by Marc Vetri
SPINACH AND RICOTTA Gnudi
The spinach gnocchi I serve at Vetri restaurant have become such a staple that they will never come off the menu. And I never wanted to put anything similar on the menu. I worked so hard to get those dumplings just right, it seemed pointless to reinvent the wheel. Then Jeff Michaud made these light, pillowy dumplings at Osteria. When I tasted them, they were so perfect that I knew they had to go on the menu. Gnudi are dumplings that are very similar to gnocchi, but this recipe is different enough from my spinach gnocchi that I wanted to share it with you here.
MAKES 6 SERVINGS
10 ounces spinach leaves (no stems), stemmed and rinsed
4 cups ricotta impastata or drained whole-milk ricotta
1 egg, lightly beaten
1⅓ cups tipo 00 or all-purpose flour, plus more for tossing gnudi
Grating of nutmeg
Salt and freshly ground pepper
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the spinach leaves and blanch for 1 minute. Remove, let cool, squeeze dry, and finely chop. Measure out 7 ounces spinach (about ¾ cup packed) and put it in a mixing bowl. Mix in the ricotta, egg, the 1⅓ cups flour, and the nutmeg. Season with salt and pepper to taste and mix thoroughly but gently.
Put 1 to 2 cups more flour in a pie pan or shallow bowl. Put the gnudi mixture in a pastry bag fitted with a ½-inch plain tip or a ziplock bag with a ½-inch hole snipped from a corner. Pipe ½-inch-diameter balls of the dough into the flour a few at a time. Gently roll into dumplings in the flour and transfer to a baking sheet coated generously with flour.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Drop in the gnudi, quickly return to a boil, and cook until the gnudi float, about 2 minutes, then cook 20 seconds longer. Each dumpling should feel soft, delicate, and slightly springy when pressed with a fingertip, and have a creamy center when bitten. Drain the pasta.
Meanwhile, melt the butter in a medium sauté pan over medium-low heat until hazelnut brown, 6 to 8 minutes, stirring now and then.
Divide the drained pasta among warm pasta bowls. Drizzle with the brown butter and garnish with the Parmesan.
PREP AHEAD
If you can’t find ricotta impastata, drain whole-mik ricotta instead. Line a sieve with cheesecloth or paper towels and place over a bowl. Put the ricotta in the sieve, cover, and let drain in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours or up to 24 hours.
BEVERAGE—Terre di Sole, Sangiovese 2008 (Sicily): Sangiovese is a great food wine, with enough acidity to cut through rich dishes, yet enough dark cherry fruit and herbal, earthy flavors to keep the acidity in check. It works wonders with the spinach dumplings.
Garganelli WITH GORGONZOLA, RADICCHIO, AND WALNUTS
Here’s a nifty little pasta rolled on a comb. You can buy a special garganelli board or comb (pettine) with little ridges cut into it especially for this pasta (see Sources). But in a pinch, any large, clean comb will do the trick. To make garganelli, you roll squares of pasta around a pencil-thick dowel over the comb and end up with little tubular pastas that resemble penne with crosswise ridges. Garganelli means “esophagus” in Italian, and that’s exactly what these little things are: tiny esophagi that suck up sauce and melt away in your mouth. With the ruddy color of radicchio, this is the perfect pasta for a cool fall day. Be sure to use Gorgonzola dolce for the best taste. It’s firmer, yellower, sweeter, and less pungent than regular Gorgonzola.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
1 pound Basic Egg Pasta Dough, rolled into sheets
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup chopped onion
6 ounces radicchio, cut into thin strips
12 large walnuts, coarsely chopped
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 teaspoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
6 ounces Gorgonzola dolce, broken into pieces
Lay a pasta sheet on a lightly floured work surface and dust with flour. Trim the ends so they are straight and cut the sheet into 2-inch squares. Place a garganelli comb or board on your work surface, or securely tape a large, clean, fine-toothed pocket comb to the surface. Flour it lightly. To form each garganello, place a square of pasta on the comb so one of the corners is pointing in the same direction as the teeth of the comb. Lightly flour a ¼-inch wooden dowel or a clean pencil and lay it over the pasta perpendicular to the teeth of the comb.
