Under the deep-rooted tradition of the ‘sacralità del pane’, Italian gastronomy echoes the importance of not throwing away bread and using it, even stale bread, in multiple recipes. Soups like ribollita or acquacotta, panzanella (stale bread salad) are a good example of this. Something that the Neapolitan chef and owner of Baldoria Group, Ciro Cristiano, knows well, for whom food waste is not an ingredient in his recipes. «If we were aware of the work that, for example, the baker who has been making his sourdough does, or that behind any good product, so much food would not end up in the trash. In a scenario in which it is easier to go to the supermarket for any new food instead of cooking according to utilization criteria, it is important that, from restaurant kitchens, we fight against waste. If society becomes aware, a movement capable of changing the industry will occur,” explains Ciro. In Baldoria he uses pappa al pomodoro as the base of his San Marzano Burrata dish: good oil, onion, basil, garlic, stale bread and tomato grown on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, in the vineyards of San Marzano, a small town close to Naples.
Small producers
This Neapolitan chef from a pastry family, who started in the world of catering when he was only 15, cannot hide his passion for cooking: “I don’t know how to do anything else and I have no idea about DIY,” he laughs and says that the end of Every week she loves to make fresh bread and pasta for her little daughters, Elise and Ambra, for whom she also cooks a useful recipe: Neapolitan frittata, a dish that gives a second life to leftover spaghetti. «My daughters call it dad’s frittata: spaghetti with tomato, eggs, parmesan and pepper in a kind of omelet. A delicious and waste-free dish,” he explains.
Delicious like the menu that, in Madrid, Baldoria proposes (which means revelry or revelry) based on classic dishes of Italian cuisine with signature touches, where part of the raw material comes from Italy – such as some cheeses, the flour for the pizzas or the San Marzano tomatoes to make the sauces – and other of national origin, such as the meat from Ávila – from the trusted butcher in the Ciro neighborhood – or the vegetables from Jorge Nieto from La Huerta de Aranjuez or the bread from Panadario. Of course, all of them from small producers, which allow control of the quality of the batches and a personalized adjustment.
The pasta, of course, is artisan and its pizzas are essential. Their Acunto oven, brought directly from Naples, reaches 420 degrees to cook them in 80 seconds. The dough is prepared entirely at home with Italian flour and biga as a preference, with 50% hydration; It is left to ferment for 24 hours and then rest for another 24 hours. This results in a very light and digestive dough, which rises when baked but is hollow and has large alveoli, and which has earned it a place among the best pizzerias in the world. “Of course, at home they can also become great allies when it comes to recycling ingredients,” the chef points out.
The place, inspired by the Italian island of Procida, with a very bright Italian-Mediterranean style that is found in many details, such as the wall covering, for which a technique similar to tempera, common on the island, has been used. The terracotta tones of the walls share the spotlight with the exclusively designed wallpapers in bright hues. The huge central wine rack, in intense yellow, is inspired by the town’s Santa Maria delle Grazie church. A place that evokes those dinners in the squares, where, suddenly, someone starts playing, singing, everyone is infected and starts to fare baldoria.
#care #respect #raw #materials
