Bread is gold by Massimo Bottura

Massimo Bottura is an Italian top chef. Published in the Netherlands two years ago a thick cookbook from the cook, where I got to know him. A phenomenon, that Bottura. In Italy he has his own Michelin-starred restaurant in Modena: Osteria Francescana, which was opened again last Tuesday best restaurant in the world was proclaimed. He also has a new cookbook in which he teaches you how to make 'unusually delicious food with the most common ingredients': Bread is gold.

leftovers

Billions are lost because we throw away food, while elsewhere in the world people are starving. Incomprehensible to Bottura, who likes to use his role as a top chef to make a difference. In 2015 he has a refractorio a guest house where groups of children and the homeless were offered meals for several months.

The lunches and dinners were prepared based on the residual waste that was delivered that day from surrounding restaurants and supermarkets. Overripe bananas, stale bread, cheese approaching its best before date, and so on. Old bread was used to make puddings, pesto was made with popcorn instead of expensive pine nuts and a lot of ice cream was made from the overripe bananas.

Top chefs at work

Bottura contacted about 50 top chefs he knows from his network (his Friends) and that resulted in this book. They all came to cook for one day in his Refrettorio Ambrosiano. They made lunch and dinner in an ancient Greek theater converted by design students from Milan.

But how do you make a great meal with few resources that are not coordinated? Bottura and his friends took up the challenge. And that resulted in inspiring dishes and stories. Chefs from Peru, Japan, France, Norway got to work with fusion cooking, cooking with traditions and elements from different parts of the world.

Cooking for the homeless

What I liked to read was that Massimo Bottura's friends really don't care who they cook for. The top chefs did not know the school children and the homeless. The only thing that counts for the chefs is to deliver absolute quality. They work just as hard for the groups of school children and find this challenge as interesting as cooking for a group of CEOs of various multinationals. Constantly improving oneself, surpassing oneself. That is the common motivation of these top chefs.

Bread is gold

Bottura took the title of his cookbook from an artist who encased everyday objects in gold to help people rediscover their value. Bottura thought of bread: an everyday ingredient, of which everyone has an old hunk lying around.

I always make grilled cheese sandwiches with it, but Bottura went in search of the ultimate (Italian) experience of a taste from his youth. Bread dipped in milk. That memory evolved into a dish that far exceeds the everyday 'bread with milk', but which in essence falls back on the daily warm dining experience at his home at the kitchen table.

Italian sopkoekjes versus Dutch apple pie

As children, Italians are all soaking their biscuits in the warm milk in the morning. I also found a recipe for special soap cookies in .'s cookbook Eleanor Galasso two years ago. I think things like this are universal. The Dutch have a thing for apple pie. Apple pie is so much more than a piece of pie! It symbolizes domesticity, family, tradition. Then you can sell such a good Italian pie as a Dutch café: it is not an apple pie!

Learning from the master

Even before I got Bottura's book, I was inspired by the Italian cook Giulia Scarpaleggia to do something with stale bread. You may find this a disgusting story, but I am a mother of young children and I am often left with crusts of bread. In her book I saw a recipe for a bread pie with cocoa. You can also make dumplings from leftover bread. I used to save my children's scabs for that.

These are still relatively easy solutions. What am I going to do with the old zucchini, half the red pepper and that half cup of mushrooms that are still in my fridge? Just read Bottura for inspiration, then I'll probably succeed.

By the way, the book and cover are printed on recycled paper, so it looks like you're leafing through a newspaper. The design is simple and minimalistic, with all steps and ingredients dry under each other. Not every recipe has a photo and the photos look a bit gray because of the choice for recycled paper. On the plus side, all proceeds from this book go to charity: fighting hunger.

Also watch: The art of Italian cuisine by Massimo Bottura.

Bread is gold (preview copy)
by: Massimo Bottura & Friends (translated by Jaromir Scheffer)
424 pages
€ 39,99
Terra publishing, February 2018
ISBN 9789089897619