Penne ai peperoni e alici

A quick note on a quick dish: penne with peppers and anchovies, something I made up, on the spur of the moment, to use some of the red bell peppers in the fridge before they went off. I decided to riff off the classic roasted peppers and anchovy antipasto and pair it with pasta. The results of my experiment were pretty tasty, so here's the recipe:

Stew some sliced red bell pepper (one per person) in olive oil over medium heat until soft. (You can cover the pan and add a spoonful of water from time to time to help the softening process along.) Then turn the pepper slices in a food processor and pulse a few times until they are nicely minced but have not been reduced to a puree. Return to the pan.

Add a battuto of garlic, parsley, a handful of capers and a few anchovy fillets to the minced pepper in the pan and continue cooking over low heat for a minute or two more. The mixture should glisten beautifully. If not, add a bit more olive oil. (Turn off the heat if need be until the pasta is done.)

In the meantime, you will have cooked some penne (or other pasta of your choice) in well salted water until very al dente. Transfer the cooked pasta to the pan along with a ladleful of the pasta water and, over low heat, mix well until the pasta is well coated with the sauce and any excess water has evaporated. Serve immediately.

NOTE: You could, of course, use roasted peppers for this dish. It might give it an even deeper flavor. But this dish, quickly made with fresh peppers, was perfectly lovely.

Minestrone: A Primer

Many people think of minestrone as the kind of hearty fare best eaten in the cold weather months. Minestrone is wonderful in fall and winter, of course, but it can actually be enjoyed year-round, its component ingredients changing with the seasons, served hot in the winter, warm in the spring or autumn, and even 'cold' (ie, room temperature) in the summer.

Like so many other classic dishes, there are practically as many minestroni as they are minestrone cooks. But almost all minestrone recipes begin with three 'base' vegetables: onion, carrot and celery. You will notice that these are the same three vegetables, referred to as odori in Italian, that go into the most common type of soffrito, or flavor base, for countless sauces, stews and soups. But while for most dishes you want a soffritto to dissolve into whatever it is you are making to provide maximum background flavor, and therefore you chop the vegetables very fine, here you want each component vegetable to retain its own identity, so chop the vegetables into smallish cubes.

Step 1: You begin the minestrone with oil and/or butter in the bottom of a pot big enough to hold all your ingredients with room to spare. (Better too big than too small.) You want a generous amount of fat, for reasons that will become evident as you read on. Add onions first, allow them to rosolare (saute) without browning while you chop the carrots, then add the chopped carrots while you chop the celery, then add the celery. If you like, you can also add some chopped pancetta to this base--it adds a lovely flavor. Add a healthy pinch of salt, which will keep the vegetables from browning and bring out their flavor. You will keep doing this until all your odori have had a chance to cook and absorb the flavors of the oil and preceding vegetables.

Step 2: After these base ingredients are all added to the pot, you add 'hard' vegetables in season. All kinds of squash, including pumpkin or butternut in the colder months, or zucchine in the warmer months, would go in at this point. Potatoes, tomatoes and string beans are also common additions. Once again, cut them into small (but not tiny) pieces and add, one by one, to the pot, allowing each ingredient to be well coated with the oil and absorb the flavor of all the vegetables that have preceded it.This time around, I used butternut squash, zucchini, potatoes and green beans:

Step 3: Now add any leafy vegetables that you want to, cut up into strips. Most common, especially in the cold weather months, is savoy cabbage, but kale, spinach, swiss chard, escarole and chicory are also great additions. (In Tuscany, the favorite leafy vegetable for soups is cavolo nero, or black kale.) This time I used cavolo nero and leeks:

Step 4: Now add water (or broth) to cover, bring to a gentle simmer and allow to continue simmering for a good hour or more (most traditional recipes call for two hours of cooking), until all the vegetables are almost meltingly soft and the soup is getting quite thick. (This step can be sped up if you use a pressure cooker, in which case cook under pressure for about 20 minutes.)

Step 5: Now you add one or more legumes: cannellini beans, borlotti beans, cranberry beans, peas, baby lima beans, fava beans, (occasionally) chick peas, etc. Here I am assuming that you are using canned, frozen or pre-cooked legumes. (If you are using fresh beans, then add them before you add the water.) Cook for another 20-30 minutes, adding more water if the soup is getting too thick--but the soup should actually be quite thick, more of a stew than a soup. In fact, I like t crush some of the vegetables against the side of the pot; the crushed veggies melt into the soup, giving it a thick and 'smooth' quality.

Ecco fatto! You can serve the soup immediately, but it is much better made ahead and served the next day, or at least after a few hours' rest.

NOTES: You can use of variety of 'toppings' to provide an extra flavor flourish to your minestrone: You can stir in grated parmesan before serving if you like, sprinkle it on top or serve it on the side. Pesto sauce is wonderful, too--a typical summer addition to minestrone--either stir it in before serving, or add a dollop on top of each soup plate, and let each diner mix it in to taste. Or, in a typical Tuscan style, just pour over un filo d'olio and a generous grating of black pepper over each soup plate before serving. As mentioned, you can serve it hot, warm or room temperature.

You can also add pasta, rice and even chunks of bread (see ribollita below). Of course, pasta is more typically southern, rice more typically northern and bread is typically Tuscan. I usually cook the rice or pasta separately before adding it to the pot at the very last, letting it simmer a bit longer, but not too long, just before serving. If you are making it ahead, don't add the rice or pasta (or bread) until you re-heat and serve, or it will become impossibly mushy.

