How do you become the youngest Michelin-starred Chef in the history of Italy? Martina Caruso, considered the enfant prodige of Italian cuisine, who conquered this title at the age of 25, and who is now 31, looks at you with that beautiful, engaging smile of hers, sunny like her character, and shy away: "I wouldn't know say it, I only know that I look around me every morning, I see this wonderful island, I see its sea with its extraordinary colors, I see the craters of the volcanoes that gave it life with their wild nature, its wild herbs, I see the sun that illuminates it for most of the year but also the stormy clouds, I see the sea so generous in summer, so impetuous, vicious in winter, I feel the scents of the waves and the Mediterranean scrub, and all these sensations I take it with me to the kitchen."
His cuisine thus becomes the laboratory of his Sicilian nature, felt in his heart almost as a vital principle, which dissolves into many culinary rivulets in which all the components of his Sicilian nature do not seek compromises of reassuring pleasantness for every palate. No, here Sicily is alive and throbbing in its perfumes, in its decisive flavours, in its material, a triumph of biodiversity.
In this Martina Caruso is Salina's daughter despite being born in Milazzo. You have to know this island to understand the meaning of this sentence. An island of just over 25 square kilometers mostly impassable, of about 2000 inhabitants mostly jealous of their own peace, an island which, unlike its more worldly and party-loving sisters, observes a slow, peaceful, almost sleepy lifestyle , where the passing tourist remains an extraneous episode to its immutable rhythms of life. And if this micro world has remained so extraneous to homologation, it is due to the will of those who live there who have been satisfied with the cultivation of capers and Malvasia which marked its fortunes in the past, with the products that mother nature offers and with those who has the choice to live there in an enchanted atmosphere of relaxation.
It is precisely this magic that pervades the island that prompted Michael Radford and Massimo Troisi to shoot some scenes of "Il Postino" there, and before that Nanni Moretti to shoot Dear Diary.
“Of all the Aeolian Islands, Salina is certainly the most deeply linked to its land – says Federica Ercoli, architect of the VIPs and of some of the most important Italian hotels, who for years has chosen Salina as her buen refuge when her commitments allow it – it is an island where time is not what men impose on themselves but what nature dictates. If Vulcano is the island of discos, Panarea is the island of VIPs, Stromboli is the island of alternatives, Filicudi of intellectuals, Alicudi of loners, Salina is itself and always itself”.
And it has remained so "because a pact of respect and conservation is rigorously observed between the inhabitants and those who have chosen it as an alternative residence for years". Here, in fact, the houses abandoned by emigrants who sought their fortune abroad are restored, ruins are restored, not new buildings are built.
And this evocative atmosphere of island intimacy is originally found in the choice of the parents of Martina Caruso, Clara, a psychologist, a master's degree in America, and Michele, a sportsman, a municipal employee, both in love with this island, who abandon their respective careers to set up, 30 years ago, one year after Martina's birth, Signum, a widespread hotel with a few rooms with a restaurant from which the view extends over Stromboli and Panarea. Michele questions himself as a chef and tries his hand at cooking with the recipes he inherited from his mother, grandmother and aunts, and Clara makes all her psychology studies available to devote herself to the guests of the restaurant and hotel, creating them the best conditions to disconnect from the world and enjoy a relaxed atmosphere.
Martina roams around the kitchens as a child while her father Michele cooks.
“I decided early on that I wanted to enter the kitchen and learn to cook, I saw my father in the kitchen and I was passionate about watching him and keeping him company. To make me feel good he gave me pots and spoons and I started playing as if it were drums ”.
The drums play and resound, Martina, who grew up with those smells and perfumes, feels that the future will be there in those kitchens, next to her father, and tomorrow also in her father's place. Which will happen when at the age of 23, together with his brother Luca, an affection made of understanding and complementarity like two sides of the same coin, one in the kitchen, the other in the dining room and in the cellar, will take the helm of Signum to make it navigate even more challenging waters.
Martina meanwhile at 14 when it was time to choose high school without hesitation, Martina directed herself to the hotel management school in Cefalù overcoming many hesitations from her father Michele and mother Clara …”they believed that I would give up on too much work. Instead I resisted and became more and more passionate about it”.
Yet her parents must have known that someone who loved to play football as a young man and who wanted to be a Carabiniere by profession, had character in spades.
And in fact the young, indeed very young Martina, after attending the hotel management school in Cefalù, goes to Rome for a professional cooking course at Gambero Rosso "with excellent results", as she is keen to point out.
