“Fiori e frutta in cucina”, a book by chef Antonio Zucco
2017-08-23
Whoever said that pineapple doesn’t go with young spinach? That aubergine and apple aren’t perfect together, if sautéed in a pan with a good pale beer? That chamomile petals aren’t great with watermelon? No one. Exactly. And in the book
Fiori e frutta in cucina (
Terra Nuova Edizioni),
chef Antonio Zucco explains why many pairings that seem improbable, or perhaps even crazy to us, can go perfectly, gastronomically speaking.
The book, published in 2016 and recently reprinted, due to the great success of the first edition, offers
one hundred original recipes,
with fruit, flowers and sprouts, from first courses to desserts, with salads, combined dishes, side dishes and fruit salads. The author, who works as a chef at a gluten free restaurant in Saluzzo, discovered in 2007 that he was allergic to gluten and lactose, and since then he began to research and specialise in the field of
natural vegetarian and vegan cuisine, writing and contributing to numerous recipe books.
In this book, Zucco tries to break down prejudices which, as we know, also exist in cooking. The first is
using fruit in savoury dishes. Though it might seem strange to make pasta sauce with courgettes and peaches, savoury fruit has been a feature of cooking since ancient times. And it can still come back into favour, in the kitchens of important restaurants in Italy, offering healthy dishes full of flavour.
Zucco advises that you always use only
seasonal fruit, preferably
organic and when and wherever possible, to use
local producers, to use it
raw whenever possible, because cooking eliminates many vitamins and mineral salts and changes flavours and consistencies, and to season it with
Ligurian extra virgin olive oil which is pleasantly aromatic but not overpowering.
Another taboo is the use of
flowers in cooking, a habit that has ancient origins. Not only in Oriental cuisine, where they are common ingredients, but also in European cooking. The ancient Romans used rose petals for many of their culinary preparations. Charlemagne added carnations to wine to aromatise it…
The flowers that we put in our dish, obviously, can’t be the ones we give as Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day gifts, as they are treated with chemicals and are ornamental. Zucco tells us to contact our
greengrocer or use those from
the garden, as long as they are grown naturally, or to
gather them in the woods or in the countryside, not to get them from conventional flower growers.
As well as enhancing our dishes with their shapes and colours, flowers also have a
great flavour and like all plants contain
vitamins and minerals.
There are also
shoots or sprouts, which are mainly used in the East. Unfortunately, they are not very popular in Italian cuisine, which limits itself mainly to soyabean sprouts, while there are many kinds, from beetroot to mustard. Zucco not only uses them in many recipes in his book, but lists their
countless benefits for our health: they are rich in vitamins, minerals and enzymes, a real treasure trove of vitality.
Mariagrazia Villa
Antonio Zucco,
Fiori e frutta in cucina. Dai primi piatti ai dessert 100 ricette originali, Terra Nuova Edizioni, Florence, 2016, 120 pages, 13.50 euro.
