If you read my blog, you might have the impression that I am superorganized, always have three meals on the table, and manage to photograph and write about every one. You’d be very wrong.
Actually, I used to be very organized. From the time I was in high school, when I was in charge of cooking for our family, I would research out all the menus, make a grocery list, and have everything planned and ready for the week. This continued in university, where I cooked not only for myself but also for my roommates. While I let them decide what they would take with them for lunch each day, dinners were my domain and The Moosewood Cookbook was my bible. Graduate school was easier, since I was on my own and had no one to boss around. I was the master planner, and mealtimes ran like clockwork.
And even during my first few years of marriage and small children, I was a fan of weeklong meal plans accompanied by detailed shopping lists. I was always prepared.
I’m not so sure when this all started to fall apart. But at some point, my lazy nature began to assert itself. Actually, it wasn’t that I was lazy, just that I was busy doing other things (like writing books) and so my mealtime organizational skills fell by the wayside. Thank god my passion for shopping saved me from complete disaster.
When it comes to Italian pantry items, I am a shopaholic. I admit it. If it has a cute label, then there is a good chance I will buy it. So my pantry is always pretty much stocked to overflowing. While I may think I have nothing in the house to prepare for dinner, I’m always wrong. I can invariably wrangle something from the cans, bags, and boxes that fill up my cupboard.
I love the word for pantry in Italian: dispensa. Usually in Italian, words have very specific meaning, but dispensa has three, all of which I believe apply to me, and particularly at that time of day when dinnertime is looming. The first definition of dispensa is “pantry.” I’ve been attached to the word pantry ever since I fell in love with Little House on the Prairie. There was never a meal laid on the rough wooden table that didn’t involve a trip to Ma’s pantry. I dreamed that one day I, too, would have my own little house (not necessarily on the prairie) with a well-stocked pantry from which comforting, nourishing meals would somehow miraculously begin.
The second meaning of dispensa is one I learned only recently, when sitting in on Italian cooking school classes. At the beginning of the class the teacher would pass out a sheet of paper that was called the dispensa. Listing not only the ingredients and recipes, the paper would also outline exactly what we’d be learning over the course of the class. While no one is handing me a list of instructions when I go to make dinner, I like to think that my well-stocked pantry is somehow advising me, letting me know what we will be covering for tonight’s dinner.
And finally, dispensa also translates as “dispensation,” as in “you are forgiven” (in the Catholic religion or in a legal kind of way), or not having to adhere to any previously agreed upon rules, which is kind of a nice idea when dinner comes around.
One of the reasons that my pantry is so well stocked is my constant fear of never being able to find that special ingredient ever again. I am a complete and utter sucker for the handmade, artisanal, heritage, and limited-production food product. If there is a farmers’ market, I am there. And there isn’t an Italian food fair that I haven’t been to many times over. When I’m walking around the aisles of Slow Food’s Salone del Gusto in Torino, or the Taste fair in Florence, I’m there to do research, to discover the latest and most obscure. I taste my way through things like pickled garlic shoots, Sardinian smoked fish roe, and cheeses aged in mountaintop caves. While many of the things I try are there only for the tasting, even more are for sale, and I’m sure that one of the reasons I have shoulder problems is due to my tendency to overload my shopping bags with kilos of beans, cans of fish, and bottles of balsamic that get lugged on the train, back to Rome, to fill my dispensa.
So even though I am past the days when I would make up detailed meal plans for the week, I don’t really have to worry, since without really even trying, my cupboard is rarely bare.
Via Nazionale 71, 39-06-489-8744
Castroni is where you go in Rome when you can’t find that hard-to-get essential ingredient. Cranberries for Thanksgiving? Check. Soba noodles? Check. The sprawling store off Cola di Rienzo (and the newly located store on Via Nazionale) is where expats—and Romans—go for exotic and foreign goodies. But it also has one of the best selections of Italian pantry items like olive oil, balsamic vinegar, mostarda, coffee, and chocolates.
Piazzale XII , Ottobre 1492, 39-06-902-79201
One-stop shopping for just about everything an Italian pantry could want, from olive oil–packed tuna to artisanal pasta.
Via Domenico Panaroli 6, 39-06-2430-0765
This small shop, located outside of Rome’s center in the Tuscolana neighborhood, is run by the passionate Vincenzo Macino, who has made it his personal goal to revive and make available, commercially and sustainably, the food of Lazio. In addition to cheese and cured meats, you’ll find plenty to fill your pantry: olive oils, vinegars, dried pastas, jams, and legumes.
Via Luca della Robbia 20, 39-327-861-2655
One of the best spice stores in Rome is located in the Testaccio neighborhood.
