Ready for the show and the winners of 2012?

Do you think Noma will still remain at the first place in the World's 50 Best Restaurants or a new restaurant will be selected as the best worldwide? In few hours we will know it... and this year will be possible to follow the event directly from the first row, thanks to the facebook technology.

Click here and reserve your place to don't miss anything from this great show and to be the first one to know who will be the winner this year.

But do you know why these nominees are so famous and recognized all over? Because this is one of the few awards where there isn’t a list of names to select from and any restaurant in the word is eligible.

“There are no criteria that a restaurant has to meet. They certainly do not have to sell a certain product. They do not need to have been open a certain number of years and they do not need to have won any other culinary accolades.”

It’s The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy, an influential group of over 800 international leaders in the restaurant industry, to choose the best. The Academy comprises 27 separate regions around the world. Each region has its own panel of 31 members, food critics, chefs, restaurateurs and highly regarded ‘gastronomes’ each of whom has seven votes. Of the seven votes, at least three must be used for restaurants outside of their region.

These criteria are designed to allow them to vote far and wide. They could vote for a small, unknown restaurant in a secluded region, or select the best-known restaurants in the world.

At this point let's the countdown start! 

I hope you will enjoy the event and I wish good luck to all the participants while I will keep my fingers crossed for our best Italian one, Massimo Bottura and his “ Osteria Francescana”.

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The right recipe for these rainy days

Rain rain and more rain!
It was a long time that I wasn’t complaining about the weather, but I have to say that now it’s a bit too much. It’s almost one month that rains without stop and also if it’s not too much cold, for sure this is not the weather you expect in spring.
Thanks God, last saturday when I went to the market the sun decided to appear for few hours and I could enjoy a nice stroll and some shopping. I could see already some english asparagus between the amount of colorful vegetables , but I didn’t feel like cooking something with that yet.

I was actually more interested in something hot, and comfy, maybe baked... And here it was ... A nice cauliflower! I have read in fact that this is the best month for them in UK and so the shopping was done and the recipe came just after: "I will do a typical english dish revisited in an italian way.... With pasta of course!"

Here is the recipe for my Cauliflower cheese baked pasta and the ingredients for 4 people:

320 gr of Mezze Maniche Rigate Pastificio dei Campi

200 gr cauliflower florets

80 gr of shelled hazelnuts 

30 gr of grated parmesan

120gr of grated mature cheddar cheese

30 gr of butter

salt, pepper and a bit of chilli too

Cook the cauliflower florets in boiling salted water for 7-8 minutes, then drain them maintaining the water to cook the pasta. Mash them a bit in a pan where you have previously put some olive oil and a garlic clove. Smash the hazelnuts in little pieces but don't make a powder.

Cook the pasta in the cauliflower water adding salted water. Drain when al dente and pour into the pan with the cauliflower florets, add the hazelnuts, some pepper and chilli, the grated cheddar cheese and a bit of grated parmesan and stir until the cheese is melted.

Pour the preparation into a greased baking dish with the butter, sprinkle with remaining Parmesan and cook in oven at 180 ° C for 30 minutes. Serve piping hot and enjoy!

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A quite, peculiar and truly good market

It’s more than a year that everyone is speaking about this awarded market, basically created by the farmers as an alternative to the busy and overcrowded Borough Market.

This street characterized by the arches of the railway is now the new foodies destination for a special Saturday market experience. Packed with farmers and little producers this truly great place give you the time and all the fun you can have in discovering niche and unique products. From amazing sweets, to spanish ham, from smoked salmon to fresh oysters and flowers, you can really comeback in time.

In Italy for example every area has its weekly market, something very common and never, never, so full like the few very famous ones here in London. To go to one of this you really need to be motivaded and ready to spend the day between lots of people. In Maltby street instead is more the market that guides you in the exploration and you can only let it drives you, like when I was a child and i was going to the market with my mum.

The smell, the  beauty of the products, the peace under the arches can only make your Saturday morning better and even the past Saturday when all London was gray and miserable, there it was sunny and warm.

After a nice stoll, a little shopping and a beautiful coffee in Monmouth I then camback to the center passing by London bridge, but when I saw the amount of people, I just rememberd. For me the tranquillity of this place and the good vibe of the shops and the people was a really nice discovery.

Do you want to know what I bought? You will need to wait my next recipe… soon on the blog.

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Massimo’s is one year old: come to enjoy a special dinner

On the 27^th of April a new pasta tasting event will be held at Massimo’s Restaurant and Oyster bar in the Corinthia Hotel.

Have you ever been here before? Are you also a big pasta lover?Then you don’t have excuses: Pastificio dei Campi pasta will be served all the night with lots of recipes to taste from the classic Italian traditions. Massimo’s won’t be there but all his amazing chefs, ingredients and truly Italian recipes will be waiting for you with a glass of prosecco too, all for 25£.

You can read here and here about the previous successful pasta events, but if you have never eaten at this restaurant before, have a look at the amazing dishes you can find on their menu’.

Here is my little way to celebrate the first anniversary of Massimo's...

To start: Crab and ricotta ravioli with arancini or  Seafood salad

Pan fried Prawns with asparagus and bergamot sauce 

For Main: Linguine Pastificio dei Campi with squid and truffle or Amatriciana

To finish: Chocolate pudding with vanilla icecream or Pannacotta with poached rhubarb

Mouthwatering? I’ll see you next Friday at this event. Please leave a comment if you want to participate and i will add you in the list.