As mentioned, the choice of vegetables is almost infinite, according to your taste, what looks best at the market and the season. But there are some vegetables to avoid, in particular those that have a very strong flavor that would overwhelm the others: peppers, for example, or most hard cruciferous vegetables like broccoli or cauliflower. And, with one notable exception (see below), eggplant is not usually part of minestrone, either.

Finally, while minestrone can be made totally vegetarian or vegan, it is often made with bits of pork, either cut up pancetta, prosciutto or pre-cooked pork rind (cotenne) for deeper flavor. In a pinch you can use crumbled sausage meat. Add the pancetta or sausage meat first to the oil, let it saute and then begin with the onion and proceed from there. Add the pork rind just before adding the water or broth. Broth gives it an even deeper meatier flavor, although personally I find this makes the soup too 'heavy'.

VARIATIONS: As I mentioned, there is an endless variety of minestroni, based on region of origin, the season, and/or the cook's personal preferences. Here are a few examples of the better known regional versions (NB: Unless otherwise noted, always begin with onions, carrots and celery, then add the ingredients listed):

Minestrone alla milanese: pancetta, potatoes, tomatoes, spinach, savoy cabbage, peas, borlotti or cannellini beans. (Some recipes call for green beans.) Typically includes rice.

Minestrone alla genovese: One version calls for pumpkin (or butternut squash), beans, dried peas, savoy cabbage, potatoes, green beans, erbette (substitute baby spinach outside Italy), tomatoes. Another calls for potatoes, borlotti, zucchine, bietole (swiss chard), savoy cabbage, spinach and (very unusually) eggplant. Serve with pesto, of course!

Minestrone alla livornese: fresh beans, spinach, prosciutto, savoy cabbage, a few swiss chard leaves, potato, zucchine, tomato sauce, pork rind (added just before the broth--not water).

Minestrone alla napoletana: garlic, zucchine, fresh beans, peas, generous amount of parsley and a lot tomato--the soup should have a definite red tinge. Neapolitan minestrone is soupier than other kinds of minestrone, so add much more water. (This is the kind of minestrone that non-Italians will probably be most familiar with.)

Minestrone alla pugliese: cabbage, green chicory, green beans, tomatoes, pork rind. Serve with short pasta (eg, ditali).

In Tuscany, they make a very special kind of minestrone called la ribollita: You make a 'regular' minestrone with cannellini beans, cavolo nero, savoy cabbage, potatoes, tomatoes, leek, swiss chard and pork skin (or substitute pancetta). You let that rest. Then when you are ready to eat (the next day) you reheat the soup (hence the name, which means 're-boiled' in Italian), adding some water if too thick, and then chunks of Tuscan bread. Mix and allow to rest a few minutes before serving. This may be my personal favorite version, although the genovese gives it quite a run for its money.

Quadrucci in brodo

The simplest, and perhaps the best, way to use your skills for making fresh pasta and broth at home is to serve a warming bowl of pastina in brodo. It makes a wonderfully light but savory primo piatto, especially apt when you plan on a substantial (but not too assertive) second course. The term pastina refers to various sorts of tiny pasta shapes used for soups. You can, of course, buy soup pasta in the store, but making your own fresh egg pasta brings this simple dish to another level. There are any number of fresh pastas that will do nicely for soup--Angelina made her own tagliolini cut into short lengths--but I particularly like the pasta called quadrucci.

Quadrucci are basically tagliatelle cut crosswise into little squares (hence the name...) You use the larger cutting blades on your mixer or pasta 'machine', the ones that look like this:

Roll out the pasta very thin, until it is practically translucent. It will look like this as it falls from the pasta maker:

You now have some fine tagliatelle (and why not make some extra for another time?) Line them up and cut them with a knife into little squares:

Keep going until you have as many as you like (remembering the rule of thumb: usual one egg per 100g/1 cup of pasta per person), separate them by tossing them gently, flouring them lightly so they don't stick to each other or to your working surface, and allow them to dry:

You are now ready to cook your quadrucci. Being so thin, they will cook very quickly, so you can simply drop them directly into your simmering broth. (Make sure to shake off any excess flour that might cling to them so as not to cloud the broth.) The quadrucci should take anywhere from 30 seconds (if they are very fresh) up to a minute or two, but no more. Add some chopped parsley if you like (it adds some color and subtle flavor) and serve immediately, with grated cheese on the side if those who want it.

NOTE: The term quadrucci is also used to describe a different egg pasta, also served in broth. It is a very rather square piece of pasta, with a parsley leaf in the middle that has been pressed between two thin sheets of pasta. It produces a beautiful effect for a special occasion. A fellow Foodbuzz members has blogged about it here. The kind of quadrucci described in this post, on the other hand, is for everyday eating.

While I associate this dish in my mind with the Emilia-Romagna region, I can't say for a fact that quadrucci originated there. And these days you can find dishes with quadrucci, not just in soup but also in various forms of pastasciutta, in a number of regions. It is available commercially in Italy but I have not seen them elsewhere. But being fairly easy to make, that should be no problem at all.

Al contadino non far sapere...

In our house dessert is usually a piece of fruit. But now that the weather is turning cooler, cheese, especially aged cheese, is making a reappearance on the dinner table. It's a great way to end off a meal and, of course, fruit and cheese are a divinely inspired combination. And by far the best fruit to eat with cheese are pears. In fact, the combination is so good that there is an old saying in Italian that goes:

Al contadino non far sapere,
Quant'è buono il cacio con le pere!

which means, "don't let the farmer know how good cheese is with pears!"--the idea being that, if the farmers knew, they'd keep all the cheese (and pears) for themselves! The saying, by the way, is cited in John Dickey's fascinating and provocative Delizia! The Epic History of Italians and Their Food as an example of how, despite its rustic reputation, Italian cooking is essential urban in its origins. (By therein lies another post...)