Extra-Virgin Olive Oil. This is your basic ingredient, so make it count. Don’t assume that the olive oil you buy in the supermarket that is labeled extra-virgin Italian olive oil is that. If it’s cheap, then chances are that it’s either not extra virgin or not even Italian. The best way to get the best olive oil is to go to a trusted source.
Anchovies. The best come in clear glass jars, to better display the fat fillets. You can use those packed either in salt or in oil. I use and love both, for different reasons. If I have more time, then I’ll make the effort to use those in salt. They are fiddly since they involve soaking, and then filleting, but the large sturdy fillets are beautiful. On the other hand, if you find good-quality fillets packed in olive oil, that is so much easier. The only problem is that they usually cost a bit more.
Capers. The best capers come from the islands around Sicily, Pantelleria, and the Aeolian Islands. If you can find them packed in salt, get those, since they have a much purer taste than those packed in brine or vinegar. They just need a soak (or a parboil) to remove the excess salt.
Tuna. I consider water-packed tuna to be the equivalent of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. In other words, why bother? High-quality olive oil–packed tuna is a thing of beauty and delicious, and an essential component of any well-stocked pantry. Ventresca, or belly tuna, is the best. Known as toro in sushi restaurants, the canned version is supertender, flavorful, and rich. It’s also pricey, so you might just want to use regular oil-packed tuna.
Beans. Dried beans are always going to be better than canned beans, but I realize that you might have last-minute emergencies. So it’s best to always have both in your pantry.
Tomatoes. If possible, try to get your hands on imported tomatoes from Italy. I always keep a variety in my pantry, including peeled (pelati) San Marzano, both crushed and pureed. The best, though, are canned cherry tomatoes from Sicily or around Naples.
Sardines. Tuna is not the only canned fish. You’d be amazed what a can of good sardines can add to a pasta dish.
Olives. A few jars, with pits please, of both black and green. Don’t feel committed to Italian imports, since those from Turkey, Greece, Spain, and France are just as good.
Pasta. If there is one item you stock your pantry with, it should be several bags of good-quality pasta. And when I say good quality, I really do mean that. Try to buy imported pasta, which has been air-dried slowly. Industrially made pasta—especially that made in the United States—can’t compare in taste or texture. Brands I like, that are available abroad: Martelli, Rustichelli, Faella, Benedetto Cavallieri, and Garafolo.
In Italy it’s still pretty common to eat seasonally. No one would ever dream of having pomodori al riso (rice-stuffed tomatoes) or friselle (tomato-topped rusks) in the dead of winter because where on earth would those tomatoes come from? And anything with cavolo nero (kale) is for the cold months only. The eating seasonally thing is mostly tied to ingredients, obviously. But there are certain dishes that could, in theory, be made year-round but are reserved for specific seasons because, well, they just are.
Insalata di riso (rice salad) is one of those dishes. It’s simply boiled rice with chopped raw vegetables as well as a few preserved ones. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper, and you’ve got your dish. In theory you could eat it year-round, varying it season by season with the addition of different vegetables.
But no. I think there is probably an Italian law that says insalata di riso can only be eaten during the summer. And just in case you are confused as to the official start of insalata di riso season, just take a stroll down any aisle in a supermarket and you are sure to be faced with a large display of Condiriso.
Yes. There is a specific mix of preserved vegetables that is used for insalata di riso that is available only during the summer. While I’m usually on the “fresh is better” team, like any good Italian housewife, I, too, make sure I stock up on these little jars.
But of course I’ve developed my own version of rice salad over the years, which manages to mix both fresh and preserved vegetables. Why include anything in a jar, you may wonder? Because I like rice salad that includes that pickle-y, briny taste. Little chunks of olives, carrots, and onions that have had a good long vinegar soak. And I always choose the leggero, or “light,” version of Condiriso, which means the goodies are preserved in brine, not in olive oil, which makes them not only lighter, but even more sour.
I also break from traditional Italian insalata di riso tradition by using the wrong kind of rice. Most Italians use parboiled rice, which is labeled clearly “per insalata di riso.” The grains cook up all nice and separate, with no gummy starch thing happening. But I prefer the chewiness of arborio or carnaroli, which makes my insalata di riso much less caffetteria-style. (At least I think so.)
When do I make insalata di riso? In the summer, naturally. (I’m not that iconoclastic.) Specifically, it’s become a tradition to make it on the days my sisters are arriving for their annual visits from the States. Since I never quite know exactly what time they will get to the house in Umbria from the airport in Rome, it’s easier if I have something already made and waiting.
