Pasta Love: Strozzapreti all'Amatriciana

Mario Batali's Babbo Ristorante describes Bucatini all'Amatriciana, originating from the town of Amatrice, located 100 miles east of Lazio from Abruzzo, as one of the most celebrated dishes in Italian cuisine. Ever since the Abbruzzese shepherds begin the tradition of eating this spicy pasta after a day in the chilly mountain air, the cooking process has always begun with the rich smell of a fatty piece of pork bubbling in the pan. Guanciale, or cured pig jowls, with its distinct pork flavor, is used to achieve the same rich taste that comforted the shepherds of old. Pancetta, a salt-cured Italian bacon, can be used when guanciale is not available. This dish can also be made with or without tomatoes.

While tomato-less gricia is still prepared in central Italy, it is the tomato-enriched amatriciana that is well-known all over Italy and has been exported everywhere. In Amatrice, the dish is prepared with spaghetti, but the use of bucatini has become extremely common after the recipe became popular in Rome. Other types of dry pasta is also used, such as rigatoni, but fresh pasta is generally avoided.

We were out of our favorite bucatini from Rustichella d’Abruzzo, but I found an amazing substitute from the same artisanal pasta company, called strozzapreti. Like all'Amatriciana sauce, strozzapreti ("priest choker" in Italian) has its own story.

According to Wikipedia, there are several legends to explain the name priest choker. One is that gluttonous priests were so enthralled by the savory pasta that they ate too quickly and choked themselves, sometimes to death. Another explanation involves the housewife ("azdora"), who "chokes" the dough strips to make the strozzapreti, expressing such a rage, perhaps triggered by the misery and difficulties of her life, to be able to strangle a priest! Another legend says wives would customarily make the pasta for churchmen as partial payment for land rents, and their jealous and angered husbands silently hoped the priests would choke on the pasta. In appearance, it resembles an elongated form of cavatelli, or a rolled towel. The texture is dense and chewy. Combine it with all'Amatriciana sauce, and your Italian pasta cravings will be more than satisfied.

Strozzapreti all'Amatriciana
Minimally adapted from Bon Appetit
(Serves 4)

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 ounces thinly sliced pancetta
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup minced onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 28-oz. can imported tomatoes, preferably from San Marzano
Kosher salt
12 oz. package of Rustichella d’Abruzzo’s dried strozzapreti pasta, or bucatini
1/4 cup finely grated Pecorino cheese (about 1 oz.)

Preparation:

Empty the can of tomatoes, with their juice, into a large bowl. Gently crush and tear the tomatoes by hand, discarding the fibrous core. Set aside crushed tomatoes and juice.

Heat olive oil in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Add pancetta and sauté until just slightly crisp and golden, about 4-6 minutes. Add pepper flakes and black pepper; stir for 10 seconds. Add onion and garlic, and sauté, stirring often, until soft, about 8 minutes. Add tomatoes with their juice, reduce heat to low, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens, about 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Season with salt, add the pasta, and cook until 2 minutes before al dente. Drain the pasta, reserving 1 cup of the pasta cooking water.

Add the drained pasta to the sauce in the skillet and toss the pasta to evenly coat with the sauce. Add 1/2 cup of the reserved pasta water, stir, and continue cooking on low until the sauce coats pasta and pasta is al dente, about 2 minutes. Add a little pasta water if sauce seems too dry. Stir in cheese, and transfer pasta to warmed serving bowls.

Newfy Notes:  I love pasta. There are hundreds of pasta recipes out there, but this is one you must have in your go-to collection. It doesn't take much time to prepare, but next time I will double or triple the recipe and freeze portions for future dinners. I would serve this pasta at a dinner party. Who doesn't love pasta? Who doesn't love pork and pasta? This sauce has earned a spot right up there with my favs - Carbonara, alla vodka, Pomodoro, and Bolognese. Go make it now, eat it slowly, and savor each bite.


There's even a postage stamp in its honor!



Pasta al Pomodoro - A Pasta for the Rest of My Life

I was excited to see the new issue of Bon Appétit fall through the mail slot in the front door. Adam Rapoport, formerly with GQ, has taken over the helm as Editor in Chief of the redesigned magazine. His vision is to present a magazine that matters, one that presents the kind of food you'll want to cook for the rest of your life. He believes having good food in your life makes your life better - it makes your family happier and your time with your friends more enjoyable. I couldn't agree more, but cooking good food also relaxes me and provides an escape. That's exactly what I needed this week, an escape.