Fold the bottom corner of the pasta over the dowel or pencil, then roll the pasta loosely onto the dowel. Roll back and forth on the comb a couple of times, pressing gently into the ridges of the comb to seal the edges of the pasta and create a ridged quill shape similar to penne. Slide the pasta off the dowel or pencil and set aside. Repeat with the remaining pasta squares, spritzing the shaped garganelli with a little water and covering them to keep them from drying out. To hold it longer, sprinkle the shaped garganelli with a little flour and freeze them in an airtight container for up to 3 days (no need to thaw before cooking).
Bring a large pot of salted water to a bowl. Drop in the garnanelli, quickly return to a boil, and cook until tender yet firm, about 1 minute. Drain the pasta, reserving the pasta water.
Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onion and radicchio and cook until wilted, about 1 minute. Ladle in about ½ cup of pasta water. Add the walnuts and cook until there is only a little liquid left.
Slide the drained garganelli into the pan. Toss gently until the sauce is creamy, adding pasta water as needed. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat and gently stir in the parsley and Gorgonzola just until the cheese is slightly melted.
Divide among warmed pasta bowls and enjoy.
PREP AHEAD
You can make the garganelli up to 3 days ahead. Toss with a little flour, seal in an airtight container, and freeze. Then take it straight from the freezer to boiling pasta water. If you’re feeling lazy, you can replace the garganelli with 12 ounces boxed dried penne pasta, but it won’t be nearly as good because penne is made with a semolina dough (just semolina and water), while garganelli is made with a richer, softer egg pasta dough.
BEVERAGE—Allegrini, Valpolicella 2008 (Veneto): Here is a great example of watching a wine transform into something entirely different as you drink it with a meal. The pungency of the Gorgonzola in this dish brings out a sweetness in the wine that you might miss otherwise, while the radicchio and walnuts amplify the wine’s menthol aroma.
SALUMI
Types of Salumi, Sanitation, Freezing, Seasoning, Salt and Sugar, Grinding, Mixing, Stuffing, Cooking, Fermentation, Curing, Equipment and Doneness, So Young and So Good, To Each His Own
• • •
TERRINES
Potted Trout Terrine
Duck Terrine
Pork Liver Terrine
COOKED SAUSAGE
Lamb Mortadella
Rabbit Salami
Swordfish Sausage
DRY-CURED SALAMI
Soppressata Calabrese
Fennel Salami
Chorizo
WHOLE-MUSCLE SALUMI
Beef Speck
Coppa
Pancetta
Lardo
Shortcut Guanciale
Warm Pork Belly
THE BOX WAS MARKED “LINENS FROM ITALY.” It must have weighed twenty pounds—obviously too heavy for linens. This was back in 2003 on the cusp of the Spanish chefs movement. A few months before my box of “linens” arrived, I happened to be up in New York for a weekend and decided to go to Babbo for dinner. Mario Batali was there, and after a few courses he came over to my table and we started talking. He told me about Casa Mono, the Spanish tapas place he was planning to open later that year. He was really excited about the ingredients: the Spanish olive oils, the bacalao, the Iberico ham, the perfectly aged Manchego, the chorizo. “I’m taking a bunch of chefs to Barcelona in a couple of weeks,” he said, “to do research.” It sounded good, and
I happened to mention how unimpressed I’d been with most of the chorizo I’d tasted so far in my life. “Dude, you should come with us,” he said. “You can see what it’s supposed to taste like.”
It took me all of a micro-second to say, “Sounds awesome!” A week and half later, I was on a plane to Barcelona. I toured around with Mario and his chefs for a few days, tasting everything in sight. When we hit La Boqueria, the big public market, I found it: that perfect chorizo with just the right spice. Mario looked at me, but he didn’t say anything. He just watched me eat and smiled. I savored that chorizo bite by bite so my mouth would remember what it tasted like when I got back home. I was going to make a chorizo just like it.
Mario opened Casa Mono later in the fall of that year. To mark the occasion, I decided to smuggle a whole Iberico ham into the United States for the opening. This was before it was legal to buy jamón ibérico de bellota in the States. I told my friend Marco Rossi in Italy about the plan and he said, “I have just the right guy. He raises some of the best Iberico pigs free-range on a small farm in Spain. They eat acorns by the bushel and get nice and plump.” I was sold. “You have to FedEx it to me,” I told him. “But how?” he shot back. “Isn’t it illegal?” I thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” I said, “You’ll figure something out. Just FedEx it to me and send me the bill.”
