Good morning everyone, I'm Giuseppe Iannotti, chef and owner
of Kresios restaurant. We're in Telese Terme. Telese Terme is a small town I was born in, under the province of Benevento. We're here today to present you one of the dishes that made the history of the restaurant, it's spaghetto allo scoglio (seafood). The traditional recipe calls for the use of fresh fish of the day, often with bones, shells, like mussels or clams. It's the famous dish where you find pasta on the bottom and a mountain of fish placed on top. Spaghetto allo scoglio by Kresios is a pasta that is seasoned with a reduction of the fish that is seasonally available. The average we are always considering is around fifty, but there is weeks when there is thirty, weeks when we have forty and weeks when we get over fifty types, exactly because there are times in the year when some species are available. The goal is to focus on taste and solve the problems that are intrinsic to the
traditional recipe, meaning the fact there is bones
and shells that somewhat bother during the preparation and most of all when eating. The approach in Kresios is choral, meaning no one has a well defined role, so the goal we have is to participate collectively, just as if it was an organized chaos,
to the creation of recipes. Now we're here, together with Eugenio
and all of the guys, cleaning the fish that is available this morning. Inside the selection, we have caramote prawns, mantis shrimps, monkfish, scampi, red prawns, cuttlefish, squid, clams, Venus clams, smooth clams, mussels, sea bass, spider crabs, these are some of the ones we have in front of us.
For the fish that has gills, like the monkfish, sea bass or gilthead bream, we're going to scale them, remove the eyes, remove the blood, that is found
under the bone, after removing the guts. We're then scraping, so that this blood can come out. This is done most of all to avoid adding a bitter taste to the preparation, because the final goal of the spaghetto allo scoglio is to obtain
a sea taste explosion in your mouth. Let's clean the bivalves. Let's somewhat clean the occasional sand. Let's clean the shellfish.
Cleaning the shellfish means to only remove the intestines, then depending on what we're going to do, we're using them
with the shell or the head. It is key to have a good quantity of red prawns, because it is those that after a couple of consecutive
extractions will give us the color for our sauce. Many people get enchanted when they see the color of the final dish, and it is due exactly to the extraction of the coral inside the head of the prawns. We're cleaning the cuttlefish,
the squid and flying squid. Just as with the others, the goal is to remove the eyes, mouth and guts. Sometimes when the liver is big, especially when extremely fresh,
but that means it was caught two or
one and a half hour before, we're using the guts as well, the noble ones, meaning liver, or the gonads, depending on the season. This is the last rockfish. We're removing the head, and from here
we're going to the laboratory. We're moving to what is the laboratory, where apart from researching and developing, we are today making scoglio and all of the basic preparations. Once cleaned, all of the fish will be toasted in a big pot. Oil and garlic, which we'll brown well, so we're toasting it and moving it around our casserole and we're adding the fish in a certain order, this is what I normally do,
balancing in terms of taste. Each of us should know what each ingredient brings - what the mantis shrimps bring, what the molluscs bring, what the bivalves bring, and this balancing makes it so that later, with regards to the reduction that we're going to make,
what you want to have as prevalent. The goal is not to have anything prevail, meaning to obtain a sort of symphony from the sea. The order that I usually apply is to add the mantis shrimps straight away, and caramote prawns and scampi, since those are the ones with the most resistant shell,
so we are somewhat toasting them in order to allow them to somewhat bring out the sea,
even just from the shell. Once we added these, we're adding all of the shells part, meaning Venus
clams, smooth clams, clams and mussels. After those, we're adding all of the other fish. The fish we're adding is someway useful to protect from direct heat, so we're starting to toast, slowly stirring, all of the fish that is inside the sauce. This toasting process will last for about 20 minutes to half an hour, depending on the quantity of fish
that is present, because we need to make sure all of the fish that is in is toasted. Once we toasted it, we're adding ice. Ice is a key component in all of
the mother sauces. What I always tell, mostly to the neophytes or those who are approaching the world of gastronomy is that the chef is the one who rules the temperatures. Temperature is our tool of control. In order to make a great broth you need to start with cold water and a piece of meat, or with a piece of fish with cold vegetables, because being there no sealing given by heat, the temperature starts extracting taste
and gives it to the broth. Once the ice is added, I'm allowing it to cook on a low flame for 8 hours or 7 hours, depending on the day and the quantity of fish. After 7 hours, we're adding more ice. There will surely be a reduction. These 7-8 hours correspond more or less to the end of the work day. So, after the first day of work, we're resting it overnight and adding ice again. The whole pot is infusing in the refrigerator.
In this instance, every time we add ice,
we want to start again from zero, so we are continuously extracting. The following morning, we're going to put everything again on the flame and at that point we're adding the tomato paste. This preparation calls for 8-10 more
hours of cooking. After 10 hours of cooking, we're going to add ice again, and at this point we're going
to keep it on the flame for 7-8 more hours so that it starts reducing. We're almost at two thirds of the preparation, now. Everything that is fibers and bones, the fish is by now unrecognizable, we can't almost tell the prawn from the flying squid. Fish with bones can't be recognized anymore.
You can find some bones, you can find some bite, but it all fell apart, so that is a sign we are working well in extracting. At this point, we're going to filter the must. Once we filtered all of our must, it is reduced by half. We're ready to cook our spaghetto. Boiling water. We're immersing the spaghetti
for a minute and a half, a couple minutes. We're draining the spaghetti and add it to the sauce that we just extracted. This will allow us to cook it
as a risotto and allow for an even greater
explosion and reduction. Here it is. Scoglio by Kresios is the synthesis of the sea. It is tradition,
but at the same time great innovation. The work made in extraction is for us concentration of taste, it is the model we always apply to all of the preparation we have. The quantity we usually serve is a quantity of 30 grams, 40 grams. A bigger quantity might even taste unpleasant, since the power of the taste we managed to extract is really the maximum.
Greetings from Giuseppe Iannotti, thank you and see you soon!
