Do you remember the hazelnut flour with which Annarita mixed the gnocchi for the challenge?
And the prickly pear flour of Roberta Cornali's gnocchi, the one for which the Community interest algorithm has practically gone crazy?
And some other flour scattered in the challenge, which I still haven't seen all the dumplings, praised and praised as completely devoid of oil?
With the race over, we can finally reveal the mystery, or "who" is behind these new products that were the real love at first sight of me, on my last return home. So powerful as to instantly transform me into a flour and oil pusher and to involve anyone I met on my way, from Genoa to Sing Sing: his name is Andrea Parodi and his story is that of a passionate and romantic entrepreneur , a river of words that completely overwhelms you.
The strangest thing is that we have been neighbors for twenty years, without ever meeting.
When I say "neighbors", I mean to be taken almost literally: same neighborhood, same street, few house numbers between the two respective addresses. Never seen, not even in passing.
This gentleman here introduced us (oh yes, he has a blog - and what a blog…), when by now there are 7 hours of time difference and 10,000 km of distance between Il Parodi and me: but, perhaps, it had to go like this: because ' it was not only the addresses that changed in these thirty years, but our lives. And now there's something that wasn't there before: the MTC, on the one hand, and a very cool company, on the other.
I'll make it short: Andrea squeezes seeds, of any kind, and obtains very pure oils from them: he started from cosmetics, he arrived at food, with enormous recognition, abroad and now also in Italy: I don't know if I can still say it (and in fact I'm not saying it), but it is probable that one of his oils will end up in the menu of one of the most famous Italian multi-starred, complete with landings on TV and so on. In between, there are all the semi-finished products, i.e. the so-called "functional flours", i.e. flours that are totally fat-free and with a very high concentration of proteins which, in addition to giving new flavors to our dishes, are also good for the body.
Prickly pear flour, for example, makes you lose weight. All are obviously gluten-free, all contain different nutrients, but maximized to be effective. And I pass over their variety: to the more traditional hazelnuts and almonds, carrot, pomegranate, prickly pear flours are added, in fact - and everything that can come to mind, because Andrea ' a compulsive and irrepressible squeezer.
The icing on the cake is his way of doing business. Involving the producers and respecting the territory. There is no company and the rest of the world from him: there is a network of relationships, based on dialogue, on shared planning, also from an economic point of view, as Sergio Rossi well explains in his last book, dedicated to the Chiavarese hazelnuts, Andrea's latest adventure.
The invitation to buy it is triple: it's by Sergio, it speaks of a wonderful product, to which Andrea Parodi is intimately linked and…ta..dan… there are also Mai's illustrations: because it's not there passion of the undersigned that is not shared, by the closest friends, in the first place, and by the MTChallenge immediately after.
At the moment, I don't know what we will do with Il Parodi and its products. All I know is that we will go ahead, whatever ideas we come up with. And the first stone is this interview, by our Francesca Carloni, in which Andrea talks about himself, with the enthusiasm and competence that have always animated him. (and that maybe they'll make him open an e-commerce to private individuals, sooner or later, since it doesn't exist at the moment :)…
1.Paraphrasing a well-known song by Sergio Endrigo, if you need wood to make a table, you need seeds to make Il Parodi: because it is from seeds that it all began. Can you tell us your story, briefly?
I'm Ligurian, born in Genoa in 1964, married with two children, a degree in architecture, some have defined me as an architect "lent" to nature. Starting from a family tradition of processing oils, in 2003 I founded Parodi Nutra. Day after day, I just pampered my dream trying to translate it into reality. Extracting its precious oil from each seed and fruit, the energy that the seed needs to become a tree and making it available to the final consumer in its "original version"... just as it is without adding anything or taking anything away.
4. This month's challenge is about dumplings. Annarita, who proposed them, prepared them with your hazelnut flour, with more than satisfactory results: but what if we wanted to use another flour, again for this dish? in a nutshell: can you give us a recipe? 🙂
Surely I would tell you to try mixing the gnocchi with almond flour as it does not have a marked taste being sweet, but it has a great advantage: that of making the gnocchi very soft and therefore they do not cover the taste of the sauce, which for example could be the pesto, bearing in mind that the light flavor of the almonds does not contrast and also has a high protein and calcium content. We had Christophe Saintagne try the gnocchi at the Papillon in Paris and he was thrilled!
article on TCM No.59
