Piazza del Cannone will host the 2019 Gelato Festival village, to discover the recipe loved by Caterina de’ Medici.
Innovative flavors, unusual combinations, curious ingredients: the 2019 Gelato Festival tour stops off in the shadow of the Madonnina, bringing some of the best 16 artisan gelato makers on the peninsula to Milan. The event that for two days will transform the city in the capital of ice cream – in piazza Cannone on Saturday, the 4th and on Sunday , the 5th, from noon to 8 p.m. – is a unique opportunity to discover the secrets of the ice cream world between tastings, themed initiatives and educational workshops set up in the three large 13-meter food trucks, including the “Buontalenti” which represents the largest mobile ice cream production laboratory in the world. A 10 euro ticket (reduced for children under one meter) also available on presale on the site, will entitle to the tasting of all competing ice creams, plus those of the Sicilian tradition of Elenka, an Air Italy special created ad hoc by chef Massimiliano Scotti, as well as participation in village activities. There will be a special contest, the “Callebaut Gelato Award”, which on Sunday will see the 16 gelato makers engaged in their personal interpretation of chocolate ice cream. The Festival, which this year celebrates 10 years and is organized with Carpigiani and Sigep, celebrates a series of special anniversarie. First of all the 500th anniversary of the birth of Caterina de ‘Medici and Cosimo I, two characters tied together in a double thread world of ice cream and its precursors. In 1559 the architect Bernardo Buontalenti was commissioned by Cosimo I to organize a banquet and he decided to amaze the guests with a cold cream made with a base of milk, honey, egg yolk, as well as a touch of wine, flavored with bergamot, lemons and oranges. A few years later, when the Medici dynasty decided to hold a competition to create “the most unique dish that had ever been seen”, the novice and cook Ruggeri won with a sweet ice cream made of ice-flavored and perfumed water.
The recipe drove the Medici crazy, who elected him the winner of the competition: Ruggeri’s ice cream also pleased the young Caterina de ’Medici who decided to take the young cook with her to France to delight even the French court. The Gelato Festival celebrates the anniversary in collaboration with the Florentine master craftsman Paolo Penko, who for years has been realizing the prizes for the ice-cream makers of the event: in the Piazzale Michelangelo the Cosimo I spoon, a faithful reworking (the result of research historical-archival by Penko) of the cutlery with which the ice cream was tasted for the first time half a century ago. The spoon is made of brass, the material with which the tools were forged at the time, according to an authentic punch dating back to the Medici era. The event represents the tenth edition of a tour that from June will move abroad with stops in Berlin , Warsaw, Baden (Vienna), London and finally in Barcelona (on July, from the 6th to the 7th). The appointments in the various cities are just as many stops for the Gelato Festival World Masters 2021, the challenge for the best artisan gelato makers on the planet, a journey with hundreds of tests over four years on five continents, with technical and popular juries to win the title of world champion. The Eugenio Morrone ice cream makers (winner of the All Stars last year), Giuseppe Cimino (winner of the first German final) and the Hungarian Adam Fazekas (Next Generation), plus the first two “American” finalists Mike Guerriero and Diego Comparin are already qualified. At the Gelato Festival World Masters 2021 final, 36 selected chefs from all over the world will participate (www.gelatofestival.com).
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