In 1985, when we started our restaurant, the menu was very traditional, except for some desserts I introduced. When I say “traditional” I mean with the typical dishes served in the restaurants of the island: spaghetti with clams, risotto with sea food, grilled sword fish, fried calamars and shrimps and many others.
The black ink sauce – made with the cuttle fish and with its own ink – was served on penne pasta, optionally dusted with some Pecorino Romano. It’s a delicious dish with a sweet-sea taste that gets the kick from the pungency of that cheese. People appreciate it but it has a big inconvenience: as eaten, lips, teeth, tongue turn black and stay black for a while. Besides there is the risk of staining clothes, which is not nice especially for the ladies with their elegant evening dresses.
http://gigliocooking.blogspot.com/2018/02/once-you-go-to-black.html
Since the beginning I had started to make fresh pasta at night, after all the guest had gone and the kitchen was clean: simple tagliatelle and ravioli with spinach and ricotta, both belonging to the deepest tradition in Tuscany.
Pretty soon – I get bored as ripetitive – the fresh pasta started to get colors from vegetables and the filling for ravioli were made with the most various combination of ingredients.
One night – the usual time was around 1,30 -2:00, just after having called the fishmonger to ask what had been selling at the fish auction – I had a “black idea”. Besides sea bream, mussels, shrimps and many other sea food, I ordered a bigger quantity of cuttle fish. The next day I would have had enough for the appetizer of cuttle fish and artichokes in bread crust and for the new “black idea”.
The next morning, cleaning the fish, I left some bags of the ink on a side. That night I kneaded a pasta dough with the black ink. The texture was more gelatinous, harder than normal pasta. I stretched it and cut in to thin noodles. Then I freezed in single portion.
The second next day, I used some of the cuttle fish to make a simple sauce with garlic, parsley, extra virgin olive oil and white wine. I kept the ink bags for the pasta at night. The same day on the menu – that we crazily changed and write every single day – the “Black Tagliolini with white sepia sauce” appeared.
http://gigliocooking.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-weird-mysterious-nature-of-squid.html
The real surprise was the feedback fron the first clients who dared to order something that they had never seen before: the black of the pasta didn’t leave their mouth and teeth black!
The Black Tagliolini had been one of the most succesful dishes of the restaurant Le Tamerici, in Castello, Giglio Island, Tuscany, for the 12 years we had been running it.
