Today and tomorrow the Auditorium of the Academia Barilla Culinary Center will host a new event from PKN, the Parma Knowledge Network who has been very active recently with a series of events focused on the sustainability of the agriculture and food industry in the Italian Food Valley, the region surrounding Parma, our home base.

PKN recently held a seminar at Academia Barilla, on the topic of responsible carbon emissions, introducing the Chicago Climate Exchange at the food and agriculture producers of the Italian Food Valley, planning towards being the first agri-food district in the world to reach the zero quota in carbon emission by 2010!

Today and tomorrow PKN will discuss more production-related topics, such as quality standardization in food production on the first day of the event, and the organization of international supply chains for produce and vegetable products.

Gianluigi Zenti, Academia Barilla’s President, said that “being an absolute prime player in the food industry not only in the Italian Food Valley but worldwide, Academia Barilla is taking a lead role in food industry innovation, going beyond corporate social responsibility and getting more and more involved with key initiatives such as those promoted by the Chicago Climate Exchange and, locally, by the Parma Knowledge Network. And, being PKN our Parma neighbor,” he continued, “it is a pleasure and an honor for Academia Barilla to host their international conferences and initiatives“.

The two-day conference, in English and Italian with live translations, is moderated by special guest Mary L. Shelman, Phd., Director of the Agribusiness Program at the Harvard Business School and Chair of the Annual Agribusiness Conference in Boston. We see her very busy and with an heavy event schedule, but we will try to do our best to corner her for a brief interview for our blog. Can’t promise that, but we’ll try!

The event, being hosted at the Academia Barilla Culinary Center, will definitely benefit from the presence of the Academia Barilla Chef Team, who will be taking care of all gourmet networking breaks, lunch and dinners!

For more info on PKN, the Parma Knowledge Network, please visit the PKN website (Italian language only, sorry) at www.parmakn.org.

We are back with our new Guest Chef and wine expert for the Italian Food Lovers Chef Network, Chef and partner of Spiaggia Tony Mantuano and wine expert Cathy Mantuano.

We interviewed via email Tony and Cathy, and asked them a couple of questions about their Chef and wine experience and their love for Italian food.

Chef Tony Mantuano wanted to be a Chef because he “loves to cook“, as simple as that. According Chef tony Mantuano, “the secret of being a top Chef is being smart enough to know to leave out an ingredient. The most important ingredient in any dish is the one you leave out“, he said to us.

Chef Tony Mantuano’s favorite food is Cape Cod Potato Chips and his favorite cooking style is “Regional Italian food that respects tradition“. His definition of Italian cuisine is “Food that has respect for Italian culture and tradition“, while his definition of Italian gourmet is “Traditional food presented in a modern fashion for today’s palate“.

Check out this video we found on Google Video, if you want to get more Italian Chef insight, knowledge and philosophy from Chef Tony Mantuano!

We also interviewed wine expert Cathy Mantuano, and she told us that her favorite food is “pasta because there are so many kinds of pasta and so many different sauces and preparations for it“, while talking about her cooking style she stated that she is “a fan of any cuisine that uses fresh, seasonal products as a base for its dishes. I like spicy dishes, as in Thai and Chinese food. I also like Japanese food. I love the spices of Middle Eastern cuisine“.

When asked about her definition of Italian cuisine Cathy Mantuano said that “Italian cuisine highlights top quality ingredients in season, prepared simply, using few ingredients“, while her definition of Italian gourmet is “freshly picked produce, handmade pasta, farm raised poultry and meat, artisanal cheese, estate wines“.

As we reported on our latest post, Cathy and Tony Mantuano are co-authors of the Italian cookbooks “Wine Bar Food: Mediterranean Flavors to Crave with Wines to Match” and “The Spiaggia Cookbook: Eleganza Italiana in Cucina“, both available online at Barnes and Noble’s and Amazon.com’s online stores. Wine Bar Food is also available at CrateandBarrel.com.

Some of the recipes from Cathy and Tony’s cookbooks feature Academia Barilla products (as well as in their Chicago restaurants Spiaggia, Café Spiaggia, and Private Dining Rooms of Spiaggia) and we got permission from the authors to share with you some of their Italian gourmet creations - so here we go with the first one… only that we want to publish the recipe on a clean new post, so you can print it and take it with you to the kitchen - stay tuned for the recipe post coming up tomorrow!

