Within the frame of activities of the already mentioned GNAM Festival, the cultural event promoted by City of Parma and Solaris Fondazione per le Arti, and dedicated to the celebration of Gastronomy in Contemporary Art.

As final show within the Festival, Academia Barilla will be hosting a collection of photographs by Marcello Geppetti (24 photographies total). The exhibition, which opened to the public last April 16, will be accessible at the Academia Barilla Culinary Center until November 16, 2008.

With over a thousands of unforgettable shots of famous celebrities capturing moments of the Italian “Dolce Vita” of the 50’s, ’60’s and 70’s. A unique, unrepeatable, marvelous period for post-war Italy, and Rome in particular, immortalized by the special touch of Geppetti.

(Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim dining in Rome - photo: Marcello Geppetti)

Celebrities, politicians, actors, artists, everyone had to pass through Rome - at that time, the centre of the Universe, of the Dolce Vita - and stop by the social scene of Via Veneto, Via Condotti and Piazza di Spagna. These places are those where everything happened around a drink, a banquet, a dinner, a party, a cocktail, a concert. And everyone who wanted to be seen and be part of this glamour life needed to pass by, to stop for a dinner at the Grotte del Piccione, or at Meo Patacca Restaurant, for a drink at Club 84.

(Alberto Sordi entertaining friends after dinner in Rome - photo: Marcello Geppetti)

Marcello Geppetti, one of the founders of Café de Paris, made the history of photography. For 40 years Geppetti was in every place and in every event. Thanks to his beautiful images depicting big celebrities around a table, in happy and vital portrait of simple gestures such as eating and drinking, he contributed to create the myth around that dreamlike period of time of Italy, giving eternity to these marvelous Dolce Vita characters and memorable moments.

(Lauren Bacall enjoying an ice cream in Rome - photo: Marcello Geppetti)

Claudia Cardinale, Liz Taylor, Vittorio Gasmann, Richard Burton, Brigitte Bardot, Kirk Douglas, Audrey Hepburn, Jacqueline Kennedy, James Stewart, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Totò, Fellini, De Sica, Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Marcello Mastroianni - just to name a few of the many celebrities that Marcello Geppetti knew and captured in his photographies during their stay in Italy.

(Audrey Hepburn shopping for food in Rome - photo: Marcello Geppetti)

At fashion stores, while working on movie set, along Rome’s street, at restaurants, everywhere. Geppetti with his special touch added a deep sense of humanity to celebrities’ pictures. David Schonhauer, director of “American Photo Manager” recently highlighted the talent of Marcello Geppetti and defined him a real artist of the shot, capable of unveal the human side of celebrities.

(Monica Vitti and Alain Delon dining in Rome - photo: Marcello Geppetti)

The name of Marcello Geppetti is mentioned in the history of photography next to big names such as Man Ray, Richard Avedon, Cecuil Beaton, Andy Warhol, and his photographies have been published by major international magazines headings such as Life, Photoplay, Daily Mirror, Bunte, El Pais and Washington Post - now they are available at the Academia Barilla Culinary Center, don’t miss this exhibition!

The address to the Academia Barilla Culinary Center is Largo Piero Calamandrei, 3/A (c/o Barilla Center), 43100 Parma, Italy. Please call +39 0521 264060 for further information and opening hours. Driving directions? Please use the Google map here below.

Last October the City of Parma hosted the first International edition of GNAM, an event focusing on Gastronomy in Modern Art. GNAM needed a context of excellence in food culture, and the choice to locate GNAM in Parma and its territory in the heart of the Italian Food Valley has certainly been not casual.

In this context, Academia Barilla, as the point of reference and most credible source for Italian gastronomy, couldn’t miss the opportunity to collaborate with the organizers to ensure the success and gastronomic relevance of the GNAM Festival.

The program created for the multidisciplinary event offered different artistic exhibitions in various venues all around the city of Parma and its province. This represented a new and innovative approach to the art of eating, exploring all political, cultural and social implications lying beyond the food’s concept, through the reading of contemporary arts.

In-between its opening and closing dates (October 2007-January 2008) GNAM celebrated gastronomy represented through expressive modern and contemporary art forms such as photography, painting, installations, sculpture, theater and cinema.

