Young and unripe, the flavour is green, fresh, even when the shoot is perfectly white and therefore looks best in all the characteristic cooking of field and forest herbs. You will not go wrong by choosing risottos, pies, omelettes, flans. “Risi co i sparasi’, ‘risi co i bruscandoli’, which are not asparagus but wild hop shoots, ‘risi e sc-iopeti’, i.e. with the shoots of the silene inflata, have exactly the same ingredients and the same procedure: this will dispel any doubts. One annotation: while the recipe from the Veneto region, albeit on the wave, proposes a risotto with lots of mantecatura, in Lombardy, where risotto is usually drier, in this case they opt for a decidedly slow soup, so much so that ‘ris e spàrgitt’ is also served as a single dish with plenty of crostini on the bottom of the plate.

If, however, having left the safe ground of tradition behind, you would like to venture into more modern combinations of asparagus with local ingredients (…): ‘Sliced raw very thinly, perhaps in a carpaccio, with excellent grana cheese, extra virgin olive oil from Crespano del Grappa and a touch of truffle, so that it does not overpower, it is an excellent dish’.

text taken from:
The asparagus
Paolo Colombo, Paolo Morganti, Maurizio Onorato, Morganti Editore, 1994