The philosophy of 'Cook the Mountain'
can be lived 100% here. What does it mean to 'Cook
the Mountain' in a restaurant? It means that you have to work
on biodiversity, and biodiversity today. We have about 400
to 500 different types of mountain herbs, roots, mushrooms, berries
and vegetables. This is called golden saxifrage.
In the past, it was used in medicine. it is quite bitter, so it must be
dosed and we'll also marinate it. It will be an element
of the spring salad and it is surrounded
by another herb which is an ivy. And here we also start to see
the first shoots of nettle too. We're going to collect them and
add them in the spring salad. We have to follow nature, we have to take what nature gives us
now in this moment. Obviously doing 'Cook the Mountain' is the most complicated thing
because nature in the mountains sleeps four months a year. It's the funny thing
we always say: winter for us is the time
to think, to think about new dishes,
to talk to suppliers and then spring begins. It's my favorite season. Then the motto is run, run, run,
because the nature wakes up, it's there,
and throws out all of these beautiful things,
those beautiful wild herbs, beautiful flowers. And you have to take that
when nature gives it to you. I mean you can't say no,
I'll go tomorrow, no, you have to go now. Here we are picking
larch pine cones, a plant that is part
of the family of Pinaceae, so the distinction
is just like pine which is not leafy
but needle-shaped. These little pine cones afterward we will peel off
all its layers one by one and marinate and we'll serve
these on one of the aperitifs that we serve in Atelier
which is a tartlet and the green part
is used to create the base itself. Then the day starts at 06:45 am, many times, except
when it rains, so the boys leave and
go foraging with Mauro. This of course happens while
working with four very important pillars: one pillar is no greenhouses,
one pillar is no olive oil, one pillar is no citrus,
and a pillar is no waste, which is becoming
increasingly important today. With these four pillars we must work throughout the year
and follow nature's dictates. Here we have shield-leaf sorrel. We're collecting its leaves with
the stem, as well which is very acidic
and is an element that we care a lot for. As we don't have the possibility
of using lemons in the mountains, this is an element which in the spring allows us
to acidify our dishes. Foraging for us starts
from the bottom, now in Brunico we are at about
600-800 meters and from there we start to go up
to high altitude to have long-term products,
to be able to manage them too and above all to load
for the coming winter. Here we have watercress.
This herb is quite fleshy, balsamic,
and this herb will be washed
and lightly seasoned since it's the spicy part
of our salad. Now we are going to collect
some pine needles, then we're going to mix them with some mountain butter. We are
cutting the slightly outermost part, trying not to affect the plant too much.
We'll use the green part that will give this aromatic note to one of our dishes
which is a spaghettone. This daily work that is foraging, of course is a very important thing for us and everything
that is harvested in the morning is served the same evening. This of course gives you
a crazy freshness, you can taste every herb, of every berry, of every fungus,
respecting the rules of nature. Welcome to my home. With the work that's
been done here we created a new place.
It's not a restaurant anymore. First of all these are two parts,
these are two souls living in this house. One is the soul of a 1900s
house, completely protected by
the Fine Arts, with an ambiance
where you feel at home. And then there's this new structure,
the new part, where we created this omakase which mirrors a bit of what you live
in a farmhouse. There's a kitchen, it's hot,
there's a glass of wine, there are people, there is live fire
and you have some amazing chats. Then there's the team,
the brigade. What's good about this family working here is the age, an average of 26, with
two very important people in front: one is Mauro Siega in the kitchen, the
other is Lukas Gerges in the dining room, managing in some magic way the
whole wellbeing of the customer when they come to visit us. Good morning everyone!
Tonight in the kitchen we have A table of two. Allergy-free. Then in the dining room we have a 2,
for her, a no meat menu, fish is fine, normal for him. At 09:15 punctual, arrives
the first point in common with the dining room
and kitchen, we have the meeting, we have the first briefing in the morning
talking about each customer, explaining the needs
of each client. This is really how the customer arrives
and lives this moment of staying in our home from the first to the last moment
of the evening - or of the lunch. Enjoy your work! The menu changes daily because the ingredients
change every day. If it rains three days, four days,
five days, we can't make any spring salad because we have no herbs. We create the menu again,
basically starting from scratch. Here we now separate the leaves the part of the larch buds
that we collected, in such a way
as to put them in oil. Being in the oil, they don't oxidize, but the oil absorbs what is the
balsamic part itself and typical of the pine cone, so that later we can
place them on top of our tartlet. Putting together all that
we've collected during the foraging, we move on
to the creation of the dishes,
like the tartlet with spruce and white fat. So here we are creating the dough
for the tartlets using everything that is the fat inside our animals, butter,
egg and water, a part of salt and let's finish with some
Lorentz flour. Here we have a custard with cream, egg, a part of honey inside,
a grapevine-based oil created
with white spruce gems and the needles.
