Let's start from a fact that may be unknown to most today but which has its emotional motivations for those who are passionate about the history of Italian opera music. We are in the Tancredi restaurant in Sirmione on the shores of Lake Garda, in one of the most evocative scenarios with a breathtaking view of the Tancredi bay, well known to the fishermen who usually cast their nets in this body of water. A noome that is inspired by a monument of Italian and international opera, the great bass Tancredi Pasero, unforgettable protagonist of Mefistofele, Boris Godunov, Gumemanz of Parsifal, of Philip II in Verdi's Don Carlos directed by Toscanini at La Scala. The big bass had a home right here and when the owners took over an old restaurant, subjecting it to a total restyling, transforming it into a refined and elegant location, it was not by chance that they decided to give it an important name, that of a artist known all over the world as a distinctive sign of a Mediterranean cuisine – and Lake Garda, with its extraordinary microclimate dominated by olive trees that produce an exceptionally sweet oil and its famous lemon houses is the undisputed witness – characterized by the influences of international cuisine.
He was called to the kitchens Roberto Stefani, forty years old from Brescia who from an early age cultivated two exclusive passions: traveling and the pleasures of good food. It was consequent for the boy to enroll in the hotel management school which would allow him to cultivate these two interests, which he was able to pursue with strong determination. After his first experiences at the Palace Hotel Villa Cortine, a historic villa with a centuries-old park overlooking the lake, he immediately takes flight to arrive at the starry school of Antonio Guida at the Pelican of Porto Ercole. You have five years left, then another big leap, this time by the superstar Gualtiero Marchesi at the Albereta di Erbusco. He travels again between London and Geneva, to then return to Italy where he holds the position of chef at Palazzo Arzaga Golf&Spa but chef Antonio Guida calls him back to his side first at the Mandarin Oriental of Bodrum and followed by the opening of the MandarinOriental Seta Restaurant in Milan. And finally three years ago he settled at the Tancredi Restaurant bringing with him an extraordinary wealth of culture and international experience which he poured into a cuisine where valorisation of the product and raw material with uncontaminated flavours are declined with international influences according to one culinary conception which the chef defines «eclectic and contemporary, with traditional cues and innovative accents». And here all this translates, for example, among the appetizers into a crispy puffed sea bass skin accompanied with a cedar gel that enriches it with a touch of acidity and freshness or into the Black Angus Tartare in an oyster shell served with lemon and with an oyster air. And among the first courses in a steamed King crab, purple potato, Champagne and smoked herring caviar to then move on to the Red mullet stuffed with scampi mousse in kataifi paste, peach, pepper and Thai sauce.
In short, it is well understood that the culinary journey of the chef from Brescia ranges between solid gastronomic culture, attention to the conjugation of the raw material and an intriguing reference to internationality as is well deserved by a restaurant named after the great Tancredi Pasero and set in a context of strong, sunny , Mediterranean landscape suggestion.
For the readers of Mondo Food, chef Roberto Stefani offers this week a recipe from original combinations of fish, meat, sea and countryside: Roast turbot, mortadella, asparagus and supreme sauce based on chicken broth.
A dish that is the combination of three products particularly dear to the chef: asparagus, mortadella and supreme sauce. “I chose asparagus – he explains – to emphasize the seasonality of the product, the supreme sauce is that ingredient which gives harmony to the dish which uniformly binds all the ingredients. Finally, the mortadella, an ingredient that evokes happy memories of my childhood and for this reason I wanted to add it to the dish.
The recipe for roast turbot, mortadella, asparagus and supreme sauce.
Leak:
2 turbot fillets of 140 grams
30 grams of mortadella
3 grams of Normandy butter
To taste pork mains
In the cutter, mix the mortadella with the soft butter until you obtain a mixture
homogeneous, then pass it through a sieve. Then, stuff the turbot and close it in the net
of pork.
For the cream of asparagus:
We start by peeling and washing the asparagus and separating the tips from the body. Afterwards
stew the shallot and add the central part of the asparagus cut into small pieces, finally sprinkle with the asparagus broth and cook gently.
We fix salt and pepper. If you like, add some mint leaves. For
as for the tips, they must first be grilled and then passed through the extractor.
Once the juice is obtained, add it to the first cream made.
Supreme Sauce:
10 grams of chicken broth
5 grams of Blond Roux
2 grams of champignon mushroom broth
2 grams of creme fraiche
A few drops of lemon juice
1 knob of Normandy butter
Salt/pepper/nutmeg/espelette pepper to taste
Once the roux is made, add the chicken stock and mushroom stock
reduced mushrooms. After having obtained the soup, add it off the heat
creme fraiche, spices, butter and lemon. Blend everything in the Vitamix and switch to
chinoix.
We finish the recipe by plating.
Tancredi Restaurant
Via XXV Aprile, 75 Sirmione (BS)
+39 030 990 43 91
