This is the second part of a series describing my experience eating at the Osteria Francescana, the restaurant of the World’s Number One Chef Massimo Bottura.
You’ll find the first part of the series “First Impressions” here, and the third part will be published next week after I taste his “Sensations” menu for the first time on Wednesday.
I am not a food critic, nor do I have much experience in eating in the World’s top restaurants. But I have been living in Modena for 5 years and am married to a “foodie” who loves the traditional cuisine of the Emilia Romagna region. I can say with confidence that I have tasted the best of what this area has to offer, and for 2 years I have been planning to dine at Chef Massimo Bottura’s Osteria Francescana. He is hailed as the World’s Best Chef, and recently won what is considered the Nobel Prize of Food, the White Guide Global Gastronomy Award.
Why Photographs RUIN experiences…
The truth is, I actually feel guilty posting photographs of his dishes on the blog, because like any opera of art, once you have seen a reproduction you will never have the experience of surprise when you see the real thing.
I remember the first time I saw the Gioconda (the Mona Lisa) in the Louvre, I felt like it was already so familiar, I had already memorized her smile. Even though I was seeing her for the first time in real life she was already familiar to me.
I truly believe that many of Massimo Bottura’s dishes should be lived-through as though they are edible sculptures. I think that had I never seen his dishes photographed the experience would have been even more incredible.
Having said that, a part of me also thinks that to truly appreciate his creations you have to understand how they were made, and the traditions that they come from. I also think that seeing pictures of his dishes was one of the main reasons that I so desired to eat at the Francescana, so in the end I’ve decided to share my pictures.
The Stuff of Legends
I know a bit about Massimo Bottura’s more famous dishes. One of his most famous (infamous!!) dishes is called “il ricordo di un panino alla mortadella”, meaning “the memory of a mortadella panino”.
Il Ricordo di Un Panino Alla Mortadella
A mortadella mousse, made by soaking mortadella in water overnight at 10 degrees celcius, evaporating the water out of the mixture at 23 degrees, whipping the remaining mixture for 40 minutes at 40 degrees, passing it through a sieve, transfering the whole thing into a kitchen siphon, adding nitrogen and letting it rest in the fridge for two hours.
Want to recreate this at home? …no problem, click on this link it is Bottura’s recipe!! To para-phrase what he is quoted as saying about this recipe:
A Snack for kids in this part of Italy has always been a panino with mortadella. We must look at the past but not with nostalgia. People were starving in Italy 40 years ago, we can take the best of the past to move on to the future. I think about the post-war period, we have to allow ourselves to be inspired by that spirit and start again.
For a chef, street food is a great source of inspiration, in Italy and everywhere in the world. It is always the first type of food I seek out when I want to find the soul of a Country, in the poorest area of Bangkok or from the best hot dog vendor in New York. I think about the wonderful Piadina stands in Romagna, what’s their secret? The piadina dough has to be as thin as possible.
So there you have it. Inspired by a mortadella panino, but taking it to that next level.
All I have to say about this dish, was that almost 20 HOURS after eating it I had a moment.
I was sitting in bed and remembered the taste of that mortadella mousse, so light and fragrant but also intense. All of my senses were filled with the delicious taste of mortadella and I closed my eyes and I remembered this meal.
I thought “how strange, I’m remembering a panino alla mortadella!”.
My favourite Osteria Francescana waitor is this man:
He is from Naples, is very friendly and made me feel very at ease. He placed this dish in front of me:
Le 5 Stagionature di Parmigiano Reggiano
He was about to tell me the name and I interrupted and said “le 5 stagionature di Parmigiano Reggiano”, meaning “Parmigiano Reggiano in five different ages”. In my household this plate is famous, we live for Parmigiano Reggiano. A love affair with an essential element, that, to be perfectly honest, is probably one of the reasons that I will never be able to live in Canada again.
My waiter even provided very helpful suggestions as to how to taste the dish. Begin with the cream, work your way up by age of the Parmigiano, and then slowly begin to mix the elements.
Parmigiano Reggiano is to Italians in Emilia Romanga what WATER IS TO FISHES!! We either buy ours from the covered Albinelli Market in the centre of the city or from Centomo, a little grocery store near my husband’s hometown.
I still remember the first time I tasted REAL Parmigiano Reggiano, it was like NOTHING I had ever tasted before. This is the lifeblood of Italian cooking, it is the expression of what you can do with a cow’s milk in the right conditions.
In his dish Bottura presents 5 ages of parmigiano reggiano in 5 ways, as a cream, a foam, a mousse, a gelato and a crunchy wafer. Using Parmigiano Reggiano that has been aged for 2 years (24 months), 30 months, 36 months, 40 months and 50 months (just over 4 years).
Razza Bianca Modenese
Oh and Bottura’s not only interested in how long the Parmigiano Reggiano was aged for, he’s also a huge supporter of Parmigiano Reggiano made by a particular species of cow, the Razza Bianca Modenese, the White Modena. 50 years ago there were over 230,000 of these cows, yet in these last few decades this cow was quickly replaced by foreign breeds and was on the brink of extinction. Foreighn breeds were much more efficient at producing milk, however, the Bianca Modenese produces a type of milk that is exceptional for the production of Parmigiano Reggiano. Today, thanks to the efforts of various groups, such as the Consorzio Bianca Modenese, this cow is repopulating and its products are again highly valued.
Rest assured, wherever there is an effort for the conservation of the Italian gastronomical treasures you are sure to find Bottura’s name!
