Cooking for Leonardo da Vinci: this is the challenge accepted by the chef Cristina Bowerman who conceived and created an exclusive and unique menu in homage to the Tuscan Genius. “Leonardo was a man open to the world”, said the chef from the stage of the Teatro della Misericordia, on April 11th at the Leonardo Genio del Vino event, underlining Leonardo’s extraordinary contemporaneity also in terms of gastronomy.
For chef Bowerman: “Leonardo Da Vinci was a pioneer of pairing food and wine and immediately opened up to ingredients and techniques that were not only Italian”. Thus was born the menu “Culinary visions from the future”, a multisensory culinary journey where food becomes creative, intellectual, food for thought, and knowledge of new techniques and cultures.
“I imagined cooking for Leonardo da Vinci. A multifaceted genius, so projected into the future that his vision of the world crossed the boundaries of his time. He dedicated his life to overcoming the concept of limits and his research still appears today as a vision from the future. His boundless work is a challenge and a journey through time ”.
From this starting point, unusual and visionary dishes are born such as the stuffed ‘parchment’ with lobster mousse, the mini tuna cones, ice cream with Tuscan olives and grapes, or the quail’s legs in apricot chutney in which the shapes play with the structures and flavors. The menu is also a roundup of curious ingredients, contaminations and gustatory stimuli: coppa di testa, fennel pollen and crème fraîche, fennel infusion, beef tartare sandwich with spicy orange sauce, capers and flying fish roe with wasabi, scallops with bone marrow and fermented pears, pea and lemon sauce.
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A journey through time and space, never forgetting its Tuscan origins, such as the puff pastry with tomato, Tuscan beans, caviar with powdered vinegar, or pigeon risotto, marzolino cheese and rosemary with black garlic gnocchetti, broad beans and candied lemon. And closing in sweetness with mini frangipani with white chocolate and wasabi, grape jelly or tartellette with red wine and red fruit. A tasting in 19 courses in which colors, textures and tastes alternate, capable of stimulating every sense: just like Leonardo would like.
“Even the kitchen is able to open up a temporal gap with the future and does so through the senses. So I created a menu that was a tribute to Leonardo’s genius and his life. With original, multi-sensory dishes, where flavors play with forms, technique is in dialogue with the raw material, science with art and agriculture. These are my culinary visions from the future.”
