Giuseppe &
Margherita Alessi
(old style couple, born in the first half of the nineteen
hundreds, married without previous divorces) With their son Matteo they
manage and animate "La Pentola dell'Oro" research, experimentation, elaboration
and hands on experience of Tuscan cooking, table manners and etiquette.
GIUSEPPE, ex musician and artist, born and living in Florence,
educated in an artistic environment, and author of three books on recipes,
history and the philosophy and art of cooking (Etruschi: Il Mito a Tavola,
1985 - Alla Pentola dell'Oro, 1994 - Dalla Pentola dell'Oro, 1996). He
contributed articles and a cookery column to newspapers (La Nazione -
Paese Sera - Firenze Mattina) and specialist magazines (Diana Caccia -
Ristorazione Romana). Today, in Florence, he is portrayed as the chef-researcher-historian-philosopher
who is the nearest and most correct interpreter of the great Tuscan-Florentine
humanistic rebirth tradition, that is to say the cooking culture of the
reawakening of the ability to create tastes by harmonising sensuality
and know-how. This, without losing sight of the "scientific" aspect of
the handling, combination, cooking and nature of the food, but with ample
and continued esoteric and alchemic-astrologic digressions. In the search
for the truest and deepest dimension of COOKING-EATING, conceived as a
privileged practical go between to stabilise the best, most direct, correct,
harmonious and exultant rapport between man, nature and the world as well
as between microcosm and macrocosm.
MARGHERITA, ex dressmaker and hand embroiderer, originally from
Mugello, with an enormous experience of household affairs, she collaborates
on an equal status with her husband in the management of their activity.
At the Pentola dell'Oro she is the main artisan in the practical daily
preparation of the food which is consequently strongly impregnated by
her rural sensitivity and at odds dialectically with the urbanity of her
husband (he is Gemini/air/fantasy - she is Pisces/ water/practicality)
producing a natural spontaneous realisation of that synthesis which, throughout
time clearly represents the most apparent and fundamental characteristic
of the Tuscans : the admirable integration of the country and city cultures
which the photographer Santioli amply demonstrates in his photographs
of the Tuscan landscape.e.
Matteo
(son of the second half of the nineteen hundreds, as
well as of Giuseppe and Margherita)
He represents and completes the circle of the couple : the man son of
the Earth and the Sky. The product of an otherwise sterile relationship
without future : Matteo is la Pentola dell'Oro, looking towards and projecting
into the third millennium, the critical progressive element with which
tradition is compared in order to be renewed and perpetuated. He is like
a note out of tune in the harmonious scale which is pushed ahead dynamically
even if transgressive and disturbing. The confirmation, in cooking as
in music, is in life; from the maxim of Eraclites the philosopher of fire
and of eternal transmutation of all things: "it is contrast which creates
harmony".
Which results in an indigenous/local cuisine but with a cosmopolitan
air unique to Florence for its typical "Courtly" dialect, but at the same
time also "illustrious " as is the "Volgare" Florentine language of the
thirteenth century (very fertile humus in which this cuisine digs its
roots) which, being very noble, was confirmed with Dante, Petrarca and
Boccaccio, as the national language. A refined domestic cuisine, therefore,
aristocratic and popular. At the Pentola dell'Oro every day, thanks to
the hand (glorious hand ?) of the ALESSI family, it is a conservative
and innovative cuisine at the same time, parsimonious and ostentatious,
chaste and licentious, Christian and Pagan, sedate and mocking.
Is it an ambiguous cuisine ?
Maybe
It is ambiguous like the Florentine who better than anyone personified
and sung the praises of this ambiguity innate to the Tuscans and of the
time in which (time of the humanistic "reawakening ", time of "gratitude")
the Florentine cuisine/art/culture definitively confirmed its peculiar
characteristics and imposed itself on the whole world : Lorenzo di Piero
de'Medici.
He was called "the Magnificent".
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