Omakase is a Japanese term that identifies a form of cooking in which guests entrust themselves to the hands of a chef and receive a seasonal, elegant, artistic meal that uses the best ingredients available. That said in short. In reality, however, in the East 'Omakase is something much more complex. In his book The Story of Sushi, academic and writer Trevor Corson defines Omakase as “what the sophisticated customer says to the chef when he takes a seat at the sushi bar. Sushi connoisseurs rarely order off a menu. Traditionally, sushi bars in Japan didn't even have menus” because Omakase, a term with which we shall begin to become familiar is a spiritual companion and counterpoint to kaiseki, the elaborate multi-course Japanese meal built around seasonal, of quality and simple preparations. There is a key difference though. While kaiseki is a highly ritualized meal with a specific ebb and flow, omakase changes at every occasion, with the chef making decisions about what to cook mid-course.
Raffaele Lenzi, chef with one Michelin star, of the Sereno Al Lago restaurant in Torno, on Lake Como, introduced this innovative concept into his cuisine after a long process of deepening his gastronomic philosophy built starting from Naples, where he was born forty years ago, after abandoning his youthful passions of football and theater, collecting important experiences in Italy and abroad from England to the United States to Hong Kong. He starts off on the right foot in Italy in 2008 when he joins Bruno Barbieri, at the Arquade of the 2 Michelin star Hotel Villa del Quar in Verona, and from there he heads to the Bulgari Hotel and Resorts by Ritz Carlton under the orders of chef Elio Sironi (“This parenthesis has shaped me a lot: I could not have wished for a better teacher than Elio”) then he joins chef Pino La Marra at Palazzo Sasso, in Ravello 2 Michelin Stars. Then back to the North in one of the places that will most leave him a legacy in his current imprinting: the Grand Hotel at Villa Feltrinelli, 2 Michelin Stars, where he has the opportunity to increase his knowledge and skills on the plant world with Stefano Baiocco one of great Italian masters on this terrain. We therefore find him in Milan where from 2011 to 2013 he oversaw the opening of the Armani Hotels & Resorts Milan from where he left for two three-starred restaurants: Bo Innovation in Hong Kong and Manresa in Los Gatos, California. "The spirit with which I approached it - says Lenzi today - was the same as an internship and, with hindsight, the choice to undertake these two trips was very helpful to me". Finally, five years ago, he joined the Sereno Hotels owned by the Contreras family, who also entrusted him with the management of an important restaurant in Saint-Barthélemy in the Caribbean as corporate chef.
The choice of an Omakase menu stems from the Neapolitan chef's international vision that embraces East and West and from the desire to give new content to the customer-restaurant relationship. The menu was created with the aim of fully describing the philosophy made up of the three souls Vegetables, tubers and roots. “Omakase – he says – is a container of ideas: there are contrasts and contradictions, traditional Italian cuisine, my passion for Asian cuisine – Chinese and Japanese in primis, represented by ingredients, preparations and marinades – but also the research I carry forward on vegetables”, a menu without animal proteins that demonstrates how vegetables can be the real protagonists of the table. The choice of raw materials rigorously rewards the rhythms of nature. “The flavors and aromas of the new menu follow the delicacy of summer and its seasonal products, but also the three dogmas of my cuisine: lightness, concreteness and essentiality”. The offer is a list of a few dishes, in which traditional flavors are found, made current, and contemporary ones with an eye to the Lombardy region. The raw materials come from trusted suppliers, who care about the issue of respect for the product, in line with the chef's ideas. The dominant idea is to use Italian-tinged ingredients, to which spices and aromas from all over the world are added, which add an international touch and unique contamination to the dishes.
In this case, the Amberjack in ceviche, fennel and codium is an appetizer that goes as far as the Pacific Ocean and condenses traditional Peruvian and Mediterranean cuisine. From oily fish, marinated in salt, sugar and Sichuan pepper, the chef obtains a tartar, which he seasones with ceviche mousse – a traditional Peruvian recipe – brunoise of fennel, sea fennel and powdered codium. Codium is a seaweed, also known as green ball due to the spherical shape it has when young before flattening, which is characterized by a fatty, vegetable and floral taste. Perfect in combination with fish.
Amberjack recipe in ceviche, fennel, codium
Ingredients for people 4
For the ceviche foam
• 500 g of white fish pulp and amberjack/sea bass/red snapper trimmings
• 18 g fresh chilli
• 70 g white spring onion
• 25 g salt • 140 g lime juice
• 340 g soy milk
• 10 g ginger
• 250 g reduced comic strip (from 1,25 L to 250 g)
• Isinglass to taste
Method
Mix all ingredients and marinate for 12 hours. Strain, squeezing to extract all juices. For every 650 g of ceviche sauce, add 10 g of isinglass and put a charge in the siphon.
For the fennel brunoise
• 1 fennel
With a potato peeler, remove the outer skin of the fennel. Making a brunoise.
For the amberjack tartare
• 1 amberjack fillet
• 500 g Demerara cane sugar
• 250 g coarse salt
• 250 g fine salt
• 30 g Sichuan pepper
Marinate the amberjack fillet for about 15/20 minutes with the other ingredients. Making a tartare.
Finishing
• To taste Codium powder, sea fennel.
In a slightly concave dish, drizzle the fennel brunoise and the amberjack tartare with a drizzle of oil. Lay the ceviche foam on the fish. Top it all off with sea fennel and a sprinkling of codium.
