He traveled around Italy a bit to enrich his passion and his gastronomic culture with strong emotions before settling in the magical village of Rocca d'Orcia, a cultural site of the Unesco World Heritage, historic strategic control center on the Via Francigena , the medieval road that connected Rome with northern Italy and France, where in 1300 Saint Catherine of Siena arrived illiterate and received the miraculous gift of writing.
Seven hundred years later, Marcello Corrado, a forty-two-year-old Chef originally from Naples, after having established himself firmly in the Val d'Orcia, also received a stellar gift, but it was not a miracle, but rather the arrival of a Michelin star on the Perillà restaurant in which he has been executive chef for four years. A recognition that does not come entirely unexpected as it rewards a long journey of tenacious culinary growth
To tell the truth, the young Marcello was not electrocuted as a young man on the Damascus road of the kitchen. Meanwhile, he soon left Naples to move to Rome, his city of adoption, where after scientific high school he graduated in economics, institutions and finance. But when accounting and financial brokerage roads were about to open up for him, he understood that his true vocation was not his: he passionately preferred the stove to spreadsheets. “I started in a small restaurant close to home – he recalls – where I understood what kind of restaurant I didn't want to do and so I tried to burn a few stages with a lot of commitment and a good cooking class since at 26 I couldn't afford any further waste of time ”.
And so he continued in forced stages, first at the Alma, where he attended the advanced cooking course, and then pursued emotional moments with the Portinari brothers at the La Peca restaurant, two Michelin stars in Lonigo in Vicenza, then with Stefano Baiocco, the two-star poet of greenery at Villa Feltrinelli on Lake Garda, then by Arturo Spicocchi, chef with a Michelin star at La Stua de Michil in Corbara and again by Ivano Mestriner of the Dal Vero restaurant in Badoere di Morgano who shortly thereafter also conquered the coveted star.
However, the call of his Campania makes itself felt, thanks to his wife Barbara, a native of Salerno, and we find him at Casa del Nonno 13 in Mercato San Severino where a Michelin star had already arrived. Not much left.
Instead, "his" star was earned in 2017 at Perillà in Rocca d'Orcia, where he had decided to move a few months earlier. Determined like the Roman centurion who exclaimed "hic manebimus optime" during the sack of Rome while everyone was fleeing, our Chef found both a human, physical and territorial environment suited to his gastronomic philosophy and set about building the quality level of the restaurant that would soon convince the Michelin judges. His watchwords were and are: creativity and research, profound respect for raw materials and seasonality, commitment to create a marriage between the contemporary and knowledge of the territory for a cuisine that does not take away, but leaves the right space for each ingredient so that each can taste it in the most complete and true way.
“Mine – he confesses smiling – is a cuisine that does not come from my grandmothers (never met) or from my mother (never been a great cook), it is an innate thing that I have always had inside, there is nothing more beautiful than seeing a person at the table enjoying something that you have prepared. Because cooking is fun. You have to have fun preparing and eating”.
And for the amusement of Firstonline's Mondo Food readers, the Neapolitan-Roman-Tuscan chef who ironically loves to quote James Joyce (“God made the food, but certainly the devil made the cooks”) proposes a demanding rabbit cooked three times, a great class that takes time to experience the satisfaction of the execution.
The Recipe: Three-cooked rabbit, carrot, mustard sauce and honey
Ingredients for people 4
1 rabbit,
4 baby carrots,
50g mustard,
50g acacia honey
cardamom, thyme, carrot sprouts.
salt and pepper,
Procedure for the belly:
marinate the belly of the rabbit with thyme and lemon salt, overlap it in several layers and vacuum-pack, cook at 72° for 24H.
Cool and portion, brown if necessary
For the thigh: cook the rabbit leg confit in oil at 80° for 3 hours, cool, portion and regenerate in its cooking oil.
Loin: bone the saddle and remove the loin from it, marinate it for about 20 minutes in a solution of water and 10% salt, brown when serving.
For the carrot: cook 4 baby carrots in water, salt and cardamom. For the sauce: combine the mustard and honey, emulsify them with a little water until you obtain a smooth Lycian sauce.
