Tag: common

Cooking and music: what do they have in common? The winning combinations – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

What are the agreements and disagreements between cooking and music? There pasta calls parmesan (or pecorino) and rejects the polenta; L’roast call the garlic (and rosemary) and repels basil; The cotechino calls the puree (or lentils) and rejects the salad. These are the “food associations” that Fernand Braudel spoke about, underlining the need for those who study the history of nutrition not to focus on the single ingredient or single product, but on their combinations; the “associations”, precisely.

Designing a few years ago for the M9 museum of Venice Mestre the exhibition Taste! Italians at the table 1970-2050together with Laura Lazzaroni and Marco Bolasco we thought of dedicating a special one section on the theme of “agreements”, that is, the ingredients that in the gastronomic field – just like notes in music – are recalled almost automatically, as if they were “natural” associations. Which, however, are not “natural”, because there is always a cultural choice in preferring and choosing a certain agreement rather than another. This applies in cook like in music: parallelism that we have already discussed, which I am happy to return to. In music, a chord is the combination of some notes that are played together and appear “right”, well harmonized with a dominant note: in tonal music, if I start from C, the simultaneous sounds will be E and G. Other cultures, ancient and modern, they love different combinations. Something similar happens in the kitchen, where a certain cultural tradition – for example the Italian one – will get me used to associating it butter and sage with low-fat tortelli, tomato and basil with spaghetti. German culture will not fail to associate frankfurters with mustard, speck with gherkins (in turn combined with vinegar), boiled pork with potatoes and sauerkraut…

The parallel between notes and flavors is recurring in literature. It was suggested, among others, by the Englishman John Evelyn, who at the beginning of the eighteenth century published a treatise on salads largely derived from Italian works. «In the composition of a salad he wrote, «each plant must play its part (…) in the same way as musical notes. In this search for harmony, even dissonances are welcomed, because they “strike and enliven, so as to distinguish and make the rest emerge better”. It was the ancient principle of the contrast of flavors, not only a gustatory theme (a pinch of bitter makes you appreciate the sweet better), but also nutritional: Galenic medicine taught that each flavor expresses a different quality, and putting them together (the qualities) is good for your health. For this reason, Salvatore Massonio from L’Aquila – one of Evelyn’s sources – recommended mixing herbs “adjusting the hot with the cold, the humid with the dry, the sour with the sweet, the bitter with the sweet”. Here then are the dissonances, the “agreements-disagreements”, not only between one herb and another, but between all sorts of products: melon and ham, cheese and pears… tasteful solutions that have remained over the centuries.

Cooking pasta: the 10 most common mistakes – Italian Cuisine

It is easy to say "I prepare a plate of pasta". But do you know how many mistakes can be made? We tell you 10

Pasta is the pride of our country and in the world we are famous for being the best at preparing it and knowing its secrets.
But do you know that in reality every day without knowing it we make many mistakes and what seems to be a perfect pasta actually hides many imperfections?
Well yes. Indeed even the simplest of recipes based on pasta, such as the classic pasta with sauce or garlic oil and chilli pepper, must be performed in a workmanlike manner.

Here, then, the 10 most common mistakes that are committed when preparing pasta.
How many of you recognize yourself at least in one point?

1. One quality is another

It's not absolutely true. There is pasta and pasta and if the price changes there will be a reason. A bronze-drawn pasta, for example, always makes it better and welcomes any seasoning to perfection.

2. A random format

If you want to prepare a good pasta you must combine the seasoning with the most suitable format. Long pasta, for example, is fine with fairly liquid and creamy sauces, striped pasta absorbs seasoning better, short pasta is perfect for ragù and sauces that are not very homogeneous, and spiral pasta is fine with the classic tomato sauce .

3. Little water

The rule says that in a liter of water no more than 100 g of pasta should be cooked. Cooking pasta in a little water is wrong, unless it is the recipe for one pot pasta in which the secret lies precisely in "risottare" the pasta directly in the sauce by adding a little water.

4. Rinse the pasta

Never pass the freshly drained pasta under the tap. Stopping cooking is wrong, even when you need to prepare a cold pasta salad. In this case, for example, let it cool by adding a drizzle of oil to prevent it from sticking.

5. Watch out for the cooking time

If the packet indicates 10 minutes of cooking, do not go further, drain it first and keep the cooking water. Saute it directly in the sauce and let it finish cooking while stirring adding the cooking water.

6. Salt to taste

When adding salt to the water, "just enough" is very wrong. In reality, the exact dose is 7 g per 100 g of pasta and should be thrown into the water as soon as it starts to boil, never before, which would prevent you from boiling the water quickly, nor when cooking the pasta.

7. Remove the lid

Use the lid to cover the pan while waiting for the water to boil. Then, once the pasta has been thrown, do not cover it.