The first issue of the "new" Bon Appétit is The Italy Issue, packed full of so many tempting pastas, like the Fettuccine with Prosciutto and Orange I made recently, and Spaghetti alle Vongole; irresistible desserts, like Chocolate Tiramisu, Ricotta Cheesecake, Zeppole with Chocolate Sauce, and healthy summer salads, like delicious Raw Artichoke, Celery, and Parmesan Salad, and Shaved Asparagus with Parmesan Vinaigrette. I particularly enjoyed the touching article Blood, Bones & Baked Eggplant, about chef/author Gabrielle Hamilton, and her reunion with her ex-husband's mother for a traditional Sunday lunch in Rome. Not too long ago, Saveur published an article about Gabrielle, featuring Brown Butter Pasta with Pine Nuts and Fried Egg. I enjoy reading stories behind recipes, and that's what the new Bon Appétit promises to deliver.

The recipe I chose for some comfort this week is very simple, as portrayed on the cover, but I've never quite been able to replicate the version I enjoy so much at our local Italian hang. Until now.

Pasta al Pomodoro
Bon Appétit 
Serves 4

Ingredients

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, minced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 28-ounce can whole peeled Italian tomatoes, puréed in a food processor
Kosher salt
3 large fresh basil sprigs
12 ounces bucatini or spaghetti
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed
1/4 cup finely grated Parmesan or Pecorino
Basil chiffonade and extra grated Parmesan for serving

Preparation

Heat extra-virgin olive oil in a 12" skillet over medium-low heat. Add minced onion and cook, stirring, until soft, about 12 minutes. Add garlic and cook, stirring, for 2-4 minutes. Add crushed red pepper flakes; cook for 1 minute more. Increase heat to medium, add puréed tomatoes and season lightly with kosher salt; cook, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens slightly and the flavors meld, about 20 minutes. Remove pan from heat, stir in basil sprigs, and set aside.

Meanwhile, bring water to a boil in a 5-qt. pot. Season with salt; add spaghetti or bucatini and cook, stirring occasionally, until about 2 minutes before tender. Drain pasta, reserving 1/2 cup pasta cooking water.

Discard basil and heat skillet over high heat. Stir in reserved pasta water to loosen sauce; bring to a boil. Add pasta and cook, stirring, until sauce coats pasta and pasta is al dente, about 2 minutes. Remove pan from heat; add butter and cheese; toss until cheese melts. Transfer to warm bowls; top with basil chiffonade and serve with more cheese, if desired.

After reading Pasta Perfect, a BA Cooking Manifesto, I now know how to make the simplest, most luxurious sauces imaginable.

• Forget the pot. Use a pan.
• Build the Foundation.
• You're not using nearly enough salt.
• Don't dump the pasta water.
• Trust the tongs.
• Now work that pan.  It's where the magic happens.
• Everything's better with butter.
• Cheese is not just a garnish.
• It should look as good as it tastes.
• Practice makes perfect pasta.

Thank you, Bon Appétit, I'm looking forward to cooking more of the food I'll want to cook for the rest of my life.

Garden to Table: Linguine with Red Walnuts and Swiss Chard

After a week of birthday celebrations with Pammy's limousine and Espresso-Frangelico Eclairs, and Sparks' yacht and Seashell Cake, I was ready to enjoy a few quiet evenings at home with John.

When John commented how beautifully our Swiss Chard was doing in the backyard, I suggested we try eating some of it. I used a few leaves under my Peruvian Ceviche not too long ago, and then promptly forgot it was back there. We have a very narrow yard that borders the back of our house, but you can only get a glimpse of the long box of herbs hanging on the fence when looking out the bathroom and bedroom windows. We also have a couple things growing in pots, including the Swiss chard, but I hardly go back there. This will be changing soon when we move in June. We will have a gorgeous yard and patio off the dining room and kitchen, with space for a few more vegetables. There's just something so satisfying about using the herbs and vegetables you've grown in your garden. As long as John continues to plant, water and grow them, I'll be happy to use them in my cooking.

I chose this Saveur pasta recipe mainly because of the Swiss chard, but also because of the Port Salut cheese and walnuts. And, with just a few ingredients, it was nice for a weeknight dinner.

Linguine with Red Walnuts and Swiss Chard

Adapted slightly from Saveur
Serves 2

1 cup shelled red walnut halves
10 ounces Swiss chard
2 tablespoons walnut oil
2 shallots, peeled and minced
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 ounces dried linguine
4 ounces Port-Salut or other semisoft cheese, coarsely grated

1. Place walnuts in a single layer in a medium skillet. Toast over medium heat, turning occasionally, for 7 minutes. Set aside. Trim chard leaves, discarding tough stems. Coarsely chop leaves and set aside.

