Sicilian Cook

   I had my nephew Stefano as my guest on his way to St. Moritz where he is now working as kitchen Commis at the Metropol Hotel inner restaurant. While he was showing me his personal knives collection I thought to make him a portrait; actually he wanted to shave his face first, but I deterred him lest he would have lost the passion which was radiating from his eyes after he had talked about his special japanese knives and some of his personal recipes. I think I have succeeded - with my digital camera, equipped with a small Foveon sensor - to capture, apart the above mentioned passion for his job, his strong determination and happy state of mind, a mix which will help him a lot in his future career. One of the knives appealed me most: the Global GS-14, a serrated utility knife for small bread and sandwich cutting, on which you could distinguish the 32 layers of stainless steel: in other words a miniature Katana sword. Hereunder, on the right, Stefano while pouring liquid nitrogen in order to prepare a quick recipe; in the second picture he is in a restaurant cellar for choosing a seasoned North-East Italy specialty: a spices treated hunch pork, called Speck.

   Stefano described me in details the preparation of one of his nouvelle cousine recipes -  which granted him a prize in an international competition - which needs three distinct preparations.
  
   You begin smearing a cocotte with butter, then line its interior with swordfish slices three mm. thick. Apart, in a pan, put some olive oil, white onion rings, cube sliced Pachino tomatoes, mint, some potfish shrimps and the upper part of  fresh wild fennel  which has to be removed later on. After cooking, and having it cooled, add minced sandwich loaf and mix it with a spoon until you get a dense well-blended compound, then fill the cocotte, cover the top with the overflowing swordfish flaps and put it into the oven for a 5-6 minutes.

   With the second preparation you get a vegetable soup. Pour some olive oil in a pan, adding white onion rings, thin sliced yellow pumpkin and brown them; then add some vegetable soup stock and, some minutes before the end, the wild fennel crown; use a blender to grind the mixture, salt it and put in a small bowl.

   The last part consists of a single caramellized almond, made by softpiercing it with a thin stick then smearing it on hot caramel, letting then oozing it until its long sugar tail solidifies.

   On top of the cocotte you put deepfried thin eggplant sliced rinds and peak it with a soft fried shrimp. You could also add in the bottom and over the filled cocotte, before sealing it with the swordfish flaps, a deepfried eggplant medallion. It’s a dish – just the cocotte content weighs almost eighty grams – costing on average €15-17, in an italian restaurant.

Stefano's  swordfish recipe