Tag: design

Hood in the kitchen: when it is mandatory and why it is better to have it – Italian Cuisine

La Cucina Italiana


A frequently asked question for anyone who is designing a new kitchen or renovating it is whether the hood in the kitchen is essential, as it is often considered a optional.
Our parents or grandparents didn’t have a hood in the kitchen, or if they did, it was certainly very noisy and had little ventilation. Over the years, hoods have evolved both in terms of performance and design. Let’s find out more thanks to the experts.

Houses change, hoods change

Compared to other appliances, which have evolved little over the years in terms of shapes and dimensions (think for example of washing machines or ovens), the kitchen hood is perhaps the appliance that has changed the most in history and which is adapting more to the needs of new living.

Think about it, there were once kitchens separate rooms from the rest of the house, there even existed the kitchen and the dining room (even today this solution is sometimes preferred), but it is undeniable that in recent years, with the shrinking of the average size of houses, and with other needs (fewer families and less time for cooking), kitchens have become an element integrated into the living room environments.

The new habits of contemporary living have led to having less time to cook and so kitchens have become smaller and smaller and have often been reduced to kitchenettes.
In the classic environments options open space with the living room and kitchen integrated, the aesthetic sense has become increasingly essential. From this perspective, kitchens have become increasingly integrated into the living area to the point of “disappearing” without wanting to show their function (or simply disorder), and with them the appliances, more and more often built-in, more and more often hidden .
The appliances that have most supported this evolution have been hoods, often not considered essential by users, often considered aesthetically not “up to par”. And so architects, furniture makers, but above all uninformed customers have tried to hide them or eliminate them completely.

On this topic I was lucky enough to interview those who have been designing hoods for 19 years, Fabrizio CrisàChief Design Officer of Elica, a Marche-based company that is a global leader in kitchen extraction systems, and made me think about how important it is to think about design in relation to these new habits and how to choose the right hood for us.
“Now the kitchen has become to all intents and purposes the living area of ​​the house, while what it is generally called living has become the area entertainment with the classic sofa and TV arrangement.” Fabrizio Crisà reflects, explaining that the first question The thing to ask yourself when choosing a hood for your home is whether you need one extractor or filter hood.

Extractor hood: the characteristics

The extractor hood conveys the fumes outside the home using an exhaust pipe positioned on the wall or in a chimney. The extractor hood is equipped with grease filters.
Pro: The extractor hood is the most performing in terms of extraction functionality, as it literally throws fumes and grease out of the house and helps to eliminate odors more.
Against: thermal dispersion, in winter it sucks in hot air from the heated house.

Filter hood: the characteristics

The filter hood does not need to have an exhaust pipe to the outside. It has two filters: an anti-grease filter to absorb cooking fats and an activated carbon filter to reintroduce clean, filtered air into the home environment.
Pros: ease of positioning, not needing an external drain pipe.
Against: generally less performing in terms of suction

Plastic scraps are transformed into design furniture – Italian Cuisine

Plastic scraps are transformed into design furniture


Supernovas transforms plastic waste into design objects for everyday use, starting a virtuous circle. How? Let's discover the Volta line together

Design and sustainability they go more and more hand in hand: together with production processes facilitated by new technologies, a good part of the difference is also made by the choice of reusable and recyclable materials. That's what it does Paula Cademartori, an Italian-Brazilian designer who created Supernovas, a company based in London and Milan that is committed to transforming waste into design furniture items, totally recyclable. And when the passion for one's work meets the desire to protect the environment, something creative can only be born.

The called line Time perfectly sums up this philosophy: in Italian the word time refers to the concept of architectural form, while in Portuguese it means return. Volta is a line of household items created using 100% recycled plastic (PETG) through the 3D printing technique, but the beauty is that this transformation is not definitive.

In fact, customers have the possibility to purchase, return and exchange purchased products. How does it work? PET plastic bottles are reduced into filaments, added with natural dyes and processed with one 3D printer. No other material is used: this way you can ensure that that plastic it will never go back to being a refusal, but it can still be recycled, giving life to the so-called circular design.

And this is how plastic containers and bottles are transformed into resistant vases, glove box, caskets or smartphone holders pastel colors. Even in the kitchen there can be many uses: from cutlery tray a container for popcorn to use during an evening with friends. And when you want to change, you just have to start the cycle again.