In any event, tonight's delightful conspiracy against the peasantry consisted of some beautifully spottled, sweet pears from the farmers' market and a wedge of St. Agur, a fabulous blue cheese from Auvergne. I adore blue cheeses, especially creamy blue cheeses, but this was the first time I had tasted this particular one. It was not too mild, not too sharp--and with pears it was truly sublime.

All sorts of aged cheese go well with pears. I particularly like blues, and until tonight my favorite was gorgonzola. Parmesan is a classic with pears. Personally, I would avoid cheeses that are either too mild like fontina, which would not provide sufficient contrast with the subtle sweetness of the pears, or too sharp, like pecorino romano, which would overwhelm the pears. (On the other hand, a less salty pecorino, like the percorino toscano, would be lovely.)

When fresh walnuts in the shell appear in the markets, they make for a perfect complement to both cheese and pear. After eating just those three, simple things and sipping a round red wine, I would be perfectly happy to bid farewell to this vale of tears...

Ravioli al sugo di pomodoro

Once you know how to make fresh pasta, there are myriad ways you can put your knowledge to delicious use. One of the most lovely types of fresh pasta are the ever-popular ravioli, which, as you probably know, are a kind of stuffed pasta, typically square with fluted edges.

The filling vary, but one of the most classic is a mixture of equal parts blanched swiss chard (spinach would also do nicely) and ricotta (to make enough ravioli for 4 people, use 200g or 1/2 lb. of each ingredient). Then season these main ingredients with a generous grinding of parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and a dash of freshly ground nutmeg. And, if you like, add an egg yolk as a binder for a firmer texture. Whiz these ingredients together in a food processor, using the pulse function to avoid over-processing, until the chard is well chopped but the mixture is not yet entirely uniform. The green of the chard and the white of the ricotta should remain distinguishable.

Once you've made your pasta dough, roll out it out quite thinly (setting 6 or 7 out of 8) one sheet at a time, and place it on your spianatoia. Working quickly so as not to allow the pasta to dry out, dot the pasta sheet at regular intervals on one side of the sheet with a dollop of the filling:

Then fold over the opposite side of the sheet and press down around the bits of filling so that the top layer of pasta adheres well to the bottom:

Then, using a fluted pasta cutter (or, in a pinch, simply a knife) cut the pasta into squares, each with filling at the center. Transfer the squares to a baking sheet covered with a towel:

You can know either cook the ravioli immediately or leave them until you need them. (NB: The longer you wait, the more the pasta will dry and the longer they will take to cook. )

When you are ready to cook your ravioli, place them into gently boiling, well-salted water:

Cooking time will vary quite a bit depending, among other things, on the type of flour you use, the thickness of the pasta sheets and how long the ravioli has been drying before cooking. It should not take more than a few minutes, however, in any case. The best way to know when the ravioli are done is simply to test them. Remember to test the thickest part of the ravioli--the double thickness of pasta around the filling. One useful tip from the Rouxbe Online Cooking School: to avoid cutting into a raviolo, you can save some of the pasta trimmings (making sure it includes a double layering of pasta) and throw a piece into the water to cook with the ravioli. Fish that piece out of the water to test doneness.

When your ravioli are done, remove a few of them gently with a slotted spoon and place them in a heated serving bowl. Top with your favorite sauce or other condimento (see Notes), and a bit of grated parmesan cheese:

Then add additional layers of ravioli, condiment and cheese, repeating until you have used up the ravioli, and serve immediately.

NOTES: There are a number of possible variations in both ingredients and technique. The spinach-and-ricotta filling is, as I said, a classic, but equally popular, especially in southern Italy, is a pure cheese filling made with ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan, chopped parsley and egg. (Angelina's sister, my great-aunt, who we all called Zi' Zi', was the family ravioli master, and her ravioli had this cheese filling.) In the cooler months, ravioli are often filled with zucca (Italian pumpkin)--about which more in a post in the near future. Ravioli can also be made with meat fillings, of course. and even, albeit less commonly, fish.

The pasta for ravioli is generally made with farina 00, but the pasta for commercial ravioli will often be made, in whole or in part, with semolina flour, which makes the ravioli much firmer than home-made, and requires a longer cooking time. The usual 1 egg to 100g of flour ratio applies, but because it is stuffed, the pasta goes twice as far, so that 2 eggs and 200g of flour should make enough pasta for 4 (rather than the usual 2) people. At least one source suggests lowering the egg-to-pasta ratio (eg, 6 eggs for 1 kilo of flour) for delicate fillings (those other than meat) and using water to make for a softer, more pliable dough. And just last night, I spoke to some foodie friends who suggested adding white wine to the dough, to the same effect.

To sauce these ravioli, I would recommend a basic sugo di pomodoro or light tomato sauce, made from a soffritto of oil and garlic, tomatoes and a few basil leaves, simmered for about 20 minutes and then passed through a food mill. Or make the soffritto with chopped onion, carrot and celery. This sauce is often called pomarola, or 'pummarola' in Neapolitan dialect. In the US, this kind of basic tomato sauce is often called a marinara sauce. Also very common is to simply dress the ravioli with butter melted with fresh sage leaves and seasoned with a bit of salt. Both are lovely. Simple butter and cheese would also be nice. Stuffed pastas (especially tortellini) are sometimes sauced with cream, but I wouldn't recommend it for this dish.