2. Heat oil in a medium skillet over medium-low heat. Add shallots and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until shallots are soft, about 7 minutes. Add chard, season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring, until chard has wilted, about 5 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, cook pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until al dente, about 10 minutes. Drain, reserving about 1/4 cup of the cooking water. Add pasta and reserved cooking water to chard mixture. Stir in cheese and walnuts, adjust seasoning, and serve.

Port Salut (pronounced POOR sah-LEW) is a creamy, delectable semi-soft pasteurized cow's milk cheese from Mayenne, France, with a distinctive orange crust and a mild flavor.

Chard is very popular among Mediterranean cooks, but the first varieties have been traced back to Sicily. It has shiny green ribbed leaves, with stems that range from white to yellow to red, depending on the cultivator. The flavor is mild yet earthy and sweet with slightly bitter undertones. Fresh young chard can be used raw in salads. Mature chard leaves and stalks are typically cooked or sauteed; their bitterness fades with cooking, leaving a refined flavor which is more delicate than that of cooked spinach.

PASTA POST! Playing with a New Kitchen Treasure

Last October, I started a feature on the blog called PASTA POST, and had every intention of sharing some of the many pastas I've bookmarked in various food magazines and Italian cookbooks.

Since that first post, I've fallen flat on my face. It seems we've become lazy, especially during the work week, tending to gravitate to the bar at Il Fornaio for a plate of Chef Marco's pasta. When we do make pasta at home, John routinely requests his beloved Ultimate Spaghetti Carbonara.

I rarely make homemade pasta, despite owning all the pasta attachments for our Kitchen Aid. There's really no excuse, especially now, since I have fallen in love with a beautiful artisanal pasta tool.



My quest for one of these tools began when I saw Fine Cooking's video series on handmade pastas (Fine Cooking Culinary School:  Handmade Pastas). One of the videos demonstrated how to make Corzetti pasta, with Pine Nut-Butter Sauce.

Corzetti are coin-shaped pasta dating back to the days of the Genovese Republic, when they were embossed with the family crest and served at festive meals.  I intently watched the Fine Cooking couple roll out the pasta and use a small round cookie cutter to stamp out the coins, about the size of silver dollars. In Liguria, they explained, there are special stamps used to imprint elaborate designs into the coins, but it is hard to find them in the states.

Plain, cookie-cutter pasta didn't excite me; I wanted one of those corzetti stamps so I could make the real thing. In less than five minutes on the internet, I was on Terry Mirri's web site, Fatto in America - Artisanal Pasta Tools.

Terry's vision is to "provide and encourage home chefs to explore food preparation with his unique line of handcrafted tools, rarely seen by the American consumer." Keeping with the Italian tradition of individuality, Terry started with the Corzetti Stamp, and has now expanded into polenta boards, cavarola boards, and garganelli-gnocchi boards.

I contacted Terry, told him about There's a Newf in My Soup, and asked if he would send me a Corzetti Stamp to try and feature on my blog. Terry graciously allowed me to chose from three design sets: Classic, Piccolini, or Michelangelo. I was also able to personalize my stamp with my choice of wood and imprint designs.

Just in time for Christmas, a package arrived in the mail with my gorgeous Michelangelo Corzetti Stamp, made of walnut, with the grape cluster design on one side and olive branch on the other.

Thrilled with my new treasure, I e-mailed Terry for sauce recommendations once I mastered the art of corzetti pasta-making. I asked him about Fine Cooking's brown butter and pine nut sauce. He agreed it was close to the classic, but encouraged me to try something different.

Terry shared his preference for making the dough with a ratio of one cup buckwheat flour to three cups all-purpose flour, with eggs and olive oil. He said "those buckwheat coins are big and beautiful, and you must find a sauce equal to its status." For the sauce, he "ruthlessly" sautes shredded cabbage, mushrooms, onions, garlic, and sage in olive oil and butter. He likes to add anchovies and capers to most of his sauces, but "not so much that you can taste either."  And black pepper, "with a large crack, big and plentiful." Terry apologized for his lack of specificity..."I was raised in a very Italian house and a piece of paper with instructions was Benedict Arnold territory. You could never be part of the kitchen intelligentsia with little pages flipping all over."

I tried the buckwheat pasta first, but rolled it too thin and was unable to achieve a clear imprint of the design. That's okay, it was a good test run. I tried again, this time making a basic egg pasta dough.

