Identikit of the chef
First name: Simone
Last name: Cipriani
Place and date of birth: Livorno 24 Febbraio 1985
Age: 32
Residence: Florence
Name of restaurant: Essenziale
Restaurants before this one: Arnolfo a Colle Val d’Elsa, Santo Graal a Firenze
Last music album downloaded: “La Terza Guerra Mondiale” by The Zen Circus
Last book read: “Steve Jobs, iLeadership for a New Generation” by Jay Elliot and Simon L. William
Favorite ingredient: Chicken liver
Most-hated ingredient: Nothing in particular
The dish of a lifetime: Bread, tomato and Pata Negra
Most venerated maestro: Davide Scabin
Most respected same-age colleague: I belong to a wonderful generation of cooks. It’s almost impossible to respect only one in particular
My ideas about cucina in 10 words: Simple, creative, tasty, practical, contemporary
Best-loved restaurant abroad: Relae in Copenhagen
The wine above all others: Burgundy
If not a chef, I would have done: Any other work in which I could have expressed myself creatively
Recipes: Egg, artichoke and caviar, Ravioli, sausage and stracchino cheese, Pigeon crostino
Egg, artichoke and caviar
Ingredients for 4 servings
4 eggs
2 artichokes
80 g herring caviar
250 g heavy cream
1 fillet smoked herring
6 mushrooms
500 ml reduced chicken broth
40 g Normandy butter
2 round squid ink bread rolls
100 ml Agresto *
Cook the eggs at 63°C for 1 hour. Cool in water and ice.
Clean the artichokes, cut in half, vacuum pack with 50 ml of chicken broth. Cook 90 minutes at 80°C, then cool with water and ice. Heat cream with herring to 80°C. Leave to infuse for 20 minutes.
Add cleaned mushrooms and reduce cream to half. Bring 100 ml of chicken broth to the boil. Remove from heat, then add butter and two tablespoons of cream-herring infusion, to obtain a dense cream.
Place the halved artichokes on a hot grill, then finish cooking them in a pan, coating them with chicken broth mixture.
Assembling the dish: heat the egg in a steam oven at 60°C (or in temperature controlled warm water). Dig out half of the squid ink bread roll and heat on grill. Open the egg inside the roll. Place a half artichoke on the egg with a tablespoon of chicken broth cream. Sprinkle a teaspoon of agresto on top. Finish with the herring caviar, a grinding of pepper and two beet sprouts.
*Agresto is an ancient condiment. It makes use of grapes that don’t ripen. Leave to dry for 3 weeks, then press. Boil the grape must until it is a dense syrup, then season with estragon, cinnamon, onion, garlic and honey. Boil for 15 minutes more, then add vinegar. Some wineries are beginning to produce agresto again.
Ravioli, sausage and stracchino cheese
Ingredients for 4 servings
For the fresh pasta
500 g of 00 flour
5 eggs
3 g salt
For the filling
500 g sausage
250 g stracchino cheese
For the broth
1 kilo pork belly
3 l water
6 garlic cloves
1 red onion
1 spring onion
1 stalk lemongrass
40 g ginger
50 ml soy sauce
50 ml Mirin
5 g salt
For the stracchino cream
500 ml heavy cream
250 g stracchino cheese
50 g Parmigiano Reggiano
nutmeg
black pepper
For the bread wafer
175 g day-old bread
175 g 00 flour
100 ml chicken broth
extra-virgin olive oil
Prepare the fresh stuffed pasta: blend all the ingredients together and leave to rest for at least 12 hours. Roll the pasta out to 1 mm, working it with flour. Make the filling: combine sausage with stracchino and place in a pastry bag. Stuff the ravioli: roll out the pasta, squeeze the filling out on the pasta in separate little mounds. Cover with another layer of pasta brushed with egg yolk. With the help of a pasta cutter, cut out ravioli first with the smooth edge and then with the cutting edge so as to obtain button shapes.
Make the broth: cut the pork belly into cubes and place in a pot of cold water. Bring to a boil, remove the meat and change the water, repeating 3 times. The third time, add garlic, onion, lemongrass and ginger to the water. Leave to simmer for 12 hours. Strain and reduce the broth by half. Add mirin and soy sauce.
For the stracchino cream: heat the heavy cream to 82°, add the stracchino and the Parmigiano. Emulsify with an immersion blender.
For the bread wafers: work all ingredients together to obtain a homogeneous mixture. Using a pasta machine, roll out to 2mm. Place the strips on baking pan and brush with oil. Bake in a 160°C oven for 10 minutes and then at 140°C for 5 minutes.
Assembling the dish: cook the ravioli in boiling water for 2 minutes. Heat the stracchino cream without reaching a boil. Drain the ravioli, place on cream, and serve with the bread wafers, broken into pieces, on top. Serve the hot broth separately.
Pigeon crostino
Ingredients for 4 servings
3 domestic pigeons
1 garlic
100 g butter
2 onions
0.25 ml soy sauce
50 g lard
1 garlic clove
1 sprig rosemary
4 slices Tuscan bread
For the pigeons: clean and debone 2 pigeons. Vacuum pack and stabilize at 53° C for 30 minutes in temperature-controlled water. For the pigeon sauce: cut the remaining pigeon into pieces and brown in a pan, adding butter to obtain an even golden color. Drain off fat and place pigeon pieces in a pot. Cover with water and ice and simmer for 2 hours. Remove from heat and chill enough to remove fat that collects on top. Reduce the remaining broth by half. For the onion: peel the red onion, cut in half and grill on one side. Vacuum pack with the soy sauce and cook in water for 40 minutes at 80°C. Blend the lard with garlic and chopped rosemary.
Assembling the dish: remove the pigeons from the vacuum bag, divide in half, separate legs and breasts to brown in a pan on both sides. Heat the reduced pigeon sauce, remove from heat and whisk with a tablespoon of butter. Toast the bread and spread with lard. Arrange onion on bread, then the pigeon on the onion. Garnish with fresh aromatic herbs. Bring the pigeon sauce to the table and pour over pigeon.
For the apple terrine
10 green apples
300 g butter, melted
100 g sugar
100 g brown sugar
1 lemon
For the salted caramel
100 g water
300 g heavy cream
50 g sugar
8 g salt
Vanilla ice cream
For the apple terrine: cut the apples into thin slices and dip into water and lemon juice. Line a baking pan with parchment paper and spread out the apple slices layered with melted butter and sugar. Cover with parchment paper and a pan holding a weight that presses it down on the apples. Bake for 160°C for 20 minutes. Cool the apple terrine and pour off any excess water. Cut the terrine in strips, roll each with transparent plastic wrap and freeze. Cut the terrine into 4cm high disks.
For the salted caramel: prepare an ordinary caramel. Heat the heavy cream in another pan. Add the hot cream to the caramel, then add salt.
Assembling the dish: heat the apple disks in a 160°C oven for 6 minutes. Remove from oven, dust the top of the terrine with brown sugar and caramelize with a kitchen blowtorch. Spoon a tablespoon of salted caramel on the plate, place the caramelized apple terrine on top and serve with a spoonful of vanilla ice cream.
Essenziale - piazza di Cestello, 3R – Florence - 0552476956 – 3337491973 – essenziale.me
