Virtù chef makes fresh mesquite-flour pasta
They don’t grow mesquite in but maybe they should.
Chef Gio Osso’s family hails from southern Italy, parts of which have more in common with our arid, desert climate than some might guess. But mesquite is native to the American Southwest, and that’s the ingredient Osso — the man behind Virtù Honest Craft in Scottsdale — chose to use as the base for his fresh pasta.
Osso is the third of six Arizona chefs featured on “Dom’s Cooler Cuisine,” a new video series hosted by
and azcentral.com
What is mesquite flour?
Italy, dining critic.
We filled a cooler with six ingredients that were farmed, foraged or produced in Arizona. We asked six local chefs to choose one and create an original dish on the spot. But they don’t know what’s in the cooler, and once an ingredient is chosen, it’s gone.
Mesquite flour — selected from the remaining four ingredients — is made from the pods of the mesquite tree, dried and ground into a fine powder with the strikingly intense flavor and aroma of caramel and cinnamon.
Italian cuisine is no stranger to flour, so it seemed a natural fit.
Osso made fresh pappardelle, carefully balancing a mix of mesquite and wheat flours to bring out the mesquite’s natural flavor while maintaining the kind of firm bite that Italians desire in their pasta and that wheat flour provides.
The perfect pair for a cinnamonscented pasta? A hearty beef ragù. Beef heart, to be precise.
Osso has been perfecting his cuore di manzo ragù, an intense, meaty concoction made from one of the most flavorful muscles in the body. To better suit the mesquite pappardelle’s unique flavor, Osso added a little roasted garlic, Marsala, butter and fresh basil to his sauce, plating the final product with a little bit of Parmesan cheese.
Osso’s mesquite flour pappardelle with cuore di manzo ragù was a thoughtful take on bold Italian flavor.
His delicate pasta paired perfectly
‘Dom’s Cooler Cuisine’
To read all six stories and watch all six videos, go to Watch “Dom’s Cooler Cuisine” playlist on Search and please subscribe to our channel. with the intense, meaty tomato and beef ragù. Most interesting, however, was the way the sauce played off the cinnamon and caramel notes in the pasta.
Throughout history, Southern Italy has found itself at the crossroads of cultures. The Moorish influence on Italian cuisine manifests itself in the use of flavors and spices more commonly associated with African or Middle Eastern cuisines, including the use of cinnamon, which the scent of mesquite flour closely resembles.
With Marsala buffeting the ragù’s natural sweetness, Osso’s pasta drifted into the kind of interplay of savory and sweet reminiscent of the foods of North Africa, creating a dish with a distinctly southern Italian character while using ingredients from the American Southwest.
Osso has found a deft way of working a signature desert ingredient into his Italian fare. Perhaps the Italians might be interested in trying their hand as well? Jeff Kraus, the chef of Crepe Bar, gets creative with a unique Arizona allium.