“Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.”
Sophia Loren
Italians are born and raised on pasta; two-thirds of our bodies are made of pasta! Garibaldi, when he liberated Napoli in 1860, vowed that pasta would be the force that united Italy and I like to think of it as the fuel that runs the country. Imagine, at around ten to twelve every day, how many millions of pounds of pasta are going into pots in every bar and restaurant and in every home all over Italy, ready for people to sit down and have a plate of pasta for their lunch, to give them energy for the rest of the day.
There are hundreds of different shapes and varieties of pasta in Italy, some particular to a region or town, some so local that you will find them only in one village, and some so famous that everyone knows about them all over the world.
Over the centuries, in the poorest areas all over Italy, pasta was a staple that would often only have a few simple, local ingredients, whatever you could grow or afford, to enhance it. For example, in the north one of the most typical pastas was pizzocheri, in which the pasta is made not from durum wheat but with buckwheat and is combined with cabbage and potato. Now, in smart restaurants, pasta can be something delicate, even elegant, but we still draw on the old ingredients and flavors.
Pasta is also our fast food. Of course everyone has to prepare meals in a hurry sometimes, maybe even most of the time, but when you are in Italy and hungry for something in a hurry, what do you do? Send out for a takeout pizza? No way.
Instead, if you want fast food, what you do is chop up a few onions, sauté them in a little bit of olive oil with some chopped garlic, add a can of tomatoes and reduce them down while you cook some spaghetti for around six minutes, during which time your sauce will be ready – there is no shame in using good-quality canned tomatoes; all Italians do. You drain the spaghetti, toss it in the sauce, and if you have some herbs sprinkle them in too. Everything is done in roughly the time it would take you to open up a prepared meal from the supermarket and microwave the packets and trays in their plastic wrap. And you have the satisfaction of eating something you have prepared yourself, with nothing in it that isn’t good for you.
I remember at Zafferano we had a customer who came in every day and wanted to eat only spaghetti with tomato sauce. One day I got talking to him, and he told me that when he cooked spaghetti at home, he didn’t know how to make a tomato sauce, so he mixed up tomato ketchup and cream – imagine. I told him how to make the sauce in the way I have just described, and the next day he came in and told me I had changed his life.
Italians are used to having packets of dried pasta in the cupboard, and cans of tomatoes and jars of olives, or anchovies, which can just be melted in a pan to make a quick sauce. Perhaps one of the reasons that in Italy we still haven’t been swamped by the likes of McDonald’s is that we already have our own tradition of quick food on the streets – slices of good pizza, fried snacks like panzerotti or arancini, piadina (flat, unleavened bread), panini (rolls with maybe some salami or cheese inside). And when we are at home, we don’t need to phone for something to be delivered, because we always have pasta.
The first thing you need to know about pasta is that Marco Polo didn’t bring it to Italy from China. At school, like most kids in Europe, we were taught about Marco Polo. He was one of my heroes. In paintings, he was always good-looking, he had long hair and would be draped in silks, surrounded by beautiful girls and beautiful things, and most exciting of all, he was a traveler. I thought he had the best sort of life; I wanted to be Marco Polo. But as far as pasta is concerned, yes, he brought back different shapes of pasta, and maybe new ideas on how to keep it, but the evidence is that in Italy we already knew about some kind of pasta long before his explorations.
Even as far back as Etruscan times, there is a suggestion that they had a type of sheet pasta. Historians have found frescoes in the ancient tombs at Cerveteri, near Roma, showing people mixing flour and water, and implements such as a rolling pin and a cutting wheel. Of course, like most topics in Italy, there is much dispute about what this really means. Some say this flour-and-water dough might not have been boiled in water, but cooked on a stove to make flatbread or cakes.
Later on, a first-century Roman cook, Apicius, writes of something called lagane, which resembles lasagne. And it seems that the Sicilians were making pasta in the twelfth century, according to an Arabian geographer named Al-Idrisi. In 1154 he wrote about a food “made from semolina shaped into strands” that he saw in Trabia, near Palermo, made in such quantities that it met the needs of the people of Sicilia, and was “exported throughout Muslim and Christian lands.” Other evidence suggests that it was the Arabs themselves who introduced the concept of pasta to the Mediterranean basin around the eleventh century, and there are Arabic texts that mention itriyah, a form of dried pasta.
Certainly by the thirteenth century dried pasta is mentioned in Italian documents. There is a record of dried pasta in Liguria on a medical prescription dated 1244, and in another medieval Italian document, dated 1279, a Genoese notary named Ugolino Scarpa mentions una bariscela plena de macaronis (bariscela is a medieval word that means “container”), which was part of his dead client’s estate and which is thought to be some sort of dried pasta. This is the first time we get a feeling of the value of dried pasta as we know it today, something that you have in your pantry, to feed you at any time. All this was well before Marco Polo is supposed to have brought the idea of noodles from China to Venezia in 1295.
Pasta was mentioned by poets and writers in the fourteenth century, and famously in The Decameron (c. 1351) by Giovanni Boccaccio, who talks about the people who lived underneath a mountain of grated Parmesan cheese and “did nothing but make macaroni and ravioli, and boil them in capon broth …”
No one knows for sure about the exact origins of pasta that was boiled as we know it today. After all, what is pasta made of? Flour and water. Such basic ingredients must have been worked into a kind of dough by primitive peoples all over the world since the beginning of time. All we can say with certainty is that no people took to the idea quite like the Italians – and we’re the best at cooking it!
Now we think of macaroni as a specific kind of short, tubular pasta, but originally macaroni was used as a generic term for various pasta shapes. The word probably comes from the Latin macerare, which means to mix or knead, though there is a nice story told by my good friends Ann and Franco Taruschio, who ran the Walnut Tree Inn near Abergavenny for many years, and who wrote one of the seminal chef’s books on Italian cooking, Leaves from the Walnut Tree. Their idea is that, in Napoli, a prince heard the cost of making such pasta and declared, “Si buoni ma caroni!” (so good, but so expensive). I like that, though it is more likely a comment from Renaissance times, when pasta became known for a while as a rich man’s food, because of the cost of milling the wheat before the invention of mechanical mills.
Sometime from the fifteenth century onward, we began to use other names for pasta, which usually say something about the way it is made or the wav it looks. Apart from the simple sheets of dough (sfoglia), the first types of pasta were the ones that could be made in a very basic way, with the hands, like gnocchi (potato pasta dumplings), orecchiette (“little ears”) from Puglia, trofie (little twisted dumplings) from Recco, strozzapreti (“priest stranglers”) from Lazio and Umbria, and malloreddus from Sardegna, which are made from durum wheat and saffron, and shaped around a special basketlike tool called a ciuliri.
Sometimes pieces of pasta were pressed between wooden molds that stamped a pattern into the dough: like corzetti from Liguria, which are shaped like the corazzo, the ancient coins from Genoa; or garganelli, which is made by pressing rectangles of pasta against a grooved stick, or comb, called a pettine.
Later we began to have shapes like farfalle (“butterflies”), which in Emilia-Romagna are called strichetti, describing the way the middle of each shape is pinched together to make the butterfly shape. A lovely little curly pasta is gramigna, named after the herb of the same name, which grows everywhere in Italy, like a weed.
There is even a shape called maltagliati, which means “badly cut.” It can be triangular, which is the way they make it in Mantova, or diamond-shaped in Veneto and Emilia-Romagna. Other pasta shapes are named after a traditional way of serving, like zite and zitoni, which are typical at weddings and take their name from the word zita, which is Neapolitan for “bride.” Some commemorate a moment in history; for example, the wavy-edged ribbon pasta called reginette or mafaldine (the curly edges help it to hold quite delicate sauces) was created for the Princess Mafalda di Savoia, after a royal visit to Napoli.
Then someone made the discovery that you could roll out your pasta dough and cut it into strips, which were given names like tagliatelle, tagliolini and taglierini (all variations on the world tagliare, which means “to cut”); or fettuccine and fettuce (from affettare, “to slice”).
The last big step in the history of pasta, from making simple handmade shapes to producing the commercial tubular pastas that everyone recognizes today, came when it was discovered that you could press your dough through a special mold or dye, full of holes, and make shapes like spaghetti or penne. Even now new shapes of pasta are being produced that reflect the times in which we live. The contemporary equivalent of the quill-shaped penne is a pasta called chiocciola, the old word for snail, which is now used for the @ sign in e-mails.
In Italy, every kind of pasta is linked to a particular traditional sauce, depending on what region you are in. All over the country, people have taken this simple commodity and designed it – literally designed it – differently in terms of shape and texture, to suit specific sauces made with local ingredients.
Of course, the whole world now loves pasta, and in other countries they have come up with their own inventions, such as spaghetti bolognese, which is not an Italian dish – traditionally you would never serve a meat ragù with long thin pasta, because it doesn’t hold the sauce properly in the way that short tubular pasta or tagliatelle does. And then there is the American idea of spaghetti and meatballs, which again is not an Italian idea (you might have meatballs and spaghetti in separate courses, but how can you eat meatballs with strips of pasta – impossible). I sometimes wonder if the idea for the dish came from the tradition of lasagne di carnevale, a special dish served in Napoli just before Lent that was made with meatballs as well as ricotta, eggs and spinach. Hundreds of thousands of Italian emigrants left the Campania region around Napoli to go to America, so perhaps they took with them this tradition, and Americans, having such an abundance of meat, turned it into a staple dish of a different kind.
Italians always look first at what pasta they have, and then decide what to do with it, because the shape of pasta dictates the sauce. If you want to make a garlic and chile pasta, for example, then find you only have penne, it is a waste, because this kind of sauce is more suited to spaghetti. No one in Italy has to think about such decisions; they are just instinctive, something inherited from your mother and your grandmother, something you feel you have always known.
In cooking, however, our ideas are constantly evolving, as the books I have in my office from the last 200 years show. They put a marker in history that says: “In 1891 or 1920 this is what we are doing; this is not the final word; things are going to change, but this is a reference of our times.” The world moves on and we have to move with it. I’m not talking about suddenly deciding to make pasta with mango or kumquats – pasta is a pretty sacred thing to Italians, and there are boundaries you can never cross. But what I like to do is look at our heritage and then try to reinterpret, update and fine-tune those ideas a little to suit the way we eat now. For example, at Locanda we make a raviolo stuffed with osso buco. In a restaurant like ours, people would be uncomfortable if we were to give them an enormous bowl of osso buco and then expect them to sit and suck the meat from the bones; but I know that they will love the flavor of the dish, so we came up with this neater, more concentrated way for them to enjoy it. I couldn’t claim to have created anything really new; it is just a different way of looking at a classic meat dish with pasta.
The only pasta dish I can truly say I “invented,” that I really consider to be 100 percent mine, is pappardelle with fava beans and arugula (see page 338), which came to me in one of those brilliant moments you sometimes have in the kitchen. Of course, pappardelle are hundreds of years old, but the idea of serving the pasta with a puree of fava beans underneath it and the pasta itself tossed in beurre fondu to keep it really moist and highlight the flavor of the beans is an idea I admit is influenced by my time cooking in Paris. When I see it copied in other restaurants, sometimes done by guys that I really respect … well, I like that. I consider it a great compliment.
We are all interested in what our contemporaries are doing. For example, the Milanese chef Gualtiero Marchesi, who was the first Italian to be awarded three Michelin stars, is credited as being the great inventor of the modern idea of open raviolo (raviolo aperto) which is like a layered lasagne, and many chefs now have a version of it (ours is on page 357). Sometimes you might see it done with a little twist in the tail: perhaps the sheets of pasta will be embellished with saffron or squid ink, or herbs, then layered up with the ragù or vegetables inside a ring, occasionally sauced and glazed under the grill. The first time I saw raviolo aperto I thought, “Wow,” but then I remembered that years ago my mum and dad used to take my brother and me to a great trattoria where they did something similar, which they called lasagne luna. It would take two people to serve it: one holding a strip of pasta and letting it drop into folds like a ribbon, while the other spooned layers of pesto and Parmesan inside each fold. So, though I take my hat off to Marchesi, his idea has roots in dishes that have been made in small villages for decades.
At Locanda, we like to research regional handmade pasta, like spaghetti alla chitarra (see page 382), and play with sauces that will complement that particular texture and shape. At Refettorio, in the City, where I devised the menu, my head chef, Mattia Camorrani, came up with a brilliant way of using octopus with an artisanal fusilli lunghi, the pasta that looks a little like a corkscrew. This handmade one was a little less twisted than the commercial versions you usually see. The cleverness was not just in the way the pasta held the sauce but in the way he used the shape to mimic the ridgy, curling pieces of octopus. You see, in the kitchen you never, ever stop learning. If you lose that capacity to be surprised and excited, you know it is time to find another job.
There are two main types of pasta: fresh and dried. If you ask an Italian from almost anywhere in Italy for fresh pasta, he will assume you mean pasta made with eggs (pasta all’uovo), which is used mainly for “filled” pasta, like ravioli or tortellini, and for lasagne. It can also be cut into long strips of pasta, such as tagliatelle and pappardelle. Of course, as always, there are a few regional exceptions, such as orecchiette, little “ear-shaped” pieces, which are typical of Puglia but contain no eggs, and are often sold fresh as well as dried.
Dried pasta is usually made only with durum wheat flour and water, though you can also have dried egg pasta. (In general, I prefer egg pasta to be fresh rather than dried, but occasionally you find a fantastic, carefully made one.) Dried pasta is usually divided into “long” (spaghetti, linguine, vermicelli, etc.) and “short” (penne, rigatoni, farfalle, etc.).
It is important to understand that dried durum wheat pasta and egg pasta are not versions of the same thing; they are completely different. Dried pasta, made without eggs, is something very light, digestible and healthy, whereas egg pasta contains more protein and is heavier to digest.
I can almost tell you whether a pasta was good or not by looking at the plate straight after it has been eaten. Of course, you really know it was good if someone has polished their plate with a piece of bread – which we call scarpetta (“little shoe”). But if they haven’t done that, there should be very little sauce left, because it should have been perfectly amalgamated with the pasta, and what traces there are shouldn’t be dry and crusted – this shows that the sauce was too thick. There should also be a little moisture left on the plate, which tells you that the pasta didn’t become too dry and sticky during the ten minutes or so it took to eat it.
I don’t want to make cooking pasta sound complicated, when really it is one of the simplest things in the world, but, as with all cooking, if you understand a few basic principles, you can appreciate the difference between a plate of something that is okay and something that is truly fantastic, in which the sauce and pasta are no longer two separate things, but become one entity, in which every surface and nook and cranny of pasta is coated and saturated with flavor.
There is a very easy way to achieve this. When you drain your pasta, keep back some of its cooking water to add to the sauce – partly because this adds extra starch to the sauce, emulsifying it and helping it to cling much better to the pasta, and partly because you need to keep the pasta “alive,” i.e., moist, until the last mouthful. Be brave: if you are cooking pasta for four, you need to add about ¼ cup of the cooking water. I promise you, it will make a great difference to the way your sauce coats your pasta – and if you find you have accidentally added too much cooking water, you can always drain off the excess. Pasta will carry on absorbing moisture, up to 30 percent of its weight, after it comes out of its cooking water. And whereas one minute too long boiling in the water can kill it by making it too soft, one minute longer in the sauce will let it absorb the flavors, without ruining its bite. The more you appreciate the relationship between your pasta and the sauce, the better a pasta dish will become.
What also influences the finished result is how much pasta you try to cook at a time. If you eat a fantastic plate of pasta in a restaurant, you have to consider that the kitchen was making a portion only for you, and that there were probably two chefs looking after it. At Locanda, we would never cook more than two portions of long pasta – spaghetti, linguine, etc. – at one time, because it is difficult to toss any more through the sauce comfortably. So, if we have an order for a table where everyone wants pasta, we have as many chefs as it takes, looking after it in separate pans. Even at home, I prefer not to cook more than 1 pound of long pasta at a time. Instead, if, say, ten people are coming to our house – always a challenge, because I don’t have huge pots at home, and ten people means a couple pounds of pasta and a couple gallons of water – then I would either use two separate pans or avoid long pasta. I would instead either do a baked pasta, which is always appreciated and which you can prepare the day before (see page 352); or I would choose a short, sturdy pasta, like macaroni, elicoidali or penne, that is easier to handle and will hold up longer.
Dried pasta must be made with the hardest variety of wheat: durum wheat (durus is Latin for “hard”). When most flours are milled, the endosperm – the heart of the kernel of wheat – breaks down into powdery flour. The endosperm of durum wheat is different – bigger than other varieties, very hard and amber-colored – and, when it is ground, it breaks into tiny chips, or semolina. In Italy, since 1967, the law requires that all dried pasta – including dried egg pasta – must be made with durum wheat. However, in the quest to satisfy the world’s insatiable desire for pasta and make a profit at the same time, there is nothing that says that other countries can’t use other flours in their dried pasta. But only durum wheat, with its high gluten content, can give pasta its unique texture and “bite” when it is cooked.
Traditionally, durum wheat was grown more in the warm, more arid regions of the south of Italy, especially around Napoli and Puglia. In the cooler, wetter areas of Lombardia, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna, they tended to grow more soft wheat for bread, biscuits and cakes. Then, between the two world wars, Mussolini, in his bid to make Italy self-sufficient, ordered that wheat, along with rice, should be grown in the north, especially on the Lombard plain, so these days durum wheat is grown all over Italy. However, the best is grown high above sea level, preferably over 7,200 feet, where the natural climate lets it grow, often without the need for pesticides, as the pests that might otherwise attack the crop can’t survive the cold nights. In the mountains, the wheat develops a high level of chlorophyll, the plant’s “fat,” which strengthens it to cope with the change of temperature from warm day to cold night, and gives it a fuller flavor.
