6. Choose an enameled cast-iron pan or other flameproof serving ware that can later contain all the pasta without piling it high. Put in the 2 tablespoons butter and 6 tablespoons cream for tossing the pasta, and turn on the heat to low. When the butter melts, stir to amalgamate it with the cream, then turn off the heat.
7. If using both green and yellow fettuccine: Spinach pasta cooks faster than yellow pasta, so the two must be boiled in separate pots of salted water. Drop the yellow fettuccine into their pot first, stir them with a wooden spoon, count to 3, then drop the spinach pasta into the other pot.
If using only one kind of pasta: Drop it into boiling salted water.
8. Turn the heat on to low under the mushroom sauce.
9. Drain the pasta when done to a very firm al dente, even slightly undercooked, consistency, bearing in mind that it will continue to soften during the final phase of preparation. Transfer to the serving pan containing butter and cream. Turn on the heat to low, and toss the noodles, turning them thoroughly to coat them well. Add half the mushroom sauce, tossing it with the noodles. Add the ½ cup grated Parmesan, toss again, and turn off the heat. Pour the remainder of the mushroom sauce over the pasta and serve at once, with additional grated Parmesan on the side.
Red and Yellow Bell Pepper Sauce with Sausages
THERE WAS A RESTAURANT in Bologna, Al Cantunzein, that had a standing challenge for its patrons: It would continue to bring to the table different courses of homemade pasta until the customer called a stop. Its claim was that on any day it could serve between thirty and forty different pastas, but I don’t know of anyone who succeeded in making the restaurant prove it. Al Cantunzein thrived until the late 1970s, when it was destroyed by student violence. It was rebuilt, but it was never the same again. It survives through its creations, some of which are now part of the classic homemade pasta repertory, such as scrigno di venere—and this perfect summer sauce for pappardelle.
For 6 to 8 servings
3 meaty bell peppers, 1 red, 2 yellow
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped onion
4 sweet sausages without fennel seeds, chili pepper, or other strong seasonings, cut into ½-inch pieces, about 1½ cups
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1 cup canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, drained and cut up
The fresh pappardelle suggested below OR 1½ pounds boxed dry pasta
FOR TOSSING THE PASTA
1 tablespoon butter
⅔ cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese, plus additional cheese at the table
Recommended pasta Yellow and green broad egg noodles, pappardelle, is what this sauce was created for and no other pasta combination seems quite so perfect. Make pappardelle, using a dough made from 2 large eggs and approximately 1 cup flour for the yellow noodles, and for the green noodles, 1 large egg, ¾ to 1 cup flour, and a tiny fistful of cooked spinach. (See the instructions for pasta dough.) Cook the yellow and green pasta separately.
Although it may not be quite so sublime a match, boxed, dry, factory pasta would be delicious with this sauce. Try such shapes as rigatoni, or ruote di carro, cartwheels.
1. Split the peppers into 4 sections, discard the seeds and cores, and peel them, using a swiveling-blade peeler. Cut them into more or less square 1-inch pieces.
2. Put the olive oil and the chopped onion in a sauté pan, and turn on the heat to medium high. Cook and stir the onion until it becomes colored a pale gold. Put in the sausages, cook them for about 2 minutes, then add the peppers, and cook them for 7 or 8 minutes, turning them occasionally. Add salt and pepper, and stir well.
3. Add the tomatoes to the pan and cook them at a lively simmer for about 15 or 20 minutes, until the oil floats free of the tomatoes.
4. Empty the entire contents of the pan over cooked drained pasta and toss thoroughly. Add the butter and grated Parmesan, toss one more time, and serve at once, with additional grated cheese on the side.
Ahead-of-time note The sauce may be prepared up to this point a few hours before serving. Do not refrigerate it. Reheat gently just before tossing with pasta.
