Identita Golose has published Massimo Bottura’s speech that was delivered at the event in Milan earlier this month. It is worth reading. Entitled the contemporary chef’s manifesto, here is the first paragraph. “Creativity is a happy hindrance. When you have mastered a technique, you’ve become aware of your means, you have developed a critical ability and most of all you know yourself, at that moment, on the road to creativity, by slipping on an over mature banana, by tasting a pesto made with breadcrumbs or a lemon tartlet that fell down, at that moment you see the world with different eyes, the eyes of a child hiding underneath a table who steals a raw tortellino from the cutting board, catching a glimpse in the darkness.”
Recipe for success: Tiziano Gérard might be the greatest chef you’ve never heard of. He combines the skills and repertoire acquired in the kitchens of five-star hotels in Monte Carlo, Milan and Sardinia with the traditional cuisine of the Aosta Valley in northwest Italy, where he grew up and learned to cook. Alongside his version of regional classics, such as alpine cheese wrapped and baked with Speck, and rich minestra soup with spelt and barley, are original dishes such as zucchini with black rice ‘tabouleh’ and toasted risotto with muscatel wine, parmesan and rosemary. Hearty fare, but you will want to find your second stomach for his perfect tarte tatin or hazelnut parfait and flambéed strawberries with pistachio ice-cream. To cap it all, the menu is as varied as it is incredible, changing every day. You can eat at Gérard’s table every night of the week and never have the same dish twice.
Heston Blumenthal has created the world’s most expensive bacon sandwich. The Michelin-starred chef’s bacon butty was among seven dishes — from red Thai curry to apple crumble — he created for astronaut Major Tim Peake to take into space, to remind him of home during his sixth-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Maria Konnikova also writes about Heston Blumenthal. She looks at how this chef is transforming how we eat. She says the new science of neurogastronomy and Blumenthal can convince us that healthy food could be delicious.
Any foodie will tell you that no Italian meal is complete without a sprinkling of Parmesan. Now, the compounds that give the much-loved cheese its signature taste have been identified by a pair of chemists in Germany. Hedda Hillmann and Thomas Hofmann from the Technical University of Munich say their findings – which include almost 50 different chemicals responsible for various elements of the flavour – could be used to monitor the quality of the cheese, or to make it taste even better. ‘This molecular blueprint of a Parmesan’s chemosensory signature … opens new avenues for a more scientifically directed taste improvement of cheese by tailoring manufacturing parameters,’ they conclude in their paper.
Read the story of a chef who lives only in winter. Mike Hiller has been cooking in Alaska and Antartica for the past three years. His biggest challenge is not cooking and living on an isolated chunk of land in the middle of the Southern Ocean—it’s the fact that Hiller can only put in a single food order at the start of the season. Fresh fruit and vegetables, or “freshies,” are fleeting and eventually fantasized about.
The Observer food monthly has a list of 50 things they love about the world of food in 2016. From Heston Blumenthal’s sweet shop to the policeman turned pie-maker and Alain Passard there is a lot to read.
Few people have heard about Claus Meyer, the other man from Noma. This entrepreneur has helped turn Copenhagen into a dining destination. He has now set his sights on New York where he now lives. Read the interview here.
Read Vanity Fair’s interesting article on Michelin stars and why some of the world’s most famous chefs don’t want the star.
If you are heading to Zurich here is the New York’s times on how to spend 36 hours in this Swiss city.
Which cities have the most expensive wines? Here is a list.
Eric Asimov looks at Etna Rosso in his wine school series.
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