If you like, you can also add the ravioli to the saucepan and allow it to absorb the flavors of the sauce, as you often do with other pasta dishes. I do like the above in-the-bowl method for ravioli, especially when made with thinly rolled soft-wheat pasta, which can be a bit too delicate to stand up to both boiling in water and simmering in sauce.

Besides being a filling for ravioli, the ricotta and greens mixture, mixed with a bit of flour, can be made into gnocchi known variously as gnocchi di ricotta e spinaci, gnocchi verdi, ignudi, gnocchi nudi or malfatti. You can find the recipe on the Gnocchi ai funghi Club site, and I plan to blog on it one of these days.

Ravioli have been a part of Italian cooking for a long time. According to Wikipedia, the earliest mention of ravioli appear in the writings of Francesco di Marco, a merchant of Prato in the 14th century. In the mid-14th century Venetian manuscript Libro per cuoco offers ravioli very similar to these, filled with green herbs blanched and minced, mixed with beaten egg and fresh cheese, simmered in broth. In Rome, ravioli were already well-known when Bartomoleo Scappi served them with boiled chicken to the papal conclave of 1549. I recently purchased, by the way, Scappi's 1570 masterwork known as his Opera, subtitled L'arte et prudenza d'un maestro cuoco or The Art and Craft of a Master Cook. It actually contains a rather lengthy description of the conclave (which took place after the funeral of Pope Paul III) starting with the funeral mass and focusing at length on the logistics of serving the cardinals within the conclave. Oddly, though, Scappi says very little about the actually food served.

The world of stuffed pastas is incredibly diverse and the nomenclature can sometimes be confusing. The quintessential ravioli are square with fluted edges. But the term "ravioli" is sometimes used to mean stuffed pasta generally, so you can come across round stuffed pasta going by the name of ravioli. And then there are agnolotti, the Piedmontese stuffed pasta which are also square with a meat filling. And the name tortelli, which normally refers to round and folded stuffed pasta, a sort of older sibling of tortellini, is sometimes also used to describe what would otherwise might be called ravioli... For more information on stuffed pasta terms, ravioli.it provides an interesting discussion (in Italian only).

Pasta e ceci

There's nothing so satisfying yet so quick and simple than the combination of pasta and some sort of legume--beans, peas or, in this case, ceci (chickpeas). And, as you probably know, the combination makes for a complete protein with plenty of fiber and no cholesterol. This kind of thing is a stand by weekday dinner in our house, especially in the cooler months.

Saute a slightly rushed garlic clove in olive oil, a sprig of rosemary--and if you want, a bit of chopped pancetta, red pepper and/or parsley. (Each of these adds another layer of flavor.) When the aroma of the garlic and rosemary begins wafting about, add some crushed tomato (the amount will depend on how 'red' you want the dish) and simmer for a few minutes. Add a can of ceci, well drained and rinsed, and allow them to insaporire (absorb the flavors of the tomato and aromatics) for 5 minutes or so. Then add water or broth to cover the ceci, simmer for another 5 minutes. To thicken the soup, either crush some of the chickpeas against the side of the pot or, for a more refined effect, scoop up about a third of them and pass them through a food mill back into the pot. They will 'melt' into the liquid and thicken the soup. Then add slightly underdone pasta. I usually use ditalini (also known as tubetti) but other small 'soup' pastas will also do fine (see below). Simmer for a minute or two more. When the pasta is cooked al dente, turn off the heat (adding a bit more water if needed) and cover the pot and allow it to 'rest' for 3-5 minutes. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil or a good grinding of black pepper--or both. Some folks like to add grated cheese on top.

NOTES: You can use any type of pasta that suits your own taste, but to my mind short, stubby (but not tiny) pasta shapes work best. Ditalini or conchiglette (small shells) come to mind. Typical with all kinds of pasta and bean combinations is to use bits and pieces of different leftover pastas that have been broken up to a more or less uniform size. (I put the pasta in a bag and bang it with a meat pounder or the back of a heavy skillet.) Broken pieces of linguine or spaghetti will also do fine. For a more elegant dish, a pasta all'uovo like maltagliati would be nice. How much pasta should you use? I would suggest using either a 1:2 or 1:1 pasta to chickpeas ratio by weight, depending on the effect you want.

Of course, the dish will be even better if you cooked the ceci yourself. This will require quite a bit more time, however, as they need to soak for a long time--a full 24 hours--and then require a simmering of several hours. To be honest, I rarely bother as I find the somewhat subtle difference in taste does not justify the extra time and effort.

Pasta e ceci can be served very thick, more a pasta dish than a soup, or as a true soup. Just adjust the amount of water you use and, as mentioned, the ratio of pasta to chickpeas. Remember that the pasta will continue to absorb water as it cooks and even during the final resting, so calculate accordingly. But no need to worry too much, you can always just add a bit more water just before serving to 'loosen' the dish if it's thickened too much--in which case it is best to reheat it quickly before serving. But even as a soup, the dish should not have a thin or brothy quality--the pureed ceci should provide a nice liaison.

For a more 'refined' version of this dish, use only a bit of tomato and omit the red pepper altogether, and after you've let the chickpeas simmer a bit to insaporire, remove about half and process or blend them with water to form a cream. Add that back into the pot, then add water to thin the whole to a smooth creamy soupy consistency. Boil broken up pappardelle, maltagliati, tagliatelle or, popular in Campanian cooking, laganelle, separately, then add to the soup for a few minutes for the flavors to meld. Add more water if need be to produce a smooth creamy result.

The dish can also be made entirely in bianco--without any tomato--and it is also very good that way. There is a closely related Neapolitan version of this dish called lampo e tuono (thunder and lightning--a humorous reference to the effect of the chickpeas) that I will blog about some day soon.