Embogoné—Cranberry Beans, Sage, and Rosemary Sauce
IN THE ANCIENT stonecutters’ town of San Giorgio, high in the hills of Valpolicella, north of Verona, the cooking skills of the Dalla Rosa family have been celebrated by townspeople and visitors for at least four generations. One of the dishes for which people now trek to their trattoria is pasta sauced with one of the fundamental elements of cooking in the Veneto, cranberry beans. Cranberry beans are essential to pasta e fagioli but no one, before some unidentified and forgotten Dalla Rosa, had put them to such delicious use with pasta.
According to Lodovico Dalla Rosa, the word embogoné comes from the dialect word for snails, bogoni. He surmised that the beans as they turn to sauce in the skillet, in their roundness and slow motion, must have reminded the originator of the dish of snails that had slipped out of their shells.
Note If you are not acquainted with cranberry beans, please see the explanation that accompanies Pasta and Bean Soup.
For 4 servings
3 pounds fresh cranberry beans, unshelled weight, OR 1½ cups dried cranberry OR red kidney beans, soaked and cooked
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tablespoon for the sauce, 2 tablespoons for tossing the pasta
¼ pound pancetta chopped very fine to a pulp
⅔ cup onion chopped fine
1 teaspoon garlic chopped fine
Chopped sage leaves, 1 teaspoon if fresh, ½ teaspoon if dried
Chopped rosemary, 1 teaspoon if fresh, ½ teaspoon if dried
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
The fresh pappardelle suggested below OR 1 pound boxed dry pasta
½ cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese, plus additional cheese at the table
Recommended pasta Pappardelle, broad homemade egg noodles, is what the Trattoria Dalla Rosa serves this sauce on, and I don’t see how one could improve on the taste of this large noodle wrapped around the substantial bean sauce. Make pappardelle, using a dough made from 3 large eggs and approximately 1⅔ cups unbleached flour.
A substantial shape of boxed, dry, factory pasta would also be a good choice. Try rigatoni.
1. If using fresh beans, put them in a pot with 2 inches of water to cover. Cover the pot, turn on the heat to low, and cook until tender, about 1 hour or less.
2. Put 1 tablespoon of olive oil, the chopped pancetta, and the onion in a sauté pan and turn on the heat to medium high. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion becomes translucent. Add the garlic, sage, and rosemary and cook another minute or so, then turn the heat down to minimum.
3. Drain the cooked fresh or dried beans, reserving their cooking liquid. Put the beans in the pan and mash most of them—about three-fourths the total amount—with the back of a wooden spoon. Add about ½ cup of the bean cooking liquid to the pan to make the sauce somewhat runnier. Add salt and several grindings of pepper, and stir thoroughly.
4. Drain the pasta the moment it’s cooked and toss it immediately in a warm serving bowl with the contents of the pan; add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil, sprinkle with freshly grated Parmesan, toss once more, and serve at once. If you should find the sauce too dense, thin it with a little more of the bean cooking liquid.
Asparagus Sauce with Ham and Cream
For 4 to 6 servings
1½ pounds fresh asparagus
Salt
1 to 1¼ pounds pasta
6 ounces boiled unsmoked ham
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup heavy whipping cream
⅔ cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese, plus additional cheese at the table
Recommended pasta Small, tubular macaroni are the most compatible with this sauce. Use such boxed, dry pasta shapes as penne, maccheroncini, or ziti, or the homemade garganelli.
1. C
ut off 1 inch or more from the butt ends of the asparagus to expose the moist part of each stalk. Pare the asparagus and wash it.
2. Choose a pan that can accommodate all the asparagus lying flat. Put in enough water to come 2 inches up the sides of the pan, and 1 tablespoon salt. Turn on the heat to medium high and when the water boils, slip in the asparagus, and cover the pan. Cook for 4 to 8 minutes after the water returns to a boil, depending on the freshness and thickness of the stalks. Drain the asparagus when it is tender, but firm. Wipe the pan dry with paper towels and set aside for later use.
