CHOCOLATE NEWS

Belgium's best chocolate maker announced a partnership with Nestlé. The goal is to open even more branches around the world. Nestlè will provide Marcolini with the know-how in terms of production, legislation, supply. What's not clear is what Marcolini will have to provide to Nestlé to pay them back.
PERPLEXITY is the least one can feel. After all, Marcolini had started off as the only chocolate maker who ground the cocoal beans himself. He was the first who worked with his own blend of beans coming from different countries, the first to celebrate the superior quality of Venezuelan beans and the difference that the concentration of cocoa will make to flavour. At the time, his Belgian colleagues worked with a big distributor and did not ask too many questions.
A lot has changed since then. Today every chocolate master worthy of this name is aware of the difference between a bean from Venezuela and one from Madagascar. Research has gone further, into Japanese flavours like Yuzu, gree tea and wasabi. But it's not sure that Japan alone will be able to save us.

Chocolate

A discovery: a black box containing a selection of chocolates by Guido Gobino!
Tourinot maximo is a small praline made with hazelnuts from the Langhe region, cocoa and sugar. It's a revised version of the original recipe for "giandujotto" from 1860 and this did not contain milk. Personally I do not see the point of milk within a chocolate praline but after tasting the Tourinot maximo, a ban of milk from gianduja pralines becomes almost necessary, especially when one wants to savour the top quality nuts inside it.

PANETTONE DI NATALE

By the 80s the Italian Christmas cake had become a sad industrial preparation. A fluffy dome-shaped cake with raisins and candy citrus fruit and a prominent taste of flavour-enhancers.
It was even hard to justify its popularity among the Italian crowds. In any case, these days a new kind of Panettone has sprung up. It's the old panettone, the one made with real stuff over a couple of days. This is a cake with real butter and especially with real lievito madre (a handmade rising agent which is prepared over a number of days).
I get mine at Paticceria Busnelli, in a small village called Arluno. They got a prize for it and since then people drive from nearby towns to get one.
I had to get there early this morning to secure a couple of specimens for Christmas. A freshly made panettone tastes best after a few days!

Best coffee in the world

The province of Milan is an ugly piece of land infested by warehouses of all kinds, its shrinking capital of green fields dotted by large ads. But not all is bad news in this polluted and ignorant suburbia. Some of the best coffees are to be found in the bars of the area.Coffees you can dream of in Rome, Paris, London, Brussels. you name it. World-famous Rancilio coffee machines are produced just around the corner and the guys who buy these machines for their bar look after them in a way that is unthinkable in most big European cities. They know what every knob does to the water and the coffee. More importantly, they know what a badly cleaned machine can do to the taste of coffee. All this care, knowledge and skill translate into a mild tasting 100% arabinca coffee. I personally take it with a thick layer of milk foam on top. It's just sublime!
Fabio makes the best coffee I know of. It is even better than the coffee of "Caffè San Carlo" in Milan (but the staff is odious). The only one that compares to it is in Tokyo, in a place called "Kid Lounge". I visited it in 2003 but did not exist anymore the last time I was there in 2007.
In any case, Fabio's is the best and kindest coffee man I know. His coffee costs 80 cents, a cappuccino is 1,20Euro and the bar is located in the main square of Nerviano, 30km West of Milan.

CITY TIPS - BRUSSELS

FOODVICE TV - INADA

check out the report!

CITY TIPS

Wasabi, Corso Ferrucci 72, Torino
Sembra essere l'unico ristorante con chef giapponese a Torino. Si cena seduti sui tatami, con le gambe dentro "lo scavo" che sta sotto il tavolo, come accade nei ristoranti tradizionali giapponesi e nelle case di campagna. I decori (rose vere che sembrano finte, luci al neon filtrate da tessuti grezzi) appartengono allo stile nipponico anni 70 che ha fatto scuola in tutto il mondo e che, in fondo, è pure tornato di moda.
Ma alla fine al ristorante si va per mangiare. Da Wasabi le porzioni sono piccole e i piatti sguarniti. L'unico piatto ben eseguito è l'anguilla con la classica cottura nel mirin e salsa di soia, servita su un panetto di riso tagliato a pezzettono, pronta a dinoccolarsi come un giocattolo di legno. La bella glassa era un mix di mirin, zucchero salsa di soja e saké. Il sukyaki era approssimativo, il brodo privo di complessità, le fette di carne troppo spesse, la varietà di verdure limitata al numero di due...Insomma un disastro. Senza parlare della ciotola di udon (pasta in brodo) con tre pezzi di tempura, venduta obbligatoriamente in due porzioni e fatta pagare 20 euro l'una. Roba da sollevazione popolare!
Dulcis in fundo: al posto del solito gelato al the Matcha, dolcini al vapore, Yokan (gelatina) ai fagioli rossi, un paffuto wagashi e anche un dolce transculturale: il kasutaro, versione nipponica del pan di Spagna portoghese.

FROM HEAD TO TAIL

These are hard times for fish! Too many people want to eat it. And too many people go for the easy fish, the one who looks like a steak and tastes like a steak: tuna. After years of overfishing, tuna stocks are dramatically low.
But nobody seems to notice and the local supermarket has the usual cuts, ready to be seared or served as sashimi. None of this is even remotely sustainable.
Fish has to do with tentacles, scales, spikes, ink, carapaces...These are wild, arche-looking creatures we ought to love from head to tail.
Back to the supermarket shelf, it's the usual view of overpriced shrimps, chemically treated king prawns from exotic lands, badly farmed sea bass and a few overpriced wild specimens of sole, monkfish or scallops.
How to be more sustainable? Simple: let's give try some of the ugly, slimy ones. Conger eel, carp, They are cheap. They are a hassle. But they are also delicious!
More news to follow!

CITY TIPS

Stazione di Rho (Milano)
Esperienza urbana di pausa cappuccino + ciambella fritta. Pochi sanno che queste ciambelle, che non sono altro che i "Krapfen" tedeschi, vengono fatte bollire prima di essere fritte! Costo totale euro 2,20.

PASTA MAKING

Fresh pasta making in Brussels.
Materials: a good standard pasta making machine, handle-operated,with a block for cutting tagliatelle and square shaped spaghetti.
The standard pasta mix (1 egg + 100g of durum wheat) worked out fine but the ultimate challenge of the evening was something else: JAPANESE SOBA NOODLES.
Why?
1. They are made with buckwheat flour, which contains no gluten (we have anti-gluten friends).
2. Gluten makes things stick, it gives pasta elasticity. Therefore it is impossible to have the dough go through the cutting block.
3. Buckwheat noodles need to be cut by hand, which requires skill and a good knife.
We actually obtained some irregular shaped pizzoccheri, but they were wuite tasty!