GNAM’s wide-ranging program started last October with the main event “Foodscapes – Art & Gastromony” (ended January 2008), curated by Lóránd Hegyi, Director of the Saint-Etienne Modern Art Museum in France. Foodscapes displayed artwork by more than 40 international artists exploring different concepts of food and eating. “Feeding is private and collective at the same time, something strictly personal and simultaneously public,” said Hungarian curator Lóránd Hegyi.

Another of the top events in the GNAM calendar was “Hungry Planet”, a photo exhibition of the work of US photographers Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio, who traveled across five continents and 24 countries photographing families and exploring differences in their dining rituals.

The program includes many other interesting appointments, and International celebrity guests, including French actor Gérard Depardieu, cookbook author Eve Ensler, movie director Emir Kusturica, and many more VIP guests.

We couldn’t cover this Parma event last winter, as our blogging and editorial team spent the last months mostly in the United States. We now have the opportunity to blog about the event, thanks to one of the GNAM Festival’s collateral events, whose opening last week at the Academia Barilla Culinary Center brought back the entire gastronomy / art symbiosis in Parma.

We will take a little more time tomorrow to talk about “Dolce Vita“, a photo exhibition open to the public at the Academia Barilla Culinary Center (free entrance), where thousands of unforgettable shots of famous celebrities, taken by “Master Paparazzi” Marcello Geppetti, captured precious moments of the Italian “Dolce Vita”, the golden age of Italian post-WWII, between the 50’s and the 70’s.

Feel free to pay a visit at the Academia Barilla to see the exhibition, that will be open to the public until November 16, 2008. Directions to the Academia Barilla Culinary Center in Parma? Check out the Google Map here below.

Millefoglie is the Italian version of the French pastry Mille-feuille, meaning “thousand leaves” which is a layered cake which can be filled in delicious several ways.

As described by the Wikipedia, other names for Millefoglie around the world are Mille-feuille (French), Napoleon (U.S.), vanilla slice, cream slice or custard slice (Commonwealth), all to describe a pastry made of several layers of puff pastry alternating with a sweet filling, typically pastry cream, whipped cream or jam. You can find the dessert name also written as “millefeuille” and “mille feuille“.

At the Academia Barilla Culinary School we thought this could be a perfect gourmet dessert to celebrate Mother’s Day, so we asked Chef Matteo Carboni to share with us the recipe, and also to prepare the dessert for us, so we could have some pictures, too (that, by the way, we uploaded also on Wikipedia).

We also took a small video of the preparation, available on YouTube and other video spaces, and of course embedded also here below in this post.

Ready for the recipe? Let’s go to the kitchen!

STRAWBERRY AND CHANTILLY MILLEFOGLIE
(serves 4)

INGREDIENTS

- puff pastry, 1 pound
- chantilly cream, 1 pound
- strawberries, 1/2 pound
- sugar (for decoration), to taste
- icing sugar (for decoration), to taste

INGREDIENTS FOR THE PASTRY CREAM

- fresh cream, 1.7 oz
- milk, 10 oz fl
- egg yolks, 2
- sugar, 1.7 oz
- white flour, 0.7 oz
- vanilla stick, 1/2

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Unfold 1 puff pastry sheet and gently roll out into a piece of 12 inches with a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface.

Put it into a large baking sheet, previously buttered and prick all over with a fork. Trim edges of pastry with a knife.

Cut each sheet into rectangular of 3 x 1.5 inches. Sprinkle sugar on and then bake the sheet in the heated oven at 350° F until pastry is puffed and golden (approx 15 minutes).

Let it cool on racks. Aside, prepare the Chantilly Cream.

Boil the milk. Whisk egg yolks and sugar, add the flour and keep mixing.

Pour in part of the hot milk in order to obtain a smooth cream. Aromatize with vanilla stick and add the remaining milk very slowly.

Cook over moderate heat and keep mixing until thickened. Then let it cool quickly.

Whip the cream and add it to the Chantilly Cream.

In the serving plate , spread over one puff pastry cake base, part of the cooled pastry cream.

Cover it with a second puff pastry cake base.

Decorate the top and the plate with cubed strawberries, and icing sugar.

Check out our video below for more preparation details!

CHEF TIPS

Add few drops of Academia Barilla Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena aged 25 years on the top for maximum gourmet results. You can easily find it at our online store.

