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The recipe for spaghetti with white pizzutello, prawns, sea urchins and basil by Chef Dario Pandolfo: the history of Sicily meets fine dining

A refined spaghetti that comes from a boat trip with the fishermen of Lipari and a snack with pane cunzato provides the Chef of Cala di Luna in Cefalù with the pretext for a refined dish that enhances the flavors of Sicilian gastronomy

The recipe for spaghetti with white pizzutello, prawns, sea urchins and basil by Chef Dario Pandolfo: the history of Sicily meets fine dining

To put it this way it seems the simplest and most natural thing: a trip to the Aeolian Islands, to Lipari, on the fishing boat of the Costanzo family, fishermen for 4 generations. The pots are pulled up, and the fishing boat is invaded by about thirty kilos of gobet shrimp with blue eggs. “My first instinct was to eat it while also sucking the head” recalls Dario Pandolfo. Returning to the port, an ancient rite of Aeolian fishermen is revived, all together to refresh themselves with a bread cooked with tomato. A real institution of Sicilian cuisine, a dish of poverty, which constituted lunch in less fortunate times when at home you barely had bread, a few tomatoes and oil and for this reason also called "bread of misfortune", rich only in its flavors made of herbs and cheap condiments that are easy to find.

That simple experience, after a short time, has turned into a source of inspiration for a fine dining dish by one of the most talented chefs on the Sicilian gastronomic scene, Dario Pandolfo at the helm of the kitchens of the refined Cala Luna restaurant set on a large lawn in Cefalù overlooking the stacks of Caldura and the Rocca, the flagship of the prestigious five-star Boutique Hotel Le Calette immersed in a vast park in the Caldura bay.

"The dish - says Dario Pandolfo with simplicity and with the great humility that distinguishes him - was ready: tomato and prawns were my key ingredients on which to work". What Pandolfo does not say is that behind that dish there is a beautiful story of a chef who leaves his homeland at a very young age to travel the world starting from the Alma international cooking school, the prestigious academy led by the great master Gualtiero Marchesi to then train in most famous restaurants in Europe such as Geranium, three Michelin stars in Denmark, best restaurant in the world in the World's 50 Best Restaurants 2022 ranking, unique in history to have won medals of each metal (bronze, silver and gold) in three consecutive editions of the competition Bocuse d'Or of Lyon; then in the prestigious Vila Joya, two Michelin stars in Portugal, and above all to spend three years of pure gastronomic philosophy at the St. Hubertus***, in San Cassiano in Badia alongside the Chef Norbert Niederkofler the great three-starred chef who has declined his stellar cuisine on products viscerally linked to the territory, on a profound principle of respect for the rhythms of nature and the balance of the environment and of those who live there, who in each of his dishes tries to tell its mountains, the hard work of farmers and breeders, the quality of their products, the traditions handed down. This desire to tell the story of the land, in his case of Sicily with its many cultures and traditions and with the richness of its sea, prompted him to return to his island and after a fruitful experience in Milazzo at the Ngonia Bay Hotel Restaurant, to settle down with many ideas and a great desire to put into practice what he had learned from the great masters in the kitchens of the Cala Luna restaurant, taking care of the fine dining proposal of the Hotel Le Calette.

All with a spirit of joyful discovery of ancient values ​​to be re-proposed with a new spirit, as he himself explains: "Working in Sicily, in a land where the abundance and variety of products of nature and the sea have set its mark gastronomy, identified in the world with the joy of sharing, of perfumes and tastes, is like taking a child to the amusement park”. Nature remains his primary source of inspiration for this reason he carefully selects the raw material through a chain of farmers, breeders, fishermen and producers who work in an ethical and sustainable way, trying to avoid, when possible, wholesalers and imported products to affirm a cuisine natural, full of flavors and colors that, with simplicity and great technique, manages to enhance each ingredient, from the simplest to the most sophisticated, considering them all in the same way. So the origins of the spaghetti recipe that the chef is offering to the readers of Mondo Food this week are humble, but behind the screen are intuitions, experience, class, research and great natural passion. It is no coincidence that on the occasion of Festa a Vico, the most important haute cuisine event that Gennarino Esposito organizes the great chef from Vico Equense every year, attracting seventy starred chefs from all over Italy, Dario Pandolfo was called to take part in an exclusive event which Gennaro Esposito promotes in his restaurant entitled "A promise is a promise". An event within an event in which he invites the talented young generation of Italian cuisine to perform for an exclusive audience of journalists and industry insiders and where, in recent editions, many young people who are now established starred chefs have passed. In short, for Pandolfo the road is marked.  

Chef Dario Pandolfo

The recipe for spaghetti with pizzutello tomato sauce, lobster prawns, their sauce, sea urchins and basil

Ingredients for people 2

180 g Gragnano spaghetti

1 kg Pizzutello tomato from the Erice valleys

extra virgin olive oil to taste

Salt to taste

lemon juice

8 gobetti di nassa shrimps

2 spoons of sea urchin pulp

chili powder to taste

a knob of butter

for the basil oil:

500 g grape seed oil

300 gr cleaned basil

Method

Prepare the basil oil by blending the cleaned basil and grape seed oil in a mixer at maximum speed for 7 minutes. Pour into a Chinese sieve and leave to filter. To put aside.

Blend the tomatoes in a mixer and pour into an etamine so that the tomato water runs off, while the pulp remains in the canvas.

Allocate the pulp for other uses, the water instead must be clear and transparent.

Cook the spaghetti and drain them al dente, finish cooking in the tomato water, stir in a drizzle of oil, a knob of butter and a few drops of lemon juice.

Clean the prawns and remove their coral from the head, taking care to always keep it at a very low temperature. Season the shrimp pulp with oil and salt.

Welcome

Arrange the spaghetti in nests, add some chilli powder, a spoonful of sea urchins around the prawns, the coral sauce and the basil oil.

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