3. When the asparagus is cool enough to handle, cut off the spear tips at their base, and cut the rest of the stalks into lengths of about ¾ inch. Discard any part of the stalk that is still woody and tough.
4. Cut the ham into long strips about ¼ inch wide. Put the ham and the butter into the pan where you cooked the asparagus, turn on the heat to medium low, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes without letting the ham become crisp.
5. Add the cut-up asparagus spear tips and stalks, turn up the heat to medium high, and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, turning all the asparagus pieces in the butter to coat them well.
6. Add the cream, turn the heat down to medium, and cook, stirring constantly, for about half a minute, until the cream thickens. Taste and correct for salt.
7. Turn out the entire contents of the pan over cooked and drained pasta, toss thoroughly, add the ⅔ cup grated Parmesan, toss again, and serve at once, with additional grated cheese on the side.
Sausages and Cream Sauce
For 4 servings
½ pound sweet sausage containing no fennel seed, chili pepper, or other strong seasonings
1½ tablespoons chopped onion
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
⅔ cup heavy whipping cream
Salt
1 pound pasta
Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese at the table
Recommended pasta In Bologna, where this sauce is popular, they use it on thin, curved, tubular macaroni called “crab grass,” or gramigna. It is a perfect sauce for those shapes of pasta whose twists or cavities can trap little morsels of sausage and cream. Conchiglie and fusilli are the best examples.
1. Skin the sausage and crumble it as fine as possible.
2. Put the chopped onion, butter, and vegetable oil in a small saucepan, turn the heat on to medium, and cook until the onion becomes colored a pale gold. Add the crumbled sausage and cook for 10 minutes. Add a few grindings of pepper and all the cream, turn the heat up to medium high, and cook until the cream has thickened, stirring once or twice. Taste and correct for salt.
3. Toss the sauce with cooked drained pasta and serve at once with grated Parmesan on the side.
Prosciutto and Cream Sauce
For 4 servings
¼ pound sliced prosciutto OR country ham
3 tablespoons butter
½ cup heavy whipping cream
1 pound pasta
¼ cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese, plus additional cheese at the table
Recommended pasta The sauce works equally well with homemade fettuccine or tonnarelli, or with green tortellini, and with short, tubular macaroni such as penne or rigatoni.
1. Shred the prosciutto or ham into narrow strips. Put it into a saucepan with the butter, turn on the heat to medium, and cook it for about 2 minutes, turning it from time to time, until it is browned all over.
2. Add the heavy cream and cook, stirring frequently, until you have thickened and reduced it by at least one-third.
3. Toss the sauce with cooked drained pasta, add the ¼ cup grated Parmesan, toss again, and serve at once with additional grated cheese on the side.
Carbonara Sauce
AN ITALIAN food historian claims that during the last days of World War II, American soldiers in Rome who had made friends with local families would bring them eggs and bacon and ask them to turn them into a pasta sauce. The historian notwithstanding, how those classic American ingredients, bacon and eggs, came to be transformed into carbonara has not really been established, but there is no doubting the earthy flavor of the sauce: It is unmistakably Roman.
Most versions of carbonara use bacon smoked in the American style, but in Rome one can sometimes have the sauce without any bacon at all, but with salted pork jowl in its place. It is so much sweeter than bacon, whose smoky accents tend to weary the palate. Pork jowl is hard to get outside Italy, but in its place one can use pancetta, which supplies comparably rounded and mellow flavor. You can make the sauce either way, with bacon or pancetta, and you could try both methods to see which satisfies you more.
For 6 servings
½ pound pancetta, cut as a single ½-inch-thick slice, OR its equivalent in good slab bacon
4 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup dry white wine
2 large eggs (see warning about salmonella poisoning)
¼ cup freshly grated romano cheese
½ cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1¼ pounds pasta
Recommended pasta It is difficult to imagine serving carbonara on anything but spaghetti.
