“Onion pasta and… : Genoese o Genoese; a stew of onions, mixed with different cuts of meat, which in the Neapolitan tradition was used to season pasta, ziti broken by hand, but also penne and paccheri. The third edition of the initiative “First Course of the Fields 2019”, a project conceived by SDSM in collaboration with Campi pasta factory, will focus this year on the most traditional of Neapolitan sauces. The aim of the initiative is to promote the culture of dried pasta.
They are called to participate Chefs, Sous chefs, game leaders, who have not completed the 35th year of age and who are regularly employed in a restaurant business, inside and outside the national borders. Essential ingredients are obviously the onions which can be "mixed" with other ingredients - meat, fish (not very noble and often discarded cuts) vegetables, fruit, legumes, roots, peels, etc - strictly "recovered", therefore elements that are not normally used when it comes to haute cuisine, to form the sauce for pasta.
The work that the organizers of the event are asking of the young chefs who will participate in the initiative is to find a possible evolution of this preparation, re-reading the past and looking to the future.
In Neapolitan culture, this is the dish for festive Sundays, when autumn begins, and continues until late spring.
“Onion, luminous amphora, petal after petal your beauty was formed, crystal scales increased you and in the secret of the dark earth your belly was rounded with dew…" Pablo Neruda in its "Ode to the onion” sings of the magnificence of the fruit of nature, its beauty and its usefulness.
There are many variations of this dish. There Genoese fujuta traces the history of the less well-to-do classes and the desire of the Neapolitan people to represent what they wanted – in this case meat – so the dish was transformed into a stew of onions and something, depending on the family's financial resources, something reminiscent of taste of meat.
At the end of the nineties there was a variant with fish, tuna, in the small seaside village of Cetara by Paschal Torrent, which has now become a traditional dish in almost all the fish restaurants in Southern Italy.
Giving things the right time and not throwing food away are the two philosophical foundations of the future in the kitchen, demonstrating that to make a great signature dish it is not necessary to use only "precious" products.
Then space for creativity and the philosophy of recovery, taking the subtitle of the book as a starting point Bread is gold, of Massimo Bottura, "Extraordinary meals with ordinary ingredients".
To sign up there it will be time until 13 February 2019by sending your application to contest@lsdm.it (containing name, date of birth, telephone number, brief presentation of one's professional background, high-resolution photo, name and address of the restaurant where one works). The applications will be evaluated and 20 chefs will be admitted to the selection who will receive a sample of pasta (after having indicated the required dies). The communication of admission will be given by mail. The recipe with the photo photo will be sent by 10 March a contest@lsdm.it
The final will take place on April 2, 2019 at the Pastificio dei Campi in Gragnano. The best three recipes will participate according to the unquestionable judgment of the jury. The author of the winning recipe will prepare the dish in the space of the Pastificio dei Campi, in moments of entertainment, during the next edition of LSDM (1 and 2 October 2019 in Paestum)
Who will the jury consist of? Guido Barendson, Giuseppe Cerasa, Luciano Pignataro, Antonio Scuteri, Massimiliano Tonelli, Albert Sapere.
By participating in the initiative, you authorize the publication of photos and recipes, always quoting the author and the project, on the sites www.lsdm.it www.lucianopignataro.it , www.pastificiodeicampi.it