Now pasta is dried in sophisticated temperature-controlled drying rooms, but at one time it had to be done outside, and it could be a tricky business. If it was too hot, the pasta might dry too fast, and crack. If it dried too slowly, it could grow fungus. Napoli was known as the pasta capital of Italy – not only because so much durum wheat was grown in the region around the city but also because it was a perfect place to dry pasta – especially Gragnano, right behind the bay of Napoli. You can be in Napoli and feel you are going to die from the heat, then you move out to Gragnano, and somehow there always seems to be a whirlwind of fresh air up on the “magic hill” of the town. In the cooler north, however, because we couldn’t dry pasta in the same way and because there is traditionally more dairy and poultry farming, if we ate pasta at all (rice was originally the northern staple), it became more usual to make fresh pasta with eggs, and cook it right away.
Dried pasta is such a simple, unsophisticated product, and yet there is a huge difference between poor-quality pasta and pasta that has been carefully made and has real flavor – just ask my daughter, Margherita. If Plaxy, my wife, has been in a hurry and bought a cheap package of pasta from the supermarket, Margherita will taste it and say: “What’s wrong with the pasta?” Sometimes people forget that dried durum wheat pasta isn’t just a vehicle for a sauce; it should have its own, slightly nutty flavor, so you could eat it with just Parmesan and oil and it would be brilliant. And, most important, it must be made and cooked with care, so that it will hold its “bite.”
I am often invited to food shows and festivals, and when I cook dried pasta at such events, I talk about the anima – the “soul” – of the pasta. People look at me at first as if I am some crazy romantic: “What is he talking about … the ’soul of the pasta?” But it is true: there is a “chain,” made up of starch and links of protein, that runs down the center of a strand of dried pasta. If the durum wheat is picked at the right time, handled well and dried correctly, and if you cook the pasta for the right length of time, then the outer layer of starch will dissolve and be released into the water, but that “chain” will stay intact in the middle of the pasta. This is its “soul.” and this is what gives it that slight crunch to which we refer when we say it is “al dente.” The process of the soft outer starch softening, and the inner starch staying firm, is similar to what happens when you cook risotto rice.
For Italians, al dente is more than a cooking term that translates as “firm to the bite,” it is an expression that has great meaning and significance for us; in other countries it is something people have heard but don’t necessarily understand. If you want to see for yourself where the “bite” comes from, just squash a strand of cooked spaghetti between your thumb and forefinger and you should see this faint yellow, perfectly unbroken line. If the pasta is not made entirely from durum wheat (which is permissible if it is made outside Italy) or if it is of poor quality, or you overcook it, the molecules of starch soften as they get moist, and the links of protein will start to pull away until they break, and at first the line will appear fragmented, and then it will disappear, leaving the pasta pale and flabby. Its an interesting exercise to begin to cook some spaghetti, then take some strands out of the pan after two minutes and smash them with the side of a knife. Do the same after maybe 4, 6, 7 and 8 minutes, and you can see for yourself what happens to the “soul” as the spaghetti cooks, and eventually gets overcooked.
Every pasta is slightly different, but I would always look at the cooking time on the box and take away one minute, and then keep testing the pasta as it cooks, because it will continue to absorb moisture when it is tossed through the sauce – and it is better to have slightly more bite than to let the pasta become soggy and die. I remember once finding in the cupboard at home some long spaghetti in a smart package with a label I didn’t know, and one Sunday night I decided to cook it. I made up a little sauce, tossed the pasta through it, and it was ready, but Jack was busy doing something, Margherita was off doing something else – when they came to the table a few minutes later, the pasta was stuck together in one piece. It wasn’t my fault – it was the fault of the spaghetti. Good-quality pasta should hold up and stay nice and loose without sticking together, or the “chain” or “soul” inside cracking, for around five minutes.
The color of durum wheat pasta is very important: it must be golden-yellow. Apart from that, however, it is hard to tell its quality simply by looking at it in the package. For me, the price is the best indicator of the quality of the pasta, because it reflects everything that has or hasn’t been done to it. I have a problem with cheap supermarket pasta. In Italy there is great competition between the big pasta companies, and Italian people are very careful about price, so how can other countries come in and commission Italian producers to make pasta for them more cheaply without cutting corners? As always with food, you have to ask not “Why is one product so expensive?” but “What has been done, or not done, to the alternative product that makes it so cheap?” Maybe, instead of starting with a pure, beautiful grain, the quality is not so good; maybe the wheat has been bleached; maybe they turned the temperature up a couple of degrees higher in the drying room, which will give you pasta that is ready one week earlier, instead of drying it more slowly at a low temperature, which preserves the molecular structure of the starches and the fragrance of the wheat. Cut all these corners and the cost of production goes down, but so does the quality.
And then the next problem is, despite the packages that say “Produce of Italy” and have Italian flags all over them, how can there be enough wheat grown in Italy to feed the world’s greed for pasta? We don’t have that quantity of wheat, any more than we have enough buffalo to satisfy the hunger for buffalo mozzarella. Of course wheat has to be imported, from Canada and the United States, and I can see that in the future whoever buys grains from these countries is going to have a big problem, because they are going with genetically modified food in a big way.
In Italy the Slow Food movement is trying to get a law passed that says that in order for something to be labeled 100 percent Italian pasta, it must be made with only Italian durum wheat. Just as we shouldn’t be allowing olives from other countries to be pressed in Italy – not because there is anything wrong with them but the oil should not be called Italian olive oil – we should realize how important it is for the image and high quality of Italian pasta that we look after our “terroir,” that we are proud of and protect what we grow.
The best pasta comes from producers (like Latini) who have their own wheat production areas in Italy and are in total control of the process from the grain to the factory. Maybe that means you have to pay more for a package of pasta, but think about it: a pound of pasta can feed six people really well, so even if it costs 40 cents a portion more, it is still not an expensive food. Even if I were very poor, I would still buy my pasta from such a company, rather than a cheap house-label pasta in the supermarket, because, when it comes to my family, my kids, my customers, I think they deserve something brilliant, not only in terms of taste but something that is ethically better and more healthy for them.
Something I find completely absurd is “fast cooking” spaghetti. Instead of cooking for six minutes, it takes … what? Three? What is that all about? Are we all on such fast tracks that those three minutes of our lives are going to be a turning point? What are you going to do with your life to capitalize on your big gain of three minutes?
The way fast-cooking spaghetti works is that instead of having strands of pasta that are completely tubular, each piece has a little channel, which is the point of entrance for the heat. You don’t really notice it, because when the pasta swells up it appears round again, but if you look carefully you will see a little mark running the length of the outside of the pasta. The pasta literally has no “soul,” because it is made from inferior durum wheat flour, which won’t hold its perfect line of protein as the spaghetti cooks.
The other thing I don’t really understand is the fashion for colored pasta. In Italy we might occasionally use spinach or tomato pasta, because these ingredients add some flavor, but for the most part less traditional colored pastas are only a gimmick. I’m not saying I haven’t experimented – as a chef you do things to show off your ideas sometimes. At Zafferano, for a bit of fun, we used to do a ravioli of white and black pasta stripes, but like most Italians I am interested in the quality of the pasta first; the way it looks is not so important.
There are two schools of thought about dried pasta. Some companies favor the “Teflon” shiny surface that is almost lacquered, like plastic, with no real texture, which is produced by pushing the dough through a stainless steel disk with holes coated with Teflon – this is a technique that was invented by the Barilla pasta company.
Other pastas are extruded through bronze plates, as they would have been done originally, and this gives them a rougher surface, which leaves a little starch on your hand when you handle the pasta, and which allows the juices and flavors of a sauce to be absorbed better.
If you are cooking something like a tomato sauce, that is full-flavored, the shiny-surfaced pasta is perfect, because it keeps the tastes and textures of the sauce and pasta distinct. Sometimes, though, if you are making a dish with a delicately flavored “split” sauce, like linguine with crab, I would rather have a pasta with more texture, which will absorb the flavors of the sauce better and strengthen the overall taste of the dish. By a “split” sauce, I mean one that isn’t thick like tomato but quite thin and loose, maybe made with oil, or fish stock and ingredients that stand out, like prawns, or anchovies.
Someone once told me that when her mother drained cooked spaghetti she rinsed it under the cold tap to get rid of the starch, so that there was no danger of any strands clinging together. Are we talking here about food as a nutrient or art? One of the greatest properties of both rice and pasta is its starch content, so the last thing you want to do is wash it away. Of course some of the starch comes out into the water, and there will be some cloudiness, but a good pasta should retain most of its starch and leave the water relatively clear, whereas a poor-quality pasta will leach out all of its starch into the water, leaving it cloudy and the pasta limp, with very little bite.
The other thing I sometimes read in recipes is that you should add oil to the cooking water to keep the strands or shapes of pasta from sticking together, but I don’t know where that idea comes from – I never saw anyone do it in Italy, and apart from anything else it is a waste of good oil. The way to keep the pasta separate and let it cook properly is to give it enough space to swirl and roll around easily and cook evenly. The ratio I always use for cooking dried pasta is 4 ¼ cups of water to every 14 ounces of pasta.
Once your water is at a rolling boil, put all your pasta in together. If it is long pasta, use a fork to curl the strands gently around the pan, so that they are underwater as quickly as possible. Stir the pasta around quickly when it first hits the water, as this is when the starch first begins to soften, and you want to keep the strands separate, or they will begin to stick together. The pasta swells as it cooks and, if the pieces are crowded in the water, then the pasta trapped at the bottom (if you are using a stainless steel pan, which generates most heat at the base) or at the sides (if you use an aluminum pan, which generates heat all around) will cook quicker than the rest.
Another reason for not trying to cram in too much is that as you put your pasta into the water, which should be at a rolling boil, you want to bring it back to this temperature as soon as possible. If you drop 14 ounces of pasta into a gallon of water, it will come back to a rolling boil very quickly – whereas if you were to drop 4 pounds into the same amount of water it would be a very different story.
For every 14 ounces of pasta and 4 ¼ cups of water, I add 1 tablespoon of salt. Some people say that rather than seasoning the water before you add your pasta, you should put in the salt just before the pasta is cooked – but for me that is too late. We always do it in the traditional way, by seasoning the water as soon as it starts to boil, so that the salt disperses evenly – always with crystals of rock or sea salt – and then we taste the pasta as it begins to soften (after about 2 to 3 minutes) and add a little more if necessary. You don’t want to taste saltiness; you just want to make sure that the pasta is not bland.
Bucatini (“little holes”) – Also called perciatelli in Napoli, bucatini is traditional in Roma, and is like spaghetti but bigger, with a larger space in the center – a bit like a drinking straw. Bucatini is good with powerful sauces, like Amatriciana, made with guanciale (cured pig’s cheek), chiles and tomato, and can hold on well to ragù and sauces made with spicy salami. It is also used to line a timballo (see page 355).
Bucatoni – This is like bucatini but a little fatter; so it is perfect for a big party-size timpano (the southern version of timballo).
Capelli d’angelo (“angel hair”) – These are very thin strands, which they call capelvenere (“hair of Venus”) in Liguria. They are too thin to hold a sauce, so are usually used in soups or broth; if you break up the strands, their starch will thicken the soup slightly.
Capellini (“fine hair”) – This, the very thinnest, wispiest pasta, is used in the same way as capelli d’angelo. It is often given to small children, with butter and cheese, or sometimes cooked in milk and served to them with sugar or honey when they aren’t feeling good.
Fusilli lunghi – These are curly, like springs. Lunghi means “long” (you also have fusilli corti, short fusilli, see page 294). They are best with chunky sauces, made with ingredients like peppers, olives, broccoli, eggplant, etc., that cling to the curves. They are rarely served with fish, though one of my chefs, Mattia Camorrani, makes a wonderful fusilli lunghi with octopus, in which the shapes of the octopus and the pasta mirror one another.
Linguine (“little tongues”) – This is made from durum wheat and is very like spaghetti, only flat rather than round – and is more of a southern pasta; not nearly as well known in the rest of Italy. The two types of pasta are quite interchangeable; there are no sauces that really work better with spaghetti or linguine – it is just a matter of choice.
Spaghetti – Everyone knows this, probably the most famous pasta in the world, but not so many people know that it comes in various sizes, so there is no standard cooking time. It is odd, though, that one of the world’s most famous dishes is spaghetti bolognese, which doesn’t really exist in traditional Italian cooking. In fact, it contradicts every principle of pasta, because a heavy meat ragù would always be paired with wider flatter pasta, such as tagliatelle or pappardelle, or short, chunkier-shaped pasta that will hold the sauce far better than spaghetti. Think about it: you put your fork into a plate of spaghetti and turn it around, and anything chunky that doesn’t twist with the pasta gets left on the plate, whereas with penne, every time you put your fork into a piece of pasta you also pick up pieces of meat and vegetable that are trapped inside the tubes.
Spaghetti is really best with sauces that are oil- and tomato-based, in which you have nothing too chunky, so the sauce can cling to it – think of the silky egg and bacon mixture in a carbonara, or tomato, olives, capers and melted anchovies in spaghetti alla puttanesca.
Of course, you can make fresh spaghetti, but I wouldn’t buy fresh spaghetti in the supermarket as, in my experience, it tends to be much softer than pasta you make yourself at home. It is much better to do as most Italians would do, and buy a good-quality dried durum wheat spaghetti.
Spaghettini (“thin strings”) – Anything that has “ini” at the end in Italian means “small,” so this is literally a thinner version of spaghetti, used with light herby or spicy sauces, or anything with oil, cheese or tomato, cooked or raw. Remember that everything that goes into your sauce must be cut a little thinner than for spaghetti.
Vermicelli (“little worms”) – Smaller versions are vermicellini; larger ones are vermicelloni. Like a thinner spaghetti, this works with the same kind of sauces, but you need to chop everything very fine. If you have any left over, when it is cold you can make it into a frittata: mix it with some beaten egg (and some Parmesan, depending on your sauce), maybe add some finely chopped cooked green beans or potatoes, mix everything together and sauté it, flattening it in the pan, until it is golden, then turn it over and cook the other side until golden and heated through. It will become entwined and gel together and crisp up beautifully, so it looks a bit like a bird’s nest. Vermicelli are also good in broth.
Because they are quite strong, and because they have big holes in them, pasta tubes trap chunky rich sauces inside – and those that are ridged (rigate) hold them also on the outside. Almost all tubular pasta is dried, apart from garganelli, which can also be fresh. You can have corkscrew ones (cavatappi) or straight-edged ones that have ridges curving around them (elicoidali), but the most usual are:
Garganelli – Traditional in Romagna (the southern, coastal area of Emilia-Romagna), it can be fresh as well as dried. It is similar to penne but more rustic, made from a square of pasta rolled up to look like the ridged quill of a pen. This is done using a special “paddle,” a little like the one we use for making gnocchi. Also, whereas penne is made with durum wheat, garganelli is made with eggs, and the pasta is thinner and more delicate, so when it is cooked it will squash a little – unlike penne, which keeps its shape.
Maccheroni – This was once the name by which all pasta was known, but it is now used to mean various kinds of short pasta, usually cooked with butter and cheese for children or baked, like penne.
Penne (“pens”) – Pointed like pen nibs, and either smooth or ridged, these can take up and hold on to any rich sauce, such as a ragù or the traditional all’arrabbiata. Penne works well with béchamel, which coats the pasta easily, so it is often used with meat sauce (or vegetables) and béchamel and baked in the oven (pasta al forno, see page 352).
Rigatoni – Similar to penne, but without the pointed “quill” ends, these have a big hole through the middle and ridges on the outside. Traditionally they are served with meat sauces, because they can hold 011 to the sauce inside too, or they might also be baked in the oven in the same way as penne. There are variations called mezze maniche (“half sleeves”), or maniche di frate (“priest’s sleeves”) from central and northern Italy.
Ziti – From Napoli, this very big tubular pasta is traditional with meat sauces, often spicy ones.
You might think that these are just for fun, but they also have a purpose, because they are able to hold sauces in special ways. They come in all sorts of shapes, like lumache (“snails”), radiatori (ridged like tiny “radiators”) and rotelle, from Sicilia, which look like little steering wheels or cartwheels with spokes. The best known include:
Conchiglie rigate – Sea shells with grooves on the outside, these come in all sizes, from the tiniest, which are usually used in soup, to larger ones often served with cheese and speck, to big, fat ones, which resemble the conch shells you might find on the seashore. These pasta shapes are often blanched, stuffed, then put into a sauce and baked.
Farfalle – From Emilia-Romagna, these squares of pasta are pinched in the center, so that they look like butterflies, with a thicker “body” in the center and light wings. They give a large surface area to take up the sauce and usually go with light sauces, made with vegetables and fish. In the mountains, however, they are often served with vegetable sauces, perhaps broad beans and lardo. The idea is to have pieces of vegetable a similar size to the pasta.
Fusilli – Also known as fusilli corti (“short springs”), originally these were rolled on a gadget that looked like a knitting needle to make them spiky. Traditionally they are served with rich meat and cheese sauces or oily sauces with tuna, spices, etc.
Orecchiette – The name means “little ears.” Though you can buy them dry, they are traditionally made fresh by hand, using an eggless pasta dough, which is pressed between the thumb and forefinger. Typically they are served with a sauce made with turnip tops or cime di rapa (see page 318) or other vegetables.