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When furniture and the right design can really create a special dining experience

Also this year the Salone del Mobile has started in Milan and everyone is speaking again about design, new furniture, space solutions and great inventions.
I normally tend to focus my attentions on the new kitchen products presented there, the little tools that make your cooking easier or nicer, funnier or just great. This year instead I'm thinking about furniture and interior design and how much the environment of a dining room is important for a special dining experience. I had the true prove of it, when I went this winter to the event 'Too much is never enough'.

More than a supperclub, more than a shop and more than a unique experience: Disappearing Dining Club with 123 Bethnal Green have organized this original dinner format really entertaining and delicious!
For just 50pounds they were offering a 3 course meal + drinks and a vintage shopping night, all in one shot and in a unique environment.
123 Bethnal green is a really nice and old building in a corner of an East London street with a weird past (they said these premises harboured London’s most notorious illegal gun supply – selling hundreds of lethal weapons to villains all across Britain at the rate of one a day). The house has really old pieces of furniture all over the three floor and they organized the night in a way that everyone could go around the place in freedom.

The aperitif was served in the first floor and in the vintage cloths part. Up at the third floor there was the starter: chicken liver and a great salmon pate’ served with a spiced punch! This was the boys room full of weird objects and old arms of course!
In the second floor was served the main: a delicious veal stew cooked with mushroom and potatoes and accompanied by lots of rice salads “Ottolenghi style” and wine. The cosy room was showing women outfits and a big cupboard was offering in sale beautiful vintage plates and cups.

Finally in the basement between discs and old book was served the dessert and the final cocktail. Everything was really tasty because cooked by a proper chef and served by weathers and nothing was left unthoughtful. The place was so peculiar but cosy at the same time that was impossible to don't fell in love with the concept :)

In Italy we are starting now with the first supperclubs, but having a building like this one, it could be really interesting to start a format of this kind. Maybe something similar is Casa Clementina in Rome.  And I could see Pastificio dei Campi just as the cherry on the cake for an event like this!

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Learning some english recipes and enjoying food... as usual

Last week a friend of mine invite me to a professional cooking class... I couldn’t believe it! I love to learn from professionals and more in England where they cook different things from the ones I used to see cooked in my italian family.
The plan was to prepare a 3 course meal in less than 1 hour almost and ... To eat it all together! Just great!

So I went to Atelier Des Chef, an amazing place near Oxford Circus, very little from outside, but very well organized internally: there are 2 big kitchens, one on the street level and another downstairs and lots of cooking tools available to use in the class but especially to buy. A very cosy place with nice and welcoming people!
So we started our class around 11,30 with a Prosecco glass, gently offered, and the 3 course meal was composed by the following recipes:

Pea soup with crisp pancetta and garlic croutons
Crisp fillet of sea bass with braised fennel and brown shrimp vélouté
Chocolate and praline cream with espresso coffee emulsion and hazelnut financiers

We started with the preparation of the basic ingredients: cutting finely the onion, garlic, mint & chives, peeling the bread, and putting the potatoes to roast in the oven. And all these easy tasks were all quite difficult to do if you wanted to follow the chef's lesson: first thing He showed us how to properly cut the ingredients and it's so much more difficult of what I could have never thought!

Then we mixed some of the ingredients to prepare a very rich sauce for the veloute’ while some other were starting to deal with the mousse and financiers biscuits. This mousse made with the praline cream and the hazelnut dough for the biscuits were just great!

Finally, the financiers in the oven and the cream in the fridge, we places the fish to cook in the pan with just a little bit of oil, the fennel to boil and we concentrate on the soup, cooking the peas and frying the bread.

It was a really funny day and of course I don’t tell you how much good the food was! I loved my peas soup and the veloute’ was great, But for me the real revelation were the financiers biscuit, very similar to the "Magdalene", that I use to eat when I was little and that I loved sooo much! Now I even cooked them by my self!!! Great place and great experience!

And you? Have you ever been to some professional cookery class?

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Two houses, lots of rain but with comfort food

There is nothing that a good plate of pasta with the ragu’ can’t fix and the past weekend my new flatmates and me we proved how much this is true.

More than Easter holidays for me these 4 days were real nightmare: I came and go from my old house to the new one with lots of stuff, fighting with the space and the cleaning to do. The weather was horrible and yesterday was raining a lot. All my muscles were hurting but my food and my friends were there for me to spend the Easter lunch together… or better a brunch!

I decided to use my new kitchen straight away preparing something absolutely new for me: a classic Easter English recipe and a classic Italian one: hot cross buns and Mafaldine with ragu' of lamb. Of course we had eggs, salami, cheese, wine, salad, the classic colomba too, but the main attractions of the day were my two dishes.

The ragu’ was so reach and the Mafaldine pasta so delicious and consistent that we could not finish 500 gr of pasta in five. It grew a  lot and the brunch was a real feast. I cooked the lamb with parsley, rosemary a bit of chilli, mint and a little sprinkle of lemon zest and I served it with pecorino cheese.

Here a little pic of my hot cross buns too and finally a sneak pic of my moving. Do you notice anything in this bag? Pastificio dei Campi boxes are great to keep in order your kitchen cupboard, and are great to move your kitchen stuff too.

What I did on Easter Monday? My flatmates and me were thinking to bake the pasta from the day before with some mozzarella and parmesan, but finally we simply hot them up in the microwave. All of us were really impressed: the pasta was still al dente even after the microwave! This is the real pasta test!

I hope you enjoyed the break too and if you didn’t eat any pasta in those days, here is the recipe for your next dish!

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