Two young cooks and two restaurants rewrite Lombard cuisine with a little obvious femininity. From Belè and Acquada the girls make the cassoeula. But in its own way
When one thinks of the definition of contemporary female cuisine, the mind sways between unseasoned salads and bowls of wholemeal quinoa. In haute cuisine, the stereotype wants it instead vegetable, delicate, light, with good aesthetic taste … For some strange stereotype women are thought to cook in a more graceful, feminine way: by women and for women.
On the Navigli in Milan two girls instead demonstrate the opposite. They are two Millennials, Lombard of origin and training, and are chefs of two restaurants where you can also eat cassoeula, excellent risotto, kidney in tempura or passatelli with pheasant ragout. Where the sex of the cook doesn't matter, but the raw material does.
Acquada, the shower of Sara Preceruti
Have you ever been surprised by an aquada? In Milan it means downpour, and for the chef Preceruti this is a starting point, a cut with the past and the birth of something new. Sara is young, but she is not a novice, born in 1983, raised in Novara, at the age of 28 she got her first Michelin star at La Locanda del Notaio on Lake Como, in 2013 she won the Best Woman Chef prize of the Identity guide Greedy, he then worked on the former convent of the Annunciata in Abbiategrasso, on Lake Lugano in Porlezza and now finally in Milan, as chef and owner of his new restaurant.
Via Villoresi is a side street of the Naviglio Pavese and the restaurant is clean, elegant, all played on white and blue. Photos of puddles that refract the beauties of Milan welcome guests in what used to be the premises of Tano Passami l'Olio.
The kitchen is characterized by contrasts, a game of balances, textures and temperatures, with a continuous reference between sweet and salty, soft and crunchy, hot and cold. Haute cuisine for the number of ingredients and complexity of workmanship, well-prepared dishes and decorations. The fruit is used in the dishes, to be counterbalanced by the liver in a first course of stuffed pasta, alongside the scallops, oranges arrive, which it also combines with a salmon tartare. The rabbit becomes sushi with seaweed, Bagnoli blue, almonds, sour onions, puffed rice and spicy carrot cream; the kidney is tempura with mashed potato, red grape sorbet and coffee sauce; juniper passatelli with pheasant ragout and crispy artichokes. The Mediterranean comes with one casseola of octopus on polenta croutons white and glazed grapefruit zest. Excellent risotto with sage water, yogurt drops, pear balls and Brussels sprouts. For dessert, his timeless workhorse Il Gianduia wears Rosso. For lunch, two courses for € 20 or three for € 28 and dishes such as chicken stuffed with ricotta and bacon, fennel au gratin.
Belè, the secret address on the Naviglio
In dialect, Belè means something beautiful, a preciousness to be preserved, a bit like this address which has been open for two years and is still little known. Genuine food, traditional heritage, contemporary interpretation without the will to upset and amaze. What you look for when you go out … not just for dinner. Via Fumagalli is tiny and the best geographical indication is being between the Rita and the Tiki Room, in an area where you can drink well, but eat poorly. The cocktail bars in Milan are a highlight, especially in this area, so much so that they have created restaurants such as Belè, where you can breathe the same light spirit and the same lightness of a happy hour. Merit of the hosts, in this case of the solid (professionally and physically) Sergio Sbizzera, who after years behind the counters of Cape Town and Pinch, now juggles the room and the counter. In the kitchen she called Giulia Ferrara, a girl from these parts, right here along the Naviglio from the rice fields of Cascina Ronchetto where her father grows the rice with which she now prepares excellent risotto. Alma cooking school, then Pont de Ferr alongside Matias Perdomo, Ratanà and then by the Japanese chef Takeshi Iwai, always in the countryside of the South Milan Agricultural Park. He is now at his first chef experience and brings so much generosity to the plate. Cauliflower risotto with smoked Chinese mandarin chutney, Goose ravioli with cream of bitter roots and endive, served with goose broth, Earl Gray and bergamot, Chicken livers with pumpkin cream and hazelnuts and coffee pumpkin waffles. For dessert the elderberry rice cake with saffron ice cream and, out of rotation paper, classic cassoeula (but fortunately lightened) or ossobuco with mashed potatoes.
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