Pastina (“little pasta”) – These are most often used in soup for children, because they are made into all sorts of shapes. Some of the oldest have been given new names; for example the old avemarie or paternostri, which were based on rosary beads, are now called corallini (“little pieces of coral”); and what we call ditalini rigati (“ridged little fingers”) used to be called garibaldini in the nineteenth century (after Garibaldi, the great Italian hero). When I was little we had alfabetini (“letters of the alphabet”) and stelline (“stars”), but now there are many more shapes, such as acini di pepe (“peppercorns”), semi di melone (“melon seeds”), puntine (“dots”), risoni (“rice grains”), quadrucci (“little squares”), funghetti (“little mushrooms”), farfalline (“little bow ties”), lumachine (“little snails”) and anellini (“little rings”). A bit more grown-up are flat pasta triangles (maltagliati).
Strozzapreti – Confusingly, in some regions potato gnocchi are also sometimes known as strozzapreti, but the ones most people know are little twists of pasta that you can buy dried (though we make our own fresh ones). The name means “priest stranglers” or “priest chokers” – from strozzare (“to throttle”). The story is that the shape of the pasta killed a priest who ate too many too quickly. In Marche, they have something similar called strangolapreti (from strangolare, “to strangle”). All are good with tomato sauces and ingredients that can also be “stringy” like onions and vegetables cut into long, thin strips (julienne).
Crudo means “raw” – so in this recipe the ingredients for the sauce are uncooked. Look for a spaghetti with a surface that is slightly rough rather than very shiny, because you need everything to cling to the pasta. In Italy, this is usually a dish you make in summer, because it is all about the quality of ingredients like tomatoes and basil. The tomatoes we use are the big ones, Cuore di Bue (see page 300), which are fleshy and juicy, with not too many seeds. On a hot day in Italy, many people will add a can of tuna to spaghetti al crudo, and that is lunch – just one course.
2 tablespoons capers (baby ones if possible)
4 tablespoons black olives, preferably Taggiasche, pitted
5 anchovy fillets, preferably salted and rinsed, finely chopped
2 tomatoes (preferably Cuore di Bue, or 3 smaller ones – the best quality you can find), chopped
2 tablespoons tomato passata
14 ounces spaghetti
bunch of basil
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
Put all the ingredients except the spaghetti and basil into a sauté pan with half the olive oil and mix together but don’t heat. Taste and season.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add salt (use a little less than usual, as the anchovies will add salt later) and put the pasta into it, using a fork to curl it around the pan, so that it gets under the water quickly. Cook for about a minute less than the time suggested on the package, until al dente.
While the pasta is cooking, put the sauté pan containing the ingredients for the sauce over the top of the pasta pan, so that the steam can just warm everything up a little, and let the flavors begin to infuse.
When the pasta is cooked, drain, reserving the cooking water.
Add the pasta to the pan containing the sauce ingredients, and toss well, adding some cooking water if necessary, to loosen.
Add the rest of the olive oil and toss again.
Tear the basil leaves, scatter over the top and toss again. Serve immediately.
This is the way that I learned to cook octopus from my friend Vincenzo Borgonzolo, who used to own Al San Vincenzo in London – cooked very simply, simmering it gently in oil for about half an hour. It is the same way that we cook it for the recipe for Octopus salad with new potatoes (see page 97). As the octopus cooks it releases its own moisture into the pan, so at the end of cooking, you have something very, very tender – much more so than if you had boiled the octopus in water.
Once it is cooked, it is important to cut up the octopus and let it cool in the cooking juices, so that it becomes sticky and gelatinous. You can keep it in the fridge for a couple of days, where it will solidify; then, when you want to make the dish, bring it out and finish it off in the tomato sauce. Because it is so gelatinous, when you eat the octopus the meaty texture combines with this wonderful, rich, sticky sensation in the mouth, to give a special flavor of the sea that people will remember for a long time.
Your fishmonger can clean and prepare the octopus for you. As I mentioned in the recipe for Octopus salad, you can use frozen octopus instead, and because the freezing process breaks down the cell structure and therefore tenderizes the flesh, you don’t have to bat it before cooking.
In the restaurant, we make this with fresh Spaghetti alla chitarra (see page 382). You can buy this in Italy but also in the United States. If you don’t feel brave enough to make your own, then it is better to use dried spaghetti.
When we make any seafood pasta, we tend to leave it in its sauce a little longer before serving. This is because these “split” seafood sauces won’t naturally cling to the pasta as thicker sauces will – so you need to give the pasta more time in the sauce, to allow it to release its starch and thicken it, and also for the pasta to absorb a little more of the delicate flavors.
1 octopus, cleaned
1 large chile, split in half, plus 1 more (optional, to taste)
large handful of parsley (with stalks) plus 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
3 whole garlic cloves
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus a little more for finishing
2 tablespoons tomato passata or 2 crushed tomatoes
14 ounces spaghetti
salt and pepper
If the octopus is fresh, beat it with a meat hammer to tenderize, and rinse very well under cold running water, to remove excess saltiness.
Put the chile, the handful of parsley and stalks, the garlic and half the olive oil into a large casserole. Add the octopus (don’t season it, as it will be salty enough), cover with a lid and let it simmer for about 1 hour – but stir every 5 minutes.
Remove the octopus from the pan, reserving the cooking liquid, and cut it into little pieces. Put the octopus pieces back into the cooking liquid and let it cool down. Once cool, you can store it in the fridge if you don’t want to make the dish immediately.
Heat the rest of the oil in a large sauté pan, add the passata or the tomatoes and extra chile, if using, with the octopus and a little of the cooking liquid (taste it first and, if it is too salty, use plain water). Let the octopus heat through, taste and season only if you need to.
Cook the spaghetti in salted boiling water for about a minute less than the time suggested on the package. Drain, reserving some of the cooking water. Add the spaghetti to the pan containing the octopus. Toss through in the pan for 30 seconds or so, adding a little of the cooking water, if necessary, to thicken the sauce. Add the rest of the parsley, toss through quickly and serve, drizzled with some more of the olive oil.
“The steak and kidney pie of Italy”
I can’t imagine life without tomatoes. Really, I can t. The world would be a completely different place – certainly Italy would be. What other fruit is there that has that texture and bite, that combination of sweetness and acidity? Take a tomato straight from the vine and smell it, and it is like nothing else. In Italy, when you drive south along the road in summer, you have this fantastic aroma all around you and, when it is time to pick, it is an exciting moment, comparable to the grape harvest – suddenly the fields are buzzing with people and everyone is running up and down.
I will never forget one time we were in Italy with one of our waiters and his family, who live in Liguria, where they make olive oil on a small estate. On this particular day, we all went to the seaside, and the father brought out the bread and some Cuore di Bue (“heart of the cow”) tomatoes, which they grew in their own garden. He squashed them into the bread, poured over some of the olive oil from their farm, seasoned the tomatoes with salt and pepper, and I tell you it was one of the best things I have ever eaten.
Tomatoes are not associated with the rich or the poor, they are everybody’s food, a truly great thing. So it breaks my heart to say it, but the Italians didn’t invent the tomato. We think of tomatoes as coming from southern Italy, but the reality is that the big production there didn’t really start until the 1800s, when the famous dish of pasta and tomatoes became popular in and around Napoli. (By the way, in this country, I know that when people make spaghetti with tomato sauce, they like to sprinkle it with Parmesan cheese – so does my dad; he is a Parmesan addict – but in Napoli, if you sit in a restaurant and order spaghetti al pomodoro, that is what you get – maybe a little basil, and some olive oil, a piece of bread, but no cheese – they wont even suggest it. If you want it, you have to ask.)
If we have to bow to two civilizations to say thank you for the tomato, it is the Aztecs and the Spanish, because tomatoes were brought into Spain from South America, sometime after the Spanish conquered Napoli in 1503 (remember, Italy was still a collection of city-states, and Napoli was ruled by the Spanish kings and later the house of Bourbon). Also, during the era of the Medici, the great multiculturalists of the time, a huge influx of Jewish people came over to Italy from Spain, and were encouraged by Ferdinando I to set up in Livorno, as they were considered a great asset to society, because of their ability to deal and do business. The Jewish community was used to the idea of cooking with tomatoes and many of the traditional dishes from Livorno are tomato-based.
Even now, while Campania, the province around Napoli, and Parma are huge producers of tomatoes, Catalunya in Spain still produces half of the world’s supply. Even bruschetta al pomodoro has its counterpart in Spanish toasted bread with garlic, tomato and olive oil – the most famous one, as my Catalan pastry chef, Ivan Icra, likes to remind me, is the Catalan version, pa amb tomaquet. So I have to acknowledge that the tomato is as important to the Spanish as it is to us.
The tomato is a relation of the pepper, eggplant and potato – and if you think about it, there is a great similarity between the leaf of the potato and the tomato plant. The first tomatoes were brought over to Napoli from Seville purely as decorative plants, with little pea-sized fruit. Imagine, back in the 1600s, how incredible and fascinating it must have been to suddenly see an ornamental hedge covered with these tiny, beautiful bright fruits.
Before we find any mention of tomatoes in cooking, we can find old paintings with tomatoes in them. The Italian word for tomatoes is pomodoro, which means “golden apple” (the first tomatoes were probably yellow), and in some countries, like France, they were called “fruit of love” (pomme d’amour), so clearly artists were interested in their romantic image long before the general public knew much about them. One of the earliest mentions of tomatoes in any Italian literature was by a chef, Antonio Latini – who talked about “tomato sauce, Spanish style” in a book on Neapolitan cooking, Lo Scalco alla Moderna (The Modern Steward), in the seventeenth century. Still, it was a while before they reached the dinner table, after the botanical gardens started to distribute seeds around the Vesuvian plain, with a soil that is very high in calcium and phosphate, so the tomato plants grew very well.
Of course, once the cultivation of tomatoes began in a big way, in the technological north we realized that we had the potential to create an industry from the produce of the south. So near Parma, next to the Ducati factory, they built the first plant for pulping, preserving and canning tomatoes. Every Italian kitchen uses good-quality canned tomatoes – you come home from vacation, you have a couple of cans of tomatoes in the cupboard, some dried pasta, olive oil and a couple of cloves of garlic, and you have dinner. Often the tomatoes used are quite regional, so all over the country you will find different varieties and brands. The important thing to check is that the can says only tomato, and maybe a touch of salt; that’s it – no added water, no emulsifiers or thickeners.
For Americans I think tomatoes are often just tomatoes, but Italians have an instinctive understanding of different varieties and the way to use them. In Italy, if you have even a tiny patch of ground for a garden, you grow tomatoes. When I was young, we would grow three different kinds for the salad, including San Marzano, which have thin skins, less water and a higher percentage of pulp than many other types of tomato.
All in all, there are about 5,000 cultivated varieties of tomato in the world, and in America new hybrids are being developed all the time: more disease-resistant, with faster maturation, but, of course, I think there is no substitute for the natural microclimatic conditions you find in southern Italy or Spain. At Locanda, we buy from the different regional markets – maybe 15 to 20 types throughout the year; in summer from Sorrento, in winter from Sardegna – and always on the vine, which isn’t just an aesthetic thing. You can tell by the state of the vine how long ago the tomato was picked. I am looking for a beautiful, mature green vine that isn’t dry and old, which would tell me that the tomato was picked five days before, or more. Every morning, when the tomatoes come into the kitchen, we see the quality, and then we decide what we can do with them. If you are making something as simple as a salad of chargrilled tuna with arugula and tomato, that tomato has to be fantastic, or you don’t make the salad at all.
There is no doubt that for a fresh salad or sauce, the round, ridged Cuore di Bue is the superior tomato: the flavor of Italy in a big half-pound fruit. Chop some and cook them briefly in a little olive oil, with chopped garlic and parsley, black olives and anchovies, and they will give you a fantastic, refreshing sauce. Or you can make a richer, sweeter, longer-cooked sauce by cutting them into big pieces, cooking them lightly in olive oil, then adding some more oil, a little salt and some torn basil leaves, closing up your pot and letting the tomatoes cook gently for about 45 minutes. At the last minute, crush your tomatoes a bit, and toss your cooked pasta through it.
San Marzano are thought to be the best for canning, and in our village, they would traditionally be used to make passata, the sauce that would also be your lifeblood for the winter. Before the technological advances that have given us canned tomato pulp, there was only passata. Even when I was small, our village of Corgeno stopped in the middle of summer, when the blue pulping machine with its big handle was set up in the courtyard, and everyone – old men, women, children – brought their wheelbarrows full of tomatoes from their gardens to put through the machine. You would put your pots underneath to catch the thick pulp, take it home, boil it up with a little salt, and then put it into sterilized jars, top it with olive oil and keep it in the larder. My granddad used to take the tomato skins, which were separated by the machine, and put them on our vegetable garden, like manure. He said it was good for the soil. As always in our family, nothing was wasted.
In Italy, there are no rules about when to use passata, or when to use canned tomatoes. The two differ in that for passata the skins and seeds are taken away as the tomatoes are pulped, and then the pulp is passed through a sieve (“passed” – that is what the word passata means), so that you have something that is quite smooth and dense, and ready to use. If you want to make a quite loose, split, chunky tomato sauce, and you have fresh tomatoes, you might cook them in oil, with some garlic, and then add some passata; whereas if you want something thicker that will coat the pasta quite strongly, you might use canned tomatoes.
If you find yourself with large quantities of overripe tomatoes, you can make your own slightly more sophisticated passata. Sauté a little garlic and onion in oil, then squash your tomatoes, add them to the pan and cook until soft and pulpy. Put them through a sieve to get rid of the skins.
In the old days, tomato paste was also made locally – the passata was boiled up in big cauldrons in the village square and, when it was reduced right down and really thick, everyone had a share to take home. Nowadays, most people buy their paste – oddly, for me, it is something I learned the value of only quite late in my career in Sardegna, watching a chef make clam and tomato soup. He tasted it and clearly wasn’t happy with the flavor, so he took a big spoonful of tomato paste and added it, and after two minutes of boiling, the paste had lifted the flavor and acidity of the soup and given it a fantastic tomato sweetness. It is important that you buy a good paste, though, because some of the ones in the supermarket are pretty terrible. Taste it; it should be pleasant enough to eat straight from the can or tube, not too astringent and acidic, but sweet and concentrated, almost like eating a tomato that has dried naturally in the sun.
Sometimes we do a dish of pasta (garganelli) with a mixture of fresh and sun-dried tomatoes (see page 323). Sun-dried tomatoes are something that, coming from the north, I didn’t encounter much when I was younger. I would say use them only occasionally and be restrained, as their flavor is quite powerful. They can add a different dimension to a dish, but they have become so fashionable they are dramatically overused and misused.
For me one of the joys of the tomato in all its guises is that it can be thirst-quenching and refreshing, but I also like to think of the tomato as the steak and kidney pie of Italy – warming and comforting. Whenever I came home to Corgeno after being away for a long time, my grandmother cooked spaghetti with tomatoes – my welcome-back dish – and, if tomatoes were out of season, she would have made a tomato sauce from the passata that she had bottled from the tomatoes we grew in our garden in the summer. There is something very special about that.
A practical note: In restaurant kitchens we tend to peel and deseed tomatoes, then chop them, for neatness. Just blanch the tomatoes first in boiling water for about 10 seconds (if you are boiling water for pasta, you can dip the tomatoes into it before you put in the pasta). Take them out with a slotted spoon, put them under cold running water, then they should peel easily. Cut them in half and scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon, then cut each half into two or four, and then into small dice, depending on the recipe.
Linguine with pesto is traditional in some parts of Liguria, whereas in the city of Genova they often prefer pesto with trofie, small triangles of pasta, which you can buy fresh in the pasticceria, and which were originally made with leftover pieces, rolled up, then flattened, so they look like tiny uncooked croissants – or long, thin maggots. What is beautiful about trofie is that the oily pesto gets inside them and attaches itself to all their twists, but somehow the trofie seem to remain white against the green of the sauce.
2 tablespoons pine nuts
12 long green beans
1 large potato
14 ounces linguine or dried trofie
4 tablespoons Pesto (see page 309)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan or Pecorino Sardo
salt and pepper
Toast the pine nuts: preheat the oven to 355°F, spread the pine nuts on a baking tray and put them in the preheated oven very briefly, just long enough to turn them golden.
Bring some salted water to a boil in a small pan, put in the beans and blanch them quickly, about 2 minutes. Drain and split apart lengthwise (they should just pull apart). Reserve for later.
Peel the potato and cut it into dice about ½ inch. Put into a pan of cold salted water, bring to the boil, turn down the heat and cook until soft. Take the pan off the heat and leave the potato pieces in the water until you need them.
Bring a large pan of water to a boil, add salt, then put in the linguine and cook for about a minute less than the time suggested on the package until al dente.
While the pasta is cooking, put the potatoes into a sauté pan and mix in the beans and pesto with half the olive oil.
When the pasta is cooked, drain, reserving some of the cooking water. Add the pasta to the pan containing the sauce and toss together, without heating. You need to do this quickly, or the pasta will cool and the pesto will darken in color (the heat will start to turn the bright green of the basil black). Add a little of the cooking water, if necessary, to loosen the sauce.
Add the cheese and the rest of the olive oil. The pesto should provide all the seasoning you need, but taste and season if necessary.
Toss well to coat, then serve with the pine nuts sprinkled over.
