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?

We have been blogging about celebrity Chefs for some time now, and we are finally proud to announce the launch of the Italian Food Lovers Chef Networks!

Thanks to the never-stopping activity of Academia Barilla’s Italian Culinary Specialist Team in the United States, and to their relations with several top and celebrity Italian Chefs, we put together a network of guest Chefs who will be contibuting to our Italian Food Lovers blog sharing their Italian food love, passion, experience and, of course, gourmet recipes and special Chef’s cooking tips!

Each month we will introduce a new Italian Food Lovers Guest Chef, who will then start contributing on regular monthly basis. We have a nice line-up of celebrity gourmet Chef who will share their culinary secrets with us.

No anticipations, just get ready to meet our first Chef Network Guest next Monday, Chef Douglas D’Avico from Trattoria n. 10 Restaurant in Chicago. Welcome to the Italian Food Lovers Chef Network series!

If you live in the Chicago Area, try not to miss tomorrow, Thursday April 17, Gourmet Food and Wine Pairing, a gourmet event at Sam’s Wines in Lincoln Park. Academia Barilla will be at the event to offer to the participants some tasting samples of Italian gourmet specialties.

Sam’s Wines is very famous for its large selection of fine wines and spirits, and for their great gourmet food store, where of course you can find Academia Barilla’s fine Italian specialties.

Italian Culinary Specialist and Iron Chef judge Mario Rizzotti will be on location with a gourmet selection of Italian specialty food to match the incredibly tasty Sam’s wines selection.

Sam’s Wines event will be held at their Chicago Lincoln Park flagship store in Clybourn Corridor District near Goose Island, from 5 to 8pm on April 17.

The address to the location is 1720 North Marcey Street, Chicago, IL 60614; the Google map here below should be of help for detailed driving directions. For more info call Sam’s Wines at +1 (312) 664-4394.

Last March 29 Academia Barilla Italian Culinary Specialist and Iron Chef judge Mario Rizzotti joint forces with the Share the Spirit Foundation in Chicago for a gourmet fund raising event aimed at learning and understanding all nuances about Italian extra virgin olive oil.

Educating Americans about real Italian food is what Mario Rizzotti does best. Mario loves to teach how to distinguish real Italian products from fake, including Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and Prosciutto di Parma, but he really loves to talk about Italian olive oil and balsamic vinegar of modena. Here is a previously published video of Mario with a few key tips on olive oil - enjoy!

We want to spend a couple of words on the Share the Spirit Foundation, as we strongly feel close to their mission. Share the Spirit was formed in 2003 to “provide help for those in need.” With the help of many contributors, the Foundation has collected thousands of dollars to help kids, families and those too ill to help themselves.

Among the charity activities organized by Share the Spirit in the last years, a close work with schools and social service agencies to provide funds to those who need a hand. Share the spirit has distributed thousand of socks to kids, and also bought hiking boots and scheduled outdoor camps for kids who have never had the opportunity to experience a summer camp. In 2005 Share the Spirit coordinated with the US troops in Iraq to distribute shoes to children in that area and in 2006, the Foundation became involved with efforts to assist families rebuilding after hurricane Katrina.

We really like Share the Spirit’s approach - they know charity work is a daily struggle, so their team vowed to coordinate the efforts of the Foundation with a personal challenge of their own team members, challenging themselves physically by hiking the Grand Canyon, walking the Colorado Trail and backpacking in the high country of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.

These activities are not also help Share the Spirit’s team member get trained to face other fund raising activities through sport, such as participating to the Avon Breast Cancer 3-day-walk, raising awareness and money for breast cancer - this was actually the moment when share the Spirit was born.

Last March 29, Academia Barilla teamed up with Share the Spirit, with a tasting event held at the Quartino Ristorante in downtown Chicago, and all proceeds from this event went to support the activities of the Share the Spirit Foundation.

While Mario Rizzotti was educating the crowd on authentic Italian food, Cicchetti Wine Bar was offering a gourmet buffet with finger food dishes such as assorted bruschette, Chef select salumeria, veal meatballs, eggplant parmigiana, passed assorted Neopolitan pizzas and house-made biscotti.

You can support the Share the Spirit Foundation, too. Just visit their website and try not to miss one of their upcoming events. You can also support the Foundation by making a donation - remember that Share the Spirit is a a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization, and your contribution is tax deductible.