An essential recipe, at once elegant in its colors and surprising in its flavors – Iodio, a recipe created by Michelangelo Mammoliti, the award-winning chef who in 2021 took the helm of Boscareto Resort & Spa’s gourmet restaurant in the beautiful Langhe region of Italy, brings together the subtle qualities of scampi with the cool crunch of celery and apple.
Ingredients for the recipe
Procedure
For the celery and green apple extraction
To begin preparing the recipe, wash and clean the celery, then pass it through the centrifuge. Add the green apple pulp, then strain the mixture. Place the infusion inside a container. Reserve in the refrigerator at 4°C.
For the lovage oil
Wash the lovage and flake it. Blanch lovage in salted water, then cool immediately in water and ice and squeeze. Combine the oils and lovage inside a blender and blend for 15 minutes at 50°C at maximum speed. Strain through a chinois étamine and paper towels, then let decant.
For the celery confit in lovage oil
Wash and clean the celery, peel it and remove the filaments. Cut the celery to the desired length. Place celery in vacuum bag, add oil, impregnate and reserve in refrigerator. Cook celery for three minutes in a saucepan.
For the crustacean oil
Remove the eyes and the pouch with the sand inside the crustacean head (in addition to langoustines, lobster or lobster heads are fine). Take a saucepan and heat it, add one part seed oil to start browning the crustacean carapaces. Continue cooking and add the aromatic substances, continue cooking for 5 minutes. Add the seed oil and cook at 75°C for 3 hours. Allow to decant until cool, strain and store in a vacuum.
For the scampi
Decorticate the scampi (7 to 8 per kg) and reserve the heads by removing the eyes for other preparations. Remove the intestinal casing of the scampi, taking care not to break it when cleaning the scampi. Parse the langoustines and reserve them on a plate with a blue antibacterial fish cloth.
To Serve
Blanch celery in salted water for 3 minutes. Place lovage oil and 10 grams of green apple extraction in a pot. Hull the celery until meltingly cooked. Blanch the langoustine after previously salting it, season with Kaffir lime and lay the celery on the plate. Arrange the two langoustines, two sea urchin gonads, one begonia flower, 4 leaves of oxalis curniculata on top. Cut the mertensia maritima into chifonade. Place green apple and celery extract in a sauce pan, add lovage oil.