Chef Alessandro Rapisarda
1. Good morning chef, we’ve known each other for a few years . Today we would like to listen from you what do you really think about your restaurant , the one you have called “RAPISARDA HOME”. It’a name that indicates clearly the atmosphere you want to convey with your cooking :being at home, relaxed, in a pleasant ambience and good home food, matching tradition with modernity .What have you discovered or what do you want highlight in your experience after having known starred chef in the world?
Good morning , it’s my pleasure , thanks for contacting me .First of all Casa Rapisarda name was chosen because it was an old fishermen house near the little port of Numana .My idea was to make the guest experience a welcome that had the flavor of “HOME” .
Today and forever my goal is to make all the people known my cooking style following the fundamental rule , the same I have had in last 8 years, EXAGGERATING BUT WITH BALANCE
2. Is your style in cooking ” Exaggerate but not too much “ a never-ending research of a new balance? It’s a pure research as you have seen in the past and as your masters transmitted to you ?It looks like always combined and accompanied by a great common sense of Le Marche region cooking ?Is your research a continuous run after between land and sea?
Balance is important both in cooking and in life …..
Today we live in a world that makes us run when sometimes we need to stop and take moments for ourselves, perhaps taking a walk on Sibillini Mountain .We are very lucky to live in Le Marche, a land that offers all year round the best of catch, vegetables, fruit and legumes. I think that the union between land and sea is the result of the symbiotic relationship we can have between producers and artisans.
3. Can you tell us the path you have made in your exclusive recipe with T&C products? What was the help you found inside these truffle products in creating your recipe? Belonging to you, which are the main characteristics of T&C products you have used ?
As I make a cooking strongly linked to our territory I’ve decided to match the sweetness of chestnuts from Montemonaco with the elegance and deepness of the Condiment based on butter with White truffle making a risotto that tells the walks in the mountain and the scents of undergrowth .
In my recipe rice is cooked very simply in mineral water together with tiny chestnut cubes so you cannot recognize the grains of rice and the ones of chestnuts, in this way they give their sweet part to the rice.
Rice is creamed with butter with truffle and white wine reduction and shallot to add acidity and aromas.
At the end I’ve enhanced the aesthetic part of my dish with summer truffle slices , black cardamom powder and some pigeon bottom.
That is my top expression of territory cooking
“UNDERWOOD” RISOTTO
Ingredients for 4 people
- Carnaroli rice 320g
- Mineral water as required
- Chestnuts 120 g from Montemonaco(Ascoli Piceno Le Marche region)
- T&C Condiment based on butter with white truffle 60g
- T&C summer truffle slices 40g
- Fine salt as required
- Shallots n°2
- White wine 50g
- Parmigiano Reggiano 50g
- Black Cardamom powder 30g
- Pigeon bottom 50g
How to do it
Toast the rice in a casserole without any fatty substance , add some water little by little , salt and the chestnuts already cutted so small like the grains of rice.
Cook it wetting with water so to let the rice starch out .
In the meantime prepare the reduction of vinegar and white wine , add it to the cutted shallots , vinegar and wine and make the reduction of the 80%, filter it with a sieve and let it cool well.
Cut the cardamom to obtain a powder , pass it through a sieve to refine it well.
When the rice will be cooked cream it with the condiment based on butter with white truffle , add the Parmigiano Reggiano, a part of the vinegar and wine reduction.
Put the rice on plate well laid out , place the slices of summer truffle in the center , powder the black cardamom and at last add the drained pigeon.
