MANILA, Philippines - For five nights in August, EDSA Shangri-La's Paparazzi restaurant ran the "Il Carnevale Dell' Amore," a festival that featured the flavors of fine Venetian cuisine, combined with the revelry of an Italian carnival, and music by world-acclaimed singers from Venice.

Italian Executive Chef Salvatore de Vincentis cooked a risotto dish with porcini mushroom as part of his six-course degustation dinner.

The chefs of Paparazzi

Online dictionaries define degustation as sampling small portions of dishes in a menu.

During the press preview on August 19, Chef Salvatore served four items. First was a rich buffalo mozzarella salad with sweet and sour mixed pepper coulis which made a light appetizer.

Buffalo mozzarella salad with sweet and sour mixed pepper coulis

It was followed by the porcini risotto with truffle oil and the roasted sea bass with mashed potato and fennel sauce.

Roasted sea bass with fennel sauce

A strawberry and chocolate dessert with a chocolate cup with liquor-laced gelatin on the side capped off this Venetian meal.

Mille-feuille of strawberry and chocolate layered with Chantilly cream

Chef Salvatore hails from Sorento, south of Italy. Depending on which region one is from, the cuisine, he said, can vary according to ingredients.

"We have 20 regions and each region has a different type of cuisine. In the south, we do more pasta and use light ingredients. North of Italy, in places like Venice, we do risotto-type dishes with porcini mushrooms and a bit of truffle oil. Venetian cuisine is more like polenta (a dish made from boiled cornmeal), meat and rice. In the south, it's a little bit light--pasta and fish," he said.

According to Chef Salvatore, Venetian and Italian cuisine have changed much from being very traditional. "Now, they call it a nouvelle cuisine, the new cuisine."

Ingredients all ready

He said herbs and liquor are used a lot to create Italian dishes.

"We use a lot of herbs in the dishes and liquor like the grappa which is very famous in Venice. We do the Tiramisu (a wafer-dessert) with the grappa, we do the risotto with white or red wine, and the scallops with lemoncito which is another liquor."

Chef Salvatore showed us how to cook the risotto, a traditional Italian rice dish cooked with broth and flavored with Parmesan cheese. He used arbollo rice which he claimed is the best kind of rice in Italy. He ladled a bit of vegetable stock into the pan of risotto to make sure there is enough liquid to cook the rice, stirring as he did so. He admitted that "cooking is an art. No passion, no cooking."

But he revealed that the secret to the dish is the truffle oil, which brings out the flavor of the porcini mushroom.

Very expensive truffle oil

"Truffle is made out of mushroom. It comes out once a year. Very expensive. Almost 2,000 euros."

The truffle oil succeeded in punctuating the flavors of the risotto with porcini mushroom, and this starch-packed meal from the risotto makes it heavy on the belly, but no less satisfying for Filipinos accustomed to home-cooked porridge that settles perfectly on a rainy day.

Risotto with porcini mushroom

Risotto with porcini mushroom

Ingredients

1/4 cup chopped shallots
20 grams butter
sliced porcini mushrooms
60 grams arbollo rice
white wine
salt
pepper
vegetable stock
truffle oil
cream
20 grams Parmesan cheese

Procedure

Saute chopped shallots in butter.

Add porcini mushrooms. Add arbollo rice.

Flavor with white wine. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Add vegetable stock to cook rice, and stir constantly.

Add butter for creamier texture, and a dash of truffle oil to bring out mushroom flavor.

When rice is almost done, add cream and Parmesan cheese.

Serve.

All photos courtesy of ANC.