Everything is blended together. Subsequently, the dough
that rested is simply stretched and
we're making a few holes, otherwise it would swell and now let's bake it in the oven. After baking the appearance
of the tartlets turns out this way.
We're lightly brushing them with yolk on the inside. Then we are adding
our pine custard. Now we are baking it in the oven
for 4-5 minutes at 185°C. So now we're finishing our tartlet with these layers of larch gems which have been marinated
with grapeseed oil, which absorbed its balsamic part. And this is our tartlet, the beginning of the 'Cook
the Mountain' voyage. We're now taking out all the needles of our pines
to make the flavored butter, which
will be one of the items for our spaghetti. The butter, which comes from Masi, from our dear friend, Christoff, who lives here in Riscone. He produces for us 4 to 6 kg, 6 kg if we are very lucky,
of butter per week. So here we are going to superimpose
the part of the needles with the butter part
and we're working it with the Pacojet, which will mix the butter part
with the needles so it takes this aroma
and balsamic notes of the pine. So we have our butter,
which emulsified with the needles that, as you
can see, are still present inside. Now we're passing it through a sieve, so that the impurity part does not
end up in the dish, so that only the part of aromatic butter
that has taken this green color given by tree needles is left. What about pasta? By now, it's become internationally
the symbol of Italy. But of course we go back
to the mountains, using a pasta that really
mirrors 'Cook the Mountain', a Felicetti
single-grain spaghettone. The pasta factory is at 1200 meters ASL in Predazzo. Mountain water, mountain air and we try to give it
a little touch of internationalism. So here we have this spaghetti
that we're cooking as a risotto with a broth made with buttermilk and scraps
from our fish, we're going to cream it
with the butter that we made with the needles collected
this morning, so it's nice and aromatic. So let's create the emulsion by releasing the spaghetti starches with the butter fat and broth. A pinch of salt
and finally let's add the first buds
of our pines, cut very finely and marinated
with grapeseed oil to ensure that all the balsamic part
remains trapped in the needles. Now on to the plating. On top of the spaghetti, fresh roe from of our trout and chars
that we have collected during the winter.
They were marinated with lemon thyme oil and
we added the first stems of the sorrel we collected this morning. The cream made with the broth
of our fish. Let's add some white currants
to give it a fruity, acidic part,
therefore fresh. And we give it an aromatic part
with bay leaf powder, so that the heat from the spaghetti can release the balsamic scents
of the bay leaf. We like to experiment with all
the flavors of the world, that is, to go to other countries,
taste and then to bring cooking methods,
storage methods, but always using our products. So to give it this very
intense flavour we make ourselves a bit wider,
we bring a bit of internationalism into it,
something of Japan with a katsobushi made with
river trout. The dish must have something
like yin and yang, something that cleans
and something that gives flavour and with every bite getting the same feeling
of freshness and feel like wanting to keep going
and eat the whole plate. You can achieve this only
when you keep balance in the dishes, as I said, yin and yang. Here we have our pantry, which is the work we do during
the spring and summer. In the coldest times, meaning winter periods,
it provides us with our survival. Here are all the vegetables,
fruits, berries and seeds and the part of the mushrooms
that we store in different ways under acetic base
and under brine. We also have some sweet and sour
and the base for our spring salad. Here we have for example
the first asparagus from Terlano for this year and confit garlic,
edamame that are stored in a soy solution with lentils, pickled elderflower, berries, to then move to the sweeter side of what we make with our preserves. All of our compotes, black walnuts
in such a way as to give a slightly more important note
to our sweet part of the menu, as well, using everything that
comes from the mountains. Then something special
is spring salad that really changes every day on the basis of what we find, however, the dressing also changes
from time to time. So let's create the
dressing for our spring salad. Let's add some eggs
from our farmers, some marinated in a soy sauce
that we make and some boiled, and we take the hard boiled yolks. We incorporated some tarragon vinegar, salt, a mustard from our farmers very spicy, very aromatic. These fermented plums
for the fruity part, a bit sour, and we're going to
whip it with this clarified butter and we're flavoring it with a powder of fermented
mountain tomatoes, so the butter will take this reddish color. A pinch of salt and we're going to add an acidic part
with this whey, which is the strained part of yogurt,
a yogurt from our farmer. We add some salt to it
and leave it to strain. The sauce is now ready. Let's start composing
