Slice the celeriac very thinly, then cut the slices into matchsticks. Mix with a pinch of salt and leave to drain in a colander for about 1 hour to allow it to soften up.
Add the mustard and vinegar to the mayonnaise and grate in the fresh truffle, if using. Mix the celeriac sticks with the mayonnaise mixture.
Spoon the mixture into the centre of your serving plates and arrange the venison around or on top, as you like. Drizzle with the extra-virgin olive oil.
Bresaola di manzo al caprino Thinly sliced cured beef with goats’ cheese dressing
Bresaola of beef is another of our Lombardia specialities from the Valtellina valley. It is raw fillet that has been salted, marinated in wine and herbs, and then air-dried to give it a lovely, delicate flavour. It is sliced very thinly to serve as an antipasto, traditionally with oil, lemon juice and black pepper. At the restaurant, we like to be a little different…
100g soft fresh goats’ cheese
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
juice of ½ lemon
4 handfuls of rocket
200g thinly sliced bresaola
salt and pepper
Put the cheese into a bowl and mash with a fork until it becomes a little more smooth. Slowly mix in the vinegar and 5 tablespoons of the oil. The mixture should still be a little coarse.
Mix the lemon juice with the rest of the oil and use to dress the rocket lightly. Season to taste.
Put a small bunch of rocket in the centre of each slice of bresaola (roll up if you like). Arrange on serving plates and drizzle with the goat’s cheese dressing. Finish with a good grinding of black pepper.
Carpaccio di manzo Beef carpaccio
I suppose everyone these days knows the story of how beef carpaccio was invented, but just in case…It happened in Harry’s Bar in Venezia in 1950, when a regular customer, the Contessa Amalia Nani Mocenigo, came to dine. Her doctor had put her on a special diet, which meant she couldn’t eat cooked meat. In a moment of inspiration, Guiseppe Cipriani, the father of the current owner of Harry’s Bar, Arrigo Cipriani, suggested to his chef that he cut up some raw beef into wafer-thin slices, and they then decorated it criss-cross fashion with a sauce made from mayonnaise mixed with Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice and milk. Guiseppe called the creation carpaccio, after the Italian painter, Vittore Carpaccio, who was famous for his use of brilliant reds and whites.
Of course, now every Italian restaurant has come up with their own version of beef carpaccio. At Locanda we either serve it with our own mayonnaise (as in the recipe below), perhaps with some fresh black truffle grated over it. Or we dress some rocket in a little olive oil and lemon juice and serve it with the carpaccio, with Parmesan shavings over the top. At other times we cook some finely diced broccoli stalks and florets until they are soft (ie slightly overcooked), then whiz them to a purée in a food processor and season. Then we season the carpaccio, brush with lemon and oil and serve with the broccoli purée drizzled on top.
Once one of our suppliers sent a box of persicelle (probably from persicum, which is the Latin for peach), or baby peaches, to Locanda. In Italy, when there are too many peaches on the tree the farmer snips off the smaller green ones, like little fat green almonds, which are mostly thrown away, but are sometimes kept and put into syrup or, as in this case, sent out as a speciality to kitchens. We blanched them, made some truffle oil, which we put over them, and served them with the carpaccio. They were beautiful – but sadly we have never had a box since.
Remember you are showing off raw beef, so it must be the best quality.
300g beef fillet
2 tablespoons mayonnaise (see page 53)
2 tablespoons salted capers, rinsed and drained (optional)
salt and pepper
Trim the fat from the fillet and chill the beef in the fridge to firm it up and make it easier to cut into thin slices. Place three or four slices at a time (side by side) on a sheet of cling film, cover with another sheet of cling film, then pummel with a meat hammer or rolling pin until the meat is paper-thin. Season the carpaccio and serve drizzled with the mayonnaise and, if you like, sprinkled with capers.
Sformato di patate, pancetta e Taleggio Layered potatoes and pancetta with cheese sauce
Sformato is a kind of savoury pudding cooked in the oven. Traditionally it was made in a ring mould so it could be turned out and the centre filled with sauce. This one isn’t traditional at all. It is one of my mixtures of French technique and Italian ingredients. Potatoes, cheese, pancetta, these ingredients are as old as time. For me, they are the flavours of cold weather. They have been used in a million ways, but I wanted to try to find a way of my own and this idea first came to me when I was cooking in Paris at Le Laurent. One of my jobs was to prepare the potatoes for a special fish dish. I used to peel the potatoes without washing them, so that the starch stayed inside, then ‘turn’ them into perfect cylinder shapes and finally slice them into thin rounds with a mandoline. Then I had to lay them out on a tray, sprinkle them with a little salt and bake them until golden. When they came out of the oven, I would lay them out again, overlapping slightly this time, so that when they cooled down, the starch in the potatoes would stick them together in a sheet.
When the order for the fish came in, I would take a fillet, place it on top of the sheet of potatoes and cut around it. Then I would cook the fish in a frying pan, skin-side up, turn it over, skin down, lay the sheet of potato on top and put the pan in the oven, so the fish would roast with the potatoes ‘melting’ over the top.
The dish was served with crème fraîche and caviar, which was too fiddly and complicated an idea for my taste, but I loved the idea of the potato sheet and it stayed in my mind. I used to experiment with wrapping other ingredients inside, and then one day, when I had a potato sheet left over, I dropped it into a cup that happened to be nearby. After a while, I noticed it had set in the shape of the cup, and when I turned it out it stayed that way. That gave me the idea of making a container with the potatoes, which would be like a crust but also add another layer of flavour. I started trying out different fillings enclosed in potato and then fried – eventually I came up with this one.
I think of this as a winter dish, and sometimes when porcini mushrooms are in season I like to use them instead of the pancetta – just sliced and sautéed with