Penne ai funghi

Fall is my favorite season, and one of the best reasons to love the Fall is all the wonderful food you get to eat! The sprightly but rather thin dishes of summer give way to more substantial fare: game, soups and stews of all kinds, pumpkin and other squashes, beans, apples, pears and, perhaps best of all, mushrooms!

Wild mushrooms are not quite in season yet where we live--it is actually still late summer, after all, if you want to get technical about it--but I decided to start early with this lovely and easy dish of penne with a mushroom and tomato sauce.

You start, as these dishes often do, with a soffritto, this one consisting of some cubed pancetta and a crushed garlic clove sauteed in olive oil over moderate heat. (As always, make sure that the garlic hardly browns.)

Just as soon as you get a good whiff of the garlic's aroma, add some roughly chopped mushrooms (125g or 4 oz. for 2 people), raise the heat to high, give the mushroom a good flip (or a stir if you're feeling timid) to coat them with the soffritto-infused oil and continue sauteing. Very soon thereafter, add a pinch of salt to encourage the mushrooms to give off their liquid. Continue until the mushroom liquid as evaporated completely. You will begin to hear the mushrooms sizzle. Now add a few sage leaves and a sprig of parsley, both nicely chopped, a good grinding of black pepper, and mix well with the mushrooms.

When the mushrooms are quite tender and just begin to brown around the edges, add a good dollop of passata di pomodoro or crushed canned tomatoes. (The amount here is variable according to your taste, but remember that this is a mushroom sauce, not a tomato sauce!) Lower the heat and allow the sauce to simmer gently until the tomatoes have reduced and separately from the oil, having turned a nice darkish color, somewhere between red and mahogany.

Meanwhile, you will have cooked your penne (about 150-200g or 5-7 oz. for 2 people) in well salted boiling water until very al dente. Add the penne to the pan, mix well and allow it to simmer gently for a few moments with the sauce. Serve immediately.

NOTES: The choice of mushroom is yours. Fresh funghi porcini would, of course, be wonderful. On this late summer evening I used a store-bought mix of 'baby bella', oyster and shitake mushrooms that worked very well. Reconstituted dried porcini or other mushrooms would also work fine (in which case you should add the mushroom water to the sauce and let it reduce along with the tomatoes).

In a pinch, you can even use button mushrooms, but the dish will obviously be less interesting. One trick (not my own, but one I read about in one of Marcella Hazan's books) is to mix button mushrooms with reconstituted dried mushrooms: you first add the dried mushrooms to saute with the soffritto, then the chopped button mushrooms, then the filtered water in which you have soaked the dried mushrooms. Allow the mushroom water to evaporate. The button mushrooms will absorb the intensely mushroom-y flavor of the dried mushrooms and their liquid, turning them into a fair facsimile of wild mushrooms in the process.

If you want a vegan version, simply omit the pancetta. The fresh sage lends a lovely subtle flavor to the sauce, but even better would be nepitella, an herb that is often described as a cross between basil and mint and sometimes called "mint thyme" in English. It is often paired with mushrooms in Italy but, as far as I am aware, not commonly found elsewhere.

This sauce also goes very nicely with fresh egg pasta, in particular with pappardelle or fettuccine. This dish is not served with grated cheese.

How to make fresh egg pasta

When making fresh home-made egg pasta, variously known in Italian as pasta fresca or pasta fatta in casa or pasta all'uovo, I usually make life easy for myself by using my trusty KitchenAid mixer to form and knead the pasta dough and then the pasta attachments to roll out and cut the dough into various pasta shapes.

An easy to remember rule of thumb is to use 1 egg per 100g of flour for each person. If you are using imperial measurements, the rule is 1 egg per cup of flour per person. These rules of thumb, however, are not at all exact, as the results will depend on the exact size of the egg, the quality of the flour, even the humidity in the air, so be prepared to adjust as you go along.

Pour the flour into the mixing bowl with a pinch of salt and the egg(s). To make the rolling and cutting easier later on, you can add a drop of oil, before adding the eggs although purists frown on this. Attach the dough paddle.

Turn on the mixer mix at slow speed (setting 1 or 2) until the the eggs are well incorporated. The dough may look rather crumbly at this point, but not to worry.

Switch to the dough hook and continue to mix, first continuing at a slow speed, then turning it up a notch to a moderate speed (setting 3 or 4) until the dough sticks to the hook and—hopefully—forms a smooth surfaced, uniform ball. But depending on various factors, including the exact size of the eggs and the ambient humidity in your kitchen, one of two things may happen: either the ball will be very sticky and wet, in which case you can add a bit more flour until the dough becomes firmer, or the dough will remain too dry to form a ball, in which case you can add a bit of water.

You can use more or less the same method for making pasta dough in a normal food processor: Add you ingredients to the processor bowl and pulse until they form a ball, making adjustments if need be as described above.

You can also form the dough the old-fashioned way, entirely by hand: pour the flour in a mound on a spianatoia or other dry surface, then make a well in the middle of the flour (this is called a fontana, or fountain, in Italian). Add your eggs, salt and oil into this fountain. With a fork, begin to whisk the ingredients in the well, incorporating the flour at the sides of the well little by little. As the mixture becomes too dense to mix with your fork, begin to use your hands to incorporate more and more of the flour until you have a ball of dough.

Whichever method you use, once you have your ball of dough, place it on a lightly floured spianatoia or other dry surface and knead it by hand for a few minutes until the dough has reached the right consistency, smooth and pliable and yet still firm. (If you find that the dough is too wet, sprinkle it with flour and knead the additional flour into the dough.

