N. 291 - Federazione Italiana Cuochi

to the stand of the “Strade del Vino e dei
Sapori del Trentino”. On the program
there is also a training corner organised
by the Maestri di Cucina (Cooking
Masters) who will present typical products:
the DOP “carne salada” (salted
meat), alpine trout (marinated or sweetsmoked,
a traditional and innovative
use) and the DOP Luganega. Buffet
service. In the evening at the Aladino
restaurant at Gardaland, dinner organised
by the Chef Team Trentino
Alto Adige.
VENETO DAY
Wednesday 27 October – the program
includes: technical visits to the companies
of the Verona hills. Arrival in Piazza
Brà at Verona and celebration of
Holy Mass with benediction and a
minute of silence in commemoration of
those FIC members who are no longer
with us. Official photo inside the Arena
of Verona. Didactic buffet with typical
products from the Veneto at the
halls of the Gran Guardia made by the
Chefs of the Unione Cuochi del Veneto,
the Team Chef and LadyChef del
Veneto.
Again on the 27th the XXVII national
Congress and the first international
Congress of FIC will be held at
the Gardaland Theatre with video-conference
link with the Maestro Chefs all
over the world. This will be followed by
a gala dinner cooked by the Chefs of the
Unione Cuochi del Veneto and with the
collaboration of the Nazionale Italiana
Cuochi. The Congress will close
with a firework display.
FOR INFORMATION
Segreteria FIC e Agorà dei giovani
Piazzale delle Crociate, 15 - 00162
ROME
Tel. +39 06 44202209 / 4402178
E-mail: fic@fic.it
www.fic.it
Segreteria Organizzativa
MD Studio Congressi
Via Roma, 8 - 33100 UDINE
Tel. +39 0432 227673
Fax +39 0432 507533
E-mail: info@mdstudiocongressi.com
SEE PAGE 18
FOR THE ITALIAN TEXT
Marinetti,
the father
of molecular
cooking?
by Eugenio Medagliani
For futurists as for the innovative chefs
of today, a dish must excite the imagination
before tempting the lips
At the beginning of the Thirties, in the
middle of a world recession (very similar
to the current one), Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti launched the “culinary futurist
revolution” in which he proposed a
new “nutritional art”, which still surprises
us today for the originality and relevance
of its proposals. The leader of the
futurist movement suggested imagination
and improvisation in the kitchen as
positive antidotes.
In 2003 Davide Cassi, a physicist at
Parma University, presented, together
with the chef Ettore Bocchia the “Manifesto
of Italian molecular cooking”,
the principles of which led to the invention
and experimentation of new systems
for the preparation, cooking, combination
and presentation of foods.
Futurist inventions anticipated the
campaign against the “static palate”
which the new chefs, from Gualtiero
Marchesi, Ferran Adrià and Ettore
Bocchia on, promoted in Italy on the
basis of initially French and then later
Spanish stimuli. For Marinetti, as for innovative
chefs, cooking must excite the
imagination before tempting the lips.
Today, the stratagems of the prophets
of “contemporary” cooking can be summarised
as follows: care in the selection
of raw materials, short cooking times or
with special systems (cooking via liquid
nitrogen and frying in sugar brought to
a temperature of 180°C), the some-
times excessive use of raw fish coming
from Japan, unheard of combinations,
the recovery of sweet and sour and
sweet and salty, the careful arrangement
and architecture of dishes which
are constructed as visual works of art, attention
for colour and shape.
Lunch became a spectacle, the hub
of a thousand emotions. When a chef
sends a dish to the table, he does not
only send proteins, carbohydrates,
lipids, fibres and mineral salts conditioned
by the physical-chemical cooking
process, but he also sends a message
to an extremely complicated system of
communication which involves all the
senses.
Futurist cooking was therefore ahead
of its time: from food sculpture to the
recovery of complementary sweet-sour
and sweet-hot combination, from exotic
or rare ingredients to the use of raw
meats and fish. But above all, futurist
chefs paid great attention, as do some
modern chefs, to the pictorial and s-
culptural aspect of dishes.
Cooking, suggests Marinetti, “must
succeed in conceiving an original architecture
for each food, possibly different
for every individual so that everyone
has the sensation of eating not only
good food, but works of art.”
The futurist banquet, as do some
lunches of today, demands a chef who
is an artist and a director and, on the
other hand, diners willing to become
players in a happening. All the sensations
must be stimulated; in fact eating involves
all the senses – taste, smell, feel,
sight, hearing – and flavours, tastes,
lights and even the tactile surfaces we
touch when chewing are all side dishes
to the main meal.
In some cutting edge lunches the abolition
of cutlery is prescribed in order to
reinstate the “tactile pre-lip pleasure”,
and in general everything is orchestrated
so that the playful spirit, in its entirety,
with all the magic of the surprise,
is returned to man.
Diploma di merito
La Dirigenza della Federazione Italiana Cuochi e la Redazione invieranno
il DIPLOMA DI MERITO a tutti i Colleghi
che avranno pubblicato sulla rivista IL CUOCO una proposta d’autore
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