There pasta with artichokes? This version by Davide Oldani will win you over immediately, especially if you love this seasonal product, thanks to a cooking secret to make it naturally creamy and enveloping. The great chef, 2 Michelin stars with his D’O restaurant, gives us a very enjoyable variant: a creamy and crunchy dish which features, in addition to the winter vegetable, also two ingredients to which the chef from Cornaredo is very attached: pasta and saffron. A dish that reflects his love for pasta (he also serves it from the trolley) and which is part of the celebrations of D’O himself. Oldani has in fact chosen this raw material as the protagonist for a special box of Barilla bronze pasta created together with the Parma company. A limited edition, to celebrate «20 years of achievements of the chef, who in Cornaredo, in two decades, has given rise to a real “gastronomic village”: in addition to the D’O restaurant, two Michelin starsalso a hotel school and the new Elm treea cozy space with a modular chef’s table, where you can meet Oldani in a one-to-one haute cuisine gastronomic experience (i.e. a single table overlooking the open kitchen).

A dish that will amaze you, as long as you follow the chef’s few tricks. Starting from the choice of raw material: spiny artichokespasta bronze drawn in format of rigatoni and an excellent saffron, to be treated with care so as not to disperse its fragrance. Finally, the spring onion, used in its entirety to bind and play on contrasts.

The recipe: half rigatoni with bronze, spring onions and saffron

Why a classic revisited like pasta with artichokes for its 20 years of activity? «Because I am convinced, states the chef, «that Italian cuisine is great, not only for variety and taste, but also for the possibility it offers of being constantly reinterpreted. I did it with simplicity, giving value to all the ingredients and making the seasonality and high quality of the products two key points.”

Ingredients for 4 people

For pasta

• 1dl white wine
• 320 g bronze drawn half rigatoni

For the cream

• 300 g cleaned spring onions
• 40 g extra virgin olive oil
• 1 bay leaf
• 0.5 g saffron in stigmas
• sugar
• salt

For the artichokes

• 4 prickly artichokes
• 10 g extra virgin olive oil
• 2 sprigs of thyme
• 1 clove of garlic
• ½ lemon

Method

1. Toast dry the half rigatoni in a saucepan and add little by little hot water until the pasta is cooked. Salt at the end with 1 g of salt.
2. Split the white part of the spring onion, cut it in half and brown it in the oil, add
   ½ dl of water and a pinch of sugar, 1 g of salt and cook. In a saucepan, braise the thinly cut green part of the spring onions with oil and salt. Add the white wine and bay leaf. Cover and cook.
3. Blend and filter the sauce, add the saffron and set aside.
4. Cut the artichokes in four equal parts, previously cleaned and preserved in water and lemon. Brown them with extra virgin olive oil, add the peeled garlic clove and the thyme.
5. Wet with 1 dl of water, cover and cook for approximately 14 minutes. Keep aside.
6. Arrange the spring onions and artichokes in the center of the plate. Mix the pasta with the spring onion cream, place it on the plate and add it to the artichokes and spring onions, finishing with the lemon thyme leaves.