How to make tortellini with The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong's top chef Nicola Russo
Today, as we celebrate World Pasta Day, the Italian staple that has tempted taste buds for centuries, try your hand at making a tasty dish of tortellini
What better way to celebrate World Pasta Day – today – than to learn how to make tortellini, a signature Italian dish, with a Michelin star chef?
Meet Nicola Russo, chef de cuisine at Tosca in The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong, and our teacher for this lesson.
Russo, who hails from Pisa in Tuscany, started his experience in Italian cuisine when he was 18. After graduating, his dream was to work in a big kitchen at a Michelin fine-dining restaurant. Although he has achieved that goal, he reminisces fondly about the learning that contributed to his success.
“You have to work with local ingredients, and that’s what made me develop as a chef”, said Russo, talking about working in the Bali, where he had to improvise and change components because locally-sourced ingredients tasted different to those he used in his Italian dishes before.
Having moved to Hong Kong in 2017, Russo worked closely with Tosca’s previous two-Michelin star chef Pino Lavarra, who indeed earned Tosca its first Michelin star.
“Working with him was a really good time, because to me, he was like a master. I have a lot of experience, but obviously when you work with a person like him, who’s a very humble person, and has more experience than me, because he’s now 50 [years old], it’s like another school where you can learn and get new ideas,” Russo said of his mentor.