8. Oil is not needed

Some add cooking olive oil to "separate" the pasta especially when it is long or egg. It is useless, really!

9. There is a pot and a pot

Do not cook the long pasta in a pan that is too low and do not fold, or even worse broken, the spaghetti to put them in a low pan. Always choose the right container for cooking.

10. Drain the pasta

As already mentioned, to allow the pasta to mix perfectly with the sauce you have to drain it al dente and sauté it with the sauce for at least one minute on the fire. Use a colander with the handle and do not drain the pasta in the sink. In this way, you will take it out of the pot without throwing away the precious cooking water.

Incoming search terms:

rinse cooked pasta gordon

Sour butter and rancid fat. When the kitchen defies common sense – Italian Cuisine

The chefs play with ancestral tastes and forgotten products, challenging our foreclosures and looking for new flavors. Good to eat, but not to think about? Change your mind with a (sexy) recipe

Acid, rancid, bitter, burnt … are not exactly words that make you hungry, on the contrary. And yet they are increasingly common on restaurant menus today. The chefs are looking for new flavors and with often ancestral procedures they recall forgotten preparations such as fermentations. But it's true, they also try to amaze us and capture our attention, challenging us to order dishes that sound like disturbing. But that I'm not at all.

"Rancid"It is said of a fat altered by contact with oxygen and evokes tastes such as that of old oil, of forgotten dried fruit who knows where and when the butter has now turned yellow, acid and with a bitter aftertaste: a disgust. We reject the idea of rancid like that of bitter or acid, from the bottom because our body recognizes it instinctively as a danger. Rancid means spoiled, but rancidity is also a necessary process for obtaining spicy cheeses or blue cheeses, it is part of ancient products that are found in every tradition, in the north and south of the world (storage before the refrigerator generated foods such as smen Moroccan or Slovenian fermented cottage cheese). In the absence of a necessity, the rancidity masterfully governed has become a way to develop new tastes, and the chefs juggle us with increasing pleasure.

Strong ricotta and rancid fat, from chef

Large pots of fermented ricotta are stored in the Hiša Franko cellar, Ana Roš and Valter Kramar's restaurant in Kaporid, Slovenia. It is eaten for breakfast on bread and is often found in the dishes on its menu, combined with the flavors of the forest, smoked eel or beetroot. Its iconic dish, not surprisingly, is Potato cooked in hay with fermented ricotta, a gourmet version of a grandmother's recipe.

Pasta, garlic, rancid fat and chili pepper is one of the (excellent) dishes that are eaten at Bros, a Michelin star restaurant in Lecce by chefs Isabella Potì and Floriano Pellegrino. In this recipe, spaghetti is cooked and then creamed in fat obtained by boiling the waste of Salento ham fat, and then seasoned with garlic and sweet and spicy pepper powder. But just from Bros one of the signature dishes is the Ricotta forte and ricci, in which they use a typical ancient Apulian product with an intense, spicy and slightly bitter taste.

The fat of the Iberian ham

Rancid is the flavor that the Spaniards pursue in the extreme seasonings of raw ham, which year after year sees the fat transform to a golden color and an aromatic flavor with notes of wild herbs, mushrooms, truffles … cheese. Joselito Iberian ham, undoubtedly the most famous in the world, is also aged for ten years, served at room temperature, dark and deliberately unctuous, and the flavor is unforgettable.

Marchesi's sour butter

Sour butter, on the other hand, is nothing new. The father of the kitchen Gualtiero Marchesi used sour butter to whisk the risotto, necessary to impart acidity and therefore balance to the dish. In France, sour butter has a more elegant name, beurre blanc, and sees the addition of sour cream. To make it Italian, Marchesi eliminated the crème fraîche and studied a different procedure: lightly fry the butter with chopped onion and white wine, let it simmer slowly and then filter. Add more butter, mix and put back in the refrigerator until ready for use.

The recipe for sour spaghetti

At the pastry-restaurant Venom of Brescia, the chef Maurizio Amato uses the same technique to prepare acid spaghetti, with butter and beetroot. To amaze, and to break our prejudice towards words, flavors and memories, and to conquer: the name of the recipe is Visceral Love and these Spaghettoni sour butter and beetroot offers them for Valentine's Day.

Recipe

Ingredients for 2 people

1 golden onion
50 g of white wine vinegar
110 g of white wine (Pinot bianco)
120 g of butter
2 red turnips
120 g of Felicetti Spaghettone

Method

Blend the turnips, sift to obtain the juice. In a saucepan over low heat, put the onion cut into thin slices. Add vinegar and wine until the onion takes on a transparent appearance and the alcohol has evaporated. Remove from the heat and gradually melt the cold butter. Sift all the mixture. Cool and refrigerate. Cook the pasta in salted water, drain and stir in the cold sour butter and beetroot juice.