My twenty-pound box of “linens” from Italy arrived a few days later. The contents cost $800. The FedEx charge was another $800. But I didn’t care. I took my linens up to New York for the Casa Mono opening. I handed the box to the chef, Andy Nusser, and said, “Here.” He nearly dropped it because it was so heavy. “What is this?” he asked. I looked at him and said, “Open it.”
Andy and Mario were blown away. Especially on opening night of Casa Mono. I mean, a whole pata negra? The real deal, shipped from Spain? Illegally? Who does that?
Some things are worth taking a risk for, and great food is one of them. I had finally tasted a great chorizo, and the ham was simply a way of saying thanks.
TYPES OF SALUMI
Iberico ham is a dry-cured ham similar to prosciutto. Preserved and cured meats like these fall under the umbrella term salumi, which is the Italian equivalent of charcuterie. I like to make four basic types of salumi: terrines, cooked sausage, dry-cured salami, and whole-muscle salumi. Prosciutto and Iberico are whole-muscle salumi. A few quick definitions: A terrine is like a coarse-textured pâté. It’s made with seasoned ground meat that’s packed into a loaf-shaped mold or baking dish and then baked in a water bath. After cooking, a terrine is usually chilled, unmolded, then cut crosswise into slices like bread. It’s an old-school salumi that makes a big impression on a modern menu. The type of salumi that’s probably most familiar to home cooks is cooked sausage. Think bologna, mortadella, or anything else called a “cold cut” in the States. Cooked sausage is ground meat stuffed into a casing—usually a large casing—poached until the meat is cooked, then chilled and sliced as needed. A cold cut. Cooked sausage is similar to a terrine, except that it’s tubular in shape and poached on the stove top instead of baked in a water bath. So what’s the difference between cooked sausage (salami cotto) like bologna and dry-cured salami like Spanish chorizo? Both are made with ground meat stuffed into tubular casings. But dry-cured salami like Spanish chorizo and Italian soppressatta are not cooked. Instead, they are fermented for several hours to create good bacteria and then hung in a cool, moist environment to air-dry and cure over a period of several weeks. Curing salt and gradual dehydration help prevent the meat from spoiling, or “cure” it, so that the dry-cured salami will keep for a month or more under normal refrigeration. That dry-curing environment is the same for whole-muscle salumi, the last type of salumi I like to make. Whole-muscle salumi refers not to ground meat but to whole pieces of meat like pork shoulder, pork belly, or pork leg (ham) rubbed with seasonings and hung in a cool, moist environment to air-dry and cure over a period of several months. Whole pieces of meat take longer to dry-cure than ground meat sausage because the muscle fibers remain intact and hold on to their moisture longer. Whole-muscle salumi includes things like Italian pancetta and American bacon (cured whole pork belly), ham and prosciutto (cured whole pork leg), coppa (cured whole pork shoulder), guanciale (cured whole pork jowl), and lardo (cured whole pork fatback).
Why do I make all these different forms of salumi when it’s easy enough to buy them in a store? Because they taste better when you make them yourself. The satisfaction of dry-curing a piece of meat over several weeks in your home, then serving it to friends and family, is enormous. It’s like growing your own tomatoes. Once they’re ready, you’re so proud, you just can’t wait to eat them, cook with them, and share them with everyone you know. Guests never fail to be impressed by home-cured salami. Get ready for eager friends to rub their hands together and ask, “Are they ready yet?” Imagine shaving off a thin slice of your own homemade Soppressata Calabrese or Fennel Salami to begin a meal. It’s unlike any other form of cooking because it isn’t cooking. It’s curing. There’s something magical about taking a piece of raw meat, salting it, then serving it with full confidence three months later. It’s something you have to experience for yourself.
SANITATION
Sausage making isn’t hard, but you have to be diligent in how you handle the meat. You want to minimize any bacterial contamination. Use clean and sanitized equipment and utensils. To make sanitizer, mix a capful of full-strength chlorine bleach with a gallon of water, then scrub or soak anything that will come into contact with the meat. Simply put, keep your work area sanitized, wear gloves, and handle the meat as little as possible. Any time you take another step with the meat, you are introducing new bacteria. Work quickly in a small area, and try not to touch the meat too much.
