Homemade Pasta Basilicata Style

One of my hobbies involves going on Google Maps satellite view and looking for towns in Southern Italy and then Wikipedia-ing them to see if there's anything of note about them. It pumps my nads when, for instance, a tiny little hilltown with population of 3,000 happens to be the birthplace of Robert DeNiro's great grandparents (Ferrazzano) plus some italian poet or scientist to boot. Call me crazy, but I like when seemingly random and totally overlooked places have these curious facts about them. It works pretty much anywhere in the world these days even if Wikipedia isn't always 100% reliable. So maybe there's an italian who does the same as me with places like Sprague, Connecticut. Ever heard of it?

Anyway, I was browsing around Basilicata, which next to Molise is the least recognized italian region in my opinion. It's the arch of the foot on the boot that is Italy, surrounded by Calabria to the west, Campania to the north and Puglia east. It's got a very low population density and was historically poor, at least since after the days when it was a part of the Magna Grecia. No major modern cities to speak of, and that's what fascinates me.

Basilicata's cuisine reminds me a lot of Calabrian cuisine; extremely simple, a penchant for hot pepper, lots of pork and local cheeses, dried pasta as a staple. This is the type of place where people improvised, often lacking the milled and softened white flours that we take for granted. Buckwheat, unhulled wheat, burnt wheat, semola, chickpea flour all comprise the grain repetoire you'll find throughout Italy, used for centuries by commoners to make meals.

So I got inspired to use on of my staples, chickpea flour, to fashion my interpretation of mischigli and what would be a recognizeable sauce in Basiliacata. I went back to my pasta making roots, recalling the first pasta I ever learned to make during my time in Italy, cecaluccoli.

Snowed in to the irpinian mountains a couple hours east of Naples for two months during the frosty winter in 2005, I would spend a slow lunch service once a week hand crafting this cavatelli clone at the restaurant where I interned. Aside from its name, another curious thing about it is that we'd boil the water before mixing it with the flour to make the dough. Made for a tender pasta. Hours would go by and bags and bags of it would be flash frozen, after I'd shaped it, for later use.

The Mischigli of Basilicata resemble Ceccaluccoli, sort of crude Cavatelli.  

The sauce is comprised of bell peppers, hot pepper, garlic and onion with ricotta salata to garnish. The traditional cheese would be cacioricotta, which is a blend of cheese and the byproduct ricotta that produces something similar to the ricotta salata I used. I opted to employ only green peppers because I want that distinct fresh pepper flavor but not all the sweetness of more mature peppers. Besides, the onions bring plenty of sugar.

Serves 4 with leftovers most likely

Ingredients:

Pasta Dough:

2 cups 00 or all purpose flour
2 cups chickpea flour
1 to 1 1/4 cups water

Sauce:
4 green bell peppers, cut into strips about 2 inches long, 1/2 inch wide
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium onions, sliced 1/2 inch thick
1 jalapeno or other hot pepper, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Cacioricotta or Ricotta salata for garnish

Mix the flours in a bowl or on a board, then add the water gradually (try boiling it first if you want), starting with 1 cup and stir with a wooden spoon to bring it together into a loose ball. If it feels really dry add water bit by bit. Once the spoon stops being useful begin using your hands and fingers to work the mass into a more cohesive ball. Then turn it out onto a board and begin kneading, letting it rest periodically if need be, until you've achieved a smooth ball. Wrap it in plastic and let it rest 30 minutes.

Cut off a piece from the ball and roll back and forth
while moving hands away from each other

Cut and keep rolling until you get snakes like these

Cut them incrementally to about 1 inch pellets

Press down almost through the dough
and roll toward you at the same time

Complete the roll so that the leading edge turns up

Now you'll have that signature channel running
through the "mischiglio"

Bring a pot of water to boil and salt it abundantly.

