He recites a beautiful poem by Jacques Prévert: “How beautiful is this little landscape/These two rocks these few trees/and then the water and then the river/how beautiful/Very little noise a little wind/and a lot of water /It is a small landscape of Brittany/it can fit in the palm of your hand/when you look at it from a distance”.
Replace the word Brittany with Lake Annone, an enclave of unspoiled nature in the shade of the morainic hills of Upper Brianza, and you can adapt it very well to this landscape. We are just under 7 kilometers from Lake Lecco, the reference to the agricultural atmospheres of Manzoni's memory is a must, but this enchanting body of water, squeezed between Lake Lecco and Pulsiano, is reality, not memory, with its nature and its small villages, forgotten by mass tourism, with its hills and woods, with its fields and farmhouses, which photograph the simple and rustic beauty of the peasant world. And we are less than ten kilometers from the small town of Eupilio, where each hamlet had its own patron saint, from San Martino a Carella to San Vincenzo in Galliano, where, according to ancient stories, yet another San Giorgio, in Lake Pulsiano, he would have defeated yet another terrible dragon that devoured the children of the country.
Today there is no trace of the dragon, and the lake of Annone with its original shape divided into two basins by the narrow peninsula of Isella which penetrates it for almost a kilometre, almost cutting it in two, reserves continuous and more peaceful surprises. Along its entire 15 km perimeter, which can be traveled on foot or by bicycle, it has a rich vegetation characteristic of the lake and marshy environments of the piedmont morainic areas. A botanical study has reported here for the first time 7 species considered absent from the Lombard territory and about 70 rare species. Among the submerged aquatic plants and floating leaves that settle in the shallower waters you can see the water millefeuille, the white water lily, in yellow nannufaro.
Many species of animals live around the waters and among the reeds. In particular, the Lataste frog hides in the reeds, as well as numerous species of aquatic-marsh birds, such as the great grebe, the little grebe, the mallard, the moorhen, the water rail, the reed warbler, the reed warbler, the nightingale of river, the marsh bunting, the kingfisher, the little bittern, the night heron and the stupendous red heron.
In short, there is enough these days when many are starting to think of moving to live in the countryside after the "prisons" of the lockdown and in view of possible future developments of smartworking, to decide to pop into this corner of Brianza where history and nature intertwine to enjoy a wild and unspoiled place.
For a shy beyond the lines who hides his reluctance behind barely hinted smiles, a man with reserved and subdued manners, a lover of nature, environmental suggestions, peasant memories, working in a magical place like this is like for a student of the history of art to be running the Louvre.
Very talented chef, 32 years old, one Michelin star, awarded as "Michelin Young Chef of the Year" for the year 2019, Emanuele Petrosino was happily established for his first job as executive chef at the stoves of the prestigious I Portici restaurant in Bologna , inside the Eden Theater, an ancient café-chantant from 1899, where he had conquered the coveted red star, when he decided, leaving everyone stunned, to abandon the vibrant metropolitan atmosphere of the effervescent capital of Emilia to move to the shores of the lake of Hanno. The proposal that reached him, for someone with slow and meditated times like him, was such as to justify a courageous leap of hedge: arriving at Bianca, an exclusive structure in Oggiono (LC), a member of les Collectionneurs, a community, presided over by chef Alain Ducasse and who pays great attention to the "kitchen" component, which brings together restaurateurs, hoteliers and travellers, made up of a 5-star relais, a bistro and a gourmet restaurant, where he leads the kitchens of the entire structure.
Born in Aprilia, a former agricultural center on the outskirts of Rome, at the age of 13 the young Emanuele followed his family who moved to the Neapolitan area on the coast. From his grandmother who had a farm and a bakery in Ciociaria he had already received the basics in terms of food and cooking. It is a passion that captures him immediately, and the territory of adoption, of ancient gastronomic vocation, with its celebrated land and sea products, with its highest concentration of starred cuisines in Italy, helps him greatly in his choices of him.
Emanuele, shy yes, but as often happens, also very determined, immediately made it clear what his address would be. At the hotel management school in Vico Equense, where Gennarino Esposito and Antonio Cannavacciuolo passed before him, he received a first rigorous classification. From there Emanuele Petrosino goes to France, for an internship at the restaurant La Rochelle by the Coutanceau brothers two Michelin stars who talks about it in these terms: ”the cuisine here rises to the rank of art. The dishes, perfectly crafted, often rise to classics”. Emanuele therefore decides to return to Italy and immediately flies high, goes to Enrico crippa, multi-starred chef, of the Piazza Duomo restaurant in Alba sixth place in the ranking of the 50 best restaurants in the world 2018. And his starred apprenticeship continues under Francesco Sposito of the Taverna Estia, Nino Di Costanzo, great starred master of Neapolitan cuisine to whom First&Food has dedicated a biographical portrait on 6 April last, to then land at the Portici of Bologna and finally conquer here, after only eight months from taking office, his Michelin star. And here he even has the honor of having cooked for Alain Ducasse, King of French catering, at the head of an empire with 1400 employees, who has collected 22 stars in his career. Seeing him sitting in his restaurant and tasting a dish of his was making your wrists tremble but the young Emanuele did not lose heart, he brilliantly passed the judgment of the great chef from beyond the Alps. A myth that among other things marked his apprenticeship because, by his own confession, at the beginning of his journey he had devoured all the books of the French Chef by studying the details minimally.
And Ducasse together with Andrià and Di Costanzo are today the guiding stars that inspire his cuisine. A cuisine linked to memories, because it is the "memory of taste" that drives him to the continuous search for tradition. “Just like my grandmother who taught me to combine the feeling of love with food, today I too try to recreate the same emotion in one of my dishes and to pass it on to my customers, whom I consider as guests in my home”.
A feeling of love that takes the form of simple and complex preparations with equal passion, from Spaghetto al Pomodoro, which for him represents the idea of simplicity, but releases a volcano of delicate flavours, to Pigeon and lobster, which tells of his training French expressed in the combination of a game with a crustacean, to a real illusionistic masterpiece such as the Fabergè Egg, which celebrates the legendary Eggs, created by the court jeweler for Tsar Alexander III who gave them as a gift to his wife, Maria Flodorovna, "because it represents the will to express simplicity in a complex key", and just as the jeweler made his eggs that always had to contain a secret, Emanuele Petrosino's egg of great scenographic suggestion, embellished with a leaf of gold, a reminder of the great glories of the Russian court, reveals in its heart flavors of refined gustatory intensity in a game of high-level references.
A calm but always dissatisfied man (the great teaching of Di Costanzo), it took him eight months to win his star at the Portici di Bologna. We can already be certain that the countdown to bring a star also on Bianca's kitchens, from whose large windows every day her gaze sweeps over the natural suggestions of the lake and its surroundings from which she draws inspiration for her new creations, is already started.
