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Winning flavours
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It's only appropriate that i-t.Alia is hosting a Southern Italian food festival right after the World Cup season
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PHOTO: SAMPATH KUMAR G.P.
DELICATE TASTES Southern Italian cuisine is light and aromatic
It's a great time to be Italian. And as the Southern Italian food festival at i-t.Alia in The Park shows, it's also a great time to eat Italian; what with all the love going around after the World Cup victory.
For those who came in late, Southern Italy, namely the states of Naples, Calabria, Puglia, Sicily, Campania, Sardegna, Basilicata and so on, serve their own distinctive cuisine that is radically different from the fare of the North that we are most familiar with. "In the North, the cuisine is usually heavier because the weather is much colder. In the South, the cuisine is lighter and more aromatic," says Chef Piero Rainone (who still hasn't stopped celebrating the World Cup). "The cuisine is also a lot more flavourful," he adds. "Everything maintains its own character, and every ingredient brings in a different sensation."
Small wonder then that every dish reads like a menu itself, as the various flavours that go into it get described. For starters, we begin with the peperoncino-flavoured chicken breast with Calabrian style red onion marmalade. And instantly we understand what Chef Rainone meant by light and flavourful. Compared to the masala-doused fare one is normally used to, the first bite seems almost bland. However, as we proceed through the course, we realise the delicate contrast in tastes between the mellow juiciness of the chicken breast and the frolicking sweetness of the marmalade. And breezing through is the occasional bite of the onion that is, for the most part, suppressed by sweetening.
For the main course, we go with the potato gnocchi with roasted peppers and saffron flavoured seafood sauce. While subtlety rules the starters, this course is more direct. Even before we dig in, we can taste the flavours of the seafood sauce as its strong but pleasing aroma settles happily on us. The gnocchi or dumplings form a great baseline for the delicious gradations in taste and texture that the calamari and mussels serve up. The result is a many-splendoured dish with each bite packing in a different surprise.
Italian cuisine isn't normally famous for its vegetarian prowess. "Only red meat is considered non-vegetarian there. People consider fish and white meat as vegetarian," says Chef Rainone. However, he has improvised on a couple of recipes to please vegetarian customers. Thus you have the fried mozzarella with tomato passata and rocket. Other choices include the pugliese lagane pasta with pan-braised zucchini and aubergine-balsamic sauce for the main course and terrine of grilled aubergines, tomatoes, zucchini and roasted peppers with mild garlic sauce.
While all of these dishes are fascinating in their own way, they don't quite pack the same punch for those who have the option of meat. The vegetarians among us, though, didn't seem inclined to complain at all.
Closing up the meal was a fascinating dessert in the form of a cream filled chocolate drop with pears cooked in aromatic red wine. This was a simply divine mélange, with the crisp bitter chocolate offset by the rich cream, which was in turn tempered by the wafting flavour of the pears in wine.
The Southern Italian Food Festival is on till July 30 at i-t.Alia at The Park on M.G. Road. Call 25594666/67 or email tpbl@theparkhotels.com
Ambience: Classy
Service: Good
Specialty: Meats
Wallet factor: Rs. 1,400 to Rs. 2,000
RAKESH MEHAR
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