For the sauce, heat the olive oil in a pan over medium high heat and when hot add the peppers and onions. Let them cook undisturbed 5-10 minutes so that when you toss or mix for the first time the bottom has gotten a good bit of color. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally until the onions and peppers are softened and the onions well colored. Make a well in the middle of the pan, add the hot pepper and garlic, and let it cook for a couple minutes, then stir to combine everything. Continue cooking a couple minutes more to meld the flavors. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Cook the pasta for 5-6 minutes, tasting it once it floats for doneness. Drain and mix in the pan with the vegetables. Garnish with some oilve oil and ricotta salata and serve.

Quick Chicken Hunter Style: Al Cacciatore

Chicken cacciatore is to me the stereotypical idea of what an Italian would do with pieces of chicken...put 'em with tomato sauce! That's not quite it, but not exactly wrong either. A ubiquitous dish in Italy from what I've found, open to lots of interpretations depending on who you talk to. It's a good weeknight meal; quick, not laborious and covering most or all your needs in one pot.


Mine doesn't really draw from any particular place. The idea is to simply brown chicken pieces in oil in a braising pot (cast iron works best), then add some herbs and vegetables, get a good layer of brown bits going on the bottom, de-glaze and create a sauce with wine, stock and/or tomatoes. Last time I had leftover basic tomato sauce and I used that instead of canned tomatoes, which already had its depth of flavor so the end result was even more ricco.

Mushrooms are a common addition and the dish is transformed if you splurge for some haughtier ones like oyster, trumpet, or porcini if you can find them (but dried ones will endow it with some serious woodsiness in no time). That's one route but I included just bell peppers last time I made it, for instance. You can simmer everything just enough to cook the meat through, or until it's falling off the bone if you've included them.

I use boneless, skinless thighs because they are naturally tender and flavorful. Any cut will do, but breasts will definitely be the least interesting. It all comes together in 30-40 minutes and is both satisfying and healthy. It's got that wintry kind of feeling to it if you go for rosemary and other Christmasy herbs as Nicole refers to them, but it can really work any time of year.

Eggless Pasta Dough & Bucatini All' Amatriciana

This isn't a knee jerk reaction to the great egg recall of Summer 2010. I will say don't eat eggs from giant farms that look like that scene from Napoleon Dynamite where he gets paid for a day's work in change and drinks some deep orange drink with egg yolks stirred in to it. Was it all egg yolks or OJ or something?

It's because I wanted to make Bucatini all' Amatriciana, to which I've referred multiple times in recent posts about Rome. I got a new contraption thanks to a Williams Sonoma Gift Card from the wedding, the Kitchen Aid Pasta Press. Not a roller, but a press that forces the dough through plates to create noodles and shapes difficult to do by hand. Among the forms that can be created with it are one of my faves, Rigatoni, and one of the more difficult ones to find in stores, Bucatini.

Kitchen Aid only lists recipes for dough with eggs in them but I know traditionally rigatoni, macaroni and bucatini were semolina flour and water pastas, so I couldn't bring myself to use an egg dough. I had a feeling I might regret my decision, that the machine would reject it, but I am a stickler for tradition in these matters. I know we live in an era of abundance, but if the originators of the recipe made it with flour and water because they had to, then I'm going to follow suit.

The slight problem with making eggless semolina dough is in bringing it together by hand. The semolina makes for a coarse, tough dough, which is why I cut it 50% with unbleached all purpose or 00 flour. Dried pasta you buy in stores is comprised solely of semolina, which is really difficult to work by hand or even a non-commercial mixer.

I've been to the DeCecco factory in Fara San Martino (Abruzzo) and seen their production, which requires massive presses and kneading machines that take the semola and water mixture and force it into familiar shapes. The durum wheat semolina and water look too dry to come together, but with thousand of pounds of force they churn out a multitude of shapes and sizes. With just my two guns at home to help me I can't quite muster that kind of force, so I compromise slightly with the bit of white flour.

It helps considerably with any pasta dough to let it rest periodically during the kneading process. A three to five minute break will do wonders in terms of relaxing the dough and allowing it to become pliable again. Do it as much as you need to to save your triceps and transform the dough into a smooth ball.

If you don't have the attachment you can improvise as so many contadine did for generations.

Wooden skewers, stalks of wheat (grab some from the backyard) or the metal ribs used to provide rigidity to an umbrella can be used.