Then allow the dough to rest for 30 minutes wrapped in plastic wrap or a plastic bag. This rest will 'relax' the dough and make it much easier to work with, but if you lack time, it is not an absolutely necessary step.

Then put the pasta roller attachment on the mixer (or a pasta 'machine'), set at the widest setting and, taking a piece of dough corresponding to one of the eggs used to make the dough (in other words, if you used 3 eggs, cut the dough into three pieces), flatten it out with your hand or a rolling pin and then pass it through the roller, which will turn the dough ball into a rather thick sheet.

If the pasta has a smooth consistency (which is should if it has been properly kneaded and rested) then lightly flour the pasta sheet, turn the roller to the next, slightly narrower setting. (If not, fold the pasta sheet and pass it through the widest setting once again, and repeat as needed.) Keep passing the pasta sheet through successively narrower settings, one by one, until you reach the thickness you want, which will depend on the kind of pasta you are making. Repeat the process with the other pieces of dough, which you will have kept wrapped in plastic so they don't dry out.

For most kinds of pasta, such as tagliatelle, taglierini or fresh spaghetti, lay out the pasta sheet to dry on a towel or (my preferred method) on a baking rack. The rack will allow air to flow on both sides of the pasta, so it will dry more quickly and evenly. In either case, however, it is a good idea to turn the sheets over every once and while so they dry evenly; the top will always dry more quickly than the bottom, even when using the rack. The pasta is dry enough when it feels 'leathery' to the touch but not brittle. If it is not dry enough, the pasta stands will tend to stick together when you cut the sheet, while the dough will become unworkable if dries out. (If you notice that splits are beginning to open on the sides of the pasta sheets, then it is getting too dry, but if you act quickly enough, the dough can still be used.) With some practice (and a few inevitable misfires) recognizing the right degree of dryness will become second-nature.

Once dried to the right point, pass the pasta sheets through the cutting attachment of your mixer or pasta 'machine'. The KitchenAid mixer pasta set, as well as most pasta 'machines', come with two cutting attachments, one for thin pasta like spaghetti or taglierini and one for ribbon pasta like tagliatelle or fettuccine. (The one for thin pasta will be the roller with cutting blades at narrow intervals looking something like a comb.) Other pasta shapes need to be cut by hand.

As the pasta sheet passes through the roller, catch the strands of pasta with your open hand and gently hold them up so they do not fold onto each other. Lay them out on a floured surface (or back on the rack). Depending how thick the pasta sheets are, it is possible that some of the strands will stick together. If this happens, then you can just gently pull the strands apart. It's a bit tedious but not too difficult.

For stuffed pastas like ravioli, however, you do not want to allow the pasta to dry, but rather you need to work as quickly as possible. The pasta should remain moist, so that the top and bottom of each pasta 'pillow' sticks together.

See the recipes on this blog for specific instructions on rolling out and cutting particular types of fresh pasta.

NOTES: The best kind of flour for making most kinds of fresh pasta is called farina "OO". It is made with a soft wheat (farina di grano tenero) that has been very finely ground and all impurities removed. (In Italy, flours are categorized from "OO" to "O" to 1 and 2, going from the finest to the coarsest If you read Italian, this Wikipedia article explains the system.) Farina OO gives the pasta a lovely texture, somewhat firm but not nearly as firm as store-bought pasta. The problem with much so-called 'fresh pasta' that you may buy in stores outside Italy is that they are almost always made with semolina flour, which is the kind of flour used to make 'industrial' pasta like spaghetti, penne and the like. It gives the fresh pasta a hardness that is not characteristic of fresh pasta.

Farina "OO" is available in many Italian specialty stores, as well as (in the US) online. If you can't find this kind of flour, regular 'all purpose' flour will do. And some cooks like to use a blend of all purpose and cake or pastry flour to try to approximate the texture of farina 00. Some cooks use pure pastry flour, which I have never tried but suspect would be too soft. I have not experimented with these blends, so I would not want to comment.

There are other sorts of fresh pasta that require other sorts of flour: orecchiette, for example, are made with a blend of semolina and all purpose flour. One of my favorite winter pastas, pizzoccheri, are made with a mixture of buckwheat and white flours. Individual recipes will specify the kinds of flour to use but, unless specified otherwise, you can assume that farina 00 is the flour you should prefer.

Peperoni arrostiti con acciughe (with notes on how to roast a pepper)

A quick note today on a very common—and very savory—antipasto: roasted peppers with anchovies.

How to roast a pepper:

The lusty, smoky flavor of home-roasted peppers more than justifies the minimal effort required to make them. You begin by charring whole peppers over a flame. You can do this on a barbecue, which is probably the most straightforward way to do it if you have one. Otherwise, you can spear a pepper and hold it closely over the flame of a gas burner, if you have a gas stove. Lacking either of these, you can roast them under a broiler (in which case make sure to use the highest rack in the oven). Whichever method you use, turn the peppers from time to time until they are well charred on all sides. Then place the peppers in a plastic bag (ZipLock bags work well, I find) and allow them to rest for about 20-30 minutes. Not all recipes call for this 'rest', but it will help soften the flesh and loosen the skins—and allow the peppers to cool. After this time, or when the peppers have cooled off enough to handle, run them under cold water as you slip off their skins and remove their seeds with your hands. They will tend to break apart along the 'seams' that run down the vegetable, which is fine. (But watch out as they will be a bit slippery and may slip down the drain...) Dry them off with paper towels and cut them into strips (thick or thin, according to the recipe and your personal taste.)

You are now ready to use the roasted peppers in any recipe that calls for them.

