that switched off a century, a millennium just like we realize today how influent was the first decade of this millenium, modeled by key figures just like Bottura. There’s still a very long way to go, to make the world realize that the cucina italiana intended as pizza, pasta, risotto and smiles, is a folkloristic stereotype that can be erased through excellent products and chefs like this one. Bottura is somehow scary because he breaks past without stopping being italianissimo.
Before speaking about tradition (by the way, is tradition a static monolith or is it the sum of a thousand different non-stop winning ideas?) or talking about molecular cuisine, mistaking a technique with a course, we should make one step behind and head to Modena to taste his Compressed pasta e fagioli or the Bollito non bollito. We’d understand that this is a contemporary sum of centuries of cucina italiana, a movement that has gone traveling around the world and comes back to the Buon Paese to get new vital lifeblood. A trip led by a guy who got, in 2011, 3 Michelin stars and uncountable awards. (2011)
Here is the chef-enfant prodige of the world highest cuisine scene, Massimiliano Alajmo! Side by side with his brother Raffaele, he’s prolonging a triumphant march in the history of cuisine. Of course, it’s not easy to go beyond the three Michelin stars, received when he was almost a kid, but… On march 19 1994, when father Erminio and mum Rita Chimetto left them the keys of their restaurant (one-starred at that age) they couldn’t expect the creative disorder and the glorious jump that Massimiliano and Raffaele would switch on soon. Rita was the chef’s first teacher («he’s a cake sculptress», he likes to say) while Erminio teached the maître Raffaele how to handle a restaurant with care, irony and savoir faire.
But Massimiliano was not satisfied with the family teachings and went soon to France to cook with Michel Guérard and Marc Veyrat , from whom he learned how to move with very precise and clear neatness, an ability furtherly improved by frequent escapades gourmands to the high cuisine French and Spanish sanctuaries. Awarded with the second star when he was just 22, he got the third at 28, being the youngest 3-starred chef in the history of Michelin ever. His nicknamed “Mozart of high cuisine” comes from his precociousness but also from the culinary depth that hides under his brilliant, free and easy surface.
To speak to Massimiliano means to experiment the seriousness of a game, philosophical and even religious issues that expressive decency and esthetical transfiguration metamorphosise into flashes of very simple pleasures. That is, the metaphysics of a tomato or a fish filet ruled by technique and strictness. Massi’s cuisine is very modern but loved even by kids, neither banal or conceptual, between tradition and avant-garde. That is, beyond definition. A rope-dancer on a perfect balance.
«What you believe being a piece of meat, actually is a sea turtle filet. And, look, this is not a stuffed pig but a dolphin liver. That’s because my chef is very clever at preserving ocean’s products. Taste these foods: here you are a holoturia marmalade, an absolutely unbeatable recipe for Malaysians people. And, here you are milk cream from cetacean’s udders and sugar from North Sea’s big fuci. And, finally, please let me offer you this anemone marmalade, not worse than those made with more tasteful fruits…». Those words are from Moreno Cedroni, the singer of the mosthidden Adriatic ravines. Fish salamis, calamari hot dogs, turbot chops, fish chitterlings: Senigallia sea doesn’t have to do with just beaches, pedalò boats and beach umbrellas.
At the beginning, Moreno dreamed of a career in the navy. But it was just a whim: as soon as he started sailing, he made up his mind purchasing a dismissed place on the Lungomare Italia. Soon it became a restaurant centered on a banal menu, with a corpulent woman in the kitchen: they used to prepare fried fishes, sea salads and even pizza. Some years later those recipes wowould be totally capsized through a virtuous man’s techniques and calembours worth of a great humorist.
In the middle, two important moments: in 1990 he migrates to the kitchen, with the first birth of some complex recipes and, in 1995, he meets the great maestro Ferran Adrià, the engine of his repentine conversion: «before him», says Moreno, «we were all just bigots».
Registers in Moreno’s philosophy are several: irony, for instance, meets meets one of the most successful Italian expressions inside Madonnina del Pescatore’s menu. But also inside all other restaurants signed by Cedroni: Clandestino - a light blue gazebo inside the park of Conero -; Anikò - a kiosk in the center of Senigallia and Officina - a shop-laboratory with small boxes and weird fish delicatessen. All these projects lean on the sweet shoulders of Mariella, maestro’s maîtresse and wife.
©2014 Emina Ristovic, The Italian Heritage Magazine