One of the things I love about Italian food–and about Mediterranean food in general–is that with very few ingredients you can make something that’s seriously tasty. Of course it helps if you start out with fresh, in-season ingredients, because there’s not much to hide a mediocre vegetable when it’s prepared simply (yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, Mr. Hothouse Tomato!).
So I was pleased to attend a cooking demonstration featuring four of Los Angeles’ top Italian chefs, each hailing from a different region of Italy, who were on hand to share tips with the next generation of chefs, tips they can in turn share with kids–the main one being that healthy food can taste really good and be super simple and fun to make. Staged by the Italian Trade Commission at Le Cordon Bleu Hollywood, the demo was part of a larger drive called Club EATalian, designed to interest children in participating in gardening and cooking something healthy–something Mediterranean.
Chef Drago of Drago Centro explains "al dente."
Sicilian Chef Celestino Drago’s focus was pasta, and he whipped up rigatoni that he dressed simply with Salina cherry tomatoes, basil leaves, a dusting of hot pepper, a healthy grating of dry ricotta cheese and super-thin slices of Japanese eggplant (the skinny one) that were baked until they crisped up and looked rather like purple rimmed potato chips.
So what’s with cooking pasta al dente? Cooking it “to the tooth” so that there’s a bit of chew in it means it has a little more absorption room for it to draw in the flavors of whatever you dress it with. If you cook pasta all the way before dressing it, the flavor just rolls right off (that can also happen if you put oil in the cooking water, so don’t do that either!).
Chef Mazzon of Il Fornaio uses a couple of roasted garlic cloves to flavor olive oil.
Chef Maurizio Mazzon, from the Veneto, asserted that the secret to the success of the Roman Empire was its reliance on farro, as he constructed a salad made of lentils, garbanzo beans, barley and this undervalued grain that Americans call “spelt.” This rich base was lightened with fresh tomatoes, celery root and basil leaves, and the whole was tossed with olive oil and topped with shavings of pecorino.
Chef Angelini of Angelini Osteria presents a fish cooked perfectly in sea salt.
Chef Gino Angelini, who is from Emilia Romagna, packed several whole branzini in sea salt mixed with aromatic herbs and roasted them for just 15 minutes. When the shell of salt was chipped away, what remained was a moist and perfectly seasoned fish.
Mario Marino & Chef Salvatore Marino reveal secrets from the garden.
Chef Salvatore Marino of Marino Ristorante picked fresh green peas and fava beans from his garden that morning just before coming to the demo and made them into a soup and a bruschetta topping, and the green pea leaves and tendrils into a salad. His brother, Mario explained that an important part of their lives as children growing up in Naples was sitting together with their family, shelling peas and beans, talking and learning not only how to prepare food, but also the value of shared chores and responsibilities–and good meals.
None of these chefs distributed recipe packets to the students. In fact, Chef Mazzon admonished students to, “Steal with your eyes!” The idea is not to adhere strictly to a set of printed recipes, but rather to learn enough about food and ingredients, and what goes together well, so that you can create a good meal through intuition, experience and memory–a valuable lesson for adults and kids alike.
