FASHION
What's Cooking in Milan: Fast Recipes for Fashion Week
by Kerry Olsen
Italian actress and model Eva Riccobono in her Milan kitchen.
Photographed by Margherita Chiarva
Fashion weeks are not always a culinary high point, with little time to prepare wholesome dishes. In Milan, however, not even the onslaught of the fall collections can prevent some of the city's most stylish from preparing delicious, fresh food. We asked its chicest residents what they prepare when the heat is on.
“I occasionally post pictures of dishes I’ve cooked at home on Twitter and receive lots of requests for the recipes and ingredients I’ve used,” says the Italian actress and model
Eva Riccobono (@EvaRiccobono) in her airy Milan kitchen. Hailing from Palermo, Italy, known for its myriad rows of food stalls, she’s a strong advocate for eating well, and has agreed to prepare one of her delectable dishes that could work as a quick supper fix for those on the go this week. “I actually wanted to make pasta con le sarde, but I couldn’t find them,” she says of an earlier attempt to locate fresh sardines (sarde) for the typical Southern Italian dish. Rule number one in Italy: Never buy or eat fish on a Monday (fish are not caught on a Sunday). As such, Eva has decided to prepare farro spaghetti with radicchio trevisano, pancetta, and ricotta salata—salty sheep’s-milk cheese—with some authentic Sicilian flair. “It’s a really simple dish, and I like to garnish it with ricotta,” she says. In Milan, it’s the norm to sprinkle Parmesan cheese over pasta; in Rome, Pecorino cheese; while Sicilian dishes favor the salty ricotta cheese.
She heats a large sauté pan over high heat and adds extra-virgin olive oil—Olio di Rosso, produced by her friend
Renzo Rosso at his farm near Vicenza, Italy—then minced garlic, diced pancetta, and the chopped radicchio. Accessorizing
her pretty spring Miu Miu outfit is an odd touch, a pair of rubber gloves: “If you want a love or a social life, you’ll need these,” she says, referring to the gloves she sports when chopping garlic to keep her hands odor-free. (Incidentally, she prefers the surgical variety.)
She sautés the ingredients until the fat on the pancetta starts to brown (about five minutes). In another pan, Eva boils water for the spaghetti. “I’m crazy. I visit around 20 places to ensure I find the best ingredients,” she explains about her rather arduous-sounding grocery trip in the city. Her Palermo family home is always brimming with fresh foodstuffs. She recounts farmers arriving daily with seasonal fruit, and a cellar complete with curing prosciutto and pasta-making contraptions. These days, though, she often feels like a tourist when she returns to the baroque Sicilian capital, especially when she makes a detour for the typical panino con la milza (chopped veal-spleen sandwich, a dish typical to Palermo).
Riccobono throws the spaghetti into boiling water, adding a large pinch of salt. “I’m one of the few that add it after the spaghetti,” she says, declining to reveal the correct length of time required for that all-important al dente pasta. “I just taste it. I don’t trust any other way.” (For the record, it was about eight minutes.) While waiting for the pasta to cook, she grates the ricotta. “Whoever wants to keep their arms firm should try this,” she laughs. Her partner,
DJ Matteo Ceccarini, stops by in the hope of securing a forkful of pasta before returning to his studio, where he’s working on
Giorgio Armani’s runway sound track.
Draining the spaghetti, Riccobono adds it to the pan with the pancetta and tosses until everything is well mixed. After spooning it into pasta bowls, she tops the dish with a few fresh basil leaves, a drizzle of oil, the ricotta, and some finely sliced red pepperoncino peppers. “They don’t have seeds, so they’re a bit fake,” she says, laughing. Nothing like the authentic dish she’s just prepared.
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http://www.vogue.com/vogue-daily/article/whats-cooking-in-milan-fast-receipes-for-fashion-week/#1