FREEZING
It takes longer for bacteria to grow in cold temperatures, so try to keep everything as cold as possible—from the meat to whatever’s holding the meat to whatever’s grinding the meat. A good rule of thumb is to keep everything below 41°F (refrigerator temperature) the entire time you’re working with it. Working in a cold room helps, too.
Most of my ground sausage has a ratio of about 80 percent meat to 20 percent fat. I usually cut both the meat and the fat into 1-inch cubes, then freeze them in a single layer on metal baking sheets until partially frozen. After about an hour in the freezer, they should be the right texture—firm but not frozen solid. Put all your meat grinding and mixing parts in the freezer, too, from the grinder auger and cutting die to the mixing bowls, paddles, and trays. Keeping everything cold serves two purposes. First, it reduces bacterial activity, and second, it makes it easier to grind the fat into those nice, juicy white pieces you see in a cross-section of salami. If the fat warms up too much as you work, it will soften and smear in the grinder instead of getting cut into nice little pieces. Again, don’t handle the meat and fat too much, because the heat from your 98.6°F body will transfer to the meat, which you want to keep below 41°F throughout the process. Before you start making salumi, wash your hands in hot soapy water, put on gloves, and stick your hands in a bowl of ice until they are very cold, almost painful. Remember, everything should stay cold.
SEASONING
I like to season the meat and fat right when I take it out of the freezer—before grinding. This is an old method I learned in Italy, and when you are making smaller artisan-style batches, the sausage gets more consistently seasoned this way. Just scatter all of the dry seasonings over the partially frozen chunks of meat/fat and mix it thoroughly, wearing rubber gloves (on your cold hands). When adding spices and herbs, I tend to season my sausage lightly to let the taste of the meat shine through. If you want to test the seasoning of the raw sausage, fry some and taste it before stuffing it into casings. Just pinch up a large piece of the seasoned ground meat, form it into a little patty between your gloved palms, and cook it over medium heat in a skillet until browned on both sides. Then taste it. If you want to taste more of any single seasoning like black
pepper or ground coriander, mix a little more into the raw meat. Jot down your changes so you know how you like it next time. But don’t go overboard with seasoning. Dry-cured sausage tends to lose about 30 percent of its weight when fully dry-cured, a dehydration process that concentrates all the flavors. I under-season to make sure the fully cured meat isn’t overwhelmed by spice flavors.
SALT AND SUGAR
When adding salt and sugar to ground sausage, I usually calculate the amount as a percentage of the total weight of the meat and fat. I add 2 to 4 percent salt and 0.5 to 1 percent sugar by weight. For instance, in my Soppressata Calabrese and Fennel Salami, the total weight of the meat and fat in each recipe is 5 pounds (2.5 kg). In each recipe, I add 2.8 percent salt and 0.5 percent sugar by weight, which works out to 70 grams (½ cup plus 1½ teaspoons) Diamond Crystal kosher salt and 12.5 grams (5¼ teaspoons) dextrose powder or 10.5 g (4 teaspoons) superfine sugar.
It might sound like a lot of salt, but salt does the hard work of curing sausage by dehydrating the meat and making it less hospitable to bad bacteria. I use kosher salt for curing salumi and measure it by weight because this is more accurate than volume measurements. Here’s the reason: salt is the main ingredient that cures the meat, and different salts vary dramatically in their weight-to-volume ratios. See for yourself. Weigh out the same weight of three different salts—fine sea salt, Morton’s kosher salt, and Diamond Crystal kosher salt. Say, 10 grams each. Then use level tablespoons to measure the volume of each little pile of salt. You’ll see that Morton’s measures about one and a half times more than fine sea salt, and Diamond Crystal about twice as much as fine sea salt. That’s a big difference, especially when you’re scaling up salumi recipes from 1 pound of meat to 10 pounds or more. But I know that most American cooks measure by volume, so I tested all the salumi recipes with both volume and weight measurements to make sure they work. For accuracy’s sake, you should know that the volume measurements in my salumi recipes are based on Diamond Crystal kosher. That’s the salt I use for curing meat. If you use a different brand, go by the gram amounts in the recipes, and weigh your salt for an accurate measurement.
