To recover from the efforts of Host2023, we decided to take a trip to the beauties of Southern Italy and we decided to make a stop in Atena Lucana, in the province of Salerno. Atena Lucana is a town located in the Vallo di Diano, on the north side, on the border with Basilicata and the landscapes that are observed to get there leave us fascinated.

This small town, located on a hilly landscape and waiting for us is the Chef Antonio Giordano, Chef and Patron of La Locanda di San Cipriano, a 360 degree laboratory of taste family management. Antonio, begins his work in the world of catering in Tuscany and precisely in Florence, to strengthen his know-how and his skills, decides to move to London to learn as many techniques and notions as possible. After a period, he returned to Italy, from Parma to Foligno, from Padua to Rome, until stabilizing for a few years in the Holy Pig’s Homeland: Modena.

In 2011, the Chef decides to return to his native land and takes over La Locanda di San Cipriano and has as its hinge to promote and disseminate through its menus the cuisine Lucana/ Cilentana.

In 2023 with more than a decade of swordsmanship behind him and experimentation in his bakery laboratory, the Chef faces the world of the induced maturation© of the focused ultrasound of waveco®, thus becoming an Ultrasonic Chef.

Let’s find out the conversation we had.

Q: Hello Chef, first of all welcome and thank you for agreeing to give us an interview and dedicate time. Can you tell us how you met waveco®, huh?
A: Hi Francesco, thank you for this conversation. I have known waveco®, through my curiosity and the continuous search for new “ideas” and new techniques for my kitchen and beyond. The first approach, was what they call “the internet” in all its facets, social, specialized blogs etc..

Q: What made you decide to put it in your kitchen, what impressed you the most?
A: For sure, having seen practically with the day of demo spent together with You and Carmine (Carmine, Corporate Chef of the waveco® Team, – ndr), what could be the applications of technology applied to my company. What certainly struck me immediately, is the healthiness of the ingredients (prolonging the shelf life), the way of working on essences (being able to extract the best from the single ingredient: from meat to fish, from fruit to vegetables, from herbs to spices)and also a bit of madness for what are my characteristics on the search for new techniques and technologies.

Q: How is waveco‍® helping you compared to the past in the management of raw materials, from procurement to storage and storage and more generally in the global management of your menu?
A: We are an inn with kitchen, we have married the philosophy of zero waste and the use of those raw materials commonly called “poor“. As for vegetables we have a small vegetable garden, and when the garden from its fruits does not there give according to the need for a restaurant, waveco® has helped us to preserve the vegetable raw material in the most natural way possible in order to use the vegetable or vegetable as if it were fresh harvested, preserving all the organoleptic qualities of a freshly harvested product.

Q: At the time of the introduction into your brigade and using it actively, what do you think of the technology of the induced maturation© generated by the focused ultrasound of waveco® ?
A: I have to say that in this period when we have difficulty finding waveco® collaborators. is an active member of my brigade and helped me and helps me for the kind of work that I probably should have removed from my menu because of the lack of staff qualified.

Q: Can you tell us about a before and after of your signature dish redesigned with the use of waveco® ?
A: The preservation of meat. We are supplied by local butchers, and to support the logic of zero waste we buy the half of veal whole, including the fifth quarter. This type of company philosophy was difficult to maintain before, because the trend of the market in catering did not give us a constancy on customer demand and managing fresh meat inside a refrigerator was not easy. Since we waveco®, this is no longer a problem: shelf life, quality, healthiness of the product allow us to work with extreme tranquility. In addition, for those products that needed long cooking after switching with waveco® they were reduced by almost half.

Q: So Chef, the slogan used for the last edition of Host 2021 and that we still use because it fully embodies a philosophy almost and for this interview is: I waveco®, and you? Do you give us a personal consideration that can be useful to make the added value of this technology understood to colleagues who do not yet use it?
A: I’ll answer you with a quote that is fashionable lately, “the essential is invisible to the eyes“. And by essential I mean the applicability of all the synonyms of the word ESSENTIAL, that is to say, both waveco® and basico. in exalting the taste of the simplest ingredients and obtaining the umami from each of them; Basic, for the preservation of ingredients. Capital, which is generated as the product retains liquids after cooking then the cost of the recipe changes dramatically; Fundamental, to offer consistent quality standards. Essential, our skill brings out the best in every single ingredient. Indispensable, in modern catering regardless of the target audience; Necessary, like other kitchen equipment, but especially Nodale, for the philosophy of no waste.

Antonio, thank you very much for this beautiful chat full of ideas for us. Would you also leave us a recipe that can be an inspiration for the many colleagues who use waveco® today?

Sure Francesco, I’ll tell you about the Baccalà to Zii Filuccia (short for Raffaella, would be the mother of my butcher, the lady is about 90 years old). It is a recipe of the late 800, was prepared on Christmas Eve with those ingredients that could be stored during the winter and is one of those recipes that shows that in traditional cuisine is already present the combination of sweet and sour.

Here it is.

Cod alla Zii Filuccia
, Ingredients

180 gr Fillet of salted cod (slice) span,
80 gr Raisined Muscat span,
40 gr Fresh bay leaves span,
30 gr Red Onion Sprouts of tropea IGP (for flavoured oil) 10 gr in pan span,
200 gr Extra virgin olive oil

Preliminary preparation.
Evo oil flavored with bay leaves and shoots of red onion Tropea IGP. In a vacuum bag, insert the evo oil, bay leaf and chives conditioning by carrying out 3 degas operations with the vacuum machine and proceed to treatment with waveco® for 60 minutes. At the end of the process let the oil rest for at least 1 and a half hours before use.

Dried grape absolute
Collect the grapes, wash them and remove the pips, put them in a vacuum bag and proceed to ripen induced maturation© for 30 minutes. At the end of the process keep in the fridge, taking care to let it rest at least an hour and a half before use.

Cod to cbt
Once the cod has been desalted, place it in a vacuum bag with 20 grams of oil flavored with laurel previously prepared and mature for 30 minutes. Once the ripening is over, let the cod rest in the fridge for at least an hour and a half before cooking it with the help of a roner or with the same waveco® at 54 for 12 min.

Execution of the dish
In a pan with a drizzle of flavored oil lightly fry the finely chopped onion bud, open the bag of grapes previously matured and begin to fry in a pan, raising the flame at the same time so that the flesh of the grapes begins to caramelize. Open the bag of cod and with the liquid that will be created inside the envelope continue to cook the grapes and after a few seconds add the cod, it should not dry out too much, it is in the broth the essence of the dish.

Plating strong,
In a deep dish, pour the broth at the base, lay the cod with the side of the skin facing up and finally the grapes, decorate with a fresh bay leaf and an onion sprout.

If you are curious to hear from Zii Filuccia, how to prepare this dish at home, look at this video