QUALITALY 139

May 2024 XII MAGAZINE costs. Living in London made me familiar with combinations and tastes far removed from the Italian tradition. At the Connaught, where I worked, they served as many English breakfasts as Japanese breakfasts with miso soup to give you an example. The multiculturalism of London cuisine has become an integral part of my essence. It is only when I merge these elements and propose them to Davide and the Acqua brigade that I realise that in reality my everyday life is seen as peculiar. I EXPECT A TYPICAL RECIPE TO BE EXECUTED ACCORDING TO TRADITION. I CAN ACCEPT IACCARINO’S PARMIGIANA WITH ITS REVISITED STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS OR CANNAVACCIUOLO’S WITH ITS BURNT EDGES. IF A DISH WAS MADE IN SWEET AND SOUR OR FERMENTED, WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT? Changing tradition, especially in Italy, is always a sacrilege. The growing success of oriental cuisine is reviving also in Italy the use of alternative cooking methods or of seaweeds and sauces once unknown to us. MA.RI.NA HAS BEEN DESCRIBED BY THE MICHELIN GUIDE AS ‘A RESTAURANT OF CLASSIC, TIMELESS ELEGANCE [...] FOR DECADES ONE OF THE STRONGHOLDS FOR LOVERS OF SEAFOOD CUISINE’. DOES ACQUA ALSO FAVOUR FISH IN ITS MOST CLASSIC FORM? Acqua started out as a fish restaurant given Davide’s ties with the historic family restaurant. However, I am a chef who likes to transform and eat more meat than fish. A part of Acqua’s menu is therefore dedicated to meat with a sufficiently wide offer. A REAL CHALLENGE Water is a universal element. I have made it a challenge to cook meat in a restaurant that has always been connected to fish. I trained at Spigaroli’s where great cured meats, black pork and white ox reign. The ‘river’ cuisine is there but the fish of the Po occupies less space. My meat dishes come spontaneously. I study the fish ones more. BUT HOW DO YOU GET THE FISH IN OLGIATE OLONA, WHICH IS A LONG WAY FROM THE SEA? The shellfish are Sicilian from Ittica Giacalone. For the catch I work with suppliers that I have selected very carefully as I am not lucky enough to be able to buy directly from the fishermen. I place weekly orders. At night I then examine the photos of the catch that I receive online and on time and confirm more specific requirements from day to day. HOW DO YOU PREPARE FISH AND SHELLFISH? Shellfish are served raw, we do not marinate them. The accompaniments never cover the shellfish. Some fish preparations involve Japanese sauces and cooking, others are more Caribbean and include coconut. We revisit traditional recipes using fish as the protagonist. This is the case with the grouper cassoulet on our winter menu. HOW DO YOU CONTEXTUALISE FISH CUISINE IN YOUR RESTAURANT? It is the ‘garnishes’ that link me to the territory because I also find excellent fruit and vegetable producers in Basso Varesotto. Or I take a traditional recipe and transfer it to fish, as in the case of our cassoeula. A SUFFICIENTLY CRAZY IDEA OF YOURS THAT YOU HAVE NOT YET REALISED? I would like very much, and when I think of it I feel very Spigaroli in spirit, to find a way to exploit a crop that in the past did noble service to the Olona Valley area and the Province of Varese: the mulberry tree. Few people know that silkworm cultivation, weaving and twisting have been activities that have made our Province rich. __________________________________ BOX The chef ’s table The chef’s table is an observatory that opens onto the private rituals of the brigade. I am privileged to be in the intimacy of an environment where human vices and virtues, sweat, blood, laughter and dreams coexist. There are bonds consolidated by trust and solidarity. One tries to live together and learns to live because in the kitchen, as in life, one lays bare the hierarchies made up of dominance and submission, orders and obedience, misery and nobility that make up the social structure of a brigade to which one is confined in the enclosed spaces of the kitchen. Actors and extras play opposite parts on the same stage without hindering each other, some in the spotlight, others in the shadows with minor scenes. They all know what to do and do it well in a division of roles, spaces and times known from the script’s delivery. I am amazed by the silence broken only by the voice of Alessandro, who gives precise orders and narrates among knives that fillet, pot lids that simmer, metal-ceramic-ghisa-terracotta-iron used for cutting or cooking and deprived of the tinkling in silent reflections, of hoods and fans without buzzing, of water flowing in the sinks without gurgling. They are precision instruments silenced by the exactitude of gesture, deprived of the cheerful background singing that I expect in a kitchen where I imagine a concert of voices and instruments. Not that I expect the same autonomous meridian sensory responses generated by listening to Pink Floyd’s Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast through the sound of an egg cooking and turning into music. Having been accustomed since childhood to a kitchen of listening, where I would play with my mother and stretch out my ear to hear dishes cooking in the different sounds of vigorous boiling, snapping fry-ups or grilling with sizzling fat, I am bewildered by this silent kitchen. It’s modernity, I tell myself. I will have to get used to it. Precise hands, metered gestures, induction cooking, electronics and maybe even artificial intelligence do not rhyme with the necessary entropy for love to be alive and true and vital. Yet modern kitchen theatre can be as mind-blowing in its perfection as Jacques Lecoq’s best mime show, where the body communicates without the use of words. Nor is it an odorous kitchen where smells overwhelm the senses. The smells of cod, flamed mackerel, fresh peach shrimp, crispy polenta, pumpkin and chestnut are circumscribed and restrained in a dignified demeanour. They do not fill the air with garrulous notes heralding the preparations, leaving the final surprise of the tasting to the imagination, in deepest anxious silence. Although grateful for the privilege, I feel like the intruder looking through the keyhole into someone else’s bedroom, the believer casting an eye at the priest consecrating the host beyond the iconostasis, the cameraman entering the locker room before a match in a jumble of anxiety, emotion, adrenalin, anger, sadness and joy that make man what he is when unprotected. Because chef and brigade are naked, with a nakedness that is