“Truly made to go with pasta”
There was a man my father knew in our village named Feruccio, who was a camionista, a truck driver. This man traveled all over Italy and seemed to have an amazing knowledge of everything, though my dad used to tell me, “Don’t listen, he’ll say he’s a doctor today, a priest tomorrow.” One day Feruccio said to me: “So you want to be a chef? You know how to make pesto?” I started to say, “Yes, like this …” “No, no,” he said. “I’ll give you some of my pesto to taste and, if you like it, before I die I will tell you my secret recipe.” Well, he gave us some of his pesto and it was fantastic; but I never did discover his secret, because one day when I was in London, my father phoned me up, and told me Feruccio was dead. “No!” I said. “He never gave me the recipe!”
There are only half a dozen ingredients that go into pesto – nuts, garlic, salt, sweet basil, olive oil and cheese – but everyone has his own “secret” wav of making it. At Olivo one of our chefs worked with the two brothers who make the pesto for the Vatican, and he used to say that all the ingredients would be brought into a special room, and then they would shut the doors and make the pesto by hand. No one else was allowed to know the recipe. All you could hear from outside was the thwock of the marble pestles and mortars being worked.
If there is a secret, for me it has to be the quality of the basil. Out of every box that arrives in our kitchen, only a proportion will be good enough to use for pesto; the rest will be used in other dishes. I love basil – even in a salad, it gives a fantastic lift – and there are more than 50 varieties of basil grown all around the Mediterranean. What I think is most important, though, is the size of the leaf. The perfect sweet basil leaf is tiny and the best is from Liguria, where most of the commercial pesto production in Italy is based, from a particular village called Prà. The reason for this is that during the day, the plants have the full force of the sun, and then at night, the temperature drops dramatically, because of the region’s exposure to the winds. To protect it from the cold, the basil builds up more chlorophyll, which is a green plant’s lifeblood and gives the leaves their taste. Because the smaller leaves are the most vulnerable, they build up the highest concentration of chlorophyll, and therefore flavor. Also, the smaller leaves are less fibrous than the bigger ones, so the pesto will have a smoother texture.
It sounds crazy, but we have the leaves from Prá flown over specially, with their roots still attached, and wrapped in plastic because they won’t last long. As soon as they come into the kitchen, the big process of making them into pesto involves a team of chefs washing the leaves in a big sink to take off the earth, lifting them out with a skimmer, then letting them drain. Then we wrap them very gently in clean cloths to protect them and shake them outside the kitchen door. Finally, they are spread out on the work surfaces, and left to finish drying completely, ready to make the pesto. It takes us a whole morning to make two big jarfuls, which we cover with three fingers of oil, and then they can be kept in the fridge and ladled out as we need it.
Some people use white almonds or walnuts rather than pine nuts (or a mixture), and there is a great divide between those who favor pecorino and those who prefer Parmesan. Personally I prefer to use pine nuts and pecorino from Sardegna, which is a little less salty than Parmesan. There is a natural connection between Liguria, where the basil grows, and Sardegna. Despite the sea that separates them, there are parts of Sardegna – such as the satellite island of San Pietro, whose main town, Carloforte, was founded by Ligurian fishermen – where they still speak the Ligurian dialect.
I am quite a purist about pesto – I don’t like to see anything other than the classical ingredients added (though we do an arugula “pesto” in a similar way, which we serve with chicken). Sometimes you see salads dressed with pesto, but I think pesto needs warmth to bring the flavors to life and arouse that aroma which fills your nose and makes it so special. That is why a spoonful added to minestrone is beautiful – but it was truly made to go with pasta.
If you can make pesto in a mortar, it is the most satisfying way. I remember hearing an Italian actor talking about his passion for pesto and the way the salt and garlic and basil screamed out at you from the bowl. Every time I make it by hand. I think of that, because it is true, the smells are enormous. On a large scale, though, it is easier to do it in a food processor. The important thing is to make sure you have a sharp blade that will chop the basil quickly without its becoming warm, or it will begin to ferment and taste bitter, whereas what you want from pesto is that wonderful freshness of the basil. The same goes for the nut s: if you overwork them, they become sweaty. Also, you don’t want an oil that will overpower the basil: I would always choose a light Ligurian one. In Italy, we use very little garlic when we make pesto; and in some regions, like Liguria, they use none at all – and no salt, either. Often I watch chefs making it with so much garlic that the flavor overpowers the light, fragrant taste of the basil.
In England the perception of pesto seems to be based on the kind you find in house-brand jars in the supermarket, which is so garlicky I would call it a green garlic sauce, not a true pesto. Probably it is made this way because garlic is a cheaper ingredient than basil. This is the flavor people have come to know, to the point that they often don’t understand a real pesto when they taste it.
Yes, you want some flavor of garlic, but it should be there to sustain the basil, and not be so strong that you will kill half the people in your office if you eat some and then breathe over them.
Because pesto relies so much on good-quality basil, make it when the herb is plentiful and you can pick the tastiest small leaves. Buy a few big potfuls rather than little packets of leaves. You can make plenty and keep it in the fridge under a layer of oil for 6 months. If you are making pesto to keep, make sure you don’t use late basil that has started to flower, as the leaves will be too mature, and the pesto will go bad quickly, even under oil. Also remember, as you use your pesto, to clean the sides of the jar, because any of the sauce that clings to the sides above the oil will turn black and rancid.
Makes a small jar
2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons pine kernels, toasted
½ pound fresh basil leaves
2 tablespoons grated pecorino or Parmesan
around 1 ¼ cups extra virgin olive oil, preferably Ligurian
tiny pinch of salt
Either in a food processor with a sharp blade or using a mortar and pestle, start with the garlic and salt. Smash the garlic, then add the nuts and crush them, but try not to overwork them.
Drop in the basil leaves only a few at a time and work them in as quickly as you can.
Then add your cheese and finally the oil, until you have a bright green paste (the quicker you bring the whole thing together, the less heat you will generate, and this will keep the bright color; the longer you work it, the darker it will look).
Lobsters are beautiful creatures. They look so primitive, like something between an animal and a dinosaur, and chefs are constantly fascinated by them – their color, shape, the gorgeous sweetness of the meat. But because they have become a symbol of luxury – if ever there was a social standing in food, lobster comes right at the top, along with truffles and caviar – they have been the victims of overzealous cooks who see them as a culinary challenge. So they have had humiliating things done to them, like being smothered in cheese for lobster thermidor or, worse still, made into mousse.
At the Laurent in Paris, my job was to weigh the lobsters every morning. They had to be 1 kilo (2.2 pounds) precisely – 50 grams under or over and I had to send them back. They used to be really lively too, because they didn’t freeze them before their journey from the market. I had to split them, chop up the tails and mix them with an enormous amount of eggs and cream, and make a terrine. What a waste of such a lovely creature. I made a promise to myself that if ever I was in charge of my own kitchen, I would serve lobster chargrilled, with a piece of lemon, nothing else. Nothing!
Then one day, when I was cooking at Olivo, I was talking to someone who had just come back from Posilipo, near Napoli, who told me about this fantastic lobster with spaghetti that he ate by the sea – the best meal, he said, he had ever had in his life. The way he described it, I could taste this lobster … I was there, eating it. So I was torn: do I do a dish that I know everyone loves, or do I stand by my vow and let the lobster be the hero, chargrilled, nothing else? Well, I made the dish, and I still make it and, especially on a sunny day, people still tell me it reminds them of their holiday in Italy.
Some people argue that you shouldn’t combine lobster with tomato, as we do here, but I feel that the touch of acidity from the tomato and wine, and the little touch of chile pepper, all help sustain the sweetness of the lobster.
You need a really fresh lobster for this, so buy one from a fishmonger you trust – most important is to make sure the lobster hasn’t been blanched, otherwise there will be no flavor left in it by the time you have finished the sauce and combined it with the pasta. The best thing, if you have the courage, is to buy a live lobster. Put it into the fridge for a couple of hours, or the freezer for 15 minutes, to put it into a torpor; then you can dispatch it quickly, accurately and humanely, by holding the claws still and inserting a sharp knife into the head behind the eyes and cutting straight down, between the eyes, so the head is split completely in half.
I know this will upset some people, but we have paid a lot of attention to the research that university biologists have done on killing lobsters painlessly. They concluded that lobsters do feel pain, so plunging them alive into boiling water, which was the custom in many kitchens, is inhumane. There is an electric stun gun that has been developed that makes lobsters and crabs unconscious in seconds and oblivious to pain long enough to be cooked in boiling water. Until that is available commercially, however, it is agreed that the way I described above is the best method of dispatching the lobster. If you think about it, it is no worse than killing a chicken – just that you have to do it yourself. A word of warning, though: the lobster might jump around a bit, even after the head has been split – it is only a reflex; I promise you there is no life left in the lobster.
When you make pasta with seafood such as lobster and langoustines, the cooking of the seafood has to be very quick, or it will end up like shoe leather. Also remember that you need to drain the pasta about a minute before it is going to be al dente, so that it can finish cooking in the sauce, and absorb more of the seafood flavors and let the starch it releases thicken the sauce at the same time. You probably won’t need to use all of the stock, so any that is left over, pour into ice cube trays and freeze, and you can use it another time.
1 lobster (about 2 ¼ pounds), either very fresh or live (see above)
14 ounces linguine
4 tomatoes
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 chile pepper, deseeded and finely chopped
½ wineglass of white wine
2 tablespoons tomato passata
handful of parsley, finely chopped, reserving the stalks for the stock
salt and pepper
For the stock:
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
½ carrot, cut into chunks
½ onion, cut into chunks
1 celery stalk, cut into chunks
1 bay leaf
2 black peppercorns
½ wineglass of white wine
½ tablespoon tomato paste
If using a live lobster, kill it first (see previous page); if using a freshly killed one, split the head in half between the eyes. Twist off the head and reserve.
To make the stock, heat the olive oil in a pan and add the vegetables, bay leaf, peppercorns and parsley stalks. Sweat for a couple of minutes to soften but not color.
Add the lobster head and, with a wooden spoon, crush it a little, to release the juices. Add the white wine and cook until the alcohol has evaporated completely. Add the tomato paste and continue cooking over a low heat for another 2 minutes or so, taking care that the paste doesn’t burn. Add a little water – enough almost to cover but not quite. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Pass through a fine sieve and keep to the side.
Take the tail of the lobster and split it in half lengthwise through the shell. Cut each half into pieces, about ⅝ to ¾ inch. We leave the shell on because it gives a little more shape to the dish than if you just serve the lobster meat, and it will easily come out of the shell as you eat it, but, if you prefer, you can remove the shell at this stage.
Put a pan of water on to boil and when it does, put the claws in for about 30 seconds. Remove and cool. With the back of a knife, crush the claws and pick out the meat. Set aside (if you are not making the sauce right away, store in the fridge).
Bring a large pan of water to a boil for the linguine.
Blanch the fresh tomatoes, skin, quarter and deseed (see page 304). Then cut each quarter in half, so you have 8 pieces.
Heat half the olive oil in a large sauté pan. Because you want to cook the garlic (so that it is digestible) but not burn it (or it will be bitter), it is a good idea to tilt the pan a little, so the oil flows to one spot, and put in your garlic so it can cook in this depth of oil. That way it will be less likely to burn. Add the chile and cook gently for a few minutes, until the garlic starts to color.
Add the chopped lobster, including the claw meat, and cook for about 30 seconds, tossing the pieces around. Season.
Add the white wine, allow the alcohol to evaporate and turn off the heat. Add the fresh tomatoes and the tomato passata, with a ladleful of stock.
Meanwhile, cook the linguine in the salted boiling water for about a minute less than the time suggested on the package. Drain and add to the sauce, with the rest of the oil.
Toss thoroughly for about a minute to let the pasta finish cooking and allow the starch to thicken the sauce (if you need to loosen it slightly, add a bit more stock). You will see that, after a minute or so, the starch that comes out of the linguine will help the sauce cling to the pasta, so that when you serve it the linguine will stay coated with the sauce.
Sprinkle the parsley over and serve immediately.
You can make a variation of the lobster dish on page 310 using langoustines or large crayfish (make sure they are absolutely fresh or live, in which case kill them in exactly the same way as for lobster) or, if you don’t want to make stock, you can do this quicker version.
Start by splitting 24 langoustines in two completely, from head (between the eyes) to tail. Then get a sauté pan big enough to give all the langoustines space to touch the bottom without crowding, so they can sear quickly; otherwise they will release their juices and boil in them rather than pan-fry (if you don’t have a big enough pan, cook them in two batches).
Sauté 3 finely chopped garlic cloves gently in around 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil for a few minutes until the garlic starts to color (but don’t let it burn or it will taste bitter), then add a finely chopped and deseeded chile pepper. Add the langoustines, flesh side down, and cook for 1 minute, crushing the heads at the same time, to release their juices. Season, add half a glass of dry white wine, allow the alcohol to evaporate, then add 4 tomatoes that have been peeled, deseeded and cut into 8, together with 2 tablespoons of tomato passata, and turn off the heat. Remove the langoustines and, if you like, take off the heads and claws and keep them for a garnish.
Meanwhile, cook and drain the pasta as for the previous recipe, and finish in exactly the same way, adding another 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil to the sauce, finishing with chopped parsley and garnishing, if you like, with the langoustine heads and/or claws.
The magic of clams is that wherever you are when you eat them, they evoke the flavor of the sea. I would never trust anybody who served me pasta with clams without the shells, though, as I want to see for myself that they are fresh. For this dish, we usually use the tender carpet-shell clams with the lined and patterned shells, which the French call palourdes. We sometimes also use striped venus clams, which are typical in Chioggia near Venezia.
The clams should be fresh and alive. Put them in a bowl and wash them under cold running water for a few minutes. Then add a handful of salt, to re-create their natural environment, so that they will breathe and filter the water, releasing any sand they have inside their shells. Discard any that are open, as these will be dead. Sometimes there is too much sand to come out into the water, and the weight of it can keep the shell of a dead clam closed. To be sure, drop each clam into a bowl, and if the clam is dead the impact should make the shell open.
Heat around 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a large sauté pan, add 3 finely chopped garlic cloves and cook gently for a few minutes until it starts to color (but don’t let it burn or it will taste bitter). Then add a deseeded and finely chopped chile pepper and 2 ¼ pounds of clams (prepared as above) and cook for 30 seconds. Add a wineglass of dry white wine and cover the pan with a lid, to allow the clams to steam open (about 1 to 1 ½ minutes). Throw away any clams that haven’t opened. Leave around a quarter of the clams in their shells, but scrape out the rest and discard the shells. Taste and season if necessary – though you shouldn’t need any salt.
Meanwhile, cook and drain the pasta as for the recipe for linguine with lobster (see page 313) and finish in exactly the same way, adding another 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil to the sauce, together with the reserved clams (shelled and unshelled), and finish with chopped parsley.
I love bottarga, though I had never even tasted it until I met Mauro, the owner of Olivo, who comes from Cagliari in the south of Sardegna, where they traditionally serve pasta simply with bottarga, butter or oil, and pepper. (Just melt most of the bottarga in the butter or olive oil and a little water, then finish off the spaghetti in it, and grate some more bottarga over the top.) Mauro would never eat it done with chile pepper and garlic, as in the recipe below, which is the favorite way in Sicilia, but one of the waiters who came from there used to make it this way for the staff when Mauro wasn’t around. Funny, isn’t it, how, even from one side of an island to the other, Italians will always disagree about how to use an ingredient. The first time I tried the combination of linguine with bottarga, chile pepper and garlic, I loved it. You can use either the bottarga made from the roe of the gray mullet or that made from tuna roe (see page 114). Personally I think the tuna roe works best with the chile and garlic. Again, this is a very simple dish to make, relying on a few intense flavors.
You just need to grate around 3½ ounces of bottarga, then start cooking the linguine in a large pan of salted boiling water – use a little less salt than usual as the bottarga has a rich, fishy flavor that shouldn’t need any extra seasoning. When the pasta has been cooking for about 4 minutes, heat around 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a large sauté pan, add 3 finely chopped garlic cloves and a deseeded and finely chopped chile, and cook gently for a couple of minutes. Turn off the heat just before the garlic starts to color (but don’t let it burn or it will taste bitter). By now the pasta should have had 5 to 6 minutes’ cooking and be al dente (with this dish I think it is extra-important that the spaghetti be al dente, because the slight “crunchiness” works very well with the richness of the bottarga). Drain it, reserving the cooking water, and add to the pan containing the garlic and chile, together with 1 tablespoon of the bottarga and a handful of chopped parsley. Add a ladleful of the reserved pasta cooking water and another 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Toss thoroughly for about a minute or so, until the sauce clings to the pasta, loosening it with a little more cooking water if necessary, then serve with the rest of the grated bottarga sprinkled over the top.
Linguine con sardine e finocchietto selvatico
We are talking about the feathery, anise-flavored herb here – not the bulbous vegetable (Florence fennel). In Italy, it grows wild by the roadside, and is traditionally used in this dish, which comes from the south; and in Toscana, it is served with pork (sprinkled with the dried flowers). If you cant find it, you could use the fronds from the top of the fennel bulbs, but the flavor will be different and not as long-lasting.