Happy Mother’s Day from Academia Barilla and Italian Food Lovers!

Our Italian Food Lovers Chef Network has been now officially launched.
After introducing himself as a Chef and a food lover, today Chef Douglas D’Avico from Trattoria No. 10 in downtown Chicago will start sharing with us his Chef experience, and of course also his top recipes.

As we already anticipated, Chef D’Avico loves seafood, and his first recipe for the Guest Chef series at our blog is for a great antipasto: Octopus Carpaccio with Blood Oranges.

OCTOPUS CARPACCIO WITH BLOOD ORANGES

(a recipe by Chef Douglas D’Avico)
(serves 6-8 approx)

INGREDIENTS

- 2 lb Steamed or Boiled octopus
- 4 Limes, juiced
- 1 cup Academia Barilla Monti Iblei Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 1/8 tablespoon Crushed Red Chili Flake
- 1 tablespoon Italian Flat Leaf Parsley, chopped
- Salt, to taste
- Fresh Ground Black Pepper, to taste
- 1 Bunch Hydro or Organic Watercress, Trimmed
- 2 Blood Oranges, segmented and juices saved
- 24 Caperberries, rinsed

PREPARATION

Remove the head and beak from the octopus and slice very thin on a mechanical slicer. Put the sliced octopus in a bowl and squeeze out excess water.

Take the juice from the limes, half of the olive oil, chili flake and chopped parsley and mix in the bowl with the sliced octopus. Mix well.

Season the octopus with salt and pepper to taste, make sure that you mix thoroughly before tasting. Cover and marinate over night or at least 2 hours before serving. You can adjust the seasoning to your liking if need be.

To serve, arrange the marinated octopus on a plate in a thin flat layer. Next mix the reserved blood orange juice and 3 tablespoons of the olive oil, season to taste. Mix with the trimmed water cress and divide

between the plates by placing a small amount in the center of each plate.

Garnish the plate with the caperberries and blood orange segments. Drizzle with a little bit of the olive oil and fresh ground pepper and serve.

CHEF TIPS

For a little extra flavor you can finish the plate by using the Academia Barilla Sea Salt flavored with Blood Orange.

Welcome to the Italian Food Lovers Chef Network series and to its official opening with the assignment of the first Guest Chef residency to Chef Douglas D’Avico from Chicago, Illinois.

Chef Douglas D’Avico, also known as Doug, decided to become a professional Chef as he loves being around food and the environment of the kitchen. Today Chef D’Avico is the top Chef at the Trattoria N0. 10 in Chicago, where the restaurant specialty is contemporary Italian cuisine.

Before taking the lead in the kitchen at Trattoria No. 10 in Chicago and been awarded with 3 Stars by the Chicago Tribune in 1991, he worked at a horse racing park, a river boat casino and for hotels in Miami, Florida and Honolulu, Hawaii, as he told us in a recent interview.

Among the other questions, we asked him what was the secret ingredient in being a top Chef, and he answered “good fresh ingredients“.

Chef D’Avico’s favorite food is seafood and pasta, and he has a definition of Italian cuisine as “clean, fresh and simple“. Also, Chef D’avico definition of Italian gourmet is “taking fresh produce, artisan ingredients, and cooking with care and respect“.

Chef Douglas D’avico is an adopter and supporter of Academia Barilla products, for his culinary creations. He states that Academia Barilla products are “very good quality with clean flavors“, and you can always find them in his menus.

You can trust Chef D’Avico’s judgment or give it a try for yourself at the Academia Barilla online store, where plenty of Italian gourmet specialties are available and just a click away, and where you can also find the authentic Italian gourmet ingredients used in gourmet recipes by Chef D’Avico and other top Chefs around the world who take Italian cuisine seriously and to the next level.

If you want to get in touch with Chef D’Avico you can meet him at Trattoria N.10, 10 N. Dearborn, Chicago IL 60602 (Google map below). Please visit the restaurant website at www.trattoriaten.com for complete contact info but also detailed menus, restaurant reviews, reservations for private parties and restaurant gift cards. Also, feel free to call directly Trattoria No. 10 at +1 (312) 984-1718.

Since Chef D’Avico’s “plat fort” is seafood, he will be back with us tomorrow to share his first recipe, a yummy Octopus Carpaccio with Blood Oranges. We can’t wait, can you?