After making the dough, and allowing it to rest, I divided it into pieces and rolled each piece through the pasta roller, until I reached the next to last thinnest setting. I then cut the coins using the other side of the wheat design piece, and then pressed each coin between the two imprinted sides of the tool. A pound of pasta dough yielded approximately 50 coins.

For this batch of corzetti, I strayed just a little from Fine Cooking's recipe and made a brown butter and red walnut sauce with fried sage leaves, finished with some cracked pepper and a healthy grating of Parmigiano-Reggiano. The beautiful red walnuts are offered by Terra Bella Ranch, and available for the next few months from Little Italy's Farmers' Market.

Now that I've got this down, I'm ready to take another crack at the buckwheat pasta with Terry's sauce. Please take the time to visit two other blogs featuring Terry's cavarola board and corzetti stamp.

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Terry Mirri lives in Sonoma, California where he creates his hand crafted artisanal pasta tools. This interest stems from his Italian heritage as well as his longstanding love of Italian cooking and entertaining friends with multi course dining extravaganzas.

Although Terry grew up in an Italian American household, his travels to Italy further exposed him to techniques and tools of making a wide variety of hand made pastas. It is this craft he has personally mastered and hopes to share with others.  His passion for his parent’s food centric culture and the hospitality and warmth it engenders led him to this pursuit.

Although Terry has been retired for several years, he developed an interest in woodworking. After learning and practicing this craft, he tried his hand at reproducing and creating antique style pasta tools. His natural talent as a craftsman is reflected in the beauty and art of the wooden tools he produces.  Fatto in America - Artisanal Pasta Tools.

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PASTA POST! Brown Butter Pasta with Pine Nuts and Fried Eggs

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Welcome to a new feature on There's a Newf in My Soup! PASTA POST!  Pasta is just one of those things I need in my life.  We frequent our favorite Italian restaurant on a regular basis, but I have several cookbooks with many pasta dishes I've yet to try, and I often come across a recipe in one of my cooking magazines that calls to me. I plan to try a couple new pasta recipes each month, and share with you the ones we find blog-worthy. For my first Pasta Post, this recipe spoke to me.

PASTA POST!

This simple and deeply satisfying pasta is from Gabrielle Hamilton, chef-owner of Prune in New York City. It is featured in her article, Open House, the hard-won pleasures of Sunday lunch, in the October 2010 issue of Saveur. Gabriella fondly reminisces about traditional Sunday lunches at her Italian mother-in-law's apartment in Rome, inspiring her to start the tradition for her own family and friends in New York. Gabriella chose this fresh pasta as one of the courses for her inaugural Sunday luncheon.

Brown Butter Pasta with Pine Nuts and Fried Eggs

From Saveur, No. 132

Serves 4

Kosher salt, to taste

8 oz. fresh pasta, such as fettuccine or tagliatelle

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (see Note below)

3⁄4 cup pine nuts

4 eggs

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Freshly grated Parmesan 


Grated nutmeg, to taste

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add pasta; cook, stirring occasionally, until al dente, about 4 minutes. Set a strainer over a bowl; drain pasta, reserving 1⁄2 cup pasta cooking water, and set aside.

2.  Melt butter in a 12" skillet over medium heat. Add pine nuts and cook, stirring often, until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer pine nuts to a bowl.

3. Working in two batches, crack eggs into butter and cook, spooning butter over yolks, until whites are set but yolks are still runny, about 3 minutes. Transfer eggs to a plate and keep warm.

4. Add pasta and half the pine nuts to skillet and toss until hot. Stir in some of the reserved pasta water to create a sauce, and season with salt and pepper.

5. To serve, divide pasta between 4 serving plates and top each serving with a fried egg. Sprinkle with remaining pine nuts, Parmesan, and nutmeg.

Newf Notes: Although you can use dried pasta, fresh pasta provides a more delicate texture with the silkiness of the egg yolk. The butter soaks up a nice nutty flavor while you saute the pine nuts. Be sure to use freshly grated Parmesan and nutmeg, and give the pepper mill a few good turns over the top. Two sticks of butter seemed excessive to me for 8 oz. of pasta, so I reduced it by half.  The two of us enjoyed this as a weeknight dinner entree, so I adapted the recipe slightly. I still used 8 oz. of pasta, but 1/2 cup butter, 1/3 cup pine nuts, and two eggs. We absolutely love Tyler's Ultimate Carbonara, but this is a bit less fattening without the bacon and cream, and equally gratifying...ok, it's really close!

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