Beyond the classic “pasta and onions”: Chef Andrea Impero's dish combines unique and unexpected flavors, thanks to the cryoextraction cooking of Cannara copper onions.

After meeting Luigi Ortolani, a small producer of Cannara onions (Perugia), the chef decided to concentrate various nutritional values in this cryoextraction technique, which requires time and a large quantity of onions. He uses spaghettini from the Pastificio dei Campi in Gragnano, which finishes cooking in 3 minutes in Cannara copper onion cryoextraction. Locci extra virgin olive oil, San Felice variety, is added during creaming. The dish is completed with aged Parmigiano Reggiano.

“Pasta and Onion”

Ingredients

280 g of Gragnano spaghetti from Pastificio Dei Campi
15 golden onions from Cannara
50 g of extra virgin olive oil
3 kg of coarse sea salt
100 g of 96-month aged Parmigiano Reggiano cheese

Preparation

First, take the onions with their skins on and sprinkle them with coarse salt; bake them in the oven for 2 hours at 200°C, then peel them while still hot and place them in the freezer for 12 hours, or until they reach a temperature of minus 10°C. Then proceed with cryoextraction, blending the onion and filtering it with a cotton cloth in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours.

Cook the spaghetti for 5 minutes in a saucepan, season with the onion, stir in extra virgin olive oil and finally serve the dish piping hot, sprinkled with 96-month Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.