Madame Ratatouille – Truffle Innovation
1. Silvia and Claudia , a friendships , food and music history .Can you tell us your story so linked to food and kitchen?The beginning , your passion , your own characteristics, why and how have you developed this love for cooking and how you make it?
Silvia: My passion for cooking was born with the first baby food for my son.I wanted to make something healthy and diversified.After that I decided to use the same approach for all the other members of my family according to their taste and necessities. So I decided to start reading and buying recipes books and to follow some food blogger to get some inspiration . I discovered that I was creative in cooking and so I went on cooking good food for my family .Quite soon I understood that what I was doing was not given.
By publishing on my blog I began receiving a lot of like and a lot of people started asking for advices.Today even my mother when I send her the photos of my recipes is amazed and tells me:”from whom did you get it?”.
Perhaps, the reason why I am what I am today stands on my mother . Due to her job , she had never the time for cooking .So, that snack, she bought in a coffe bar when I was a kid, I turned in an healthy “made by me” snack for my children .
I also must say that my grandmother influenced myself well.
Seeing every day my grandma rolling out the dough using a rolling pin and cooking for all the family exactly as if she was making a real job, has been a huge example for me .
She taught me to say I love you , I take care of you thanks to the recipes made with care for your family .
Over the years and also due to a bad disease I decided to put more care on choosing ingredients and on the preparation of food , giving preference to healthier way of cooking and experimenting light and vegetarian recipes.
Claudia: I have always been surrounded by the ingredients and flavors of the central Italy classic cooking.
I spent hours and whole days with my maternal grandmother cooking the weekly lunches for the family.
I remember the dough rolled with rolling pin , the filling of ravioli and cappelletti , the floured tagliatelle , lupin in water and legumes in preparation.
At home I must say that my mother has never spared herself on cooking.Besides the weekly preparation ,our Sunday lunches were a triumph of traditional recipes.
My passion for dessert was born from a kid toy .
The “sweet oven” was a very famous toy in 80’s to keep growing pastry chef girls entertained !
At that time I just was waiting to grow up for having a real oven to make new desserts.
In my 30’s the pseudonym “Madame Ratatouille” was born from the meeting of 3 elements :my passion, the well-known animated film and a special soup created together with my nephew Alessandro , unfortunately I lost him when he was only 6 years old .
As time went by my big passion for shortcrust pastry, biscuits and cupboards cakes and last but not least my gluttony took me to sweet and savory leavened products .
2. Everybody knows that women together are a force of nature .
You are very different from each other , one more health -conscious and the second a lover of sweets.This dichotomy becomes complementary ?
Can you tell us how are you different and in what do you complete yourselves in your friendship and in cooking?
How much your family of origin and your current family influenced your ove for cooking?
Silvia e Claudia together: We have in common the desire for good home food , but also the pleasure of sight .
Each recipe is made together and it becomes a study to present our recipe at its best :tastier by Claudia and healthier by Silvia , but always in perfect harmony between us !
We share a passion for life and good food preferably with family and friends .
We love to transform a moment of daily life as the cooking with four hands in moments of lightness.
We are deeply convinced that it is very important to find the good life again ! We rediscover in our recipes the importance of simple but good and healthy things as our grandmothers cooking !That’s happiness for us!Tht’s the reason why we listen good music when we cook and also we dance just a little bit , because cooking while having fun is what we love!
Nearly always our children are with us , they are the very first to taste and criticize our dishes!
Both of us we have different job:one of us is psychologist and the other a freelancer.
But nevertheless we manage to find some time to dedicate to our passion: cooking . It helps us to release tensions of daily life adding to the food a pinch of irony and madness!
3. Please tell us your new recipes you have made thinking to T&C truffle innovation project !
Your creativity took you to make two different recipes or to a unique one made together?
Did T&C truffle products help you and how?
Which kind of music would you match to it?
The recipe: Silvia e Claudia
We have tried to make an easy and vegetarian recipe within everyone’s reach .Truffle mix itself with the taste of broccoli and black cabbage , and we have just used seasonal products .
We have done it together mixing our ideas . Basically we have used T&C products making a béchamel with White truffle butter condiment adding fine white truffle cream to add taste a little bit more. Over the béchamel we have laid down a broccoli and black cabbage quenelle using white truffle olive oil and at the end we have decorated the dish with T&C summer black truffle slices.
At the end we have made the recipe crisp with fries onion and drops of carrots puree.
We have had a lot of fun also while we have given the name at our recipe.
We called it “TAO of broccoli and truffle”this name not only describes our recipe but also our partnership.
It is a symbol of harmony where two different , necessary and opposite energies complement each other , exactly as we are”
We must say that the background music that made our bodies move was “Cry to me “ BY Solomon Burke .
Silvia&Claudia
