Cooking with Gucci: Recipes from Michelin-starred Gucci Osteria to Recreate at Home

Food and fashion haven’t always been the best of friends. Unless of course you are indeed Lady Gaga in 2010 and meat dresses are your thing. But those days are long gone, as this star-crossed partnership has blossomed into one that delivers some of the most incredible collaborations to date. Case in point: Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura.

This Michelin-starred restaurant was created by Gucci in 2018 with celebrated chef, restauranteur and innovator Massimo Bottura. It is located within the historic Palazzo della Mercanzia in Florence and lead by Mexican Head Chef Karime López, who cut her teeth at prestigious restaurants such as Chef Virgilio Martinez’s Central Restaurante in Peru and René Redzepi’s Noma in Copenhagen, to name a few.

Due to the pandemic, the restaurant has had to temporarily close its doors but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a high fashion dose of fine dining at home. Ahead, Gucci and Chef Lopez has revealed two recipes from the menu for patrons to recreate — as if it came straight out of the Gucci Osteria kitchen.

First Recipe: Lucky Fennel (Serves Two)

Preparation

Fennel Cream

1. Fennel bulbs for the cream x 4
2. Extra virgin olive oil
3. Salt

Wash and cut the fennel coarsely, steam them at 90ºC for 2 hours. Drain the fennel once cooked and whisk them with extra virgin olive oil and salt until creamy. Pass the cream in the chinois strainer with fine mesh.

Wild Fennel Oil

1. Seed oil x 400g
2. Wild Fennel x 200g

Whisk 400g of seed oil with 200g of wild fennel. Then heat the oil in a saucepan and bring it to a temperature of 80ºC. Filter the oil in a sac à poche and then filter it with the chinois strainer with fine mesh.

Pistachios

1. Pistachios x 20

Toast the pistachios in the oven at 190ºC for 4 minutes. Grate them with a microplane.

Main Dish

1. Sliced fennel bulbs x 2
2. Red prawns x 2
3. Lemon x 1
4. Lemon Oil
5. Linguine Pasta x 100g

Cook the linguine pasta in well salted water for about 5 minutes. Drain the linguine and finish cooking in the pan for 3 minutes, adding the fennel cream and the lemon oil to make them creamy. Season the raw and finely sliced ​​fennel with the wild fennel oil. Season the prawns with extra virgin olive oil and the lemon peel and cut them into 6 pieces each.

Plating

Spread the grated pistachios on the base of the plate, and lay a nest of linguine on top, developing it in height. Add 6 pieces of prawn, other pistachio powder and finely sliced ​​fennel. Garnish the dish with wild fennel leaves.

*The fennel can be replaced with seasonal vegetables

Second Recipe: Pollock (Serves Two)

Dish Components

Datterino Tomato Sauce

1. Yellow Datterino tomato (or local cherry tomatoes) x 100g
2. Spoons of extra virgin olive Oil x 2
3. Finely-diced garlic x 5g
4. Basil leaves x 2
5. Fine salt

In a saucepan, fry garlic and basil, add the tomatoes and cook for 20 minutes, whisk and sift, salt lightly.

Red Pepper Sauce

1. Red Bell Pepper x 100g
2. Spoons of extra virgin olive Oil x 2
3. Finely-diced garlic x 5g
4. Bay leaf x 1
5. Fine salt

Bake the seedless pepper for 40 minutes in the oven at 180 degrees, peel it and roast it in a pan with oil, garlic and bay leaf. Remove the bay leaf and whisk the pepper until it becomes a homogeneous sauce, salt lightly.

Chard sauce

1. Chard (or mature spinach/mustard greens/cavalo nero kale or large bok choy) x 100g
2. Cooking water
3. Fine salt

Blanch the chard for 2 minutes in salted water and cool in water and ice. One half must be cut with a knife for the filling and the other half must be blended with its cooking water until it becomes a homogeneous sauce.

Bechamel sauce

1. Milk x 250g
2. Corn flour x 15g
3. Butter x 25g
4. Macis (nutmeg) x 2g

Flavour the milk with the nutmeg and simmer it.

Separately prepare the base of butter and cornflour, then pour the milk while turning with a whisk until it becomes a homogeneous sauce, salt lightly.

Discs of Pasta

1. Gluten-Free Flour (or 00 flour) x 100g
2. Whole egg x 1

Mix the flour with the egg and leave to rest in cling film for 30 minutes. Spread to 1 millimetre thick and cut the dough to the desired size, cook the discs in salted water for 2 minutes.

Filling

1. Ricotta cheese x 50g
2. Cut chard x 50
3. Extra Virgin Olive Oil x 10g
4. Fine salt

Stir in a bowl and serve warm.

Plating

1. Put a disc of pasta on a preferably deep plate, add the filling and cover with a second disk of pasta.
2. Finally, cover the pasta disc with all the lukewarm sauces in an artistic way, Jackson Pollock style.

*Chard can also be substituted with seasonal vegetables