Two chefs educated us on real Italian cooking recently.
Chef Marcello Spadone speaks no English, but that didn’t matter. He let his cooking do the talking. Of course, the other information had to be supplied by someone else, and the man who brought him here, sales director Rodrigo Redmont of Talamonti Winery, spoke excellent English.
Chef Spadone was to demonstrate three dishes from his restaurant called La Bandiera in the Abruzzo region of Italy, the same place where the winery is located. Abruzzo is where one should go on a trip to Italy, Redmont said, bypassing the more popular tourist regions like Rome or Florence. His reasons are expressed as well in the Talamonti winery website, beautifully done with references to history, agriculture and cultural practices such as the La Panarda, an annual communal feasting serving from 35 to 50 courses. The practice goes as far back as the 16th century.
Three courses
We only had three courses that day, but with the wines and the full house of new friends at the Wine Depot in Reposo, Makati, it was a feast, indeed. Spadone’s La Bandiera has a 1-Michelin star rating but the dishes that day were not the complicated, fine dining stuff. They were very simple dishes, cooked in front of us though the cooking for the crowd there was handled by Spadone’s wife, Bruna, and the staff of chef Marco Legasto.
For his demo, Spadone used some of the main products of Abruzzo—pasta, olive oil and the chili. Those were the main ingredients for his spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino. And yet its simplicity is a test of the chef’s know-how, with no sauce to mask mistakes.
It was the novelty of using chopped old crusted bread that made the dish different, by not only adding texture but also absorbing the flavors. Two whites were paired, a light perfect-for-this-heat Talamonti Trebi (its nickname) and the Trabocchieto 2010. This recipe was tested in my kitchen and it was perfect.
Chicken in white wine was the next dish using the Talamonti Trebi and flavors from herbs such as rosemary, thyme, parsley, marjoram, oregano, bay leaf, all of which gave off such a wonderful aroma. Three wines were its partners—a more complex white, the “Aternum,” a perfect “Rosé” and a rich red called “Moda,” considered this year’s best wine in one of those tasting competitions.
Dessert was an easy must-try recipe. It involved cream and ricotta cheese whipped together, with sugar and honey added, then pistachio plus chopped kaki fruit (persimmon) which can be substituted with other fruits like mango or strawberry. Two reds, both earning high points in wine magazines, were the surprising pairings—“Kudos” 2007 and “Tre Saggi” 2008.
While the Tre Saggi is considered the better wine (the name means “three kings”), it was the Kudos I preferred because it was not as heavy.
Having tasted something of Abruzzo’s wine and food, the region is another place I have put on my mental map to visit especially during the La Panarda. I do believe I will, because my wishes have come true many times before.
Food as canvas
What you imagine of the modern Italian mama is the way chef Oriana Tirabassi looks. Big-boned, big gestures, big expressive eyes. You think of that as she relates how she used to bring her daughter to grown-up events telling her little girl that she would eventually relish the experience.
Chef Oriana certainly relishes today her experiences with her grandmother who taught her how to cook from the age of seven. While cooking was the business of her family, Oriana studied arts and advertising instead, then worked as an assistant stylist at the Gucci house of fashion. She would eventually go back to cooking and now she considers the food as her canvas.
Her grandmother taught her also to be true to Italian cooking, and she observes that what is being cooked out there as Italian isn’t. She tested me by asking if pizza pepperoncini meant a topping of cold cut slices. Thankfully I knew that pepperoncini is sweet pepper, and understood what she meant about correcting erroneous Italian dishes.
Championship form
It is pizza, the tossing of it, at least, that earned her a top prize in Las Vegas. She showed off her championship form to the delight of young diners at Edsa Shangri-La’s Heat who watched her perform. Cooking there was a limited engagement of just a week, but she made sure authentic Italian dishes were tasted and that she was around to explain the cooking to them.
The pizza certainly was terrific even without the tossing, and she made Parma ham with arugula for me. The crust was perfect with just the right amount of cheese and a generous heaping of ham.
The pasta vongole, I must say, is better than my own (which I consider also nothing to sniff about). But her chocolate gelato can make you want to go to Shangri-La Jakarta, where she is head chef of Rosso, the fine-dining restaurant at the hotel. Made by hand, it has the texture of mousse, which is the way gelato is supposed to be.
We hope chef Oriana Tirabassi can educate as further on genuine Italian cooking.
E-mail the author pinoyfood04 @yahoo.com.