our spring salad from the base,
meaning all the vegetables that we stored over the winter. So we're recalling this passage from winter to spring. These were stored in different ways, we're now tossing them on the grill to give it a slight smoky note. We make sure the coals
are nice and hot, without too much flame,
and we toss it quickly. So we're seasoning our vegetables, tossed on the embers, with simply oil, emulsified with peasant mustard and let's compose the base
of the salad with all of the preserved vegetables. So this spring asparagus mix, last spring's garlic cuts, a part of spring onion,
some radicchio, some Jerusalem artichokes,
some mountain potatoes. The real waste of a vegetable, these roots of leek washed
in the water to wipe them off the dirt
and then fried. Various seeds, here we have
pumpkin seeds, flax seeds and sunflower seeds,
which are simply roasted, and will add the savory part
to the dish. And we finish with these potatoes,
which are grated just as if we were making rosti, a typical dish of these areas and then in this case
it was fried. This is the richest and heaviest part
of the salad. So now let's start
with the fresher part, the part of the herbs
that we collected, we always slightly season it
with this basic dandelion dressing, trying to be as delicate
as possible. And we are now going
to compose the salad, to give some structure and
different notes of acidity and of aromaticity, with some wood sorrel, sorrel, we have some yarrow
and spicy cress. The first balsamic parts and
the first flowers: some pimpernel and golden saxifrage, so that each aromatic part is created
in every bite of the salad itself. Let's complete everything
with mushrooms and on top, with the crispy part
of the first spring nettle
that was simply fried. And here is the first
asparagus from Terlano that we're going to use
in our menu. We're finishing it with the
scraps of our herbs, we dried them and created this
powder that enriches the salad. It is served to the customer and finished with this sauce
based on tomato scraps and marinated eggs
from our farmers. And we're finishing it with topfnudeln. Then we created this dish
with lamb. We're going to bone this lamb,
a 12 kg lamb and today we're going to cook
the part of the loin, this part which is located here,
towards the hips. We'll cook it on the embers and serve it as our main course. The offal is also
a very important part of our menu, we use the whole animal
and we're going to serve them as the second course of our main course. This is also a period of transit, because the meat of the lamb
during the winter is much more delicate
than during the summer. In spring, when the lambs first
go out on the pastures, they eat fresh herbs, wild herbs, the meat becomes tastier, becomes more intense. Here we have our lamb
that has been dissected, we have both sides of the thighs which will subsequently
be marinated and will become the hams
that are maturing here on the side. The part of the back anyway, then the part of the two loins
with the ribs is left here to dry for a few hours more and then we're going to remove
only the part we're going to need. Francesco will cook our lamb from
Valle Isarco directly in the coals we're going to give it
around ten heat hits, in and out of the fire, so that the cooking gets
inside slowly, gently, so that the wood can also play its part. He's cooking it and keeps
turning and moving it many times, so that the cooking is uniform. After these passages on the embers
in a fairly direct way, and the various resting times, Francesco is portioning the lamb. Some noisette butter on top. Let's start plating
our main course with this kimchi that
we have created with vegetables and fruit and
fermented for about two weeks which gives this fruity
and acidic note. The lamb loin on top. And let's complete with this salad made of aromatic herbs and spring flowers. The final part is
the cooking fond of the animal flavored with ransoms berries. And here's the lamb served
with spring salad. I'm glad to finally see
this beautiful book by Italia Squisita about the diversity
of pasta. Among 100 colleagues, I chose to make a pasta with
garlic, oil and chili, using a wild garlic, ransoms, which is an awesome
product from this area, that's why it became the 'mountain
version' of garlic, oil and chilli. I had you ring the bell
of the Villa, I opened the door
to my new world and here today you have been able
to experience a day of ours, a day in the Atelier Moessmer -
Norbert Niederkofler, with a very young brigade which is no longer a brigade
but a family. Then I also showed you
the philosophy of how we work. We respect nature,
we respect the environment, we respect manufacturers
and above all we try not to create waste and this is to me the future
of Italian cuisine. Big greetings to ItaliaSquisita. Thank you for spending
this day with us, and to all of you out there
who see this reportage: come and visit us, come four times a year minimum,
because that's how you see the colours, flavours and all of
the beauty of nature. And in the end, as we say
in South Tyrol -
