Restaurateur
Saveliy Libkin

Pappardelle with Pecorino and a drop of the best Tuskan oil. The best recommendations of those who are an experts in making and eating of pasta. It is immodest to compliment, but in this case I liked it too.

P.S. on the video is 24-month old Parmesan, but I’m writing about Pecoriniно because I tasted pasta exactly in Pecorino cheese.

Тuscan picnic on thу roadsideof Deribasovskaya street…

Yesterday in the «Steakhouse» was over the Festival of Tuscan cuisine. The first prize  — trip to Italy for two persons — won our regular guest Andrey Kolbin. It is he who will journey through the wineries of Friuli  region: Livio Felluga and Zamo. Congratulations!

Some more photos

Yesterday in the Steak has been finished the Feast of Tuscan cuisine. I have my own very simple way to understand how the feast has been held. On its first day I always take a notice of how looks a Parmesan cheese in which the pasta will be served. On the last day I always look how much has been rest from the cheese which was on the first day. This year in the cheese we served fettuchini with duck and spinach and yesterday I took a note that the Parmesan cheese has been scraped very well.
The main prize has been won by our patron Leonid Nidyak. Congratulations!

More photos…

As I wrote the yesterday’s evening has staid in memory not only because the fire in the Rusov house about which everyone talking today  but also because we have organized the feast of opening of the Tuscan cuisine in the «Steakhouse».

The reportagefrom the opening

Sasha, Andrey and Rigan give the last arrangements and prepear to meet the guests.

We have prepeared the huge carpaccio for the guests

The girls has dansed and tramped grapes. In the original the girls had to be barefooted but it is not summer in the street and we have provided them with the boots.

In the middle of the evening all the waiters has left the guest for a short time and started to dance at the veranda.

Rigan has met with the guests and has carried out 2 masterclasses: about Panna Cotta and about  Gnocchi.

The quanitity of the steaks «Gorgonzola» which were roasted in the Josper oven  has gone beyond the limit.

At the auction of wine at a price 2100 UAH «has gone» a boutle of red wine Saffredi of 2000 year.

The rest of photos you can see  here.

We will cook the dishes of Tuscan cuisine till the 19 of November.

The Tuscan cuisine begins from the bread. It is unleavened a little (the historic circumstances were such that the salt in Tuscany has liable to a tax and that is why many of Tuscan dishes can be seemed not salted little). The bread is different in every town, baked according to the special old recipe. While traveling along Tuscany I have managed to taste the bread with rosemary, nuts, olives, ham, and raisins and even with chestnuts.

It is impossible to imagine the Tuscan cuisine without olive oil also and only of the best quality. In every region the oil has also its own typical taste and aroma and when you have visited the entire Tuscan region soon you began to recognize to taste what is this oil and where it was produced. If you manage to do this «test» without any efforts then it means that you are filled with the culinary traditions of Italy in full.

Among the soups cooked in Tuscany except the famous enough soup based on the kidney bean «ribolita», the special attention deserves the favorite soup of Italian seamen « cacciucco». The best «cacciucco» is cooked of course in the small restaurants in the seaside cities. According to the authentic recipe this soup should consist of no less then 13 inhabitants of the sea beginig from the octopus and up to the shark. This Italian version of Russian hotchpotch should be washed down with not white but read wine, the famous Tuscan Chianti.

On e of the main Tuscan dishes is Вistecca alla fiorentina and it can’t stand the compromises: it is turned over only one time during the process of roast, the weight of the bistecca can’t be lesser then 450 grams (otherwise it is not bistecca), the only one degree of roast «medium rare» and seasoned only with ground black pepper, olive oil and salt. If you will order the bistecca in Tuscan restaurant and you will ask to depart from at least one the mentioned above conditions then they will look at you with a surprise at least. And more about meat. To be more precise about the lard. Having visited the town Colonnata you will understand that fact then not only Ukraine can be proud of the lard. In Colonata the lard is cooked in absolutely special way, keeping it almost a year in the containers made from white marble. The ready lard turned out to be very tender and the Tuscans consider it like the delicacy.

In my native Odessa the soup «cacciuco» is called uha (fish soup)and there are no sharks there but in summer you can buy at the market an excellent tomatoes (the best sort is  «mikado»), to find in the shop the brown bread, let’s say «Borodinskiy, to salt it, to rub it with the garlic, to sprinkle it with olive oil brought from the Tuscany and to cat a slice of the lard bought at the Privoz  — of course it is not Tuscany but it an fit for every day.

My love to the Tuscan cuisine appears in that already five years we conduct the Festa di Cucina Toscana  for the guests of the restaurant «Steakhouse. Meat&Wine».