He is commonly considered the Chef of bluefin tuna, what you can eat in his elegant restaurant in the center of Cagliari is incomparable, the result of a family tradition that has been cooking with local culture for three generations, starting from his grandfather's first restaurant on the island of Carloforte, a Ligurian outpost overlooking the southwestern coast of Sardinia which, together with Sant'Antioco and a group of islets, forms the Sulcis archipelago. Land of ancient seafaring and fishing traditions Carloforte is something more than an island, it is an original way of thinking about the sea and its cuisine. A culture made up of flavours, of perfumes, of the rituals of the tuna traps, of discipline, of times and meetings, of travel. The inhabitants of Carloforte come from afar, they are used to travel and Luigi, after graduating from the hotel school, leaves the island and is trained by collecting important experiences working for important restaurants, in Italy and abroad, in New York at Sirio Maccioni, in London by the three-starred Marco Pierre White. What Luigi Pomata, today one of the most sought-after chefs on the island, inherited from his family is a "passion", dictated by his DNA and certainly influenced by the memories and perfumes he has been wearing since he was a child, thanks to his father Nicolo, who taught him the timing and discipline of this job.
But for Pomata remaining anchored to the tradition of his land is not a contemplative fact it is a search for ancient gastronomic stories that the Chef manages to combine perfectly in a dynamic vision with a formidable desire for curiosity that drives him to always experiment new ways to enhance the material that his land and his sea offer him, reinterpreting traditional dishes to bring them in an ever-present way to the tables of our days. “If you live on a rich island like ours – he says – you are almost obliged to source yourself exclusively from local producers. Of course, if you want a good cod it must come from northern Europe, because they are the excellence, if you want to consume excellent oysters they will come from the cold sea of Brittany or if you want an excellent lard you need the marble tanks of Colonnata. My dogma is to preserve typicality, so I get tulips from Holland… certainly not tomatoes grown in greenhouses!”
And on the basis of so much rigor he arrives in 2003 to represent Italy at the prestigious BOCUSE D'OR; to win the world review of COUS COUS and since 2000 to be called in various television broadcasts such as: La prova del Cuoco, La cucina del Gambero Rosso and Alice. At the same time, the Sardinian chef has also carried out an intense publishing activity by signing various cookbooks: Tuna and Mediterranean Fish, with Luca Montersino (Etoile Edizioni), The Encyclopedia of Sardinian Cuisine (Edizioni Unione Sarda), La Cucina di Luigi Pomata : my way – Dragonflies (Edizioni Il Golfo); TUNA by Luigi Pomata (Italian Gourmet Editions), My Story in a Plate (Thirty Editore Editions).
The recipe proposed this week for Mondo Food readers is tuna ventresca in a bread and ham crust with chard in two consistencies, an unusual combination of land and sea, also the result of its openness to international cuisine. In fact, in this dish he brings together Carloforte and Japan, places so distant from each other but united by a great tradition of processing and consuming bluefin tuna,
Ventresca so noble meets a cornerstone like wasabi which gives freshness and prepares the palate for each new bite.
The Recipe: Tuna ventresca in bread and ham crust with chard in two consistencies,
Ingredients for four people
Tuna ventresca 700 gr
Grated bread 100 gr
raw ham 150 g
Wild beets 1 kg
Wasabi powder 2 g
Mixed pepper to taste
Oil, salt, pepper to taste
Lemon 1
Method
Clean the belly and remove the stringy parts. Make 4 portions.
Place the ham on a tray lined with parchment paper and dry at 60°C overnight. Chop the ham
Prepare the mince by placing the bread, ham, mixed pepper to taste and lemon peel.
Wash the beets and blanch them for a few minutes in salted water. Cool them immediately. Remove the stems and blend them together with a few leaves, the wasabi and extra virgin olive oil until you get a green and creamy sauce.
Bread the belly. In an iron pan with oil, brown the tuna on both sides, put in the oven at 180°C for 5 minutes. Cut the ventresca into two parts. Leave to rest in a warm environment.
Sauté the beets in a pan with oil.
Plate up and Serve
Luigi Pomata restaurant
Viale Regina Margherita 18
Cagliari (CA)
+39 (070)672 058