Now for the recipe: Place your pepper strips in a bowl or container, intermingling anchovy fillets among the strips. (The ratio of anchovy to pepper is a matter of taste, but remember that anchovies have a very strong taste.) Then nestle one or two slightly crushed garlic cloves among the strips. Season lightly, remembering that the anchovies are salty, and pour over fruity olive oil to cover. Allow the peppers and anchovies to sit for at least a couple of hours, but overnight is even better. Serve as an antipasto with crusty bread and good wine.

NOTES: The best peppers for roasting are bell peppers, which are fleshy and have skins that will slip off easily after roasting. Frying peppers, while possible to use, have thinner flesh and skins that are hard to peel, even after roasting. (I know—I used frying peppers for this dish!) Any color pepper—red, yellow or green, or a combination—will do fine. Red peppers, as you may know, are quite sweet, while the green ones tend to be more piquant. Salted anchovies—acciughe sotto sale—make for a finer dish, but canned or bottled anchovy fillets in oil will do perfectly well. If you use salted anchovies, you will need to rinse them well under running cold water, removing the head and center bone (called the lisca in Italian, by the way.

You can vary the recipe by adding one or more flavorings to the basic recipe: a few capers, for example, or some red pepper flakes, ground black pepper, parsley, oregano, a few drops of vinegar or a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

Peppers under oil will keep for quite a while—at least a week—but remove the garlic cloves after 24 hours, as the garlic flavor will continue to intensify and become unpleasantly strong after a while.

Fricassée de poulet à l'ancienne

I grew up on Julia Child. Other than nonna Angelina herself, no one inspired my love affair with cooking more. While other kids were eating milk and cookies and watching cartoons, I ran home to make rice and cheese and sit down to the latest instalment of The French Chef. And I practically memorized my Mom's original 1963 edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking while I was still a teenager living at home. So when I saw Julie and Julia with my folks, I broke out my own well-worn, dog-eared, nearly-falling-apart-at-the-seams 1986 edition, purchased when I was living in New York after law school, and starting reacquainting myself with an old friend. But the dish I was yearning for was not boeuf bourguignon. As much as I love that dish, my favorite dishes from Mastering were the chicken fricassées. And this is one is perhaps the most sumptuous of all—fit for a lovely Sunday dinner: fricassée de volaille à l'ancienne, or "Old Fashioned Chicken Fricassee with Wine-Flavored Cream Sauce, Onions and Mushrooms", on page 258.

As Julia says, this is not a difficult dish to execute. But it does involve a fair number of steps, so plan on spending a good hour and a half or even two hours, depending on how fast you work in the kitchen. The good part is, it can be made entirely ahead of time and finished off just before serving. Here is my (somewhat abridged) version of Julia's recipe:

Cooking the chicken:
Step 1: To begin, sauté a sliced onion, carrot and celery stalk in 4 tablespoons of butter (I substituted 2 Tbs. of butter and 2 Tbs. of canola oil) over medium-low heat for about 5 minutes, until almost soft but not browned, in a large braiser:

Step 2: Push the vegetables to the sides of the dish and add a frying chicken that has been cut up into pieces. Raise the heat to medium and turn the chicken pieces often until they have stiffened slightly without coloring more than a light golden yellow—about 3-4 minutes. Lower the heat and cover the braiser and cook the chicken very slowly for 10 minutes, turning the pieces once. The chicken should swell slightly and stiffen a bit further, but it should not brown:

Step 3: Sprinkle the chicken pieces with salt and white pepper, then with 3 Tbs. of flour. Turn so that the flour is coated with the cooking butter. Allow to cook slowly for 4 minutes, turning once.

Step 4: Then add enough hot chicken stock to almost cover the chicken pieces, then enough white wine to just cover the pieces. Insert an herb bouquet of parsley, fresh thyme and half a bay leaf inside a small cheesecloth 'bag'. Cover and simmer for 25-30 minutes:

Preparing the garnish:
Step 5: While the chicken is simmering, make some white-braised pearl onions and stewed baby button mushrooms (see below):

Making the sauce:
Step 6: When the chicken is done, remove the pieces along with the herb bouquet from the braising pan. As the liquid continues to simmer, skim off the fat from the surface. Then raise the heat and allow the liquid to reduce until it is thick enough to coat a spoon nicely. Correct the seasoning.

Step 7: In a bowl, whisk together two egg yolks and 1/2 cup of heavy cream. As you continue whisking, add the hot cooking liquid to the bowl by spoonfuls until you have added about a cup. Then add the rest of the liquid in a thin stream (or by ladlefuls) and mix as you go. Pour the liquid—now a sauce—back into the pan and bring it to a boil for about a minute, adding the cooking juices from the onions and mushrooms. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve, to eliminate the vegetables and sundry small particles, back into the bowl. (By the way, don't throw out the vegetables left in the sieve; it's the cook's privilege the eat the vegetables, which are absolutely delicious!) Grate in a bit of nutmeg. (Here Julia calls for a few drops of lemon juice—presumably to mimic the taste of crème fraîche—but I found that the wine had already given the dish enough acidity, so I omitted it. And since I did not seem to have quite enough sauce, I thinned it a bit with more cream.)

Step 8: Arrange the chicken pieces, onions and mushrooms in a clean casserole (or, as I did, you can clean out the braising pan). Spoon over the sauce to coat the contents evenly. If you are making this ahead, Julia suggests spooning over more cream or milk to prevent a film from forming.)

Step 9: Just before you are ready to serve, bring the dish back to a simmer and allow to simmer, covered, for about 5 minutes, until the dish is fully reheated. Off heat, add a tablespoon or two of butter to enrich the sauce (!) and baste the chicken pieces wth the sauce until the butter has completely melted into the sauce. Serve the fricassée in its casserole, sprinkled with some finely chopped parsley.

