Iconic, highly appreciated, elegant, design lover: Davide Oldani is a chef with an extraordinary ability, who besides his gastronomic knowledge always has a careful eye for hospitality and joie de vivre.
With his cuisine made of research and technique, refinement and creativity, he has inspired and contributed to build contemporary Italian cuisine. Creator of the pop cuisine, he offers to his many passionate customers many dishes that have now become new classics. He has signed for Salumi Pasini a collection of unique products that recall his childhood and his family tradition.
What’s your first memory connected to cured meats?
For us, salami is a lovely family history. My dad used to say that salamis in our area are made in a unique way: we still make them with a noble part of thigh and culatello, and then we enriche them with beef meat.
What’s your favourite cured meat?
Driss, the salami that I studied together with Salumi Pasini, is definitely my favourite. It is composed of selected meats, keeping only the most valuable parts and processing them together with spices and flavourings. The black pepper is crushed by hand in a mortar in order to preserve its aroma within the product. The mixture, once ready, is stuffed into a “straight” casing that gives it its typical shape from which its name – Driss precisely – and tied by hand. Driss owes its taste to a drying process with a constantly controlled temperature and humidity. During the maturing and seasoning phase the salami is hung.
Another cured meat that I like very much is our lard, Grass, produced from a first choice Italian pork meat softened with a delicate manual massage. In addition to water and salt, there are various types of spices that give it its intense flavour and aroma.
How important are cured meats in your cuisine?
I like to eat cured meats as they are naturally, if they are well seasoned they have the right flavour and all it takes is the right combination with bread to make an extraordinary dish.
But I’ ve always used them in my cuisine: from when I worked at Gualtiero Marchesi’s restaurant, when we prepared vegetables with shabu shabu cured ham, to the ham powder that I use for our carbonara. We also use cold cuts both in our restaurant at Malpensa airport and also at the Camparino in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele.
I like the idea of a modern healthy cuisine, where there are also some good sliced cured meats. Obviously I expect them to be excellent, I don’t like all kinds of cured meats: my favourites are definitely salami, lard and ham, and then the culatello.
How did you get to know Salumi Pasini?
I’ve known them for many, many years now. There was a client of mine who introduced me to them: they immediately caught my interest because they were from the my territory. We started talking with Andrea and Daniela, we selected and marketed the lard and then other cold cuts and we still work together. Thanks to them I had the pleasure of being able to make my salami recipe, the one my father used to make, available to everyone