Take a bit of dough, roll it into a long dowel and cut off tootsie roll portions. Then take the instrument of choice, press it into the dough and begin rolling it back and forth.

This will flatten and force the dough outward, while also keeping it hollow. Time consuming, yes, but it can be done! I've made a Calabrian pasta called Scilatelle in just this way with, yes, wheat stalks.
As for the sauce, hailing from the little town of Amatrice, now in Abruzzo, it's tomato based but spiked with guanciale and usually some hot pepper. That's really it.

Garlic was probably always acceptable, but onions and herbs and anything else are seen as bastardizations in Rome, where the dish has been adopted as a local favorite (kind of strange because Amatrice is about 70 miles away). Top it off with salty aged pecorino and it's an easy to understand classic.

There's no reason why simple tomato sauces have to be bubbling gently for hours over a low flame. Sure, if you're braising braciole in it for Sunday sauce or something it needs time, but otherwise the tomatoes can break down and cook in as little as twenty minutes. This sauce is a perfect example of that. The guanciale adds a depth of flavor quickly with its porky intensity. It tends to be more intense than pancetta, coming from the cheek. But it's also difficult for me to get at stores, which is why I use American bacon. I want the porcine component to bring something more than pancetta can, so I like the smoky forwardness of the American style, in slab form. It's even more distinct than guanciale would be, but I think it works well.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

Pasta dough:

2 cups semolina flour

2 cups 00 or all purpose flour
1 cup water

Amatriciana Sauce:
3 32 oz. cans San Marzano Tomatoes
1/2 lb. smoked or unsmoked slab bacon, medium diced
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 chili pepper, finely diced or 1 teaspoon pepperoncino
Chunk of aged pecorino romano for grating
Salt and pepper to taste

To make the pasta dough mix the flours in a bowl, then add the water and stir to combine with a wooden spoon. When the water has been incorporated and the spoon isn't really do anything anymore use your fingers and knuckles to work the mass into a loose dough.

It should still be quite dry at this point and a decent amount of flour left on the bottom of the bowl. Turn it out onto a work surface and begin kneading, with short rests in between as needed.

Once you've achieved a nice smooth ball wrap it in plastic and let it rest uninterrupted for 30 minutes before making the desired shape.

Bring a pot of water to boil for the pasta. Salt it abundantly.

In a heavy bottom pan or frying pan heat the olive oil over medium low heat. Add the bacon and let it cook slowly so it renders much of its fat without browning too much. When the bottom of the pan is coated with the liquefied bacon fat and most of it is rendered, add the pepper or pepper flakes and let cook for a minute or two.

Add the tomatoes and partially crush them. Bring the sauce to low boil and let it cook, stirring occasionally for twenty minutes or so for the flavors to meld. Season to taste with salt and pepper and keep it on a minimal simmer. This can be made a day in advance to improve flavor.

Cook the pasta in the boiling water, basically until it floats, about 3-5 minutes. Drain, and either toss into the frying pan and stir to combine, or drain to a serving bowl and mix with some olive oil, then top with sauce when serving.

Garnish with pecorino romano and enjoy.

Tuscany I: Villa Bordoni

To prepare us for Tuscany before we left we bought some diffusers with scents like Tuscan Breeze, ate Toscani pasta from Pizza Hut, and we even tried to plan a visit to the Olive Garden Cooking School in Tuscany. But we weren't accepted because in our sample recipe we pushed the envelope too far with a five cheese ravioli and Nutter Butters crumbled on top.

Alright guys. I couldn't help note the way the tag of Tuscan is slapped on innumerable products to lend credibility. But I put effort into not being jaded, and I will say that although Tuscany seems cliche, it's really that spectacular to me. For all the photos and oil paintings of Tuscan landscapes I've seen, I can't get enough of them. And when we were actually there I wanted to just pull to the side of the road, take out a couple lawn chairs and soak the real thing in for hours.