Soak 2 tablespoons of golden raisins in warm water for about half an hour so that they plump up. Then roughly chop 12 medium-sized fresh sardine fillets and blanch, peel and deseed 4 good-quality tomatoes (see page 304) and cut each into eighths. Spread 2 tablespoons of pine nuts on a baking tray and put in an oven preheated to 350°F very briefly, just long enough to turn them golden. Remove from the tray and set aside. Heat around 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a large sauté pan, add 3 finely chopped garlic cloves and cook gently for a few minutes until they start to color (don’t let the garlie burn or it will taste bitter), then add the chopped sardines and cook for 1 minute. Season, add half a glass of dry white wine and allow the alcohol to evaporate. Put in the tomato, pine nuts, drained golden raisins and 2 tablespoons tomato passata, and turn off the heat.
Meanwhile, cook and drain the pasta as described on page 313 and add to the sauce, with another 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Toss in 2 tablespoons of chopped wild fennel and a handful of finely chopped parsley and serve.
People are often surprised to find chiles in Italian cooking – but they arrived in Italy back in the sixteenth century, probably via Mexico or Spain. In the south of Italy, especially, you find chiles in everything from salami and sausages to soups and pasta sauces – though one of the most famous Italian chiles is the diavolicchio (little devil) of Abruzzo. There, in the summer, you will see strings of the bright red peppers hanging over doorways and from balconies so that they can dry in the sun.
Spaghetti with some dried chile pepper, garlic and olive oil, and sometimes parsley and sautéed bread crumbs, is such a brilliant, quick thing to do when friends come around – it’s the kind of thing we cook up after a football match.
In Calabria they make the famous fiery salami ’nduja (so spicy that in our family only Plaxy and Jack can eat it). Because the heat and antimicrobial qualities of the chiles help the curing of the meat, they can use less salt when they make the salami, which is why it is so spreadable (the more salt you use, the more you draw out the moisture). Some ’nduja melted in a pan with a little olive oil and garlic and some fresh tomato makes a fantastic sauce for pasta.
Each September in Calabria they hold the Sagra del Peperoncino, with every restaurant serving chiles, and the pasticceria making cakes, pastries and biscuits spiced with chiles – you can even find it in ice cream. In the north, we have traditionally been more wary of spices – a peppery olive oil used to be too much for most people – but now you find chiles being used all over Italy, though away from the south it is often more for flavor than heat.
Different varieties of chiles have different intensities of heat, but mostly the smallest are the hottest – and the concentration of heat is in the seeds and inner membrane, so remove these unless you like real fieriness. After cutting up chiles, wash your hands in cold water, then with soap, and never touch your eyes or sensitive parts of the body immediately after handling them, or they will burn and sting.
Orecchiette alle cime di rapa e peperoncino
Orecchiette come from Puglia, where they are traditionally handmade using only flour, water and olive oil. The joke is that everyone in Puglia has big, bent thumbs from pressing them into the little ear shapes that give them their name.
Broccoli rabe is in season from around September to January; it forms little florets like broccoli in October – which is the time to use it, otherwise the leaves are a little too bitter and fibrous. The florets have a sweet flavor and a texture that also makes the sauce creamier. At other times of the year, though, or if you can’t find broccoli rabe, use broccoli instead. Cut off the florets, leaving a couple of inches of stalk, and blanch them, then chop and sauté them in the same way as for the broccoli rabe in the recipe. You can use the water you blanched them in to cook the pasta afterward (don’t do this if you are using the broccoli rabe, though, as they will make the water bitter and this will flavor the pasta).
Remember that the chiles you need for this recipe should be quite long, and not very hot – we are not talking about Thai food here. (If you like a little extra heat, though, you can leave in the seeds.)
3 small bunches of broccoli rabe tops (cime di rapa)
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 medium red chiles, deseeded (leave the seeds in if you want more heat) and thinly sliced
14 ounces dried orecchiette
2 anchovy fillets salt and pepper
Take the leaves and florets of the broccoli rabe from their stalks and blanch them in boiling salted water for about a minute, just to take away some of their bitterness. Drain and squeeze to remove the excess water. Chop very fine.
Warm half the olive oil in a large sauté pan, add the garlic and chiles, and gently cook them without allowing them to color (don’t let the garlic burn or it will taste bitter). Then add the broccoli rabe and toss around. Add another tablespoon of olive oil.
Meanwhile, bring a large pan of water to a boil, salt it, put in the orecchiette and cook for about a minute less than the time suggested on the package until al dente.
While the pasta is cooking, ladle out a little of the cooking water and add to the pan containing the broccoli rabe. Then turn down the heat and add the anchovies as well. Let them dissolve without frying them, stirring all the time. Taste and season if necessary – remember that the anchovies will add their own saltiness.
When the pasta is cooked, drain, reserving the cooking water, and add the pasta to the pan containing the sauce. Toss for 2 to 3 minutes, so the turnip tops cook and begin to cling to the pasta.
Add the rest of the olive oil, toss well to coat and serve.
Orecchiette con piselli, pancetta e tartufo nero
1 tablespoon plus 1 ¼ teaspoons butter
3 ½ ounces pancetta, thinly sliced and cut into thin strips
8 tablespoons raw peas (preferably fresh)
14 ounces dried orecchiette 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan
1 ounce fresh black truffle
salt and pepper
Melt half the butter in a large sauté pan, add the pancetta and cook for a couple of minutes just to release some of the fat, but without allowing it to color. Then add the peas and toss around for a couple of minutes.
Add a couple of ladlefuls of cold water, cover the pan with a lid, and cook slowly for 3 to 4 minutes until the peas are tender enough to crush.
Bring a large pan of water to a boil, salt it, put in the pasta, and cook for about 1 minute less than the time suggested on the package.
While the pasta is cooking, start to crush the peas with a wooden spoon or spatula, so that they resemble “mushy peas.” If they seem too thick, take a little of the cooking water from the pan of pasta and add to the peas. Season.
Drain the pasta, reserving the cooking water, and add the pasta to the pan containing the peas. Toss around for a couple of minutes, then add the rest of the butter, and keep on stirring. The pea “sauce” should start to thicken, so you might need to add a little more cooking water to loosen it.
Add the grated Parmesan, toss well and then, at the last minute, grate the truffle over the top. Toss again and serve.
Malloreddus al pomodoro e ricotta salata
Malloreddus are little dried Sardinian gnocchi, made from durum wheat semolina with saffron mixed into the dough, which you can find in Italian delicatessens. They look a little like small ridged caterpillars – traditionally the ridges come from pressing the pieces by hand against straw baskets. These pasta shapes are often served with a ragù made with tomatoes and local sausage (malloreddus alla campidanese). We serve them with tomatoes and ricotta salata. It is important not to season the sauce with salt until the end, and to taste it first, as the cheese has a strong and salty flavor.
4 tomatoes
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
one 15-ounce can of chopped tomatoes
14 ounces malloreddus
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 ¾–2 ounces ricotta salata
salt and pepper
Blanch the fresh tomatoes, skin, quarter and deseed (see page 304).
Heat a tablespoon of the oil in a saucepan and add the onion. Sweat it until soft but not colored, about 5 minutes.
Add the canned tomatoes and simmer for another 15 to 20 minutes.
Bring a large pan of water to a boil, salt it, put in the malloreddus and cook for 8 to 12 minutes (check the instructions on the package as a guide – cook for about 1 minute less than they say), until al dente.
While the pasta is cooking, heat half the remaining oil in a sauté pan, add the garlic and cook without allowing it to color for a few minutes (don’t let it burn or it will taste bitter). Add the fresh tomatoes, cook for a minute or so and then add the tomato sauce.
Drain the pasta, reserving the cooking water, then add the pasta to the sauce and toss around for a couple of minutes until the sauce becomes “creamy.”
Grate half the ricotta salata into the pan and toss again for a couple of minutes. Taste, season as necessary and serve with the rest of the cheese grated on top.
You need around 2 pounds of walnuts for this. It’s best to use fresh nuts around the end of October, as they will be less bitter than older ones, and because their flesh is softer it will be easier to make the paste.
Buy them in their shells (once they are shelled, they turn bitter quickly). Crack them, keeping them as intact as possible, so they will be easier to toast evenly and to peel. Put them on a tray and toast them in the oven at about 340°F for about 4 to 5 minutes until golden. Then, while they are still warm, wrap them in a cloth and rub the bundle to pull off as much of the skins as possible. You can then peel off any remaining skin with a small knife. Leave to cool.
In the meantime, crush 2 garlic cloves in a mortar, add the walnuts and pound into a smooth paste, then stir in 2 or 3 tablespoons of olive oil – just enough to make a thick paste. If you are not using it all right away, you can keep it in a sterilized jar covered with at least a finger depth of extra virgin olive oil – it should keep for around 4 weeks.
We use this paste in all kinds of fish and pasta dishes.
You can make this and the following recipes with penne if you prefer. We make our own fresh garganelli. If you do this, or if you can find good fresh garganelli in an Italian delicatessen, you need to cook the pasta for 2 or 3 minutes only. You can make your own walnut paste (see above), but you need a lot of patience to peel all the nuts – so it might be easier to buy a good-quality paste.
14 ounces garganelli
2 tomatoes (the best you can find)
4 tablespoons walnut paste
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
5 sage leaves, finely chopped
sprig of rosemary, leaves finely chopped
salt and pepper
Get a large pan of salted boiling water ready for the pasta.
Blanch the fresh tomatoes, skin, quarter and deseed (see page 304).
Cook the garganelli in the salted boiling water for about a minute less than the time suggested on the package.
While the pasta is cooking, put the walnut paste into a large sauté pan or frying pan with 3 tablespoons of the oil and heat gently so that the paste melts but doesn’t fry. Season if necessary. Sometimes you will find that the walnut paste may break up a little if you overheat it; if this happens, stir in a little hot water to bring it back together.
Drain the pasta, reserving some of the cooking water, add the pasta to the pan of sauce, and toss well. If you feel the sauce needs loosening slightly, add a little of the cooking water from the pasta.
Add the tomatoes to the pan, together with the Parmesan, chopped herbs and the rest of the oil. Toss well and serve.
This relies on a very few, very good ingredients and, like so many pasta dishes that use fresh tomatoes, is best in summer, when the tomatoes are really, really ripe and the basil is plentiful. Usually, though, even when you are using the best fresh tomatoes you can find, you will still need some good-quality canned tomatoes to make some extra sauce.
If you like, add a little chopped chile pepper to the sauce – just add it to the garlic before you put in the tomato. Or, if you prefer a more creamy sauce, add a dash of cream before you put the pasta into the sauce.
Sometimes we make a variation of this using just fresh and sun-dried tomatoes. We heat the oil, add the garlic, and when it starts to color add 6 fresh tomatoes – again, the best you can find – blanched, skinned, deseeded and each cut into eighths. Cook them until the tomatoes start to become squashed, then add some sun-dried tomatoes and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes, before finishing the pasta in the same way. Because the sun-dried tomatoes are quite strongly flavored – and sometimes salted – it is best to taste and season the sauce at the end.
To make the sauce, first blanch, skin and deseed 2 of the best-quality tomatoes you can find, and cut each one into eighths (see page 304). Heat 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a large sauté pan and cook 2 finely chopped garlic cloves very gently until they start to color (don’t let the garlic burn or it will taste bitter).
Add a can of chopped tomatoes, together with the fresh tomatoes, and cook for 10 to 15 minutes until you have quite a thick sauce. Toward the end of that time, cook the garganelli in a large pan of salted boiling water for about a minute less than the time suggested on the package.
When the sauce is ready, turn off the heat, season and add 2 heaped tablespoons of Pesto (page 309). Drain the pasta, reserving some of the cooking water, and add the pasta to the sauce, together with 2 more tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Toss well and, if necessary, loosen the sauce with a little of the reserved pasta cooking water. Add 2 tablespoons of freshly grated Parmesan and serve.
Garganelli con triglia e olive nere
This is a little more complicated than the last few recipes, but worthwhile because it is quite impressive. Although you can buy the mullet already filleted, it is better to buy whole ones from a fishmonger and ask him to fillet them for you, as the dish will have a more intense flavor if you ask for the bones to use for the stock, and for the liver, which is crushed and mixed with butter and beaten into the pasta right at the end.
1 tablespoon plus 1 ¼ teaspoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons black olives, such as Taggiasche
4 small fillets or 2 large fillets of red mullet (ask your fishmonger to give you the bones and the liver)
14 ounces garganelli
4 tomatoes
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
½ wineglass of white wine
4 tablespoons tomato passata handful of parsley, finely chopped, reserving the stalks for the stock
salt and pepper
For the stock:
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ carrot, cut into chunks
½ onion, cut into chunks
1 celery stalk, cut into chunks
1 bay leaf
2 black peppercorns
½ wineglass of white wine
½ tablespoon tomato paste
First take the butter out of the fridge to let it soften. Pit the olives.
To make the stock, heat the olive oil in a pan. Add the vegetables, bay leaf, peppercorns and reserved parsley stalks. Sweat for a couple of minutes to soften but not color. Add the fish bones and continue to cook until these start to stick to the pan. Add the wine and cook until the alcohol has evaporated completely. Add the tomato paste and continue cooking over a low heat for another 2 minutes or so, taking care that the paste doesn’t burn. Add a little water – enough almost to cover, but not quite. Bring to the boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Pass through a fine sieve and keep to one side.
Put the butter in a bowl. Crush the mullet liver, preferably using a pestle and mortar or the back of a knife. Then mix with the butter – it should be a nice pink color.
Slice the red mullet into strips and keep at room temperature.
Get a large pan of boiling salted water ready for the pasta.
Blanch the fresh tomatoes, skin, quarter and deseed (see page 304).
Heat half the olive oil in a large sauté pan. Put in the garlic and cook it gently for a few minutes until it starts to color (don’t let it burn or it will taste bitter).
Add the red mullet and cook for 1 to 2 minutes until the fish starts to stick to the pan. Keep scraping it, and it will crumble.
Add the white wine, then the fresh tomato, olives and stock. Finally, add the tomato passata and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta in the salted boiling water for about a minute less than the time suggested on the package (usually 5 to 6 minutes).
Drain the pasta well (it needs to be quite dry to take up the liver butter), reserving some of the cooking water, and add the pasta to the sauce with the rest of the olive oil.
Just before serving, beat in the liver butter with a wooden spoon, and, if necessary, you can add a little cooking water to loosen things. Finish with the chopped parsley.
In most small towns in Italy, you have the pastificio – the shop that specializes in making only pasta, and often it is of amazing quality. In some places, the local restaurants don’t even bother to make their own fresh pasta, they just ask the pasta maker at the pastificio to do it for them. In America, you often find Italian specialty shops making their own, which can be good, and of course you can buy it in the supermarkets, but most commercial fresh pasta is made with water added to the dough, so that it can be extruded through the machines more easily. If you start with such a soft dough, and then leave it for a day or so, it will be even softer. Then, when you cook it, it will have less “bite” than I like from a good pasta.
When you make egg pasta at home, though, in around half an hour you can have something that has real personality and you have the satisfaction of knowing all the ingredients that went into it. You know you chose the best flour, the best and freshest eggs … you are not at the mercy of companies that only want to make a profit. And while rolling out pasta was once a laborious process that you had to do with an enormous rolling pin, every kitchen shop now sells little machines that will roll the pasta for you and cut it into various widths, if, for example, you want to make tagliatelle.
I can’t promise that the first time you make fresh pasta it will be absolutely perfect; not because I don’t have complete confidence in the recipe – this is the one we use every single day in the restaurant – but because the conditions in every kitchen are different, and the heat and humidity can affect the way the dough comes together. I am completely at ease making pasta in my own kitchen, but if you say to me, “Okay, you have to go to Scotland, buy your ingredients and make pasta for a hundred people in a strange kitchen,” I will be a bit scared, because I don’t know the quality of the flour or the eggs, and I don’t know the temperature and humidity.
You need a few trial runs to get it absolutely right, but if you fail the first time, what is the worst that can happen? A few eggs and a bag of flour end up in the bin. I promise you, once you get the feel of it, it will seem like therapy, not a job.
Even though making pasta is a pretty straightforward thing, everyone in Italy has his own idea about how to do it, how many eggs to use, whether to put in a drop of olive oil, or add some water. And then there are regional differences: in Emilia-Romagna, for example, they like to use more whole eggs – one for every 100g (¾ cup) of flour – whereas we prefer to use a mixture of whole eggs and egg yolks.
In the kitchen, we typically use 6 whole eggs and 4 egg yolks to 1 kilo (7 cups) of flour, but you can make egg pasta with a much higher concentration of eggs. The more you add, the “crispier” (more brittle) the pasta becomes. We sometimes make a pasta with zucchini and bottarga (see page 346) in which we use 32 eggs to 500g (3 ½ cups) of flour. The greatest number of eggs I have ever used to a kilo of flour was when I was working at Le Laurent in Paris, where the consultant chef was Joël Robuchon. One day he came by for lunch and asked who I was. “So, you can make pasta – why don’t you do some for me?” he said (this was at a time when Italian food was still a big mystery and the chefs in the kitchen had very little idea how to make fresh pasta or a proper risotto). The chef told me that Robuchon was looking for a clever garnish for some fish dishes, something special, and so I started to work with the dough, adding more and more eggs, and eventually I came up with an amazingly rich dough that had 52 egg yolks to a kilo of flour and was incredibly elastic.
The way I like to make fresh egg pasta is to make the dough quite “tight,” which means about 10 minutes of hard work, as the mixture will feel quite stiff and unyielding. As soon as the dough comes together, we stop working it, because we know it will loosen and soften as it rests. One of the reasons we make our dough this way is that, at the restaurant, we make a lot of filled pasta like ravioli and, while you can get away with pasta that is a bit overelastic if you are going to cut it into strips, like pappardelle, you need it to be firmer for filled pasta. This is because if the dough is too soft and elastic, it will stretch when you roll it, but then pull back again while you are making the ravioli, leaving the pasta too thick around the edges.
