Tag: menus

Light winter menus – Italian cuisine – Italian Cuisine

We all know the theory, so here is how to put this wise principle into practice with many ideas of light dishes, but with taste

December is the month with the highest rate of flab: impossible (and wrong) to give up the toast with friends, the greeting dinner with relatives, the exchange of gifts with panettone attached. Actually i chiletti accumulated at Christmas I'm usually alone temporary, what it makes a difference it's eating habits that you follow on non-festive days and meals. A saying (very wise) states that "you don't get fat from Christmas to New Year but from New Year to Christmas". With the three light and delicious winter menus that we propose you will not have to fear any delicious occasion, as long as you do not make every meal from the beginning of December to January 6 a dinner.

For those who don't give up meat

During the holidays there will certainly not be missing meat, especially rich and tasty cuts such as roasts and braised meats. Better, then, opt for the White meat in your light winter menus, especially because it is more digestible. Always remember combine proteins, carbohydrates is fat good (ie our extra virgin olive oil) at each meal and to prefer the raw vegetables and i grain cereals with bread, pasta and starchy foods. So for lunch, you could prepare awarm barley salad with chicken breast morsels, sautéed radicchio and a pinch of curry to precede or accompany with a rich big salad mixed. For dinner, however, the rabbit with endive and vegetables accompanied by a small portion of potatoes parsley it is a light meal with a delicate but satisfying taste.

Light and seasonal seafood dishes

In theory, it would perhaps be more appropriate to opt for the fish, which is light and satiating and usually less consumed during the holidays (if not at the Viglia, for those who eat lean). An idea for lunch could be araw artichoke salad – bitter vegetables are those that have particular detox properties – e boiled octopus, to accompany with some potatoes parsley (perhaps advance the night before from the light winter meat menu, so as to speed up the time). At dinner the perch rolls in savoy cabbage they are a guest-proof dish. Accompany them with del basmati rice and savoy cabbage with turmeric for a complete dinner with an oriental touch.

Light winter menus for everyone: the vegetarian version

The lentils they are not eaten only on New Year's Eve, on the contrary. Since it would be wise to reduce the consumption of packaged products, rich in salt and hidden calories, if you do not consume meat and fish, avoid vegetable and related burgers. For lunch you could prepare a lettuce risotto, omitting the mozzarella, and then eating some eggs a boiled with a colorful carrot and radicchio salad. An invigorating lentil soupinstead, it is ideal for dinner to warm up after a cold winter day.

Scent Dinner, when a perfume inspires menus and drinks – Italian Cuisine

From sumptuous parties of the late nineteenth century to the fragrances of today. The St. Regis of Venice offers a special sensorial experience inspired by Caroline Astor, matriarch of the founding family of the hotel brand

The holidays of Caroline Astor they were legend. Matriarch of the founding family of the prestigious hotel brand St. Regis, today part of the group Marriott, Mrs Astor knew how to organize the most exclusive receptions of New York in the late nineteenth century, transforming her own ballroom in a riot of palm trees, quince flowers, white lilies, cherry trees and American roses. All for an exclusive list of 400 distinguished guests, representatives of the highest spheres of society of the time, invited to wear their best clothes and to take part in these thousand and one night parties.

And so today that same magic lives on also in Italy, and to be precise on the Grand Canal of Venice, in the fresh reopening spaces of The St. Regis Venice. Here, in fact, you can let yourself be intoxicated by the new fragrance Caroline’s Four Hundred, obviously dedicated to Mrs Astor and her famous "list of 400", while tasting a menu and a selection of drinks made especially for the occasion. In a wonderful ton sur ton of perfumes that includes plate and glass, thus giving an all-round sensory experience.

The perfume designer Carlos Huber and the chef Nadia Frisina

The fragrance

"Perfume has the rare ability to transport us to other times and places in the most intimate way possible," he comments Carlos Huber, designer and founder of Arquiste Parfumeur, the brand that created the Caroline’s Four Hundred room fragrance. "Collaborating with St. Regis to enclose the rich history of the brand and its modern refinement in a unique and exclusive olfactory experience was an honor. What we have tried to achieve is a contemporary perfume, very current, but at the same time capable of communicating a timeless charm . The chronicles of the time that told the sumptuous parties of Mrs Astor, extrapolated directly from the New York newspapers, thus suggested the different scents of the fragrance: starting from exotic woods of the ballroom, to get to the palm trees, ai flowers that decorated the corridors and the sparkling essence of Champagne that spread among the crowd. The result, enclosed in an elegant bottle, can also be purchased on the official portal of the St. Regis.

Menu and cocktail pairing

Between a pinch of American rose and some pleasant citrus notes, the scent of Caroline Astor is released into the air and burst into the kitchen. And that's how it is Nadia Frisina, executive chef of the restaurant Gio's, set inside The St. Regis Venice, has developed a special menu on request for the occasion, to be enjoyed in combination with the cocktails studied by the hotel bar manager Facundo Gallegos. Here then the appetizer, a Carpaccio of Amberjack with bergamot, capers and mint, is served with a "Rose Flight", a refreshing gin cocktail with rose liqueur, bergamot and violet. While the second course, a Scottona fillet with figs, Tropea onion and grapefruit, is accompanied with an «Exquisite Woodiness, a revisited Manhattan, with resin liqueur and cedar wood essence. The dessert, a Sicilian ricotta tart with almonds and marzipan with jasmine tea, is then combined with a "Nutty Blossom", a drink inspired by one of the most popular cocktails of the early twentieth century, the Adonise, revisited with a more decisive note of hazelnuts. To celebrate this Scent Dinner with a last drink, finally, the glasses for the top «Golden 400, prepared with Champagne, gold powder and Calvados. A cocktail of sumptuous elegance and a rich olfactory bouquet, which would certainly have delighted Mrs. Astor and her guests.

