When going on the perfect vacation we don’t only take what is necessary for our travels, we take with us the dream of soft white sand beaches, the hope to discover beautiful new places, to have relaxing wellness treatments and of course treat ourselves to delicious gourmet cooking like that of Alessandro Cocco.

At Forte Village in Sardinia, Alessandro Cocco is a member of the resort’s team of top Italian and international chefs.

The resort offers a wide variety of food to its clients, professional recipes that combine tradition, innovation and the most interesting trends of the moment.

You can find great quality and variety at the resort, the cuisine is identified by the constant research of traditional cooking and experimental methods. The natural ingredients and the recipes mastered by the chefs, make every bite a delicious experience.

The choice of Michelin starred gourmet restaurants at the resort, like the terrazza San Domenico managed by chef Massimiliano Marcia, the Forte Gourmet, the Belvedere and Heinz Beck, is wide enough to satisfy all.

Alessandro Cocco, a promising young Italian, and Roman cook worked at the school of two great masters of international cuisine: Heinz Beck and Alain Ducasse.

Alessandro Cocco: the recipe of Alessandro Cocco for Forte Village

Forte Village is the perfect destination for those that wish to enjoy a healthy vacation full of flavor.

Young Italian chef Alessandro Cocco, originally from Rome, has become the new face of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant at Forte Village. He has worked with masters of international cooking like Heinz Beck and Alain Ducasse.

“I like an extroversive cuisine, a union of faraway worlds and vanguard techniques. I like the rhythms of metropolises. I like to risk. I run, I run and I never stop” explains Alessandro Cocco, leader of the kitchen team.

Cocco has thought of a recipe for the guests of the resort that combines the perfume of scallops with the unique taste of artichokes and the nutrition of quinoa. Three ingredients that are used all over the world and are present in historical facts, although sometimes this goes unnoticed.

It is said that the first man to value the flavor of scallops was Aristotle, who advised to “grill them and use some vinegar so to pronounce the sweetness of the fruit”. This same recipe was also found in documents belonging to Senocreate, another Greek philosopher. Served on the tables of the Roman Empire, scallops remain a loved ingredient both in Europe and in England where they are usually fried or roasted with butter.

Scallops are not only in the kitchen, but they are also represented on the shield of Pope Benedetto XVI and are the symbol of Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage. They are also the image of the petrol company Shell and it is represented on the flags of two Italian contrade – a subdivision of an Italian city– one in Siena, the other in Padova. It also appears in Botticelli’s painting: the birth of Venus in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

To understand more about quinoa, it’s necessary to go back to the time of the Inca civilization who called it chisia mama, meaning: mother of all seeds.

Artichokes were used in Ancient Greece and by the Romans as an aphrodisiac. They have been common in Italy since the XV century, they first appeared in Tuscany in 1466 and they were brought to France by Caterina de’ Medici after her marriage with Henry the II.

The Dutch brought artichokes to England in 1530, they were cultivated in the vegetable gardens of kind Henry Tudor the VIII. Writer Pablo Neruda dedicated them a poem entitled “Oda a la Alcachofa”, gathered in Odas Elementale.

After these brief historical references about the three ingredients, we can learn all the steps of the recipe made by Alessandro Cocco.

Seared scallops with quinoa and artichokes

Boil the quinoa. Clean the artichokes, cut into 12 pieces and lightly boil, stir fry them in a pan with oil, pepper and a piece of garlic.

Clean the scallops and lightly grill them with a bit of oil. For the pesto, mix the aromatic herbs with extra virgin olive oil until the consistency is homogeneous.

To compose the plate, make three small quinoa cakes and rest a cooked scallop on top of each. On the side of each quinoa cake, rest a piece of artichoke, decorate the plate with circles of pesto made with the aromatic herbs and lay some edible flowers on the scallops as you wish.

Ingredients for 4 people:

• 120 grams of quinoa
• 12 scallops
• 1 artichoke
• 1 piece of garlic
• Extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, edible flowers
• Fresh herb pesto

Would you like to have an unforgettable vacation in a real paradise of relaxation? Discover Forte Village Resort in Sardinia.