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This is the fifth article of a ten-part series featuring interviews with chefs competing in the S.Pellegrino Cooking Cup 2014. S.Pellegrino Cooking Cup 2014.
Luciano Monosilio is one of the 10 talented chefs competing in the S.Pellegrino Cooking Cup 2014. If you are familiar with the competition, you'll know it's a special regatta featuring a race-within-a-race. While sailors race across the Venetian lagoon, chefs will be below deck crafting dishes for a panel of judges that includes Gaston Acurio and Helena Rizzo.
The S.Pellegrino Cooking Cup 2014 will take place June 13th to 15th and will offer chef contestants a change to win the S.Pellegrino & Acqua Panna Young Chef of the Year Award, as well as the People's Choice and Critic's Choice awards sponsored by Acqua Panna.
In anticipation of the big event, FDL got a chance to catch up with Chef Monosolio from Pipero al Rex restaurant in Rome. Here's what he had to say about his cooking philosophy:
Describe yourself in three keywords.
Essential, good, clean
How would you define your cooking style?
My cooking style can be defined as free because I don't have a real master. What I do is try to make what my mind thinks, always respecting my origins.
Which is your signature dish? Can you briefly describe it?
My signature dish is raw duck, mustard and apple cream. It's like a beef tartare, but we do this with the duck, we put the raw duck tartare between two crispy slices of bread and we serve with marinated apple and apple and mustard cream.
Who or what is your main source of inspiration? Why?
I take inspiration from everything.
Tradition and innovation: which is the relationship with these words in your cuisine?
I like all styles - in my cuisine it's very easy to find both. I always say that I must be free.
What is fine dining for you? How do you think the new generations are changing this idea and making it evolving?
It's like a window where it is possible to find all the new chefs and the concepts of this world. For me, the new generations have to try to change this idea and make a new generation of chef and journalists.
Next big trends related to food and conviviality?
Maybe we are going to eat on the floor (laughs). I really don't know.
The food you’d happily die eating.
Spaghetti with clams.
If you weren’t a chef, what would you be?
If I weren't myself, I'd sitll like to be a chef. I'd like to be Enrico Crippa from Ristorante Piazza Duomo in Alba, Italy.
