Nature, research and balance in Franco Montaldo’s au naturel cuisine
A home chef, Franco Montaldo loves to educate about the beautiful and the good in the kitchen. With courses and experience-à-porter, the young nomadic chef uses ingredients spontaneously in his recipes, never ceasing to play.
Where did your career as a chef come from?
Originally from Milan, half from Puglia and half from Campania, I live in Bologna where I cook as a chef at home in private homes, organize amateur cooking classes and work as a private chef for Casa Bertagni, guest house in the heart of Bologna.
Plants and Nature: an anecdote in your life/profession.
When I can I forage. I am a huge lover of nature, which really offers us everything. I like to go to parks, somewhat wild expanses away from dwellings and collect the plants I know, from aromatic herbs to herbs like pimpinella, parietaria, Venus’s navel. I like the idea of being able to retrieve herbs that you don’t find in the classic trade, from the greengrocer or in supermarkets. I see foraging as a way to procure what nature spontaneously offers us.
When do you feel “healthy and wild”?
The first thing that pops into my mind? Rolling in the grass in the meadows downhill. It’s something I still do because it’s wonderful, it reminds me of childhood, when I used to go to the mountains with my family and roll over meadows, with very high grass, and then lie down “a star” creating the silhouette within the meadow.
If I said “Share Your Nature,” what would you say to me?
Sincerity, purity, transparency.
Being natural to me means being pure, essential, sincere. Maybe not for everyone it is easy to show yourself for who you really are, without heeding other people’s judgment of your way of being and behaving, but that is what I constantly try to do.
Nature is pure. I feel close to nature and try to imitate it in its purity. Even in Pure&Food ‘s kitchen, there is nothing hyper-processed. We have an exceptional raw material, just a little processing is enough to make you feel the purity of the taste and flavors of that ingredient, without being there too much processing. Food is something pure. Pure understood as purity, but also as simplicity. True, sometimes you look for contrasts in flavors and textures, but at the same time I try to leave each ingredient in its being, as it is.
Can you tell us your recipe?
Reading the ingredients of your Remedies, some pairings came to me: in the Remedium Boost, used in this recipe, there is lemongrass, which in Asian cuisine is always paired with fish, a pairing that I in turn wanted to propose.
