Executive Chef Josh Zeman shows us how to make scallops with Kabocha squash gnocchi

Recipe:

Mushroom puree‍

Add butter to pot add shallots and sweat for 5 minutes, add the porcini mushrooms, and white mushrooms and season with salt.Cook until mushrooms are dry, add mushroom stock and simmer until the stock has reduce by ¾ . add the cream and bring to boil than reduce to a simmer until the cream coats the mushrooms. Transfer mushroom mixture into blender and puree until smooth.

Radicchio

Melt the butter in pan over medium heat. Add the raddicco and rosemary and season with salt , sweat until the radicchio is wilted about 5 minutes , add the honey and turn the heat to medium high. Boil the radicchio and honey for 3 minutes. Add the port reduce until dry than do the same with the red wine , than add the water and reduce until it is dry again.. keep warm

Scallops

Heat a nonstick pan on high add olive oil season scallops with salt and pepper sear for 3 minutes on each side for medium rare. Add to a plate with a paper towel to absorb excess oil.

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With more than 9,000 bottles in its cellar, Best of Award of Excellence winner Sea Salt is a leading wine destination in Naples, Fla., a seaside city with a growing community of enophiles. (Its sibling restaurant in St. Petersburg, Fla., has held a Best of Award of Excellence since 2016.) Here, diners can choose from wine director Liset Zelaya’s diverse 1,200-selection list, with gems from across California, Italy and France, including verticals from celebrated wineries such as Sonoma’s Peter Michael, Burgundy’s Domaine Ponsot and Piedmont’s Gaja. Steps away from the Naples Pier, looking onto the Gulf of Mexico, the restaurant takes surf and turf to heart. Chef Josh Zeman’s menu includes the likes of swordfish Milanese and Key West pink shrimp ceviche from the sea, plus Kurobuta pork chops, free-range chicken and boneless short ribs from the land.

Local chefs go the extra mile, wrestling with ambiguities, to lighten their footprint and impact on Mother Earth.

Consider this: Buying food from local sources keeps the carbon footprint shallow. On the other hand, it sometimes makes sense for a restaurant to branch out geographically for products that are raised on regenerative farms and in intelligent fisheries.

More inconsistencies in the world of sustainable food exist. Plant-based diets, for instance, are good for the body and the planet. This often involves working with protein alternatives. Yet, you have to consider how the ingredients for plant-based proteins are produced, and sometimes manipulating vegetables to taste and feel like meat requires additives that can mess with how you feel.

Another example: Carefully sourced, farm-raised fish are healthier and can save depleting wild populations. The catch here? Locally, environmental organizations protest the increase in nutrients the farms can bring, potentially causing more red tide outbreaks.

So, what makes the best sustainable restaurants? The answer is not always clear-cut, but today’s conscientious chefs agree the effort is essential for the future of their business and our world. Some local chefs leap quantumly beyond the bounds of early definitions of sustainability and battle with the double-edged sword of inconsistencies.

Fabrizio Aielli and his wife Ingrid have raised the standard of wining and dining in Naples since their culinary debut during the Naples Winter Wine Festival.

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“Wine is a very, very important part of food culture,” Fabrizio Aielli, chef-owner of five Florida restaurants, says. “Being from Italy, wine is the way we grew up. I cannot imagine having dinner without wine. A glass of wine emphasizes your palate and just makes you happy.”

As important as wine itself is to Fabrizio’s life and restaurant empire, the Naples Winter Wine Festival (NWWF) played a crucial role in the trajectory of his career. He was running an A-list Washington, D.C., restaurant when he was invited in 2005 as a celebrity chef for the fifth annual festival.

He and his wife Ingrid, who is also his business partner, had been vacationing in Naples since 2001. “That time, with the wine festival, we were down here not for vacation but for work, and that’s when the idea came to my mind to open a restaurant,” he says with his infectious, trademark smile.

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The Culinary & Hospitality Education Foundation of Southwest Florida will distribute $42,000 in scholarships to Collier and Lee county students who intend to pursue careers and education in hospitality or culinary arts. What a great accomplishment by the Culinary & Hospitaility Education Foundation of Southwest Florida! The money has been raised at the last CHEF charity showdown between our corporate Chef Jason Goddard, and Chef Asif Syed (21 Spices by Chef Asif.)

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The Naples Children & Education Foundation, founders of the Naples Winter Wine Festival, joins with Sea Salt and The Wine Store for a new virtual dining series, “Purposeful Pairings,” at 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25. The event supports local restaurants and helps the organization fulfill its mission to support underprivileged and at-risk children in Collier County. The menu includes some of Chef Fabrizio Aielli’s signature dishes and “tips and tricks” on how to make a perfect risotto, presented by Aielli Group’s Corporate Chef Jason Goddard. Sommeliers Liset Zelaya of Sea Salt, wine portfolio specialist Marcello Palazzi, and Bruce Nichols, owner of The Wine Store, will guide participants through the wines. The presentation will last 90 minutes. The menu includes a sea urchin appetizer with Domaine Papagiannakos, Attiki Assyrtiko 2019; a lobster risotto entrée with Castello di Neive Barbaresco 2017; and a white truffle panna cotta with Henri Champliau Wild Miss Méthode Ancestrale Rosé Demi-Sec.

The inaugural ideas festival partnered with the James Beard Foundation and a team of national and local chefs to spotlight sustainability—and throw one heck of a party.

As it came to a close, the rest of the night’s chefs were brought onstage—a mix of local talent, including Asif Syed of 21 Spices, Jason Goddard of Sea Salt and Vincenzo Betulia of The French, plus a Miami-based pastry chef Soraya Kilgore of MadLab Creamery. They each announced what dish the audience had to look forward to in a matter of minutes at the party, and how it dovetailed with the sustainable theme.

And then everyone was off to eat, drink and be merry—and think about the big ideas behind them and what was still left in store.

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The Aielli Group is honored that all three of our restaurants (Barbatella, Sea Salt and Dorona) have been named among the Top 25 restaurants in Naples by food critic JLB from the Naples Daily News. This is a great recognition for all our staff members who put in much effort and passion in their daily work at each restaurant. Thank you!

Jason Goddard was once a farm boy in the rolling hills and limestone bluffs of eastern Iowa.

On a 3½ acre plot of land on the Mississippi River, Goddard helped his family grow sweet corn, okra and five different varieties of beans. It’s there he developed an understanding of food and its growing cycle. How ingredients should be fresh and local and pesticide-free.

And now he’s applying those practices as corporate chef of three Naples restaurants and one in St. Petersburg.

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