For all Humanity
At one point I said “isn’t Parmigiano Reggiano amazing? What would Italian cuisine be without it? It should be protected by Unesco as a World Heritage!” and another waiter responded with “In fact, Bottura’s been working for years on making that happen”.
Wow. Amazing.
I found this article yesterday, there is a movement happening right now to change the criteria for recognition as World Heritage by UNESCO to protect Parmigiano Reggiano as a good that belongs to all humanity. In 2012 the Earthquake that hit this part of italy, caused a huge problem for the Parmigiano Reggiano producers, who lost thousands of “forms” (how they refer to the large circle of Parmigiano).
What would happen to Italian cuisine in the case of a shortage!?
Let’s talk about this dish.
Here, I mentioned that for me, eating at Bottura’s Francescana was like reading a very good book that you don’t want to end. One of my absolute favorite dishes during my lunch was Parmigiano Reggiano in 5 ages. Oh My Goodness.
The spoon that it was served with, was not your ordinary spoon. Half bevelled and half flat, it allowed you to scoop up the cream, but when you put the spoon in your mouth the left side of it was flat, so it was like eating off a knife’s edge!
Scarpetta
In Italian the layman’s term to describe cleaning your plate with a piece of bread is “scarpetta”. You ABSOLUTELY do NOT do “scarpetta” in a 5-star restaurant, let alone in the restaurant run by the World’s best chef….unless of course you are me.
JUST TRY TO RESIST, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. The waiter from Naples saw me, I was a little embarrassed and said “Do other people do scarpetta in the Francescana?” and he said laughing a bit “Of course, when something is good you have to finish it!”
Permission granted:
Come mangiare il cotechino con le lenticchie 365 giorni l’anno
This next dish is called “How to eat Cotechino with lentils 365 days a Year”. Cotechino is a type of large sausage, or raw salame, that is made from pig meat. It is usually cooked for hours and is eaten at Christmas and New Year’s with lentils. Legend has it, the more lentils you eat the more “money” will come to you in the following year.
I have to admit, I am not a huge fan of cotechino, I find it too fatty for my tastes. However, in Bottura’s recipe, found here, most of the cooking is done in a metal steamer over lambrusco wine, so the cotechino drains its fat!
That is how you eat cotechino year round!
One of the dishes that quite possibly CHANGED MY LIFE was this one:
Costolette di maiale con la Saba
Costolette is the Italian word for “ribs”, they are seen as a poor man’s dish because they are the part of the pig with the most fat and the least meat. In this dish Bottura glazes these ribs with Saba, the ancient predecessor to Balsamic Vinegar, made by slowly cooking grape must, thus caramelizing the sugars.
La Mora Romagnola
These aren’t just any ribs, they come from the “Mora Romagnola” a species of pig that hails from the Romagna part of Italy (places like Ravenna, Forli and Cesena).
This antique pig species is on the road to extinction, no longer desired by farmers, it isn’t as “productive” an animal and is quickly being replaced by breeds that are more commerically viable.
What does this mean? What happens to Italian cooking when the basic elements disappear forever? In the last 50 years in Italy, over 36 species have disappeared from the market, and therefore from our plates, from cuisine, from culture!
Needless to say, when Bottura uses a certain meat in his dishes the World takes note.
I am North American, and I’ve eaten my fair share of spareribs in my lifetime, NOTHING I HAVE EVER TASTED CAN COMPARE TO THIS DISH. I ate the whole plate with MY EYES CLOSED, it was that good. Every single bite was followed ith the words “Oh my god”. It was so tender, the meat just fell of the bone and melted in my mouth, but that could easily be caused by the cooking process.
Cooked in an airtight pot at 40 degrees celcius for 30 HOURS, the result is a meat so tender that you cannot help but suck the bones clean!
But perhaps the most incredible part of this meat is the fact that these are the only ribs I have ever tasted with no fat what so ever. Not only that, but the bones were NOT SOLID, they were perforated like marrow bones and as light as air.
Surely this little piggy is pretty special and worth saving, it is definitely not like anything I have ever tasted in my entire life.
The last dish I had was dessert and this is what it looked like when it arrived.
I mentioned here that I thought Chef Massimo Bottura had a pretty great sense of of humour and this dish confirms it!! What is the WORST thing that could happen in a restaurant? ……The dessert falls, spattering everywhere.
Not coincidentally, he calls this dish “Oops! Mi è caduta la crostata!”, “Oops! I dropped the pie!”, and it comes complete with a “broken” dish.
I won’t describe the taste of this dish, which was absolutely NOT what I expected just by looking at it…all I will say is….”Oops My Pie is MISSING!”
I’ve mentioned before, that to truly experience Massimo Bottura’s Osteria Francescana you have to think about each meal as a culinary adventure. A trip into the creative world of the World’s Best Chef, a vacation to a place that your taste buds have never been. It is Italy, but it is also so much more. It is Italy recreated through the hands of a gastronomical genius, and we have it right here in Modena!
An incredible lunch, I cannot wait for Wednesday night. I’ve saved every week for two years to go to the Francescana for dinner with my husband and I will be ordering his “Sensazioni” menu, “Sensations”, which is the epitome of their research and passion.
If you’ve enjoyed this “Normal Person’s” review of the Osteria Francescana, come back next week, I’ll be posting part 3 of the experience.
Feel free to read , Massimo Bottura’s Osteria Francescana in Modena – Part 1 First Impressions, and let me know what you thought of my (pretty long-winded) normal person’s review!
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