The dish is a deconstructed pasta. Pasta being the very essence of Italy, I wanted to weave a story through my plate. There is a popular folklore in napoli - that of the cornicello. A cornicello - corno (Italian for 'horn"'), or corno portafortuna (Italian for 'horn that brings luck') is an Italian amulet or talisman worn to protect against the evil eye (or malocchio in Italian) and bad luck in general, and, historically, to promote fertility and virility. In Neapolitan, it is called curniciello or variants thereof. The amulet is also sometimes referred to as the Italian horn.
Deriving inspiration from the same, the tomato bellpepper espuma takes up the shape of the cornicello or the italian horn on the plate. And where there is a horn, there has to be a devil or The Satan. Hence i created the black and white striped pasta sheet that is the representation of Satan's veil. This place also depicts a story of the goodness of the produce as well as the quality and taste and minimalistic processing and cooking. Having used only salt as a seasoning , i have let the actual taste of the ingredients be the hero of the dish. This is what my dish is all about.
Ingredients
1 PASTA DOUGH 30 g
2 Mushroom mousse 40 g
3 TOMATO SAUCE 20 g
4 Pesto 10 g
7 Edible flowers
8 Basil leaves few
Mushroom Mousse
Portobello 200 g
Button mushroom 60 g
Cream cheese 40 g
salt 20 g
thyme 2 g
Olive oil 50 g
confit garlic 10 g
Pasta dough
Caputo semola flour 150 g
Water 60 g
Salt 5 g
Tomato espuma
Italian peeled canned tomatoes 150 g
Red bellpepper 60 g
Salt 5 g
Olive oil 20 g
Basil 2 g
Basil Pesto
Italian basil 200 g
Walnuts 60 g
Olive oil 40 g
parmesan 20 g
salt 2 g
Preparation
Method
Boil the pasta sheet until it starts floatinng on the water.
In a pan, heat tomato sauce and season if needed.
Similarly, heat cheese sauce in another pan.
On a serving plate, pour tomato espuma, then olive oil dressed pastas and cheese sauce on top.
Can garnish with parmesan shavings, lotus root chips, rocket leaves and some microgreens.
Mushroom Mousse
Roughly chop both the mushrooms
In a pan, heat olive oil, add confit garlic, chopped mushrooms and thyme
Cook the mixture till mushroom is sweated and take it off flame
Remove the thyme stems and blend the mushroom mixture
Once cooled, add the cream cheese
Pasta dough
Mix all ingredients together
For black colour pasta dough, add charcoal powder 5 gm to the ingredients
Knead a semi soft dough
Let dough rest in fridge for 1 hr
Tomato espuma
Roast bellpepper and de skin and puree them
Blitz the canned tomatoes to make a puree
Cook the tomato puree to thicken it a bit in a pan
Add the bellpepper puree and cook till correct consistency
Add bail and salt
Blend once more in a blender once cooled and charge in the syphon gun
Basil Pesto
Mix all ingredients together in a blender