After we have made the pasta, we let it rest and it will soften up and become just the way we want it. In the restaurant, we usually leave it in the fridge for 24 hours, because we roll it through big pasta machines. At home, though, if you are using a small domestic machine, you only need to let it rest for an hour, covered with a damp cloth, and it will be ready to work with.
All over the world, there are different grades of flour, but most Italians use 00 (doppio zero) for fresh pasta, because it has small, fine particles that will give you a smooth dough. The Hour may be made from durum wheat or a combination of various strains of wheat; it varies according to manufacturers, and every household in Italy will buy the flour they swear is the only one to use, just as they believe completely in a particular brand of dried pasta.
You can either make egg pasta in the traditional fashion, by hand – which is the best and most enjoyable way – or use a food processor that has a dough hook. If you are finding it hard work to bring the dough together in the kneading, which can happen sometimes if the kitchen is hot, don’t just lake a jug of water and start adding it; instead wet your hands a little and keep working the dough until you begin to get some humidity into it, and then it will come together.
When you make egg pasta, much of the “bite” comes from the protein in the eggs, which also contain lecithin. This is a natural emulsifier that gives a malleability and elasticity to the pasta, allowing you to twist it and bend it. Also, as you knead the dough, you help to stretch the gluten in the flour, strengthening and making it more elastic. However, if you keep on kneading and kneading, and really overdo it, you can break the strands, which is why it is better to stop kneading the moment the dough comes together, then let the dough relax for an hour.
We use Italian eggs, which have very rich orange, almost red, yolks, because the hens eat grass and vegetation in spring and summer, and corn in the winter. So, when the pasta is made, it is a lovely golden color. If you are able to buy fresh eggs, preferably organic, from a farm where the hens can wander around freely and eat vegetation, rather than being penned into cages on a diet of formulated feed, you will find the yolks have a similar rich color and their flavor and quality will be much higher.
Makes about 1 ⅓ pounds
3 ½ cups 00 (doppio zero) flour
3 large eggs, plus 2 extra (large) egg yolks (all at room temperature)
pinch of salt
Preferably make the pasta by hand – especially if you are making a relatively small quantity like this, which will be difficult for a food processor to mix well. Sieve the flour into a clean bowl, then turn it out into a mound on a clean surface and make a well in the middle (in Italy we call this the fontana di farina, “fountain of flour”). Sprinkle the salt into the well, and then crack in the eggs.
Have a bowl of water on one side so you can wet your hands, to help bring the dough together if it is being stubborn toward the end of kneading. To begin, break up the yolks with the fingertips of one hand, and then begin to move your fingers in a circular motion, gradually incorporating the flour, until you have worked in enough to start bringing it together in a ball. Then you can start to work the ball of dough by pushing it with the heel of your hand, then folding the top back on itself, turning it a little clockwise, and repeating, again and again, for about 10 minutes, wetting your hands if it helps, until the dough is springy but still feels quite firm and difficult to work. (If you are using a food processor, sieve the flour into the bowl, add the salt, then start the machine, and slowly add the egg yolks, followed by the whole eggs. Keep the motor running slowly, or it will heat up the pasta too much and also “beat” rather than mix. Once the dough has come together, take it out and put it on a clean work surface.)
Don’t worry that the dough feels hard; after it has relaxed for a while it will be perfect. Divide the dough into 2 balls, wrap each in a damp cloth and allow to rest for about 1 hour before use.
Roll the first ball of dough with a rolling pin (keep the other covered with the damp cloth) until it is about ½ inch thick and will go through the pasta machine comfortably (if it is too thick, the pasta machine will have to use so much force to make it go through that it will damage the machine and squeeze out too much moisture in the process, so the pasta will be dry). There isn’t an exact number of times you will need to feed the pasta through the machine – each time you make it, it might be slightly different (and not every pasta machine has the same number of settings), but use the next few steps as a guide and, after a while, you will get the hang of rolling the pasta and feel your own way.
Put the machine on the first (thickest) setting to start with, then feed the piece of pasta through the machine, turning the handle with one hand and supporting the dough as it comes through with the other. Then change to the second setting, and put it through again. Repeat another 2 to 3 times, taking the setting down one step each time. Don’t worry if the pasta appears slightly streaky; this should disappear as you continue rolling it.
Next, fold the strip of pasta back on itself, put the machine back on the first setting and put the pasta through. Repeat 3 to 4 more times, again taking the setting down one each time, and you will see that the pasta begins to take on a sheen. As it begins to get longer, you will find that you have to pull it very gently, so that it doesn’t begin to pleat. You shouldn’t need to dust it with flour, unless you feel it is too soft and likely to stick and stretch too much.
Now you need to cut your strip in half. Put one half under cover of the damp cloth, then fold the length of the other strip into three, bringing one end in and the other over the top of that, so that the pasta is the same width as the machine. Roll it with the rolling pin, so it is no more than ¼ inch thick, then put the machine back on the first setting and feed the pasta through – this time across the width not lengthwise. The idea of changing direction is to put equal elasticity and strength throughout the pasta. Keep feeding it through this way, taking it down two or three settings as you go.
Finally, fold the pasta back on itself, then put the machine back on the first setting, and take it down again through the settings until it is about ⅝ inch thick. By now the pasta should be nice and shiny, with no lines in it, and you are ready to cut it into strips (either by hand or using a cutter attachment on your machine), or use it to make filled pasta. It is best to use each sheet as soon as it is ready, before starting to roll the rest of your dough.
Fettuccine (“flat long ribbons”) – Also called trenette, or piccage in the Ligurian dialect, these are narrower than tagliatelle, but are often used in similar recipes, depending on the region (fettuccine originally hails from Roma, tagliatelle from Bologna). Like tagliatelle, fettuccine is usually sold wound into nests. Its rough porous surface is designed to grip creamy or rich sauces, often incorporating vegetables like eggplant, mushroom, etc. The famous fettuccine alfredo, in which the pasta is tossed in a sauce made with cream, cheese and butter, was invented in Alfredo’s restaurant in Roma, while the traditional dish of “straw and hay” (paglia e fieno) is made with both green spinach fettuccine and egg fettuccine.
Pappardelle (“fat ribbons”) – These are the widest of the pasta strips, about ¾ inch wide. In Bologna, they are also called larghissime, meaning “very wide,” and are traditionally served with a rich ragù of game, such as hare or pigeon, sometimes chicken livers, and porcini.
Pizzocheri – This comes from Valtellina in Lombardia and is made with no eggs and a mixture of plain and buckwheat flour. It also gives its name to the most famous dish of the region, which is made with cabbage, potatoes, onions and Bitto cheese.
Tagliatelle (the word means “little cuts”) – The pasta strips should be ⅜ inch wide. Tagliatelle has quite a noble, elegant tradition, and is held in such reverence in Bologna, where it originates, that there is a strand of tagliatelle cast in gold at the Chamber of Commerce there. Tagliatelle is best eaten with ragù, especially of game, and with rich creamy sauces or porcini. We also serve it with marinated sardines (see page 342). According to the great early Italian food writer Pellegrino Artusi, the people of Bologna used to say that “bills should be short and tagliatelle long.” Fresh tagliatelle is best made at home, unless you have a good Italian deli near you where they make it themselves. Rather than buying house-brand supermarket packages of fresh tagliatelle, I would buy dried.
Tagliolini – These are narrow ribbons, about 1/16 inch wide, that are used in soups or sometimes with a light sauce. We often serve them with chicory or zucchini and bottarga (see page 346).
Garganelli – Most tubular pasta is dried, but this one can also be made by hand, with egg pasta, which is cut into rectangles against a grooved stick, or comb, called a pettine. It is best with sauces like pesto and tomato, or walnuts. We also use it with fish, such as mackerel, and olives.
Cannelloni – Rectangular sheets of pasta, stuffed with ricotta, vegetables or meat, and rolled up, then baked.
Lasagne – Large sheets, which are blanched briefly – in some regions just wetted with water – then layered up with meat and/or seafood or vegetables and béchamel sauce and baked. If I didn’t make my own fresh lasagne, I would buy dried rather than the commercial fresh lasagne sold in the supermarkets.
Agnolotti – This is what we call them in Piemonte, but they are also called raviolini (“small ravioli”). They are usually square but can be round, and are traditionally filled with meat, cheese, etc.
Anolini – Typical of Emilia-Romagna, these are half-moon-shaped. The stuffing is put in the center of the disks of pasta; then they are folded and pinched together to seal. Traditionally, they are stuffed with meat and served in stock; alternatively, they can be cooked, drained and served simply with butter and grated Parmesan.
Cappelletti (“little hats”) – Similar to anolini, but this time you take your half-moon shapes (usually the pasta is filled with ricotta) and bring the ends together around your little finger to form a shape like a three-cornered hat. There is a larger version, called cappellacci, which are shaped around your ring finger.
Malfatti – These are similar again to anolini; however, the tip of the triangle is folded down and then sealed on top of the pasta parcel.
Ravioli – The most famous square filled pasta, details of which are recorded as far back as the fourteenth century, stuffed with pork or cheese. They usually have fluted edges, unlike tordelli (also called tortelli), in which the edges are left plain. Nowadays they are used to hold every filling you can think of, from mushrooms to game to seafood.
Tortellini – Small filled pasta that are twisted to look like belly buttons – supposedly the inspiration for these was the belly button of Venus – they are a speciality of Bologna and are usually stuffed with cheese and prosciutto or mortadella, served with cream sauce or in broth, traditionally on New Year’s Eve.
Tortelloni – Large stuffed pasta, usually filled with spinach and ricotta, or Swiss chard, and tossed in butter and grated Parmesan.
Pappardelle alle fave e rucola
I really think of this dish as my own – it is based on a traditional pasta but has a twist that comes from ideas I had when I was working in Paris, and has been perfected at Locanda. I love it; but it is a dish that has to be made in springtime, when the young fava beans are in season and are beautifully sweet. For the puree, though, we use frozen fava beans, because the chlorophyll content is higher, as they are frozen as soon as they are picked – with fresh ones, the puree tends to darken almost to black, and looks off-putting, rather than staying nice and bright green.
1 recipe quantity of fresh egg pasta dough (page 330)
flour for dusting
2 handfuls of shelled fava beans
2 tablespoons grated Pecorino Sardo
2 small bunches of arugula, plus one extra for garnish
salt and pepper
For the butter sauce:
1 cup butter
1 shallot, finely chopped
2 black peppercorns
⅓ cup plus 1 tablespoon white wine
2 tablespoons heavy cream
For the fava bean puree:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 white onion, finely chopped
11 ounces (about 1 ½ cups) frozen fava beans, defrosted, blanched and peeled
7 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
First make the pappardelle by rolling the pasta through the machine as described on page 332. Work with one strip of pasta at a time. If it is dry or frilly at the edges, trim with a sharp knife. Then, using your rolling pin as a straight edge, cut the pasta across into strips ¾ to 1 inch wide.
Dust a tray with flour. Then, with a spatula, Hit up the strips 3 or 4 at a tune and lay them on the tray. Dust again with flour, cover with a damp cloth and leave aside to rest while you prepare the sauce and pure.
Cut all but two pats of the butter for the sauce into small cubes and keep in the fridge.
To make the puree, heat the olive oil in a pan, add the onion and cook for 4 to 5 minutes without allowing it to color. Add the frozen fava beans and cook with the onion for another 4 to 5 minutes.
Slowly add some water, a ladleful at a time, until the vegetables are covered. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat, put on the lid and leave to cook slowly (adding more water if necessary) until the beans are soft (about 20 to 25 minutes). At this point, continue cooking, without adding any extra water, until you have a very firm mixture.
While still hot, puree with a hand blender or a food processor, adding the butter cubes as you go (if the puree gets too dry, add a little water – the finished consistency should be like mushy peas). Transfer to a small saucepan, check the seasoning and keep warm, covered with plastic wrap to stop a skin from forming on the top.
Make the butter sauce: melt one pat of butter in a pan, add the shallots and sweat them for 2 to 3 minutes with the peppercorns, then add the wine and reduce that by three-quarters. Add the cream and reduce for another 2 minutes or so. Take off the heat and keep to the side.
Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, put in the fava beans and blanch them for 2 to 3 minutes, then drain and refresh under cold running water. Peel off the outer skins of the beans.
Melt the other pat of butter in a sauté pan, and add the fava beans. Season lightly and turn off the heat.
Put the pan containing the wine reduction back on the heat, bring back up to a boil, then slowly whisk in the cold butter cubes. While you are whisking in the cold butter, turn up the temperature slightly to keep it from splitting, but once it is all incorporated turn it down again for the same reason. Pass through a fine sieve into a warm container and keep in a warm place.
Bring a large pan of water to the boil, add salt, put in the pappardelle and cook for a couple of minutes, keeping it moving all the time until al dente (checking after a minute). Drain, reserving the cooking water.
Put the pan containing the beans back on a low heat, and add the pasta, with a little of its cooking water. Toss, add the pecorino, some pepper, the 2 bunches of arugula and 3 or 4 ladlefuls of the butter sauce. Toss a little more for 1 to 2 minutes, adding a little more cooking water if necessary to loosen.
While you are tossing the pasta, warm up the puree, then spread a little on each of the plates, and top with the pasta. Garnish with a little more fresh arugula.
Pappardelle ai fegatini di pollo e salvia
In autumn we shave some black truffle over the pasta just before serving.
1 recipe quantity of fresh egg pasta dough (page 330)
5 ¾ ounces chicken livers (about 6)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 shallot, finely chopped
4 tablespoons brandy
1 glass of white wine
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 cup butter, plus 2 extra pats
10 sage leaves
2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper
First roll the dough through the machine as described on page 332, and then cut as in the recipe on page 338.
In the center of each of the chicken livers is a white filament, so cut around this and keep it to the side, as you will need it to make the butter sauce. Chop the livers coarsely.
Put a large pan of water on to boil for the pasta.
In a separate saucepan, heat half the vegetable oil and add the reserved chicken liver trimmings. Make sure all the pieces are spread out over the pan, so they all touch the bottom. Leave on a high heat for about 2 minutes – the pieces should stick to the base of the pan, so gently scrape them off with a spatula and flip them over. Let them stick to the pan again, then scrape them off again, so they won’t burn. Turn down the heat and squash the pieces in the pan until you have a paste. Add the shallot, toss for another couple of minutes, then turn up the heat, add 2 tablespoons of brandy and carefully flame.
Add the white wine and cream, and reduce for 2 to 3 minutes or so. Turn the heat down to low.
Cut the 1 cup of butter into cubes, and slowly whisk it in. While you are doing so turn up the temperature slightly to keep the sauce from splitting, but once it is all incorporated turn the heat down again for the same reason. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve and keep warm.
In a sauté pan, heat the rest of the vegetable oil, add the chicken livers, season and turn over. Turn down the heat, add the rest of the brandy, carefully flame again and season again. Add the 2 extra pats of butter, then put in the sage leaves and let the butter foam.
Put your pasta in the salted boiling water for a couple of minutes (checking after a minute), until al dente.
Drain, reserving some of the cooking water. Add a little of this to the pan containing the chicken livers, then put in the pasta and toss. Add the reserved liver butter sauce, taking care not to heat too much or the butter will split. Add the Parmesan, a little more cooking water, if necessary, and serve.
If you can’t find any porcini (ceps), or they are out of season, you can still make this with other wild mushrooms — but not button mushrooms (as they don’t have enough flavor) or trompettes (as they are too dark and bitter).
1 recipe quantity of fresh egg pasta dough (page 330)
7 tablespoons butter
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
½ pound (8 ounces) porcini, sliced
½ glass of white wine
small bunch of chives, cut into short lengths
handful of parsley, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan (optional)
salt and pepper
First roll the dough through the machine as described on page 332, and then cut as in the recipe on page 338.
Heat half the butter in a sauté pan, add the chopped garlic and cook gently without allowing it to color. Add the mushrooms and stew them gently without frying. Season and add the white wine. Cover with a lid and cook for a couple of minutes.
Put a large pan of water on to boil for the pasta. Salt it, put in your pasta and cook for a couple of minutes (checking after a minute), until al dente.
Drain, reserving some of the cooking water. Add the pappardelle to the pan containing the mushrooms. Toss for a minute, add the rest of the butter and stir in. Add the chives and parsley, with some more cooking water if needed, and serve with Parmesan if you like.
Tagliatelle alle sarde in saor
Although there is a famous Sicilian pasta dish made with sardines, golden raisins and wild fennel or fennel seeds, this is a variation on a Sardinian starter of just the marinated sardines, no pasta.
1 recipe quantity of fresh egg pasta dough (page 330)
⅔ cup olive oil
1 bay leaf
sprig of rosemary
2 juniper berries
3 black peppercorns
2 cloves
8 white onions, thinly sliced
10 medium-sized sardines
about 2 tablespoons flour
vegetable oil for deep-frying
5 tablespoons
white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons golden raisins, soaked in water for about 30 minutes
salt and pepper
We felt it needed some other element to turn it into a dish that we could serve in the restaurant, and I think the sweet and sour flavors work really well with the tagliatelle.
It is also a dish that owes something to the way my grandmother prepared sardines for us — she would fry them first and then put them under a warm marinade.
Some pastas work because they have a homogeneous sauce, but this is a good example of one in which every mouthful is different. As you turn the tagliatelle with your fork, the sauce coats it, but you also spear pieces of melting sardines and golden raisins, and different flavors and textures jump out at you.