Maybe that's why so many people who've been to Italy say it's the place they want to go back to, a place they'd like to have a second house. Because it's the antithesis of the rat race so many of us live in here. For instance, we arrived in Tuscany at the perfect time. Rome was great, but it's pazzo. Poor us. After four days there we were ready for some space, a lower tempo and greens-ery.

I can't say enough about how connected to the surrounding earth you feel there. We only drank wine from the Chianti zone during our stay, mainly bottles from vineyards in the hills encompassing Greve. There was no reason to drink anything else.

I'll only speak for myself and say it was an amazing experience, but I know Nicole appreciated it as well. It makes me want to move to northern California, where so much of our produce comes from, or just to upstate Connecticut, our own burgeoning small farm country.

Every morning we started the day with Villa Bordoni's exceptional fruit salad, and I know the fresh apricots it was filled with came from the tree on the drive up where they were littering the ground. It wouldn't matter even if the ones we ate were taken from the ground, 'cause I'd eat off it.

Aside from Siena, where we had the worst meal of the entire trip (Elio's pizza I reckon) the food was consistently good, made with care and utilizing raw materials of the highest quality. This is why you go to the country or the burbs in Italy to eat well without trying as hard. Proprietors know tourists still account for a big share of their income in places like Tuscany, but considering their surroundings it's hard not to be happy, and they can more easily maintain tradition that is challenging in constantly evolving city culture. If you serve produce taken from your garden or ingredients from local purveyors you trust, you're not going to want to cut corners and serve up mediocre dishes to people. You want the few products on any given plate to shine--Italian cooking in a nutshell. Think about it; you don't have to be in Italy to know how full of pride itals are about a lot of things, none more than food.

Villa Bordoni is perched a mile or so above the town of Greve, up a winding and very narrow road that gives you a little hell your first time up to it. But when you finally arrive there after about ten minutes and a mouthful of dust things mellow out very quickly. The staff are warm and genuine, welcoming you in for a drink to help settle you in to one of the twelve unique rooms in the estate once owned, like so many country villas, by a Florentine family. It had fallen on bad times and was pretty decrepit when the current owners found and bought it.

Whereas English gardens are proper and orderly, Tuscan gardens are wild and teeming, with lavender and huge bushes of sage dominating, honey bees and bumble bees buzzing all over the place and gorging on the variety of nectars. There were the requisite cypress lining the drive, some lemon trees in the back courtyard, olive groves around the perimeter of the house and grape vines in every direction. The sound of cicadas was ever-present, just pure summertime.

Staying in a villa, albeit a full service one with pool and restaurant, was definitely the way to go for us. You don't get it via day trips from the cities. You can certainly go the agriturismo route, very rewarding I'm sure, but we were newlyweds and we can't kid ourselves that we really wanted to rough it. Bordoni produces both olive oil and wine, which we sampled repeatedly, but neither are quite ready for retail yet. So you just have to enjoy them while you're there.

We originally thought we'd use the villa primarily as a home base for day trips all over the Tuscan map. Maybe take a dip in the pool after a long day of being out and about. But as it turned out we were very content to stay around Greve, hopping on the SR 222 occasionally to go between historic towns in the Chianti Classico zone, never straying more than an hour away.

I mean you have a pool, a full service and good restaurant on premises, a very friendly cat that lounges around the courtyard and the countryside to breath in, so why rush to leave?

We ate at Bordoni's restaurant for lunch and dinner a bunch of times in 4 days/nights, and the last time we went for the tasting menu, which changed daily. The above dish is Pappa al Pomodoro, tomato sauce thickened with old bread into a porridge, and this was served with some pancetta to garnish and a reduction of balsamic. Pappa al Pomodoro is right in my wheelhouse, a great use for old bread, peasant sustenance. I think of it more as a Fall and Winter dish because it's thick and sticks to the ribs, but served warm rather than hot it's just fine on a summer eve. The balsamic looked cool, but since it's not a Tuscan product I could have done without it, not that I made a stink though.

For the primo we had paccheri filled with pecorino toscano and ricotta in a tomato sauce, garnished with basil oil. Pecorino toscano isn't necessarily as salty as that of Rome, and cut by the creamy ricotta it was a cheese lover's delight. The sauce was a smooth and simply tomato with balanced sweetness and acidity. When I see a dish with paccheri on a menu I am probably going to order it.