“Already in those years I was returning to Salina to work in the kitchen during all the summer seasons, thus continuing my training in the field”. From that moment on it will all be a coming and going between the kitchen of the Signum and the internships at important restaurants. It begins with Massimo Riccioli, patron of La Rosetta, a historic fish restaurant in the center of Rome. So in order to improve his English, necessary for customer relations in the family restaurant and hotel, he decides to go to London and while he's at it he works for 5 months at Jamie Oliver's Jamie s'Italian restaurant, chef , television presenter, writer and at the time entrepreneur of a chain of 25 restaurants scattered throughout England and also in Asia, under the watchful eye of executive chef Gennaro Contaldo.
After which he returned to Italy and continued his training internships with some of the great starred names of Italian catering such as Antonello Colonna, Alessandro Pipero and above all at the Torre del Saracino of Gennaro Esposito two Michelin stars in Vico Equense, the master who most influenced the his training.
With her character, sweet, caring, sunny, always ready to smile and be cheerful, but stubborn and tireless in the kitchen, she is appreciated by everyone.
The non-carabiniere "I use to obey in silence", observes, looks, studies, stores and metabolises the secrets of cooking, of combinations, of the use of raw materials.
And her road is all downhill and also at great speed: in 2016 she triumphantly enters the Red Guide, she is awarded a Michelin star, she is the youngest star in the history of Italy, in the same year she receives the Emerging Chef Award d'Italia by Gambero Rosso, and in the same year she received the Chef of the Year Award from Identità Golose and was called as a speaker for the international cooking congress in Milan. The name of Martina Caruso and her Salina goes around Italy and abroad. Finally three years later, and we arrive at last year, she receives the very prestigious Michelin 2019 Best Female Chef Award supported by Veuve Clicquot, whose Atelier des Grandes Dames project supports the cooks of the Buon Paese. With a motivation that is a color photograph of the young Chef: “A structured cuisine, but at the same time fresh and delicate with original proposals that enhance the flavors and aromas of local products. Martina Caruso receives the Michelin Chef Donna 2019 award for her great will and ability to progress and to represent her radiant island, through a great technique and the feminine touch of a passionate and determined young woman".
A glance at the menu explains beyond words how it arrived on the fine dining stage. The most demanding palates are conquered by her Murena alla Brace, Oil, Lemon and Oregano, the result of a journey and research that has led Martina Caruso and her team (she cares a lot about the concept of teamwork) to work more and more products of the territory, while still maintaining incursions of other ingredients, and ancestral cooking techniques such as fire and embers in the case of the moray eel which is cooked in terracotta underground. Essence of raw material and simplicity. To keep this dish on the menu, Martina and her brother Luca have recruited friends who are "hunters" of moray eels who work practically only for them because moray eels are certainly not a fish that is easily found in fishmongers as they have no commercial market. "But at the home of the fishermen and families of the island - we are keen to underline - we have always eaten".
And what about his Mezzi Paccheri with Squid, Tumapersa and Bieta Croccante? A dish that requires long and patient work on the matter,
the squid, a mollusc of which the Aeolian sea is rich.
In this case everything is extracted from the animal thus applying the concept of ethical cooking without waste without ever neglecting the final product and the taste.
Vegetables are also worked on: the chard harvested in the Signum garden looked after by the whole family is first cooked and then dried in the oven to create chips.
The third founding element of the dish is the Tuma persa, a cheese that owes its name to a phase of its production process. In fact, once placed in the moulds, the cheese is not touched again for about ten days, then it is washed and left to ferment again. The term "lost" of the name is to be attributed precisely to this phase of "abandonment" of the cheese. But the word perso fits well also because all traces of this cheese were being lost: the last documents date back to 1930. It is a raw pressed cheese obtained from whole cow's milk, with the addition of kid's rennet. Produced in the area of the province of Palermo by a single cheese maker”.
What to say? We are faced with two symbolic dishes that address the territory not only from the point of view of matter and taste but also of its cultural value, two dishes that read the gastronomic history of an island.
“My cuisine – says Martina – has the flavor of the Mediterranean scrub. She's playful, creative, and I enjoy contrasting flavors and textures.
It's light and I check it every time because here people eat and sleep in it and I know how they wake up.
It is contaminated, because Sicilian history is made up of encounters. Simplicity and keeping your feet on the ground, without losing the taste of what you eat.
I love being inspired by the scents and flavors that the island gives me. I love the transformation of raw materials or kneading with my hands.
I am attracted by the adrenaline rush of service and the teamwork of a brigade”.
There is always in her the concept of a fraternal embrace with those who find themselves in the values in which they believe. For this reason, her restaurant is one with the widespread hotel, almost a sort of small village, a place to meet.
"I was born and raised always in contact with hotel guests, sharing and making the customer feel good is part of me, as is welcoming and hospitality, a vocation of my family - says the Chef - All this has led me to learn balances in relationships between people”.
And for her, making people feel good means introducing them into her world, opening the door of her Salinity to them so that through the table they can better understand what heritage this extraordinary island contains.