1. Cut the pancetta or slab bacon into strips not quite ¼ inch wide.
2. Lightly mash the garlic with a knife handle, enough to split it and loosen the skin, which you will discard. Put the garlic and olive oil into a small sauté pan and turn on the heat to medium high. Sauté until the garlic becomes colored a deep gold, and remove and discard it.
3. Put the strips of pancetta or bacon into the pan, and cook until they just begin to be crisp at the edges. Add the wine, let it bubble away for 1 or 2 minutes, then turn off the heat.
4. Break the 2 eggs into the serving bowl in which you’ll be subsequently tossing the pasta. Beat them lightly with a fork, then add the two grated cheeses, a liberal grinding of pepper, and the chopped parsley. Mix thoroughly.
5. Add cooked drained spaghetti to the bowl, and toss rapidly, coating the strands well.
6. Briefly reheat the pancetta or bacon over high heat, turn out the entire contents of the pan into the bowl, toss thoroughly again, and serve at once.
Bolognese Meat Sauce
Ragù, as the Bolognese call their celebrated meat sauce, is characterized by mellow, gentle, comfortable flavor that any cook can achieve by being careful about a few basic points:
• The meat should not be from too lean a cut; the more marbled it is, the sweeter the ragù will be. The most desirable cut of beef is the neck portion of the chuck.
• Add salt immediately when sautéing the meat to extract its juices for the subsequent benefit of the sauce.
• Cook the meat in milk before adding wine and tomatoes to protect it from the acidic bite of the latter.
• Do not use a demiglace or other concentrates that tip the balance of flavors toward harshness.
• Use a pot that retains heat. Earthenware is preferred in Bologna and by most cooks in Emilia-Romagna, but enameled cast-iron pans or a pot whose heavy bottom is composed of layers of steel alloys are fully satisfactory.
• Cook, uncovered, at the merest simmer for a long, long time; no less than 3 hours is necessary, more is better.
2 heaping cups, for about 6 servings and 1½ pounds pasta
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3 tablespoons butter plus 1 tablespoon for tossing the pasta
½ cup chopped onion
⅔ cup chopped celery
⅔ cup chopped carrot
¾ pound ground beef chuck (see prefatory note above)
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1 cup whole milk
Whole nutmeg
1 cup dry white wine
1½ cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoe
s, cut up, with their juice
1¼ to 1½ pounds pasta
Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese at the table
Recommended pasta There is no more perfect union in all gastronomy than the marriage of Bolognese ragù with homemade Bolognese tagliatelle. Equally classic is Baked Green Lasagne with Meat Sauce, Bolognese Style. Ragù is delicious with tortellini, and irreproachable with such boxed, dry pasta as rigatoni, conchiglie, or fusilli. Curiously, considering the popularity of the dish in the United Kingdom and countries of the Commonwealth, meat sauce in Bologna is never served over spaghetti.
1. Put the oil, butter, and chopped onion in the pot, and turn the heat on to medium. Cook and stir the onion until it has become translucent, then add the chopped celery and carrot. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring the vegetables to coat them well.
2. Add the ground beef, a large pinch of salt, and a few grindings of pepper. Crumble the meat with a fork, stir well, and cook until the beef has lost its raw, red color.
3. Add the milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely. Add a tiny grating—about ⅛ teaspoon—of nutmeg, and stir.
4. Add the wine, let it simmer until it has evaporated, then add the tomatoes and stir thoroughly to coat all ingredients well. When the tomatoes begin to bubble, turn the heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through to the surface. Cook, uncovered, for 3 hours or more, stirring from time to time. While the sauce is cooking, you are likely to find that it begins to dry out and the fat separates from the meat. To keep it from sticking, continue the cooking, adding ½ cup of water whenever necessary. At the end, however, no water at all must be left and the fat must separate from the sauce. Taste and correct for salt.
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking Page 23
