A slice of cod placed on julienne-sliced vegetables, served in a squid ink broth and topped with a sprinkling of powdered seaweed and sea urchins. The dish that the Modenese chef Massimo Bottura created to pay homage to jazzman Thelonious Monk, reminds me of Malevič’s Black Square painting and makes me think that, if art were to enter Bottura’s – the number one chef in the world – kitchen, it would definitely be an explosion of geometric abstraction and modern art, an aesthetic vanguard aiming at elaborating the past and open up to experimentation.
The dish is the result of techniques and products that come from different parts of the world, even if, in the end, it’s the color – that intense, deep black – to turn into the core of the tasting experience.
“When cooking, we have to ask ourselves the right questions,” Bottura points out during our meeting at Eataly’s cooking school in Los Angeles, where the chef led a master class for the latest edition of Identità Golose. “And it’s the hardest thing to do, because it is very comforting to indulge in nostalgia, especially for those like me who come from a land where traditional flavors have been handed down through centuries”.
Massimo, what can prevent us from indulging in nostalgia when cooking?
Art can help us a lot. Personally I feel a bit like the great artist Ai Weiwei, who represented himself with three images: in the first one we see him holding a 2000 years old vase in his hands, in the second we see him dropping it and in the last one himself and the vase in pieces. He explained: “I am not distancing myself from my past, I am breaking with my past to build the future.” That’s exactly what I’m doing. I look at the past in a critical and non-nostalgic way, with the aim of taking the best from the past and bringing it into the future, whether it’s an emotion, a piece of meat or anything else.
And what questions have you asked yourself?
For example, while conceiving my bollito non bollito I asked myself: “Why do we have to boil meat in water?” The answer would be: because a thousand years of history have taught me so. But since I am a contemporary chef, I use technique to sublimate raw materials, not my ego. Thanks to nowadays’s technology, I can communicate to palates all over the world that mixed boiled meats can also be served without boiling the meat, but by cooking it vacuum sealed, with temperatures below 70 ° C and for a very long time. In this way, I respect the ingredients, so the meat will be alive, full of proteins and organoleptic properties, becoming the true protagonist of the bollito misto, as opposed to its canonical version, where meat looses flavor and the real protagonists are its accompanying sauces.
Is there anything you save from our traditions, from the past?
If you look at it in a nostalgic way, it’s all beautiful. “It was so good back in the days” they say, “What extraordinary ingredients there were!” Instead, there was hunger. Nowadays we are lucky to be able to choose what cheese we want right in front of a counter, and we can travel from north to south, from east to west throughout Italy and have a different cheese every day that gives us emotions.
What kind of approach it’s better to have in the kitchen then?
At my restaurant, Osteria Francescana, I do this: if I see that a recipe doesn’t evolve, I change it because I know that if I don’t, then it will eventually degenerate and get stuck in a rut. This is one of the worst things that can happen, especially when doing a job like mine, that is all about creativity. If you get too much entangled in routine and everyday life, working 14 hours a day in the kitchen becomes alienating; if you are in charge of everyday life and you keep dreaming, you evolve. This is the secret of success.
What’s your very first memory related to food?
Even before eating raw tortellini, I remember I would steal with my sister my grandmother’s key for the acetaia, a vinegar cellar, we knew where she kept it, and she was the only one who was allowed to go there. We would go up and steal the saba, which is a typical cooked grape must from Emilia Romagna, and when it was snowing we would make granita and put saba in it. In addition to this, I remember the bowl of hot milk that inspired my charitable restaurant Refettorio, in Milan: a cup of hot milk filled with breadcrumbs, leftovers from my family’s moka and sugar. These are my very first memories, and they still feel as if it were yesterday.
The Refettorio in Milan inspired your book Bread is Gold that presents three-course meals from 40 of the world’s top chefs, from Alain Ducasse to Carlo Cracco, from Davide Oldani to René Redzepi and Ferran Adrià. What was your goal?
The book is the sum of six months of work at the Refettorio and all families should have it at home, because it teaches you how to cook food you’d waste otherwise. It makes the invisible visible. In the book, I explain what you can do with zucchini that are not in perfect condition, with tomatoes that haven’t ripened yet, with dry bread and even with old popcorn.
Speaking of popcorn, you used them at the Jimmy Kimmel show. How was that experience?
Without being warned before, Jimmy took me to the writers’ kitchen where they eat unbelievable crap! And he told me: “Cook something with what is available here.” I had to create something with bananas, cereals, cilantro and even popcorn. I looked at the pop-corn and asked: “You, dried up pop-corn, what can you do for me?” An epiphany came when I decided to make it crunchy, so I put a part in the pesto for the pasta and I chopped the other part, then I re-toasted it and, once it was crispy, I put it on the pasta I had previously prepared.
How did you have that epiphany?
When you know the food and the techniques, your mental palate guides you and tells you what to do. The mental palate is the most important ingredient, especially when you’re like me, a chef that wants to write his own music.
Speaking of music, it is your big passion.
Music and art are my biggest passions, I cook because I have to otherwise I would travel the world eating and touring museums. This would be my highest aspiration!
How does this passion affect your work?
In the morning I turn on music before my brain starts to even function and it’s the last thing I turn off at night before going to sleep. When I did up my restaurant Osteria Francescana and I refurbished the kitchen, the first thing I worried about was the sound system: I wanted everyone to be able to listen to music while working.
And if your cooking was to be a band what would it be?
It would be many but since I’m someone who dreams big I’ll tell you Bob Dylan.
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