The menus with the photographs do not please the chefs (but the customers do) – Italian Cuisine

We associate the menus with photographs to tourist traps. Instead they are just the most effective communication tools. Are the sealed menus about to set? Google, Deliveroo and even two three-Michelin-star chefs say yes (and dust off pictures)

There are different types of writings, this is technically an invective. Against the menu that are in fashion today. In the space of a few years we passed from the insistent description of raw materials and processing to hermeticism. The Spaghetti with tomato sauce no longer exists. First it was all one Taldeitali spaghettone bronze drawn with 12-hour San Marzano cherry tomato coulis and basil confetti. Then we switched to Tomato / Basil. From pink romance pornography with a flood of winking descriptions, to small yellow book clues. From taking off every surprise of what you will eat, to not understanding not even what you are ordering: will it be a first or a second? With the deconstruction of the menu and the multi-purpose dishes, even to understand what course is being ordered has become a quiz. The more timid try to be on the safe side, the curious baffle the waiter with questions, the majority ends up discovering that he would have ordered the nearby table plate.

The dictatorship of the fixed menu

There were the mileage menus, the plastic ones, in which from the A of Appetizer of the House to Z of sautéed Zucchini, you could order almost any dish ever born since the times of Artusi. Then increasingly shorter, seasonal, rotating lists, tasting menus "recommended" for the whole table. Eventually the menu also became superfluous, once the restaurant was chosen, it is given.
Having a card means more line work, more raw materials to find every day, more dishes to prepare, having to deal with the clients' impromptu requests. In the name of "no waste" and the philosophy of the chef, it is better to do as he says. In many gourmet restaurants the choice is between a longer menu, new dishes, and a shorter and more economical one, with great classics; in others the trend can be chosen only between the quantity of courses (7, 9, 25 …), sometimes not even that. From Copenhagen to Colombia, the trend is the mono-menu, rather than a tasting it is a set menu and to be able to choose you must be mortally allergic to something.

I wonder what could be wrong in making customers understand what they are going to order.

The efficient menu

The menu with the photographs is cheap, makes tourist restaurant on the passageways with "throws in" at the entrance. Or it is the most effective and efficient means of communication available in the image society we live in today. Someone arrived there. Massimiliano Alajmo in Piazza San Marco at Grancaffè Quadri illustrated the menu with lots of photos to explain unequivocally what comes when you order the Continental Breakfast or the aperitif. Ok, Venice is a tourist city with people coming from every corner of the world, without necessarily speaking fluent English, but when the menu illustrates it you find it from ALT Station of taste, half of the truck restaurant half autogrill in the deep province of Abruzzo, in Castel di Sangro, means something. Niko Romito it is a practical one that looks to the point.
Without the need to know how to read, to order just point a finger. And especially in the case of exotic kitchens and unknown recipes, the image is a universal language. For us Italians the difference between spaghetti and tagliatelle is clear, but will it also be clear for those coming from the Congo? The illustrated menus are very popular in tourist cities as cultural mediators, as in restaurants with international cuisine. I challenge for an Italian to know the difference between a taco, a tostada, a quesadilla and nachos. From tex-mex chains in shopping malls to Italian restaurants in the world, illustrated menus help waiters and customers.

From American diners to Japanese wax sushi

In America the phenomenon of illustrated menus began even before restaurants could afford to take photographs. The illustrations were cheaper and the filling of the courses became the job of the professionals in the tempera. It was thus until the democratization of the printing processes in the 1950s, when the spread of food photographers and food stylists became popular. The idea was practical: to explain to everyone, even without having to read, the nature of the dishes, to make them more palatable and understandable, to be ordered at a glance by levering on the mouth watering.
In Asia, photo menus are the norm, in China as in Japan, where even the explanation becomes 3D with bowls of ramen and sushi in wax. "Cooking" i sampuru (from the English sample, example) were born a century ago just to explain the nature of dishes then unknown and took hold to make life easier for tourists; and to the Japanese who are notorious for having foreign languages as badly as Italians. It works.

The history of the menus

The menus of the restaurants are ethnographic finds of our history, anthropological expression of our society. In lustres of distance they end up exposed in museums, in the center of studies, published in collections like Menu Design in America, 1850–1985 published by Taschen. I wonder what posterity will think by browsing through the menus of these years and how it will be easy to interpret the phenomenon with the benefit of hindsight. In the meantime, I wonder what could be wrong in making customers understand what they are going to order.
Having a photographic menu requires a high production cost and historically in fact applies to restaurants where the card changes approximately every decade or those who cook the classics, and find generalist photos of databases. It is true that it does not fit the chef's impromptu creativity or cuisine du marché, but would help life to everyone else, that is, the silent majority. Customers.

The online revolution

Google Maps has just introduced a Menu tab for restaurants and is studying a feature to associate the written menu item and price with the exact photo of the dish. In the online ordering apps photographs are quickly taking over, they are already a feature available on Deliveroo, although in Italy still few restaurants are seizing this opportunity. In rooms where orders are placed via iPad, software producers have shown that photographs make ordering faster, customer satisfaction rates higher and limit misunderstandings and complaints. Beautiful images even raise the average receipt.
The experts, alias the consultants, argue that a good menu can also grow 20% of restaurant receipts (up to 27% if the description gives a precise origin to the ingredients). This was explained by Oxford professor Charles Spence in his book Gastrophysics: the New Science of Eating. "Naming the farmer who grows vegetables or specifying a pig's breed can help add authenticity to a product. Consumers consider it a sign of quality, and words can make a dish more attractive . Wordtelling in words works, but imagine beautiful photos. We live in the society of the image and the appearance deceives, less and less.

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