Tag: Chef

Fabrizio Galla is the best pastry chef of the year for APEI – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

AND Fabrizio Galla to have been nominated Pastry Chef of the Year 2024 during the public seminar of APEI held in Turin on 5 and 6 May. The pastry chef from San Sebastiano da Po (To) has been recognized by Pastry Chef Ambassador of Italian Excellence for “professionalism, research and the desire to share the elegance and excellence that distinguishes each of his creations”.

Who is Fabrizio Galla?

Born in 1973, Galla has to his credit the bronze medal and the special prize for best cake for Jessica (seven layers, from the crunchy hazelnut wafer to the 72% Santo Domingo dark chocolate mousse for a dessert whose name recalls the cartoon character Jessica Rabbit, from the theme of the 2007 competition of the Coupe du Monde de la Pâtisserie of Lyon), but also important professional experiences such as the one at the starred restaurant Del Cambio in Turin. Since 2016 she has been running her own pastry shop in the province of Turin where she makes everything from cakes to miniature excellences every day. «This recognition – comments Galla – means a lot to me. I don’t work for the rewards but because I love my job, but this is undoubtedly a great professional satisfaction for me. An award that tells of a constantly evolving path because I am always looking for stimuli and innovations to create products that make people happy: this is an important reward for me, seeing people smiling in my shop. Currently – he adds – we are working on breakfasts with leavening that develop vertically like the pistachio croissant and, in view of autumn, on interesting proposals with infusions and teas paired with pastries.

Fabrizio Galla and Iginio Massari.

The APEI 2024 public seminar

AND Fabrizio Galla it was but one of the over sixty pastry chefs present within the two days of APEI, the association created and chaired by the master of masters Iginio Massari. An event which, in addition to consolidating and making known the excellence of Italian pastry making, has taken on an even more important meaning in light of the recent approval of the Massari Law: «law which finally establishes the official recognition of the professions of pastry chefs, chefs and artisans of the food: an objective that I pursued personally to put Italy on a par with France and other large countries”, explains the creator.

Eating excellent Piedmontese agnolotti in Paris is possible – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

I ate them Piedmontese agnolotti in Paris and I felt transported to the kitchen of my home in Turin. I recognized the taste of Sunday, like when my grandmother Michelina prepared agnolotti for family lunch. Proust’s Madeleine effect 100% guaranteed at the restaurant The Tastinggastronomic outlet ofhotel Castille 5 * in the chic heart of the French capital and part of Starhotels Collectionthanks to the management of chef Ugo Alciati.

At chef Alciati’s table

1 Michelin star chef at the helm of the historian GuidoRistorante from Serralunga d’Alba in Piedmont, heir to a family that wrote the history of Italian cuisine, and ambassador of Piedmontese cuisine in the world also thanks to the collaboration with the friend Oscar Farinetti of Eataly, Ugo Alciati is a true champion. He has no pierre or press office to communicate the splendid work he carries out together with his family, you can often find him in his kitchen from the early hours of the morning and he is the last to leave, he has no problem jumping into the car and driving for hundreds of kilometers to go and collect the best ingredient. As a good Piedmontese – and I’ll spare you the rhyming cliché here – chef Alciati doesn’t like self-promotion, in the sense that he will never let words precede his work. Instead, he lets his dishes speak for him – and since June 2017 they have also done so in French.

Good cuisine is an international language which first allows us to dialogue and Elisabetta Fabri, President and CEO of Starhotels, understood this immediately. When he asked the gentleman chef to collaborate for one of his hotels he wanted to bring high-level Italian style abroadAlciati had no doubts: Paris. «France is very close to Piedmontese cuisine, starting from the raw materials and small producers, everything is simpler. We bring many ingredients from Italy, but we get everything fresh from the French markets, where we find excellent quality products”, says chef Alciati. At the L’Assaggio restaurant, the menu starts out based on a more classic Italian and Mediterranean cuisine, then over time it becomes clear that the customer, who chooses to come here for a gourmet evening, is looking for Piedmont. Dishes like the Veal with tuna sauceL’Russian saladthe Agnolotti del Plinthe Guinea fowl and so on, they take space on paper and the proposal becomes Piedmont-centric – Parisian (and non-Parisian) customers say thank you.

