Enough already! Stop calling everything ‘carpaccio’
Chicken carpaccio salad. Carpaccio wrap. Carpaccio tart. Pineapple carpaccio? Guiseppe Cipriani, the Venetian creator of the iconic meat dish, is turning in his grave. Maybe it’s time to stop calling everything sliced thinly carpaccio.
There it is, in a new cookbook: the carpaccio tart. ‘As if a star chef had prepared it,’ says the accompanying press release. The tart looks festive: layers of meat with layers of arugula, sprinkled with pine nuts and Parmesan, but no star chef is going to risk burning their fingers on this.
Perfect simplicity
And they’re right: some classic recipes are good as they are; there’s no need to improvise with them. A good carpaccio is perfect in all its simplicity. Guiseppe Cipriani, owner of the legendary Harry’s Bar in Venice, came up with the dish in 1950 for an Italian countess. She was anemic and therefore had to eat a lot of red meat. He named the plateful of wafer-thin slices of raw beef after the painter Vittore Carpaccio, who happened to have an exhibition in Venice at the time. The bright red color of the meat featured prominently in his paintings, so there you have it.
Less is more
A real carpaccio is made with thin slices of raw beef sirloin or tenderloin, with a dressing of (homemade) mayonnaise with lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, a little milk, salt and pepper. You can add a little arugula, pine nuts or some Parmesan, but of course you don’t have to. Less is more, especially with a dish like this.
Smoked chicken in the carpaccio
But these days, hardly anyone pays any attention to that anymore. You see carpaccio rolls at the butcher’s—steak rolls filled with arugula and Parmesan. At parties, you’re served a carpaccio wrap, with thin slices of roast beef and truffle mayonnaise rolled up in a cold tortilla. What about carpaccio salad: smoked chicken, mayonnaise with basil and pine nuts, delicious on a piece of toast.
Creation
There are plenty of vegetarian carpaccios too. Beetroot carpaccio is practically a Christmas-menu classic, as are versions made with grilled zucchini or celeriac. Carpaccio for dessert? Of course: thin slices of pineapple, citrus carpaccio with orange and carpaccio made with poached pear. Try explaining that to Guiseppe Cipriani: his creation of raw meat is now a dessert made with fruit or vegetables?
Action! No more everything-carpaccio
It’s time for someone to say: enough is enough. We don’t want everything to be carpaccio anymore. Italians are normally as flexible as a vault door when it comes to modifying their classic dishes—just think of the riots over the pizza vending machine. Why isn’t there a carpaccio activist group yet? With carpaccio demonstrations?
