Among the woods and vineyards of Collio Goriziano, there was once a simple family tavern that offered frogs and crayfish: the dream, surrounded by greenery, of Josko Sirk and his wife
Loredana. That osteria that offers fast, tradition-bound dishes is La Subidawho now lives next door to a country resort and a starred trattoria, because if you believe in dreams, they become big.
Here, the Slavic world meets Friulian peasant origins, Latinity: a culinary tradition to which Josko and Loredana wished to give nobility, which then embraced the creativity
when into the Trattoria's kitchen came Alessandro Gavagna.
"Josko," the chef recounts, "left me in charge of the kitchen on one condition: the 50% of the menu had to remain traditional and the other half could be more imaginative, but always an evolution of traditional recipes, made as much as possible with local products.
Quite a challenge for a 'mestizo' cook: born in Umbria to a Friulian mother and an Emilian father. An even greater challenge when his first love in the kitchen was (and above all remains) fresh pasta, in a land like Friuli, queen of soups and gnocchi but certainly not of pasta!
Alessandro smiles if you remind him. At his table, almost 20 years after that promise made to JoskoThe dishes still smell of history: plum gnocchi, game, brovada, cotechino... Whimsy has certainly led to the evolution of the dishes, the contamination of years of experience in the cuisines of the world has left its mark, but the secret of the special character of the La Subida are the aromas and flavours of the gastronomic culture of an area that does not want and must not be forgotten.
'Yes,' Alessandro confirms, 'we never wanted to distort ourselves. La Subida was born with this bond and it made us strong. If at 27 years old I thought that having to look only at local recipes and make reinterpretations was a limitation for my cooking, almost an impossible thing to do, today I say that it has been our greatest good fortune, because it has made us incomparable. We even pass today as great innovators, but in truth we are only keeping tradition alive. Even the recipes we offer of meat with fruit, such as venison with blueberries or guinea fowl with peaches, is a novelty today, but in the Middle Ages, in the Austro-Hungarian world, these combinations were commonplace; then of course today I serve the fruit raw because it gives more freshness
to the dish, but it is just a reinterpretation of a culture, and a way to remember that Friuli has been a place of passage of different ethnic groups, each of which has left its mark, handing down a vast gastronomic culture'.
Tell us about the evolution of this tradition.
The game has been to lighten and modernise the recipes.
Some of the national dishes of Friuli were brovada col muset and cotechino. These are dishes that today, with the lifestyle we have, you cannot present in a restaurant. So, to recall the flavours of yesteryear, brovada is served in spaghettini with a ragout of cotechino, but in a tasting portion or as an aperitif, not in a large portion. A whole dish would become cloying, so instead it is a taste of the acidity and complexity of this historic dish.
In Friuli, then, they used thrown pasta, little pieces of pasta with which they would enrich soups or broths on the occasion of important visits (the priest or the doctor). At home, two eggs and a little flour were always there and a batter was made, which was then cut into noodles with the help of a funnel. I turned them into 'girini', little drops of pasta made with the help of a colander, served dry and seasoned with seasonal ingredients: in summer porcini mushrooms, courgettes and pumpkin flowers; in autumn Gorizia rose (radicchio), sausage and pomegranate; in spring rabbit meat, wild asparagus, silene and hop shoots.
And the classic evolution of game has moved towards cleanliness: removing sauces, degreasing and leaving the flavour of the meat more natural.
You also play a lot with fish-meat combinations...
Yes, it goes well, and throughout the year I develop different solutions: fallow deer with pike tartar and apricot carpaccio, roe deer with Arctic char, venison with trout roe.
Where did you find the secrets of the typical recipes of this 'middle' land?
Josko told me right from the start that if I really wanted to understand the local cuisine, I should go to the homes of the women farmers, and so I did. To this day I still have a wonderful relationship with 4-5 ladies, now aged 85-90, who are the custodians of the cultural heritage of our gastronomy. One of the recipes they taught me is an evolution of the Trieste iota: soup with sour pumpkin. It was made in the summer: when the courgettes 'escaped', they were left to grow a good size, emptied of their seeds, grated and soaked in red wine and vinegar. Then a bean soup was made with this sour gourd. The funny thing is that these women had no written recipes, all the ingredients by eye (a cicìn of salt,
a tablespoon of flour, just a little bit enough...), and I had to interpret, weigh, calibrate ingredients and doses and then write the recipes. These women were very important. Even many of the desserts I have on the menu are reinterpretations of their recipes.
Traditional base and all local products?
Yes, as far as it is possible. We try to give continuity to small local realities, for fruit and vegetables, but also for grains. We started working with indigenous grains with a solidarity market: a supply chain pact in which some of us restaurateurs pay the farmer for sowing and are rewarded in quality flour. Thus we have rediscovered an indigenous Friulian corn grain such as the Ros di Acquileia, for example. These are things that give prestige to the territory, which thus has a way of continuing to tell its own story.
And in the meantime you continue to travel abroad in search of inspiration and contamination?
Absolutely. I think your way of cooking should be a choice and not a limitation dictated by lack of knowledge. Knowledge must be total. It takes a lot of curiosity and a lot of modesty.
What about all this innovative cuisine that fascinates young chefs?
It is all very well if it is a choice. The important thing is not to want to fly before you have learnt to walk. Always remember that all the greatest innovators started from a very strong base of traditional cuisine. Ferran Adrià himself had an immense culture of French cuisine, he started from there. Only by starting from a strong base can you do what you want. And it also takes a great spirit of sacrifice!
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