Bon appétit !

NOTES: The vegetable garnishes for this dish are made as follows: The pearl onions are simmered in butter and chicken stock until they are quite soft, but have not lost their shape. Most of the liquid should have evaporated but the onions should not brown. In Mastering, Julia says that this will take around 50 minutes, but I find that 30 is more like it. You can save yourself a great deal of time and trouble by using frozen, peeled pearl onions. The mushrooms are simmered in water, lemon juice and a pinch of salt for about 5 minutes. (Here I find 10 minutes is better.)

Julia suggests serving fricassée de poulet à l'ancienne with buttered noodles or steamed rice. We had it with some steamed baby potatoes, which was lovely. We preceded this rich dish with a salade frisée aux lardons and followed it with a bowl of fresh fruit. A lovely Sunday dinner.

Julia explains that a fricassée a hybrid cooking method combining both dry and wet heat. A chicken dish that is cooked entirely by dry heat (eg, in butter or oil) is properly called a sauté, while a dish cooked entirely by wet heat is properly called a stew. The more observant readers will have noticed that this fricassée is actually a close cousin to coq au vin and a distant cousin of boeuf bouguignon. The cooking methods are, in fact, quite similar, and the two dishes share the same garnishes. The main difference lies, of course, in that this dish is 'white' and the others 'brown'. In 'white' dishes, the cook studiously avoids browning the ingredients, the wet ingredients include white wine, and the sauce is finished off with egg yolks and cream. In 'brown' dishes, the meat and other ingredients are browned, the wet ingredients include red wine and the sauce is thickened with a beurre manié. But, in the end, they are all manifestations of the same basic techniques.

Salade frisée aux lardons

This rustic salad was one of my favorite starters when I lived in Paris. It is sheer simplicity to make: just brown some lardons slowly in a bit of oil (I like olive oil) until they have rendered their fat and are lightly crisp. While the lardons are browning, rub a salad bowl with garlic, then add frisée that has been cut up into bite-sized pieces. Salt and pepper lightly (remembering that the lardons will be salty). When the lardons are nicely browned, add a tablespoon of white wine vinegar to the pan, swirl around to mix well, and then pour the still-hot mixture over the frisée in the salad bowl. Mix well and serve on individual plates, topped with the lardons and a generous grinding of black pepper.

NOTES: Lardons are bits of cured pork belly cut into smallish cubes or strips. In France, you can buy them already cut up in the store. Elsewhere, get yourself some pancetta or ventreche (which is the French version of pancetta) and cut it into thick slices, then unroll each slice, cut off the fattiest parts and cut each strip into small cubes. You can also use slab bacon, but bacon imparts a smokey taste to the salad which is not characteristic of the original, so you may want to parboil the bacon lardons for a few minutes to remove some of the excess smoke flavor before you brown them.

This is the simplest version of the dish—and the one you will find in the Larousse Gastronomique—is my personal favorite. (The rubbing of garlic is my personal touch.) But there are many other versions. Perhaps the most common variation is to add an egg—either poached or hard boiled and sliced in two, or even chopped up, on top of each serving. Some versions call for a bit of garlic or shallot to be sautéed along with the lardons. Other versions call for adding crème fraîche to the lardons instead of vinegar. And other versions call for dressing the frisée with vinaigrette and topping the salad with the lardons. And, finally, a few recipes I've seen call for topping with croutons or boiled potatoes as well as the lardons.

This is typically a winter salad but frisee can be found most of the year, so I like to make it as soon as the weather turns a bit cool. If you can't find frisee, then substitute the white heart of chickory, which has a similar taste and texture. (Frisee is, in fact, a kind of chickory.)

Salade frisée aux lardons is a wonderful entrée to a home-style meal, but in particular if you serve it with egg, it is satisfying enough as a light meal in and of itself.

Odd as it might seem, this salad reminds me strongly of another favorite cold weather salad: puntarelle, one of the signature dishes of Roman cuisine. Will blog about that soon.

Quick Note: Gazpacho «mejicano»

Gazpacho is such a wonderful invention: salad in liquid form! I love it, but I have an aversion to the taste of raw peppers, in particular raw green peppers, which is one of the standard ingredients in gazpacho andaluz. So I decided to invent my own variation of gazpacho.

There are tons of recipes on the web, but the one I like best is one that was contributed by a member of the Gnocchi ai funghi Recipe Exchange Club: it calls for 5 very ripe tomatoes, 1 peeled cucumber, a garlic clove, 70 g of white bread (crusts removed), 15ml of sherry vinegar, 50ml of olive oil and 125ml of cold water (add more water to thin out the gazpacho to your taste) and salt to taste. You cut up the vegetables and add them, along with the other ingredients, to a blender and blend until perfectly smooth. Taste it to see if it needs more salt, or a bit more vinegar or (if the vinegar is too strong for your taste) some more oil. Chill for 2-3 hours and serve. In Andalucía, they garnish their gazpacho with finely chopped hard boiled egg and croutons. Here's a photo of the classic version (sans garnish):

That's the classic recipe. My "Mexican" variation is easy: instead of the green pepper, use a whole jalapeño, and, instead of egg and bread croutons, garnish with avocado slices and, if you like, some cilantro leaves and some chopped white onion. Voilà!

NOTE: The original recipe calls for peeling and seeding the tomatoes before they go into the blender. But if your blender is powerful enough, I find that this bit of work is not necessary. If you want a less picante version, you can seed the jalapeño before adding it to the blender.