Barbapedana

Dishes mentioned

• Mondeghili

  I start with the mondeghili, very traditional from Milan. They are meatballs made from leftovers, boiled meat, braised meat, boiled meat, mixed with mortadella, often liver, sausage, eggs, grana cheese and stale bread soaked in milk. They form balls and are fried in butter. Holy mother, it's of a poetic goodness. The breading is pure pleasure, the frying is dry, but inside they remain soft and nicely moist. And this note of liver mortadella is the death of it.

• Brushit con Polenta e Insoldoni

  I instead took for an appetizer, if we want to call it that, a dish that is from the upper Milanese area, not exactly from Milan Milan, it's more from the Varese area, but I've never tasted it, I wanted to taste it. They are brushit with polenta, insoldoni, pieces of braised beef served with a nice thick polenta. Once upon a time this dish was made with scraps, with the scrapings from the bones of the animals, all the meat that could be recovered was put here. Now it's made with nobler cuts of meat. The aroma that arrives is spacey, I don't want it to cool down, so let's get a move on. Very good. The quality of the meat is very good, you can taste the wine, it's very tender. Recommended.

• Tortelli al Grass de Rost

  Oh, a first course has arrived, one of those I really wanted to taste, because it's not the classic first course of the Milanese tradition that you always find. It's a classic, but you don't find it everywhere. Tortelli al grass de rost. They are tortelli stuffed with roast beef, napped with a grass de rost sauce, that is, the cooking juices of the meat, the ones collected at the bottom of the pan, used as a condiment. What goodness this thing is. It gave rise to the Milanese saying: 'set propri un grass de rost', meaning you are a heavy person. I wanted to point out that there are two. Each tortello is a meal and a half. Look, look at that filling. Complete package, roast beef cooked to perfection, tasty, delicious inside the pasta, so I eat with one bite, first and second course. Moreover, it's not even easy to make such a large and thick pasta that holds the cooking, enough to accommodate both the moist filling and the sauce without falling apart. Instead, exceptional pasta cooking, right thickness and inside, holy crap, what goodness. This grass de rost makes you swear your head off.

• Rustin Negàa

  This is Milan, on a plate: a veal rib that is first roasted and then drowned in white wine. This dish is what we could define as the ancestor of ossobuco, which is another very typical dish. You don't need a knife. My goodness, guys, it's so tender. The note you taste most is the white wine, which obviously is drowned in white wine. The coating is truly a cream. Ah, how beautiful! I mean, you don't even need a knife, look, it falls apart on its own. Look at that. Madonna, what a spectacle, it's a spectacle.

• Risotto alla Milanese

  Well, risotto alla Milanese. Saffron, butter, marrow, cheese. You all know it. There's a beautiful legend that we have in Abruzzo. It says that we brought saffron here to Milan. When the Duomo of Milan was built, the boys left from our town, Navelli, to go up there to work. The mothers, knowing that Milan was humid and cold, put a little saffron in a handkerchief in their suitcase to cure themselves during the winter. One day it was one of these boys from Navelli who was feeling unwell to cook and he was tired of eating plain rice and decided to throw in some saffron and that's how saffron risotto seems to have been born. Maybe. We love this legend, even if it's not true, we want to believe it. Nice and creamy, the grain is nicely separated, you can taste the saffron. It's truly one of the best Milanese risottos I've eaten in recent years. Very marrowy, it has that meaty, creamy note, an atomic thing.