The Sixth Quality Of Cooking
May 28, 2006 | 12:00am
Star Chef Nadia Santini laughs as she describes the bicycle pile-ups outside the fishing shed here 80 years ago when laborers crowded in for lunch cooked by her husband’s grandmother Teresa.
"The first to arrive would put his bike against the wall, then the others would add theirs, until there was a pile. The problem came when people started leaving–the first pulled his bike out from underneath and they all fell," she said.
Santini is one of three female chefs of a total of five cooks in Italy who have won the coveted Michelin three-star award. Italy has 226 Michelin-starred chefs and 60 are women–the highest number in any European country.
She won the award at the Dal Pescatore restaurant, which she runs with her husband Antonio, here in the lush countryside of Canneto Sull’oglio around an hour from Verona, in Italy’s Northeast.
The restaurant is built around the original fisherman’s hut, from which it takes its name, where Teresa cooked fish caught by her husband in the river nearby. Laborers from the surrounding fields came to eat.
"Nonna Teresa taught me how to cook tench, carp, the most humble fish but with wonderful recipes, very simple but marvelous," Santini says.
The front door of Dal Pescatore still opens directly onto a little lane, just as it did 80 years ago.
These roots in Italy’s tradition of small trattorias, which were originally simple extensions of cooking in the home, are used by leading chefs to explain why so many of the country’s top cooks are women.
"The woman was in the kitchen and the man was in the salon," said Annie Feolde, the first woman in Europe outside France to win three stars from Michelin.
"In my case, it worked even better because my husband is a wine expert," Feolde, who cooks at the Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, told Reuters during a Michelin event earlier this year to mark 50 years of its famous restaurant guide in Italy.
Nadia Santini sees this tradition as something women in particular are adept at passing from generation to generation.
"We women know how to value highly those who have died but who have trodden the path before us. We manage to keep alive not just the culture, but tastes, smells, to move other people emotionally," she said.
Dal Pescatore’s kitchen has three generations of Santinis at work– Giovanni, who has just finished a college degree in food technology, Nadia and "Nonna Bruna," mother of Antonio.
It is a bright room with huge windows on two sides overlooking a garden. A central work area of gleaming steel with hanging pans reflects the workspaces along the walls.
The atmosphere of a large, family kitchen makes you want to stick a finger in to taste the chutneys, or grasp and knead the creamy dough laid out ready for transformation into walnut bread or rosemary grissini.
Nadia Santini still cooks carp, tench and eel–but updates them for modern tastes.
Eel is smoked and served in a coin-sized portion with sliced ginger in sushi-style alongside a terrine of salmon as one of about seven starters.
Dal Pescatore now has been expanded and the dining room alone has seating for about 35 people in large armchair settings. It has a reception area with divans for digesting and a backdrop of books and vintage bottles.
The menus are of equally large proportions, measuring some 16 by 12 inches and each year carrying a unique painting on the cover. This year, they depict a field of bright sunflowers reflecting the restaurant’s walls and tablecloths.
The color resonates in Nadia’s pasta, which comes to the table one shade lighter than the egg yolks used to make it.
Inside little parcels of tortelli is orange pumpkin flavored with amaretti almond and chutney, a speciality of the region and one of Pescatore’s year-round dishes.
Eel features again among the main courses, alongside turbot and for meat lovers, lamb, beef, duck and pigeon.
The desserts, which Giovanni prepares after he has worked on the starters with Nonna Bruna, include cooked fruits of the forest and an apple tart with vanilla ice cream, or a twin set of strawberry and pear sorbet served in china flutes.
"For something to be perfect for us women, it can’t just be beautiful to the eyes, but (also) good to smell, tasty, satisfying for the stomach and also stimulating for the brain," Nadia says. "It has to have these five qualities and maybe cooking has a sixth, which is happiness."
"The first to arrive would put his bike against the wall, then the others would add theirs, until there was a pile. The problem came when people started leaving–the first pulled his bike out from underneath and they all fell," she said.
Santini is one of three female chefs of a total of five cooks in Italy who have won the coveted Michelin three-star award. Italy has 226 Michelin-starred chefs and 60 are women–the highest number in any European country.
She won the award at the Dal Pescatore restaurant, which she runs with her husband Antonio, here in the lush countryside of Canneto Sull’oglio around an hour from Verona, in Italy’s Northeast.
The restaurant is built around the original fisherman’s hut, from which it takes its name, where Teresa cooked fish caught by her husband in the river nearby. Laborers from the surrounding fields came to eat.
"Nonna Teresa taught me how to cook tench, carp, the most humble fish but with wonderful recipes, very simple but marvelous," Santini says.
The front door of Dal Pescatore still opens directly onto a little lane, just as it did 80 years ago.
These roots in Italy’s tradition of small trattorias, which were originally simple extensions of cooking in the home, are used by leading chefs to explain why so many of the country’s top cooks are women.
"The woman was in the kitchen and the man was in the salon," said Annie Feolde, the first woman in Europe outside France to win three stars from Michelin.
"In my case, it worked even better because my husband is a wine expert," Feolde, who cooks at the Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, told Reuters during a Michelin event earlier this year to mark 50 years of its famous restaurant guide in Italy.
Nadia Santini sees this tradition as something women in particular are adept at passing from generation to generation.
"We women know how to value highly those who have died but who have trodden the path before us. We manage to keep alive not just the culture, but tastes, smells, to move other people emotionally," she said.
Dal Pescatore’s kitchen has three generations of Santinis at work– Giovanni, who has just finished a college degree in food technology, Nadia and "Nonna Bruna," mother of Antonio.
It is a bright room with huge windows on two sides overlooking a garden. A central work area of gleaming steel with hanging pans reflects the workspaces along the walls.
The atmosphere of a large, family kitchen makes you want to stick a finger in to taste the chutneys, or grasp and knead the creamy dough laid out ready for transformation into walnut bread or rosemary grissini.
Nadia Santini still cooks carp, tench and eel–but updates them for modern tastes.
Eel is smoked and served in a coin-sized portion with sliced ginger in sushi-style alongside a terrine of salmon as one of about seven starters.
Dal Pescatore now has been expanded and the dining room alone has seating for about 35 people in large armchair settings. It has a reception area with divans for digesting and a backdrop of books and vintage bottles.
The menus are of equally large proportions, measuring some 16 by 12 inches and each year carrying a unique painting on the cover. This year, they depict a field of bright sunflowers reflecting the restaurant’s walls and tablecloths.
The color resonates in Nadia’s pasta, which comes to the table one shade lighter than the egg yolks used to make it.
Inside little parcels of tortelli is orange pumpkin flavored with amaretti almond and chutney, a speciality of the region and one of Pescatore’s year-round dishes.
Eel features again among the main courses, alongside turbot and for meat lovers, lamb, beef, duck and pigeon.
The desserts, which Giovanni prepares after he has worked on the starters with Nonna Bruna, include cooked fruits of the forest and an apple tart with vanilla ice cream, or a twin set of strawberry and pear sorbet served in china flutes.
"For something to be perfect for us women, it can’t just be beautiful to the eyes, but (also) good to smell, tasty, satisfying for the stomach and also stimulating for the brain," Nadia says. "It has to have these five qualities and maybe cooking has a sixth, which is happiness."
BrandSpace Articles
<
>
- Latest
- Trending
Trending
Latest