Chilled tomato and garden vegetable soup

Chef Rivetti adores visiting Spain.

During the summer months in his first period at Bandini he proposed his own Gazpacho soup, rather more delicate than the original recipe.

Every year now he slightly changes the culinary presentation.

Since 2007 the soup is no longer called Gazpacho but “Chilled Cream of Tomato Soup” and it is presented as follows:

The main ingredients for the dressing are as follows;

potatoes

runner beans

aromatic and other herbs (fennel, green perilla leaves, red perilla leaves, lemon balm and lichwort nettle) flowers, all edible, borage (blue), garlic (red) and calendula petals (yellow), crostini topped with natural aromas, salt, butter and extra virgin olive oil prepared by the Bandini team



The latter are a “noble” version (*NB) of “soma d’aj” (meaning “garlic burst” in piemontese), simple traditional piedmont crostini made from slices of ‘biova’ bread, typical piedmont bread with a crisp crust and soft breadcrumbs, toasted in the oven, with a rubbing of garlic and topped with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. 




*NB “a noble version of soma d’aj”:

invented by Giovanni Masoero, the founder of Brasserie Roma in Piazza Alfieri d’Asti which no longer exists. The restaurant at which the current owners of Ristorante Bandini (Rivetti and Bera) learnt how to cook and who eventually became managers.
Masoero belongs to that old class of Asti restaurant waiters, famous for their style and courtesy.

He worked his way up the ladder by working for many years on transatlantic liners by exploring the world.

After finishing his time on the ships he then opened the Brasserie Roma in the 70s. The restaurant consisted of a normal eating room (and the way it was decorated it looked like a ship’s dining room) and a steel bar counter with many stools, where people used to sit and taste the delights of the ‘astigiane’ home cooking – it was something novel for Asti in those years. 
Masoero has always had and still has a huge passion for cooking, and to experiment and create new delicacies.