The Costardi brothers’ other side of pasta

Pasta made as risotto? No, too easy, «today it is so trendy yet our mother was using this technique already 15 years ago, we believe she was one of the first …». It would have almost been a banal trick to face the request made by Paolo Marchi in this way: to test themselves with pasta, being the recognised kings of risotto, a definition that is in fact diminishing for two of the most mature and established young chefs in Italy. We’re talking about Christian Costardi, the savoury half of a perfect couple in which the sweet side is represented by the quieter younger brother Manuel: they will be among the many protagonists in the next edition of the Identità Milano congress, and will get on the stage of Sala Blu 1 on Tuesday February 10th (here there’s the complete programme), apparently on the wrong day and in the wrong place, because that day, under those lights, people will speak about pasta.

This is an irksome theme for the Costardi brothers, «a good challenge – they admit – We enter a territory that is rather unknown to us», not that you can’t find it in the menu of Cinzia da Christian e Manuel, the restaurant inside the homonymous hotel in Vercelli they “inherited” from they parents, «but because for us, the first course par excellence, the one that best represents national cuisine, has always been risotto», after all, the only spaghetti in their menu are with tomatoes, cooked in infusion, a simple counterpart of their famous Costardi's tomato rice.

Therefore, it was necessary to welcome the provocation given by Marchi while avoiding the pasta-risotto dichotomy, a frontal counter position that in their eyes would necessary imply that their beloved grains would win, and instead they find a “different place” for pasta, presenting it with different ideas. And thus asking themselves another fundamental question, a rhetorical one, in fact: «Who said pasta is a first course?». Nobody did, Christian e Manuel reply and in fact they offer an opposite answer: pasta is not a first course. Instead, it has some still little explored potential as it is incredibly versatile: «In our Italy, the land of spaghetti and the like, we have never used the infinite possibilities that pasta has always offered. The only exception is that of Davide Scabin, and indeed he’s an unavoidable point of reference for our current research».

Research, indeed: because the input-provocation given by the founder of Identità Golose led the Costardi brothers to question themselves and wonder: «this is the strength of culinary congresses, which are essential in stimulating study, you go there to learn something, not to teach others, even when you’re a speaker. This will be the case this time as well». The lecture will thus develop the concept of pasta as a “non-first-course”, an idea that has already stimulated the creativity of the establishment in Vercelli, «in the past we created a cannolo made with pasta, filled with buffalo milk ricotta, bitter orange marmalade and sprinkled with icing sugar», that is to say a dessert, as in the case of one of the three recipes the Costardi brothers are preparing for Milan, «we will present an idea of sweet that is halfway between our tradition and the oriental one, thus keeping an eye on the fusion fashion: it will be a sort of ramen, with noodles in a chocolate broth».

In order to have more details, it will be necessary to wait for the congress, as in the case of the initial divertissement with which they will debut in front of the audience, «we will play with pasta in a rather crazy way», imagining a sort of “spaghetti western” – where the noun is the first word – cooked in an infusion of garlic, chilli pepper and herbs, and then fried and served crispy in a paper cone, «as if they were fries or popcorn ready to be munched at the movies», seasoned with a beer-barbecue sauce.

They will introduce the main dish, Milanese paccheri, the perfect union of two emblematic Milanese dishes, saffron risotto and bone marrow. In this case, of course, there will be no rice, but Felicetti paccheri cooked in an infusion, in a broth aromatised with saffron; it is then filled with lightly seared and delicately seasoned bone marrow, placed on meat jus, before the finishing with gremolada, hazelnut butter and two stems of saffron. This will be the Costardi brothers’ dish for Expo 2015, «the ideal union of North and South, a synthesis of culinary simplicity».