We have the pleasure today to introduce a new Guest Chef for the Italian Food Lovers Chef Network. We will continually introduce a new Guest Chef each month, while the Chefs already introduced will keep sending us one recipe per month, each month! Wow, by the end of the year this will be a top Chef recipe bonanza, and of course we all love it!

This month we won’t only introduce renowned Chef Tony Mantuano, but also wine expert Cathy Mantuano. James Beard award-winning chef Tony Mantuano is Chef and Partner of Spiaggia, the only 4-star Italian restaurant in Chicago! Chef Mantuano and wine expert and wife Cathy recently released a new cookbook titled Wine Bar Food that features Academia Barilla products in the book!!! They also are running a casual dining café-restaurant called Café Spiaggia that complements the recently launched exclusive shoreside Private Dining Rooms of Spiaggia. And there will soon be an event with Zagat next month!

Wait, wait, too much info, let’s start introducing both our new Guest Chef and wine expert.

Chef Tony Mantuano, as reported on his bio published on the Spiaggia Restaurant site, “loves green, fruity olive oil, rare Italian cheeses, woodsy porcini mushrooms and the riches of Italian gastronomy“, which he considers “every day specialties“.

After spending one year in Italy back in 1983, learning all he could about traditional Italian cooking and working at a number of Guide Michelin-rated restaurants near Milan and on the Tuscan coast in Viareggio, Chef Tony Mantuano learned to prepare regional specialties that few Americans had ever experienced.

When Chef Mantuano opened Spiaggia Restaurant in 1984, he was widely acclaimed as a trailblazer of fine Italian cuisine, with reviews from the Chicago Tribune calling Spiaggia “the best high-end Italian restaurant between the coasts” and describing the Italian restaurant as “a jewel” and the food as “spectacular“.

While operating also his family’s restaurant, Mangia, in his native Kenosha, Wisconsin, Chef Mantuano took Spiaggia for a new spin in 2000, reshaping the restaurant’s traditional menu into “an exemplar of contemporary Italian cuisine,” with signature dishes such as Crescenza Cheese-Filled Pasta Pillows with Parmigiano-Reggiano, Brown Butter, Rosemary and Garlic, or the Succulent Roasted Turbot with Sunchoke Puree, Porcini Mushrooms and Veal Mushroom Sauce.

Tony Mantuano is the author, with co-author and wife Cathy Mantuano, of “The Spiaggia Cookbook: Eleganza Italiana in Cucina” (Chronicle Books 2004, awarded as one of the twenty-five best cookbooks of 2004 by Food & Wine). He also has appeared nationally on CNN and PBS, is a regular contributor to the local ABC, CBS and FOX affiliates in Chicago, and has been a guest on popular food talk shows, such as “The Frank DeCaro Show” and “Food Talk with Rocco DiSpirito.”

In 2004, Zagat Survey awarded Spiaggia the “Best Italian Restaurant in Chicago” and the restaurant was named one of the Top five in Chicago by Chicago Magazine. Chef Mantuano also received Chicago Tribune’s “Good Eating Award” and James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef: MidWest Award in 2005.

The recent launch of the fashionable Cafe Spiaggia, in the heart of the Magnificent Mile in Chicago, brought the dimension of the neighborhood cafe sanctuary and casual dining room in the fast pace of Michigan Avenue, creating a new well-known neighborhood Chicago favorite.

Chef-Partner Tony Mantuano and wine expert Cathy Mantuano, their cookbooks and their restaurants get plenty of rave reviews from the likes of Forbes blogs, Chicago Sun Times, Food & Wine, Condé Nast Traveler on Concierge.com, Epicurious.com and OpenTable.com.

Spiaggia’s address is One Magnificent Mile (on the corner of Michigan and Oak) - 980 North Michigan Avenue, Level 2, Chicago, Illinois 60611 - Google Map for your driving directions here below.

For more info on Tony Mantuano please check Spiaggia’s and Cafe Spiaggia’s web pages.

If you are interested in the Italian cookbooks published by Tony and Cathy Mantuano, you can purchase them online at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com. Wine Bar Food is also available at CrateandBarrel.com.