Serves 8
3 cups (¾ liter) chicken broth
1 tablespoon salt
1 pound (½ kilo) arborio rice
1 jar Condiriso, drained
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Freshly ground black pepper
Bring the chicken broth and enough water to fill a pot large enough to cook all the rice to a boil. Add the salt. Add the rice and cook until done but not mushy. Drain.
While the rice is cooking, put the Condoriso and chopped vegetables in a large bowl. Add the olive oil, lemon juice, and parsley.
Add the warm drained rice to the vegetable mixture. Stir and let come to room temperature. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Add as much lemon juice and freshly ground pepper as you’d like.
Note: I’ve actually seen Condiriso for sale in the States. Another option is to buy a jar of giardiniera, a mix of pickled vegetables like cauliflower, carrots, and celery. Just make sure you chop the larger pieces finely.
Variations: You can add just about anything else you’d like. Other herbs like basil and chives are great. Also add any other chopped raw veggies like zucchini or scallions. If you want to throw in some tuna to make it more of a one-dish meal, that works, too. Or, if you’re feeling porky, thinly sliced hot dogs are often my secret ingredient. For real. Feta is lovely. And, of course, if you’re feeling healthy, any sort of grain will do: brown rice, farro, even barley.
Serves 5 to 6 as a first course
My pantry is always well stocked with fish. Not your usual cans of dry white tuna in water, but cans of delicious, oily sardines, mackerel, and fatty ventresca tuna. While the ventresca tuna can be expensive, I’m always surprised at how cheap both the sardines and the mackerel are, and equally shocked at these ingredients aren’t more widely used in pasta sauces.
Last summer when my mother-in-law came to visit up in Umbria, she carefully packed in her suitcase a kilo of handmade orecchiette. Since it was summer, I had plenty of tomatoes on hand, and so roasted them at high heat to toss with the pasta. While I’d usually add a few handfuls of grated ricotta salata cheese to finish, this time I decided to skip the dairy (both Sophie and Emma are getting to be slightly lactose intolerant) in favor of one of my beautifully labeled cans of sardines.
My mother-in-law was a bit skeptical as I was dumping cans of fish onto her carefully carried, handmade, fresh orecchiette. “Cosi’? Senza fare niente?” (“Like that? Without doing anything to them?”) Putting canned food onto pasta was obviously something only an American daughter-in-law could think up.
All doubts faded away once she tasted the pasta. “Non e’ male.” (“Not bad.”) From an Italian mother-in-law? That’s more or less the equivalent of two Michelin stars.
2 pounds (1 kilo) fresh plum or cherry tomatoes
Salt
Hot red pepper flakes
3 teaspoons dried oregano
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
⅓ cup (70 milliliters) extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound (500 grams) pasta (I used orecchiette, but you can use any other pasta)
3.8-ounce (110-gram) can good-quality sardines
A handful of fresh basil leaves
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Slice the tomatoes in half lengthwise. Lay them on a baking sheet in one layer, cut side facing up. (You may need two baking sheets.)
Sprinkle with salt, red pepper flakes, and oregano. Slip the sliced garlic into the tomatoes and drizzle liberally with olive oil; the more the better. Roast in the oven until the tomatoes have begun to shrivel up and brown, about 45 minutes.
In the meantime, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. When the tomatoes are almost done, boil the pasta, cooking until al dente. Drain, reserving ½ cup of the pasta cooking water. Transfer the pasta to a large bowl, and scrape the tomatoes onto the pasta. Pour the reserved hot pasta water onto the baking sheet(s), and use it to scrape up the bits of browned tomatoes and their juices. Pour that on the pasta as well and toss to combine. Add the sardines to the pasta, breaking them up with a wooden spoon. Add the fresh basil and serve.
Serves 5
Most people take tuna for granted. It’s that can you keep in the pantry for an emergency. And if you’re like most, you sort of think of tuna as a relatively inexpensive diet food, and so buy the small cans packed in water, which taste about as interesting as cat food.
But there’s a whole other world of tuna out there. Ventresca tuna is from the belly, and so is very tender, very fatty, and extremely flavorful. It’s always packaged in flat cans to preserve the shape of the fillets, and always packed in olive oil. And, for some reason, the old-fashioned cans always have fantastically beautiful labels, which makes me overbuy.
Although you don’t have to add much to a can of fine tuna to turn it into a topping for pasta, you probably also have lemons, capers, and olives around, which make it even better.
Salt
16 black olives, pitted
2 tablespoons capers
2 garlic cloves, crushed
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
Grated zest and juice of 1 untreated lemon
One 3.5-ounce (100-gram) can imported ventresca tuna
½ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Bring a large pot of salted water to boil, add the pasta, and cook until al dente.