Make the pasta and roll the dough through the machine as described on page 332. Work with one strip of pasta at a time. If it is dry or frilly at the edges, trim with a sharp knife. Then cut the pasta strip into lengths roughly 8 inches long. Attach the tagliatelle cutter to your pasta machine and put the strips through one at a time.
Put the oil, herbs, juniper berries, peppercorns and cloves into a deep saucepan over a low heat, turn up the heat and let the flavors gently infuse the oil. When the herbs begin to fry very gently, add the sliced onion, season with salt and cook very gently, without frying, for about 20 minutes, until the onion is soft but not dark and the volume has reduced right down and is covered by the oil.
Meanwhile scale the sardines, clean them and fillet them (see page 94). Season the fillets and dust lightly with flour.
Heat the vegetable oil in a deep fryer or pan (no more than one-third full). To test whether it is hot enough, put in a little flour and, if it fries, then the oil is ready. Put 2 or 3 sardine fillets at a time on a skimmer or metal sieve and dip into the oil for 1 minute. They shouldn’t color and should be rare inside — they will continue cooking in the warm marinade. Drain on paper towels to soak up the excess oil.
Turn up the heat under the pan containing the onions and slowly, slowly add the vinegar. Turn the heat off and add the golden raisins.
Put 2 or 3 tablespoonfuls of this mixture into a deep dish. Place the sardines on top and cover with the rest of the mixture. Leave to cool and then cover with plastic wrap. Leave in a cool place (preferably not the fridge) to marinate for 2 to 3 hours. (You can marinate them overnight, but in that case put them in the fridge and bring up to room temperature when you are ready to use them.)
Put a large pan of water on to boil for the pasta.
Take the herbs and cloves out of the marinade. Then, with a slotted spoon, transfer the sardine mixture to a large sauté pan. Place on low heat and let everything warm through. At the same time, using a spoon, gently smash some of the sardines and onions.
Put the pasta into the salted boiling water and cook for a couple of minutes until al dente (check after a minute). Drain, reserving some of the cooking water.
Add the pasta to the pan containing the sardines and toss for a minute or so, adding a little oil from the marinated sardines (go gently, as you don’t want the pasta to be too oily). Also add a little of the reserved cooking water, if necessary, to loosen the sauce, and serve.
Tagliatelle di castagne ai funghi selvatici
This is a pasta that has its roots in necessity. After the Second World War there was a big shortage of flour, so chestnut flour was used to bulk up whatever wheat flour there was available. Because it has no gluten, you need the mixture of the two flours, as you couldn’t use chestnut flour alone. The sweetness of the chestnuts really comes through, which is why we use wild mushrooms in this dish, because they often grow underneath the chestnut trees in the woods, so the flavors seem to have a natural affinity.
2 ½ cups 00 (doppio zero) flour
¾ cup chestnut flour
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
15 egg yolks
pinch of salt
For the wild
mushroom sauce:
11 ounces (about 2 cups) mixed wild mushrooms
7 tablespoons butter, cut into small cubes
2 garlic cloves
½ wineglass of white wine
handful of parsley, chopped
small bunch of chives, cut into short lengths
⅓ cup freshly grated Parmesan (optional)
salt and pepper
If you are making the pasta by hand, sieve the two flours together in a bowl, then turn out into a mound on a clean surface, and make a well in the middle. Pour in the oil, add the salt and the egg yolks, and slowly start to bring in the flour with the edge of your hand, so that the flour becomes absorbed. If you are using a food processor, sieve the flours into the bowl, add the olive oil and the salt, then start the machine and slowly add the egg yolks. Keep the motor running slowly, or it will heat up the pasta too much and also “beat” rather than mix.
When the mixture starts to come together in a dough, if you are using a food processor, switch off the machine, take out the dough and put it on a clean work surface. Work the dough with your hands, kneading for about 5 minutes. The dough will be much softer than normal egg pasta dough, and darker in color, thanks to the chestnut flour. If it feels too soft, though, add a little more flour as you are kneading.
Divide the dough into two balls, wrap in plastic wrap and keep in the fridge until you are ready to use (it will keep for 2 to 3 days).
Put the dough through the pasta machine as described on page 330. Then, if the strip of pasta is dry or frilly at the edges, trim with a sharp knife. Cut the pasta strip into lengths roughly 8 inches long. Adjust your pasta machine to the tagliatelle setting and put the strips through one at a time.
Make the mushroom sauce: pick through the mushrooms, brushing out any grains of sand or earth. Trim the stalks and tear the mushrooms lengthwise into halves, quarters or eighths, leaving the stalks attached, so that the pieces are all roughly the same size.
Heat half the butter in a large sauté pan, add the garlic and cook for a minute without allowing it to color. Add the mushrooms and cook for 2 more minutes, then pour in the wine and let the alcohol evaporate. Season and take off the heat.
Bring a large pan of water to a boil for the pasta, then salt it, put in the tagliatelle and cook for a couple of minutes until al dente (checking after a minute). Drain well (so that the mushroom mixture clings well to the pasta), reserving some of the cooking water.
Add the pasta to the pan containing the mushrooms and toss together, stirring in the rest of the butter. Then add the chopped parsley and chives. Now you can add a little of the cooking water from the pasta to loosen, if necessary, and serve with Parmesan if you like.
Tagliolini alle zucchine e bottarga
You can use the egg pasta dough on page 330 for this, though at Locanda I like to have a more “crunchy” pasta here, which we make in the same way as the basic egg pasta dough, but we use 1 ¾ cups semolina flour and 1 ⅓ cups 00 (doppio zero) flour mixed together and lots of egg yolks — 16 (no whole eggs this time). Because we use Italian eggs, which tend to have very deep-colored, red-gold yolks, the pasta is a lovely yellow color, which looks good with the zucchini. If your egg yolks are pale, you can add a pinch of turmeric if you like, to deepen the color. You need a tagliolini cutter for your pasta machine for this. If you can’t find any bottarga, you can toss some anchovy fillets through the pasta when you combine it with the sauce (see picture).
1 recipe quantity of fresh egg pasta dough (page 330, or try the variation above)
6 zucchini
up to ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped
½ wineglass of white wine
4 anchovy fillets
3 tablespoons tomato passata
4 tomatoes, quartered
1 ½ ounces tuna or gray mullet bottarga
handful of chopped parsley
salt and pepper
To make the tagliolini, follow the instructions for rolling the dough on page 332, then, using the tagliolini cutter, put the pasta through the machine again, so that you have strips of pasta just a little wider than spaghetti.
Cut the outer green layer only of the zucchini into strips the same width as the tagliolini, preferably using a mandoline grater.
Put the strips into a colander, season with salt and leave for 10 to 15 minutes in a warm place, so that they lose some of their moisture and become soft, like the pasta.
Heat half the oil in a large sauté pan, add the garlic and fry gently, until soft but not colored. Shake the zucchini to remove excess water, and add to the pan. Stir for a minute or so on a high heat, then add the white wine and allow the alcohol to evaporate. Add the anchovies and let them “melt,” without frying them, then add the tomato passata and the fresh tomatoes, and cook for another minute or so, then take off the heat. Season lightly.
Bring a large pan of water to a boil for the pasta, add salt and put in the tagliolini, stirring to prevent sticking. Cook for a couple of minutes until al dente, then drain, reserving some of the cooking water.
While the pasta is cooking, grate the bottarga (not too thick).
Add the drained pasta to the pan containing the sauce, toss and use a fork to mix the pasta and zucchini together, so that it looks like two different colors of tagliolini. Gently add the remaining olive oil, incorporating everything together. Add some of the cooking water from the pasta, if necessary, to loosen, followed by the chopped parsley, and serve with the grated bottarga sprinkled on top.
1 recipe quantity of fresh egg pasta dough (page 330)
small head of chicory
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
½ wineglass of dry white wine
4 anchovy fillets
2 tablespoons grated pecorino cheese
salt and pepper
Roll the pasta dough as described on page 332, then make the tagliolini as in the previous recipe.
Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil for the chicory. Cut off the base of the chicory, so that the leaves come away, then wash them carefully. Put the chicory in the boiling water and blanch for about a minute, to take away the excess bitterness. Drain.
Lay the leaves on a cutting board and flatten them. Cut each leaf in half across the width (so each half is more or less the same length as the tagliolini), then cut into thin strips, so that they look similar to the tagliolini.
Heat half the oil in a large sauté pan, add the garlic and cook gently until soft without allowing to color. Add the strips of chicory and cook, stirring, for a couple of minutes. Add the white wine and let the alcohol evaporate. Put in the anchovies and let them dissolve without frying. Taste and season as necessary.
Bring another large pan of water to the boil for the pasta. Salt it and put in the tagliolini, stirring to prevent it from sticking. Cook for a couple of minutes, until al dente. Drain, reserving some of the cooking water.
Add the drained pasta to the pan containing the sauce, toss and use a fork to mix the pasta and chicory together, so that it looks like two different colors of tagliolini. Gently add the rest of the olive oil, incorporating everything together. Add some of the cooking water from the pasta if necessary to loosen, then add the grated pecorino and serve.
Ragù — traditional meat sauce — is, as I said in the introduction to this chapter, best with fresh egg pasta, especially tagliatelle or pappardelle, but not with spaghetti, which is too thin to hold the chunks of meat. You can also serve it with short pasta, such as penne or farfalle; in fact, when the meat is minced (as in the case of beef and pork), it works better with these pastas, and also with fusilli. When you make ragù with wild boar or game, which is cooked on the bone to retain the flavor, and then flaked, the meat has a different consistency that will coat long pasta, such as pappardelle or tagliatelle, better. Sometimes, too, we use ragù as a filling for ravioli.
Each region of Italy has its favorite ragù; sometimes you will even find a mixture of veal, pork and beef all in one sauce. In Toscana, where my sous chef Federico comes from, they like to add chicken liver to pork or beef ragù. At Locanda we vary the ragù according to the season; so sometimes it might be venison or kid (baby goat) — which we get just after Christmas. We make ragù with baby goat in a similar way to wild boar (see page 351) but we don’t marinate the meat first. At other times it might be hare, pork, veal or lamb. The beauty of making it at home is that you can cook up a big quantity, then divide it into portions and freeze it, ready to heat through when you want it. Cook the pasta, reserving the cooking water, as usual, then toss the pasta in the pan of ragù, adding a little of the cooking water if necessary to help the sauce cling to the pasta. Stir in a couple of pats of butter, and if you like, add some grated pecorino or Parmesan.
Sometimes I make a very quick and simple sausage and tomato ragù, which the kids love. I chop up some good pork sausages, sauté them in a pan with some garlic cloves — no onions — add a can of good tomatoes and maybe some chopped fresh ones, bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for about 40 minutes until it is good and thick.
Because it makes sense to make ragù in large quantities, I have broken with the pattern of the rest of the book and given recipes that should make enough to feed eight people, or four for two different meals. If you want to make only enough for four at one sitting, just reduce the quantities.
This is the most famous Italian ragù, which I love with gnocchi.
In the restaurant we cook this in the oven in big pans at about 250°F so it just simmers, for about the same length of time as if you cooked it on the stove — if you have a big enough oven and big enough pans, you can do the same.
Makes enough for 8
4 pounds minced beef, preferably neck
5 tablespoons olive oil
2 carrots, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
2 onions, finely chopped
sprig of rosemary and sprig of sage, tied together for a bouquet garni
2 garlic cloves
up to 1 bottle of red wine
1 tablespoon tomato paste
32 ounces (4 cups) tomato passata
salt and pepper
To serve:
pasta, preferably pappardelle (page 338), tagliatelle or short pasta
freshly grated pecorino cheese
Take the meat out of the fridge and lay it on a tray and let it come to room temperature, so that it will sear rather than steam when it goes into the pan.
Heat the oil in a wide-bottomed saucepan, add the vegetables, herbs and whole garlic cloves, and sweat over a high heat for 5 to 8 minutes without allowing it to color (you will need to keep stirring).
Season the meat with salt and pepper and add to the pan of vegetables, making sure that the meat is covering the base of the pan. Leave for about 5 to 6 minutes, so that the meat seals underneath and heats through completely, before you start stirring (otherwise it will ooze protein and liquid and it will steam rather than sear). Take care, though, that the vegetables don’t burn — add a little more oil, if necessary, to stop this happening.
Stir the meat and vegetables every few minutes for about 10 to 12 minutes, until the meat starts to stick to the bottom of the pan. At this point, the meat is ready to take the wine.
Add the wine and let it reduce right down to virtually nothing, then add the tomato paste and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring all the time.
Add the passata with 4 cups of water. Bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and cook for about 1 ½ hours, adding a little extra water if necessary from time to time, until you have a thick sauce.
When you are ready to serve the ragù, cook your pasta (preferably pappardelle, tagliatelle or short pasta) and drain, reserving the cooking water. Add the pasta to the ragù and toss well, adding some of the cooking water, if necessary, to loosen the sauce. Serve with freshly grated pecorino.
This is done in exactly the same way as the ragù alla bolognese (above), but with finely diced meat rather than minced. I also like to add a little milk just after the water has been added and the heat has been turned down to a simmer, to give the ragù a good color and creaminess, and to draw out a little of the acidity from the tomato paste. Serve it in the same way as the ragù alla bolognese, with Parmesan grated over (Parmesan goes better with pork than pecorino).
Again, this is made in the same way as the ragù alla bolognese (see page 349), but instead of the bouquet garni we add finely chopped rosemary and sage (a sprig of each) to the vegetables, and lots of cloves and juniper berries (about ¼ cup of each). We usually serve it in the same way, but instead of pecorino, we grate over a cheese from Piemonte, called Sola, which is made from goat’s and cow’s milk.
The meat needs to be marinated for a day or two first. We like to cook the meat on the bone for extra flavor, and we add an extra carrot for sweetness.
Makes enough for 8
4 pounds wild boar shoulder (preferably on the bone), cut into pieces about 3 ¼—4 inches long
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 carrots, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
2 onions, finely chopped
sprig of rosemary and sprig of sage, tied together
2 garlic cloves
2 to 3 tablespoons sunflower or vegetable oil
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 cups tomato passata
salt and pepper
For the marinade:
1 bottle of red wine
2 juniper berries
2 black peppercorns
1 bay leaf
1 small carrot, coarsely chopped
1 small celery stalk, coarsely chopped
1 onion, coarsely chopped
sprig of rosemary
A few days ahead, put the boar into a large bowl with all the marinade ingredients, cover with plastic wrap and leave in the fridge for at least a day, preferably two. Before you make the ragù, bring the wild boar out of the fridge and let it come back to room temperature. Lift it from the marinade and pat dry. Strain the marinade through a fine sieve.
Heat the olive oil in a large, wide-bottomed pan. Add the vegetables, herbs and garlic, and sweat over a medium heat for about 5 to 6 minutes without allowing it to color.
At the same time, in a separate sauté pan, heat the sunflower or vegetable oil, until smoking hot. Season the wild boar on both sides, put into the pan and cook for 3 or 4 minutes, until slightly crusty on one side, then turn it over and repeat on the other side.
Lift the wild boar from the pan and add to the vegetables. Cook for about 5 to 8 minutes, then add the tomato paste and passata. Cook for a couple more minutes, then add the strained marinade. Bring to the boil, turn the heat down to a simmer and skim off any impurities on the surface. Cook for about 1 ½ hours, until the meat comes off the bone (if using) and flakes easily. It will be quite stringy but should be tender. Check the seasoning and adjust if necessary.
When you are ready to serve the ragù, cook your pasta (preferably pappardelle or tagliatelle) and drain, reserving the cooking water. Add the pasta to the ragù and toss well, adding some of the cooking water, if necessary, to loosen the sauce. Add a little extra virgin olive oil just before serving.
“Great dishes, much misunderstood”
Kids will cry in Italy if you give them lasagne al forno that doesn’t stand up straight on the plate. If it falls over, they say: “What’s wrong? It’s all floppy!” Lasagne — which involves thin pasta sheets layered with meat ragù or vegetables, and usually cheese — is clearly the best-known baked pasta al forno, a generic term for anything in which pasta of any shape is combined with sauce and then baked in the oven. It is also a dish that is much misunderstood.
The classic lasagne alla bolognese, which everybody knows, is meant to be a sturdy, quite dry pasta dish, with a little bit of meat ragù and be-sciamella (béchamel) sauce in it, not sheets of pasta floating in minced beef and lots of sauce, which will boil up in the oven, so the whole thing comes out moist and soft. That is completely contrary to its spirit. In a true lasagne all the elements come together as one, with a top that crisps up until it is beautifully, cracklingly burnt.
In Britain, when I look at the lasagne that is served everywhere from highway cafés to pubs, or the ready-made versions you can buy in supermarkets, what I see is not lasagne but a version of shepherd’s pie, only made with pasta instead of potato, which is all wrong. It is a classic case of Italian tradition colliding with another culture’s way of eating meat. Supermarkets have sometimes asked me to develop a lasagne for them, but when I say, “Why do you have to put so much meat in it?” the answer is always “If you don’t, people will think they aren’t getting a good deal.”