A taste of Paris

Chef Alciati chooses to play the away match with the Torino shirt and uses the experience to his advantage by going to offer the best of the best of Piedmontese cuisine, the one that is in his blood, the one he has been able to do since he was a child curiously peering at his mother Lidia’s quick hands in the kitchen of the family restaurant with over 60 years of history. In the same rue Cambon where the myth of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was born, the L’Assaggio restaurant of the Italian boutique hotel Castille Paris maintains its success precisely because it is as fashionable as it is not at all. A concept that chef Alciati expresses very well: «Good people no lie (don’t move in Piedmontese, ed), we don’t move from our beliefs, but we are there. We realized over time that our beliefs are the new direction of catering. And by convictions I mean the careful choice of small producers and small farmers towards sustainable cuisine, the simplification of dishes towards a more understandable menu, in short what we have already been doing for 63 years. As I tell my brother, if we stand still, we are in fashion, you will see. Bubbles, air, spheres, molecules, they get boring in the long run. People want to eat well and taste good things, wants to live a memorable experience that passes through the palate of good taste. It is not enough to make elaborate and spectacular dishes, the beautiful will never be remembered as well as the good. True success lies inhave a good raw material like no otherhere’s what the first ingredient of great cuisine is: the search for excellent raw materials.

Andrea Casali and Davide Caranchini, four-handed dialogues in the kitchen – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

Alert to all fine dining enthusiasts: the new format Dialogues inaugurated last April 30th by the chefs Andrea Casali (Kitchen *) e Davide Caranchini (Matter *) on Lake Como is simply exceptional. If four-handed dinner isn’t enough, Dialogues It’s the upgrade we deserve. This time, it’s not about cooking your best dishes in the company of an equally talented colleague, no. Dialogues it is the perfect contamination of the cuisine of two chefs who, taking inspiration from each other, create an exclusive menu one shot – the maximum of quiet luxurywhich is so suitable for the Como area.

In this debut, the cuisine of the protagonist chefs is mutually pulled, kneaded, manipulated, mixed, revisited, invented, until it is upset. In fact, everyone reworks a dish signature on the other: on the one hand Andrea Casali and his gourmet gastronomy with roots firmly rooted in tradition, on the other Davide Caranchini and his (never lost) research into plant-based sustainability. Casali tames Caranchini’s experiments, smooths out the edges and makes the rupture more understandable. Caranchini pushes Casali’s dishes out of their comfort zone, increases the kaleidoscope of flavors (especially the acidity) and thickens the techniques: the result is definitely a remarkable experience.

The idea disruptive was born precisely from Casali and Caranchini, when last autumn they found themselves cooking together with other starred chefs for an event held in Villa Erba and organized by the Stanza Blu association. The desire behind this unique experiment is the desire to meet in the kitchen, the ideal place for them to express themselves in an open dialogue through each other’s dishes. Starred chefs under 35, Casali and Caranchini start from a common basis of great respect for raw materials and a strong passion for vegetables. From here, they identified their signature dishes and reinterpreted them freehand in a game of creativity and contamination, attempt after attempt until a noteworthy result – worth remembering given that these are dishes served for the first time and not replicable.

The Dialogue menu #1

After the chefs’ welcome, the complete menu is 8 courseswhich takes the palate to an amusement park of elegant, delicious and interesting, and above all surprising, taste experiences. First courses that become desserts, second courses that are suitable as an opening, in short, a deck of cards reshuffled for new pokers of flavours. Any examples? Imagine it Mallard oyster and cashew stew by Davide Caranchini transformed into a fresh appetizer. In this case, Casali cooked the mallard marinated in salt, sugar and spices including sage and bay leaves, then washed and rinsed to be chopped into the form of tartare. Instead of the oyster, in its place only the flavor is found thanks to the leaves of a particular Canadian plant. The cashews were pureed and a BBQ sauce of mallard legs, honey and green apple was added.