Meanwhile, in a large bowl combine the olives, capers, garlic, oil, red pepper flakes, lemon zest, and juice and stir well. Add the tuna, broken into large chunks.
When the pasta is al dente, drain, reserving ½ cup of the pasta cooking water. Transfer the pasta to the bowl with the tuna mixture and toss gently. Add a bit of the reserved cooking water to moisten. Add the chopped parsley, toss, and serve.
Serves 5
One of the biggest property owners in my pantry is the jars and jars of tomatoes that our friend Paolo puts up every August and gives to us. People so often think about these “canned things” as somehow not vegetables anymore, but just a vehicle for sauce. And the other misconception that people have is that pasta is not a diet food. The evil carbohydrate raises its head.
But diet is about how much you eat, of course. If you eat loads of pasta (or anything, for that matter), you’re going to gain weight. And if you load tons of oil and cheese on top of that, well … you know where this is going.
So, here follows my answer to what to make when your pantry is bare and you maybe want to start the year on a slightly lighter note. Things to note: I’ve cut the oil way down, which isn’t always the way I do things. But in this case I’ve doubled the amount of tomatoes I usually use and cooked them down even more to boost flavor. And to add more zing, I’ve thrown in a handful of olives—not too many, just a few to give texture and color and a bit of “oliveyness.” I’ve also added anchovies, so yes, this is really puttanesca (but with less oil, which I consider one of the main ingredients of puttanesca sauce).
And a word about amounts of pasta. It bears repeating about the whole quantity thing. More pasta equals more calories. Now, I don’t know about your family, but in mine as much pasta as gets cooked gets eaten. So like a good Italian cook I measure out my pasta. For a dish like this, with such a light sauce, I use 100 grams (3½ ounces) per person. (No more than that.) For a heavier sauce, or one with a lot more vegetables, I cut it back to 75 (2.6 ounces) or even 50 grams (1.7 ounces) a person.
4 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
6 garlic cloves, chopped
½ teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
4 anchovies
8 black olives, pitted
4 cups pelati (peeled whole San Marzano tomatoes) with their juices
2 cups canned crushed tomatoes
1 pound (500 grams) farfalle (see note)
About ½ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a pan large enough to hold all the cooked pasta and sauce. Add the garlic and cook for just a couple of minutes, then add the red pepper flakes, anchovies, and olives. Cook, stirring, until the anchovies start to fall apart, about 2 minutes.
Add the tomatoes and their juices. This will seem like a lot of tomatoes and juices, but you’re really going to cook it down a lot. Turn the heat to medium-high and let the sauce really bubble away. You may have to put one of those splatter shields on the pot, but you don’t want to cover it. You want the sauce to reduce to about one-fourth of what you started with. This should take only about 20 minutes or so, if you are really cooking on medium-high heat.
In the meantime, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the pasta until al dente. Drain, add the pasta to the sauce in the pan, and cook until heated through, scraping in any bits of dried sauce that have stuck to the sides of the pan.
Top with parsley and serve.
Note: Of course you can use another shape of pasta. But sometimes I feel as if I’m getting into a penne rut.
Serves 4
During the summer, I like to make up a big bowl of some type of salad on Sunday, to have something to see us through a week of lunches. More often than not it’s a grain or rice salad. And of course, the perennial standby: bean and tuna salad.
While I usually add something bright and colorful like bell peppers or cherry tomatoes to a bean salad, I am often forced to raid the pantry. An excellent can of olive oil–packed tuna and a beautiful red onion from Tropea come to the rescue. A hefty pour of olive oil and some freshly ground black pepper turn it all into a light, yet delicious, Sunday lunch, with plenty left over to see us through at least three more lunches during the week.
2 cups dried beans (see note)
One 8.8-ounce (250-gram) can olive oil–packed tuna
1 large red onion, chopped
1 big bunch flat-leaf parsley, leaves roughly chopped
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
Put the drained cooked beans into a large bowl. Open the tuna and add it to the beans, along with the olive oil it is packed in. (Come on, you can do it. Don’t drain that good, tuna-flavored oil away!)
Add the onion and parsley, and stir. Season with salt and abundant black pepper to taste. You may need a bit more olive oil.
This is the basic version. If you do end up making it to have for lunches during the week, then each day you can add something else to change things up. A sliced tomato is always great. Some chopped bell peppers. I also love celery. It’s up to you.
Note: Beans: Yes, you can use canned beans. But as always, dried are so much better (or fresh if you can get them). If you are using dried beans, soak them for at least 6 hours, then cook in abundant salted water just until tender. Do not overcook. When you’re making bean salad, a bit of a bite is a good thing, and you definitely want to avoid the mush factor.
