Refettorio Ambrosiano Recipes from Milan, Italy by Ruth Paget

Refettorio Ambrosiano Recipes from Milan, Italy by Ruth Paget 

After attending an expo on world hunger in Milan (Italy), chef Massimo Bottura and other world famous chefs used the surplus food available in Milan to make meals for the homeless at the city’s Refettorio Ambrosiano that qualify as no food waste, delicious, nutritious, and economical to make. 

The Milan Refettorio Ambrosiano can operate thanks to help from markets and farms that provide: 

-less than perfect looking, but still good produce 

-produce with 2 or 3 days left to sell that cannot keep for a long time 

-organizing food in crates for storage and delivery at the donor site 

-people to drive the produce from the donor site to the refettorio 

-refrigerated pantries to deal with Milan’s heat at the refettorio 

Five of the stand-out, no food waste recipes in the Bread is Gold cookbook are economical to make with fresh ingredients for the home cook as well: 

*Summer vegetables with bean broth and croutons – The broth is made with water and boiled Parmesan cheese rinds that are removed before the beans are added in. The beans and broth are puréed. Place a variety of sautéed summer vegetables on top of the bean broth. Scatter seasoned croutons made from hard bread on top of the vegetables. 

The boiled Parmesan rinds could be fed to pigs as part of a circular economy around the cheese.

*Chilled cauliflower soup – Boil cauliflower with milk and salt. Purée the soup and refrigerate. Add cream and serve. Use less liquid to make a creamy sauce for warm vegetables or dressing for salad.

Other winter vegetables could be used in this recipe: broccoli, carrots, celery root, rutabagas, turnips, parsnips, or a combination of these. For extra flavor, you could boil the vegetable with a sautéed onion. 

*Chilled yogurt soup – Mix yogurt, vegetable stock (I make mine from reconstituted dehydrated mushrooms), canned chickpeas, canned lentils, salt and pepper, and olive oil together. (I would purée everything and then chill the soup.) 

*Green bean salad – Mix green beans, fresh cheese (mozzarella, but burrata could also be used) and charred Savoy cabbage together and drizzle it all with Balsamic vinegar. 

*Panada bread soup This simple soup is made by boiling Parmesan cheese rinds with water and removing them before adding cubes of hard bread. The bread and cheese broth are then puréed and served warm. 

Massimo Bottura and other famous chefs put together Bread is Gold recipes to solve hunger in Milan, Italy by reducing food waste. In the process, they put together recipes that everyone can use to stretch money, making Bread is Gold a good book to buy. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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A Milan (Italy) Rallye Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

A Milan (Italy) Rallye Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

I wanted Florence to know about Milan, Italy’s fashion, food, and newspaper industry even as a child, because I loved Milan’s Corriere della Sera newspaper. 

I consider Corriere della Sera to be one of the best newspapers in the world for news on the arts and culture coverage.  I absolutely struggled to learn to read Italian to read this newspaper and can do it now.  That is a lifetime goal of mine that I checked off after reading Gelb’s How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci. 

So, when we were in Norfolk, I subscribed to Vogue and Glamour magazines and went through the ads with Florence.  She liked Versace and Armani like I did, too. 

I eventually subscribed to Junior Vogue along with Nickelodeon and People in English for Florence.  She could read at a young age thanks to those magazines.

I wanted to do a Milan lunch and made steamed carrots and puréed them with olive oil, dry garlic, chopped flat-leaf parsley, and red wine vinegar.  This was my Italian version of a Libyan hummus-like spread. 

I made toast and cut them into fourths and then put this carrot purée on toast squares.  These looked lovely stacked up on a plate like a pyramid. 

I served this appetizer with lemonade when Florence was small, but adults might like what some wine enthusiasts describe as hay-flavored Sauvignon Blanc with them.  Chilled Pinot Grigios and Rosés would go well with this appetizer, too.  I might remove the vinegar, though, which clashes with wine. 

I talked with Laurent and Florence as I stirred the basic risotto Milanese I made with butter, chicken stock, and mushrooms.  I made these sides to go with T-bone steaks for everyone. 

I asked Laurent what he thought about risotto.  “It’s soupy rice.  I want sheet, pan-baked potatoes with onions and Italian seasonings,” he said.

“A lot of those cookbooks are just PR,” he commented.

“I know, but I like trying to make foods from other cultures and parts of the country.  It is good for Florence to know about other cultures.  Technology just seems to speed up the process of cultural misunderstandings with language sometimes,” I told Laurent.

I did not use the Internet, but knew just getting a catering order done to satisfy people from different religious, cultural, and dietary, political preference backgrounds could be a grueling process let alone collaborating on engineering projects.

During lunch, Florence recited a poem about fall that she learned at school.  It was a cute, Japanese haiku poem about leaves turning color and falling to the ground in fall.

Laurent and I applauded and yelled “brava” and “encore” as she recited the poem a few times more times to general acclaim.  We asked her questions like “Why do tree leaves change color in fall?” and “Which leaf color do you prefer and why?” after each poem recitation.

We turned on some samba (street music) and bassa nova (fancy apartment music) from Brazil after lunch.  We all got up and danced for an hour.  (Italians definitely dance at home dance parties, so we did our Franco-Italian rallye at home.)

After dancing, I read Florence the book The Furry News: How to Make a Newspaper that described articles, ads, and circulation.

Florence took an old Virginia-Pilot and pasted some drawings in it. 

“Do you have anything to advertise?” she asked me.

“Can I advertise mom’s taxi service for 50 cents?” I asked.

She agreed to these terms and made me give her fifty cents.  She, then, called grandma and asked her to subscribe to her newspaper called – The Norfolk News for a quarter. 

I laughed at Florence’s business flair and asked her, “How many months can grandma get for 25 cents?”

“A long time,” she said.

We took dad to the ship for work.  On the way home, Florence said, “I like risotto and prosciutto.”

We stopped at the commissary and bought some chicken stock and other goodies, including a small bag of Arborio rice.  The rice was expensive, but they had it.

I improvised a risotto with chicken stock, grated Parmesan, pieces of chopped up prosciutto, sautéed mushrooms, and butter.

We listened to Laurent’s Ennio Morricone music and went out for ice cream cones dunked in chocolate sauce after lunch for dessert.

The ice cream place was across the street from our little apartment.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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