In gallery at the top you will find the products in the collection, you can get an idea of ​​their uses and find out how many recycled plastic bottles were made.

No more cake design, it's time for blown sugar – Italian Cuisine


Italian identity and French mastery, the processing of plastic sugar is an art that is gaining ground and the world champion is the Italian Davide Malizia

It is the new frontier of designer decoration, but few know that the processing of artistic sugar has ancient origins and practical implications. And above all that it allowed us to beat the French in a "sport" in which they had been undisputed protagonists for decades. We talked about it with Davide Malizia, the new world champion of plastic sugar, the man who took the scepter from the French, this year conquering the Sucre d’Or, the Oscar of artistic sugar.

The history of artistic sugar

The art of sugar processing dates back to the times of the court of Caterina de 'Medici, daughter of Lorenzo de' Medici and consort of the French king Henry of Valois. We are in the sixteenth century and according to tradition, royal pastry chefs would have started decorating cakes for kings with a sugar processing technique borrowed from that of Murano glass. The Italy-France connection is therefore evident from the first stirrings of this art, even though the spread of artistic sugar until recently was practically the prerogative of the French.

The Sucre d'Or award

And it was the French cousins ​​themselves, in 1997, who launched a prize for the best "tireur", the shooter of plastic sugar, the Sucre d'Or (literally, "golden sugar"). To bestow it, Déco Relief, a historic French company specializing in ingredients and professional materials for haute patisserie, which appointed Gabriel Paillasson as the first winner, considered a French pastry expert and inventor of the Pastry World Cup, which every two years sees the best of pastry challenge each other world. The intention of the promoters was to award this prize every ten years and Paillasson's successor in 2007 was Stephane Klein, another French master pastry chef, who has an atelier in Belfort, where he teaches his noble art to the new generation. However, ten years later, in 2017, no one was considered equal to these two predecessors and the promoters of the Sucre d'Or were waiting for the chosen one for three more years.

Award ceremony-Sucre-dOr-Davide-Malizia
Sucre d'Or award ceremony to Davide Malizia (center).

An Italian surpasses the French masters

And here comes the time to crown Davide Malizia, our local master pastry chef who has beaten the competition from beyond the Alps. "But it's not the first time, it's been a few years that Italians have been giving the French a hard time in international competitions," says the master pastry chef. And Malizia was always there: in 2013 she won the gold medal at the Artistic Sugar World Championship The Star of Sugar and gold at the Junior World Pastry Championship as the coach of the Italy team. Gold again as coach of the Juniores team in 2016 and in the same year Gold Medal at the World Pastry Championship in Paris, Mondial des arts sucrés, again as coach of the Italy team. The latest award, in 2020, is the world sugar Oscar, the Sucre d'Or, which is a band that Malizia will wear for at least ten years, just like its predecessors.

In short, this Italian pastry chef is one who, although he learned to master the technique of artistic sugar processing from the French, nevertheless surpassed the masters, or at least equaled them, both as an artist and as a coach. It took hours and hours of laboratory training, gritted teeth and iron tenacity to do so. In 2015 Davide Malizia founded Aromacademy, the pastry academy in Rome where he teaches this ancient technique to the new generation of pastry.

Technique and style: the secrets of Malizia

But be careful, because to become the best tireur you certainly need a great technique, but also style. “It's that extra something that distinguishes a good performer from a true artist and that makes his works truly recognizable,” he admits. Malizia probably had that extra something in her DNA, since, despite being born in Rome, she comes from a family of potters from Caltagirone, a plastic art, which also has some analogy with the processing of artistic sugar. In addition, Davide Malizia reveals a gem: "Do you know the stained glass windows or glasses that break in films, especially action ones? Well, they are almost always made of sugar, worked so that it looks like glass . And the connection with Murano returns strongly.

A rising trend

Windows that break apart, «today, explains the master Malizia, «artistic sugar is gaining ground also in Italy for the decoration of cakes in an important way. For years considered "useless" because the sugar sculptures are not eaten, artistic sugar is finally undermining the most massive sugar paste decorations in the ceremonial market. On the other hand, even cake design decorations are not really edible, unless you want to risk a glycemic spike. They also have a more pasty consistency, while on the contrary the artistic sugar, which is pulled like glass paste, can even be blown, becoming very light. It is therefore time for the gracefulness of plastic sugar, its bold colors and its potential in the creation of real sculptures.

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