In Italy, since the 1960s — just as everywhere in the world — lasagne has become popular all over the country. At one time, though, you had lasagne only on Sunday, at home or in a restaurant. Often in the country, before every house had a modern oven, the women of the village used to take their assembled dishes of lasagne to the bakery and, when the morning’s bread had been made, all the dishes would be baked in the big ovens, ready for their owners to collect them and take them home, wrapped in cloths, for the family lunch. Even if you didn’t want to make your own dish, you would never buy a ready-made lasagne in a supermarket, because either the local deli would make their own, or you would go to your local restaurant on a Saturday or Sunday, give them your baking dish, and say, “Can you make me enough lasagne for six?” So, while they were making their own lasagne, they would also make some for you, in your own dish, ready to take home and bake yourself.
The women would also know that one of the great secrets of lasagne is to assemble it or have it made for you a day in advance, because a night’s resting lets the pasta and sauces really gel together, so all the elements will properly cook as one. Franco Taruschio always used to say that it was better still if you cooked your lasagne the day before, then put it in the oven for a second baking before serving (in a bain-marie to keep it from drying out). Like a good stew, heating, cooling down, resting, then reheating seems to enhance the flavor.
Think of pasta al forno as a dish that can really help you if you have lots of people to feed, because all the work is done in advance. You can have your lasagne in the fridge, ready to bake or baked once already, and say to yourself, “Fantastic, all I have to do is buy some salami to eat first, and maybe some cheese and fruit for afterward, and everyone is going to be full and happy.” When we do big parties at Locanda, we often make three different lasagne: one with spinach and ricotta for vegetarians, one classic one, and an extra-special one with porcini. On one occasion, we cooked for friends who were throwing a party at one of London’s art galleries. We brought in big ovens with enormous dishes that fitted the oven exactly, and we had perfect hot food in abundance for 450 people standing around and eating in complete ease.
When we make lasagne, we use our own fresh pasta (though at home, because Margherita is allergic to eggs, we often use dried durum wheat pasta). We roll it out very thin, cut it into sheets (for 4 you would need around 12 to 16), then blanch them, 2 or 3 at a time, for a minute or two in plenty of boiling water, moving around the pieces so that they don’t stick together. Then we drop them into cold water to stop them cooking any more, take them out and lay them on cloths to dry, before beginning to build the lasagne. Some people say you can make lasagne without blanching the pasta — and it is true they do it this way in some traditional recipes; in others they merely wet the pasta in bowls of cold water. In these dishes, though, you have to be sure that the rest of your ingredients are going to provide plenty of moisture, so that the whole thing doesn’t dry out and the pasta doesn’t begin to flake and break.
We have ready our ragù alla bolognese (see page 349) and besciamella (béchamel sauce, see page 129, but omit the cheese). First we spread just a thin ladleful of ragù over the dish, then a ladleful of besciamella, again spread thin like a layer of jam on bread. Next goes another layer of pasta and so on, finishing with besciamella and lots of grated Parmesan that will crisp up in the oven (we put it in at 375°F for 30 to 40 minutes). If you want to make the dish more luxurious, you can sprinkle some grated Parmesan over each layer of besciamella, together with a few pieces of mozzarella and a couple of pats of butter.
The classic lasagne alla bolognese may be the one that everyone knows best outside Italy, however, from the north to the south of the country, every region uses different ingredients and has its own traditions of pasta al forno.
In the south, you find a great use of eggplant — sometimes instead of besciamella, because it provides the same kind of moisture you need to make the dish meld together. In Sicilia, they make an elaborate dish with tubular pasta, spicy sausage and eggs, baked inside a case made with slices of eggplant. Coming up toward Calabria, they often use spicy sausage, mozzarella and ricotta. In Napoli, during carnival time before Lent, you find the traditional lasagne di Carnevale, made with things like ricotta, eggs, spinach and meatballs (polpettine). Once upon a time, when meat was expensive, finding a meatball in such a dish would have been like discovering a golden nugget.
One of the most renowned baked pasta dishes is vincisgrassi, which is traditional in the Marche region and uses layered sheet pasta with cured ham and porcini. Some say it was created by a local chef for an Austrian general, Prince Windischgrätz, who was commander of the Austrian forces stationed in Marche during the Napoleonic wars in 1799. As always, though, there is a dispute about this, because something similar, called “princisgras,” is mentioned earlier in 1784 in a famous book by Antonio Nebbia called Il Cuoco Maceratese, which was one of the first to champion Italian dishes, such as pasta, over French influences. Marche is a region that is divided: half is by the sea and half in the mountains, where you have plenty of butter, hams, cured meat, mushrooms and truffles. Franco Taruschio, who comes from Marche, made a famous vincisgrassi during his time at the Walnut Tree near Abergavenny, using the wild mushrooms from the local woods. Sometimes in mountain areas the pasta is replaced by polenta, which is layered in the same way and known as polenta cuncia — the polenta has great absorbency, so we are talking about a very heavy, thick, warming food.
And then there is timballo (or timpani, as it is called in the south), the subject of the brilliant 1996 movie Big Night, the “horn of plenty” of Italian cooking — a rich, lavish dish that has been embedded in our culture of celebration since Renaissance times, when it would be served by the great chefs at court banquets in Napoli. It is baked in a round mold, often lined with big, long tubular ziti (traditional at weddings), tagliatelle or tagliolini, and sometimes it is encased in pastry. Everything you have goes into the timballo. It is a fantastic thing; the panettone of pasta. When Big Night opened in London there was a big party at Locanda — and so we made timballi encased in sheet pasta and inside a mix of short pasta and meatballs. One of Italy’s most famous modern chefs, Alfonso Iaccarino, of the restaurant Don Alfonso 1890 at Sant’Agata sui Due Golfi, near Napoli, made everyone smile at the cleverness of his variation, which uses a mold lined first with bread crumbs, then with peeled, roasted yellow peppers, and filled with bucatini (big, fat tubular pasta), tossed in garlic, tomatoes, olives, capers, basil and mozzarella, then wound around and around.
There is a newer Italian-French style of pasta that resembles pasta al forno but in fact never goes into the oven, which we call gratinata — something that came into fashion in the sixties and seventies. It is very much a “restaurant” sort of thing: the sheet pasta is cooked as the order comes in, layered up with its sauce inside a pastry ring, then “glazed” with béchamel, which is flashed under a grill before the dish goes out to the customer. It works especially well with seafood, which is difficult in a pasta dish baked in the traditional way, because the fish would be seriously overcooked; this way the whole dish becomes lighter, and you can work on it to make it look beautiful. It is a concept most exploited by the Cipriani family of the Cipriani restaurants and Harry’s Bar in Venezia, and it is a brilliant idea. I enjoy doing it myself sometimes in the restaurant, but it has no real basis in Italian tradition.
Fazzoletti alla purea di legumi e basilico
This is a quite new way to serve pasta, in the style that the Milanese chef Gualtiero Marchesi has made famous. It is a little like a lasagne, except that it isn’t baked — the pasta and sauce are just built up on the plate before serving. In the restaurant, we add parsley leaves to the pasta for the last rolling through the machine, to make it look attractive, and add an extra flavor. When the pasta has gone through once on 0.5, we scatter it with whole flat parsley leaves, then fold it in two and put it through again, so that the leaves are pressed into the pasta. In spring, in addition to asparagus, we also add some blanched fava beans, peas or snow peas to this recipe but at other times of the year you can leave them out. Sometimes we also add some sautéed morels or other mushrooms.
2 medium-sized eggplants
2 zucchini
1 recipe quantity of fresh egg pasta dough (page 330)
about 7 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 banana shallot or 2 regular shallots, finely chopped
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons milk
handful of basil leaves
½ red pepper, deseeded and finely chopped
½ yellow pepper, deseeded and finely chopped
1 ½ tablespoons flour
vegetable oil for deep-frying
8 asparagus spears
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
about 7 to 8 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan
salt and pepper
Finely chop one eggplant and one zucchini, and cut the rest into large dice. Put the eggplant and zucchini in separate colanders or sieves, sprinkle with salt and leave for at least a couple of hours, but preferably overnight, so that you draw out as much of the water as possible, and also any bitterness.
Put the pasta dough through the machine following the instructions on page 332 (if you like, put it through once more, scattered with parsley leaves as described above). Trim the edges of your pasta if they are dry or frilly. Cut each strip of pasta in half lengthwise, then cut each piece in half, so that you have 16 squares. Lay the pasta squares on a floured tray and put in the fridge until you need them.
Put a large shallow ovenproof dish into a barely warm oven — you will need this to keep the pasta warm later.
Melt half the butter in a medium saucepan, add the shallots and cook for 6 to 7 minutes until soft but not colored.
While the shallots are cooking, put the milk and basil into a blender and liquefy, as if you were making a basil milk shake. Set aside.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil for the pasta.
Take the finely chopped eggplant from the colander and squeeze very well in your hands to remove the remaining moisture, and add to the pan of shallots. Cook quickly on a high heat, stirring all the time. After 4 to 5 minutes, add the peppers and keep cooking quickly and stirring.
After about 6 to 7 minutes, squeeze the finely chopped zucchini in the same way as the eggplant, add it to the pan and lightly season (go easy as you have already seasoned the eggplant and zucchini with salt). Cook for another 3 to 5 minutes, still stirring.
Add the flour and cook for a couple of minutes, still stirring, then add the basil mixture, a little at a time, stirring as you go. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for about 5 minutes, still stirring, until the sauce begins to thicken — like a green vegetable béchamel. Turn off the heat and cover with a lid, plastic wrap or foil to stop a skin from forming.
Meanwhile heat the vegetable oil in a deep fryer or deep saucepan (don’t fill any more than one-third full). To test whether it is hot enough, sprinkle in a little flour and if it sizzles it is ready. Take the diced eggplant and zucchini in your hands and squeeze well, to get rid of a little more moisture. Fry separately in batches for about 2 minutes, so that they turn slightly crisp (be careful, as any remaining moisture may cause the oil to foam up). Drain on paper towels.
Tie the asparagus with string and stand in a tall pan of boiling salted water, keeping the tips above the water so they will steam gently, for about 4 to 6 minutes depending on thickness. Untie them, wrap in a wet cloth and keep on one side.
Put the rest of the butter in a small saucepan over low heat so that it begins to melt and then foam, while you are finishing everything off. Keep an eye on it and, if you feel that it is bubbling too much, add another pat or two of butter and turn off the heat.
Put the pasta into the salted boiling water for a couple of minutes until just soft (slightly beyond al dente). Drain, reserving a little of the cooking water.
Drizzle the olive oil into the ovenproof dish you have been keeping warm, add a little of the cooking water, then put in the pasta, moving it around so each square is covered in water and oil to keep the pieces from sticking to each other.
Have 4 warmed plates ready and start to build up your “lasagne.” Put a tablespoon of sauce in the middle of each plate, sprinkle with some Parmesan (for each plate you are going to need 5 layers of Parmesan, so use just a little at a time). Add a layer of pasta, then more sauce, Parmesan, pasta, etc., finishing with a layer of pasta and a final sprinkling of Parmesan. Add some of the reserved deep fried zucchini and eggplant to each plate along with 2 asparagus spears. Spoon some of the foaming butter over the top and serve.
In general, the filled pasta of the north tends to involve meat, whereas in the south and around the coast you are more likely to find stuffings of vegetables or seafood. Of course there are exceptions, and one of my favorites is a typical filled pasta from Lombardia, made with pumpkin and amaretti cookies (see page 366). In Lombardia we even have a kind of sweet filled pasta, a tortelli, dusted with sugar, which is one of the many specialties we make for the feast of San Giuseppe.
Each region also tends to have its preference for a particular shape of pasta, which they believe works best with the filling, but you can substitute any you like in the recipes that follow.
When you make filled pasta, one of the most important things is not to try to make too many all at once, or they will become dry and start to crack. Work with only one strip of pasta at a time, keeping the rest of the pasta dough wrapped in a damp cloth until you are ready for it.
The relationship between the pasta and its stuffing is important — you don’t want too much floppy pasta around the edges, but take equal care not to overstuff them, or they might “explode” when you cook them.
Filled pasta is wonderful for freezing. Put a tray into the freezer, then make your ravioli, bring out your tray, put the ravioli on it, making sure they are completely separate from one another, put them into the freezer for 10 minutes, then turn them over, and then when they are hard, put them into a freezer bag. Then, when you are ready to cook them, you can do so from frozen.
The best thing of all is to have some cubes of homemade stock in the freezer (see page 264). Then, when you come home at night, you can just put some in a pan, and, when the stock is boiling, put in your frozen ravioli, bring the stock back up to a boil, and cook for a few minutes until the pasta is just soft and you have ravioli in brodo; a fantastic plate of pasta soup.
Ravioli di patate e menta con peperoni
In the restaurant, we often also make these using a slightly different shape of pasta pocket, called malfatti (see page 336).
2 red peppers
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
12 ounces (¾ pound) new potatoes
1 stick plus 2 tablespoons butter, diced
sprig of rosemary
¾ cup freshly grated Parmesan
1 recipe quantity of fresh egg pasta dough (page 330)
1 egg, beaten, to brush on the pasta
about 40 mint leaves
sprig of sage
salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 340°F and, when hot, put in the whole peppers drizzled with the olive oil and roast for about 15 minutes, turning them every 5 minutes, until soft but not black. Take them out, put into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let them steam for about 10 minutes, so that you can take the skins off easily.
While the peppers are in the oven, make the filling for the pasta. Boil the potatoes in their skins for about half an hour, then peel while still warm and put into a food processor and process.
In a small pan, melt 7 tablespoons of butter with the rosemary, so that the flavor infuses and the butter starts to color.
Slowly add the butter to the potatoes and continue to process until smooth. Add half the Parmesan and season to taste. Transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and leave to cool.
Next make the sauce: skin the peppers, deseed and chop them, then put them into the (clean) food processor and process until smooth. Transfer to a small saucepan and set aside.
Make the pasta dough in the usual way (see page 330) and put: through the machine (see page 332). Mark the halfway point of your first strip of pasta and brush one half with beaten egg, then place little mounds of filling (each about a teaspoonful) two abreast on the half brushed with egg, leaving a space of about 1 ¼ to 1 ½ inches between each mound. You should have enough to make around 10 from each strip.
Put a mint leaf on top of each mound of filling. Fold the other half of the pasta over the top, carefully matching the long edges down one side and pressing them together, then doing the same on the other side. Gently press down around each raviolo (don’t worry if you compress the filling a little as you go).
Using a fluted ring cutter about ½ inch bigger in circumference than the filling, cut out each raviolo and discard the trimmings. Seal each one and press out any air trapped inside, by taking each raviolo and carefully, with your thumbs, pinching around the outside. If you hold each raviolo up to the light, you can see where the filling is, and whether you have smoothed out all the air pockets. Repeat with the rest of die pasta.
Bring a large pan of water to a boil.
Put the pan containing the peppers back on the heat to warm through, with a tablespoon of the remaining butter, stirring it in.
Melt the rest of the butter with the sage in a large sauté pan.
While the butter is melting, put the ravioli into the salted boiling water and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, then drain them using a slotted spoon or a skimmer and transfer to the pan containing the butter and sage. Toss gently for a minute or so.
Spoon some pepper puree on each of your plates, then arrange the ravioli on top, sprinkle with the rest of the Parmesan, spoon the rest of the butter and sage over the top and serve.
Ravioli di erbe con salsa di noci
This is a springtime dish, when the herbs are in season — you can use borage or young nettles as well, if you like. You can buy the walnut paste from Italian delicatessens, but make sure it is good quality. It’s best to make the filling at least half a day before you need it.
4 ½ ounces Swiss chard leaves
2 large bunches of parsley leaves, plus a handful to garnish
2 large bunches of basil leaves
2—3 sprigs of rosemary
bunch of sage leaves
⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil
11 ounces fresh spinach
3 ½ ounces young nettle leaves (optional)
2 ounces borage leaves (optional)
12 ounces (about 1 ⅓ cups) ricotta
¼ nutmeg, freshly grated
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan
2 eggs
1 tablespoon bread crumbs
2 tomatoes
1 recipe quantity of fresh egg pasta dough (page 330)
4 tablespoons Walnut paste (see page 322)
5 ¼ tablespoons butter
salt and pepper
Add the herbs to the chard leaves, reserving one of the bunches of parsley for garnish.
In a separate pan, warm the olive oil, add the herbs and chard leaves and the spinach, together with the young nettle and borage leaves if using them. Gently “stew” without frying for 4 to 5 minutes until soft (you are softening, rather than cooking, as you want everything to stay green). Drain in a colander and weight everything down for about half a day to lose as much of the excess moisture as possible.
Put the contents of the colander into a food processor and process to a smooth paste, then transfer to a fine sieve and leave to drain for another 10 minutes or so.
Put the ricotta into a bowl, add the drained herbs and leaves, season and add the nutmeg, Parmesan, one of the eggs and the bread crumbs. Taste and adjust the seasoning, if necessary, then put into the fridge until needed.
Put the tomatoes into a large pan of boiling water for 10 seconds. Skin, quarter and deseed (see page 304), then cut into about ½-inch dice. Set aside while you make the ravioli.
Make the pasta dough in the usual way (see page 330) and put through the machine (see page 332). Make the ravioli as described in the previous recipe, omitting the mint leaves.
At the same time, in a separate pan warm the walnut paste with a little of the boiling water.
Heat the butter gently in two separate sauté pans, and add another tablespoon of the boiling water to each.
Add salt to the boiling water, put in the ravioli and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, then drain them using a slotted spoon or a skimmer and transfer to the pans containing the butter and water. Toss gently for a minute or so, then add the diced tomato and chopped reserved parsley.
Spoon some walnut sauce onto each of your plates, arrange the ravioli on top and serve.