Or, if you live in the Chicago Area and can’t wait to catch up in person with Tony and Cathy, they have a book signing and demo scheduled on July 2nd beginning at 2 p.m. as part of the Taste of Chicago. They will be located outside the Zagat pavilion signing copies and showcasing recipes from Wine Bar Food - save the date!

This is getting quite long for a blog post, so we cut it here to introduce to you wine expert Cathy and Chef Tony Mantuano with their first gourmet recipe tomorrow!

Summertime is here, at least according to the calendar since today is June 21. Not much according to the season, as in Italy this year we experienced a very slow start of the season, with heavy showers up to a couple of days ago alternated to beautiful sunny days, but not so hot as we had up to last year (this is actually good news, as last year we couldn’t even breath for the high temperatures!).

What’s the most characteristic summertime food icon? Nine out of ten would say Ice Cream and sure gelato plays a big role in Italian gastronomy and food culture, so we decided to serve you a video on an event we hosted at the Academia Barilla Culinary School last month, for the Academia Barilla Short Film Awards, a satellite event to the well-know Brescello 2008 Film Festival.

During the gala event, Academia Barilla Executive Chef Nicola Bindini, helped by Chef Matteo Carboni of the Academia Barilla Chef Team, prepared and served to the participants of the event a very particular ice cream: liquid nitrogen ice cream.

We managed to get some video footage of the Academia Barilla Short Film Award Gala from TV Parma, who was partnering, filming and broadcasting the event. After some editing for the web format, and with the help of Chef Matteo Carboni whose voice-over comments the making of ice cream using the nitrogen freezing process, we are happy to present you the video on how to make a gourmet ice cream using liquid nitrogen.

Used in creative cuisine, as well as in many other applications including surgery, liquid nitrogen has the power to freeze instantly and, in the ice cream making process, really helps in reducing preparation time, while not affecting the ice cream flavor nor its organoleptic properties.

As Matteo comments, liquid nitrogen has a boiling point at -320 Fahrenheit degrees, and this is why the Chefs have to use protection gloves to handle the preparation. So please don’t try this at home before taking all due safety precautions.

The ice cream base is composed by milk, cream, sugar and egg yolks. As Chef Matteo Carboni reminds in the video, it is important to pour the liquid nitrogen very slowly and keep mixing the ingredients to avoid crystallization, and to keep the ice cream homogeneous and smooth.

All the fog you see in the video and in the picture above is the product of the fast evaporation of the liquid nitrogen, and it is safe to breath for the few minutes of preparation. As Matteo says, the ice cream made with liquid nitrogen has a fresher flavor and a finer and smoother texture than the traditional ice cream - yummy!

Happy summertime to all Italian Food Lovers from the Academia Barilla Culinary School!

Academia Barilla gets featured again as a must-do when traveling in Italy from Italian cooking website Cooking in Italy, who dedicates a full page to the culinary classes and cooking courses offered at the Academia Barilla Culinary School in Parma, Italy.

As reported by Cooking in Italy:

You will experience regional delicacies, authentic menus, exclusive tastings, one-of-a kind culinary tours to regional Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, Prosciutto Di Parma, Balsamic Vinegar of Modena, olive oil and wine producers to learn the intricacies and traditions of true Italian foods.

You will also be able to explore authentic Italian markets and gourmet stores, observe the cultural street life, and enjoy the wonderful shops, cafes and restaurants that Parma boasts. Instructed by top professional Italian chefs, countless food enthusiasts have been amazed by the prized elements and variety in our program.

We offer full hands-on training, group or individual classes, professional tasting techniques and instruction, authentic menus with specialty recipes and English-Italian translation in our modern, state-of-the art facilities.

Ditto! Still waiting?

Get in touch with Academia Barilla to organize your culinary learning vacation at the Academia Barilla Culinary School.
You can call toll free in the United States at +1 866 772.2233, in Italy at +39 0521 264060, or by email at academiabarillaculinary@barilla-usa.com.

See you in Parma this summer! By the way, if you are planning a culinary tour of Italy, we suggest you read the travel advisory tips offered by Cooking in Italy on their website on “Choosing the right cooking holiday” - among which the latest tip, that goes “Plan as far ahead as possible. Many of the more popular cooking holidays book up quickly!”

Ditto, again!