One of the many local wines we drank during our stay. We almost forgot wine existed in other places for the time being. Not that chianti is the end-all of Italian wine, but the balanced acidity and tannins and the slight fruitiness pair so well with the cuisine of the area. We enjoyed the variations and nuances of so many different bottles from a pretty small geographical area.

For the secondo, some almost bloody beef tagliata from the renowned Falorni butcher down the hill in the main square of Greve, served with a salad of arugula and fennel. Nicole was a little put off by the straight-from-butcher-to-plate-with-a-short-stop-on-a-grill treatment, but it's a more rustic interpretation of bistecca alla fiorentina to me. A little fattier and harder to chew, but good natural flavor. Whether you liked it or not, it was quite a helping. The salad was very good; crunchy and peppery arugula, fragrant fennel in a nicely acidic vinaigrette to help digest all that cow.

For dessert a coffee flavored gelato with whipped cream and chopped nuts to garnish. Simple and refreshing, and so it goes in Toscana.

The best friend we made at Bordoni, Mima. She actually belonged to a family down the road who summer in Greve. Every day she'd come by the property and greet us in the morning on our way to the pool. Not a beggar, just a perfect fixture for the villa, often sprawled out in the sun on the stone patio by day, and there again at night wanting more attention.

I'm ready to go back and work for food and board picking grapes or olives during the harvest.

Tuscan Bread Salad: Panzanella

I feel like I have to sell people on Panzanella, that the idea of a salad composed of moistened bread lacks appeal. Maybe for that reason a lot of American chefs and recipes propose it as a salad with old bread cut into cubes and toasted, basically croutons. But that's the lowest common denominator spin on it, and not at all like the real thing.

I like my panzanella homogeneous with all the elements close to the same size. That way the mound of shredded bread bits dominate, studded with diced vegetables along the way. Those who hearken back to the days when this would have been invented by those looking to stretch every morsel would say panzanella should just be the bread, some olive oil, maybe vinegar, and maybe a handful of olives or tomatoes (post 1492). But the chassis of pane makes for such a good vehicle that it can carry a wide range and varying weight of treats to make a complete meal.

With the setting sun of Labor Day, so too goes the Summer for most intents and purposes. The thrill is gone, or trill if you're French Canadian. This salad works best in Summer, when you tend to seek out crisp, refreshing and watery vegetables. But it can really be employed in any season with raw or cooked vegetables. I suggest though that the first time you make it you get it in while local tomatoes are still on the vines, the Sun is still warm and so is the comradeship.

The only finesse involved is in handling the bread. It needs to be quite old, soaked, then drained without mashing it into a breadball, then torn into bits. For this you will need a rustic, crusty bread. Sandwich bread, whole wheat bread, multi-grain, even most baguettes will not work. They tend to rip and disintegrate with minimal effort when pulled apart, and they become dense like a star turned black hole when wrung out. A ciabatta, a legitimately crusty Italian bread or artisan baguette, with their large irregular holes, will stretch a ways before tearing, and will spring back like a sponge when squeezed. Take a moment or two to visualize the breads I'm talking about and the texture needed.

The bread needs to age long enough that the moisture evaporates from the cells throughout the entire loaf, not just the surface. Kind of strange that you dry the bread out only to re-moisten it, but the air drying changes the properties. Reference my post several months back about Italian bread where I noted that I leave my loaves out and exposed for weeks, by which they last much longer and avoid mold that occurs when you wrap them in air-tight plastic. This dish is exactly why you naturally age bread and don't throw it away. I'll tell you a secret though; in a pinch I will accelerate the aging process by cutting the bread into large chunks and baking them at 225 for about ten minutes. Shhh! Nonna Crocifissa would spank me with the wooden spoon if she ever caught me!

When you think about it you can easily use a whole loaf of Italian bread to make this salad for four people. Don't think one loaf of bread will feed eight. So it's like eating at least four thick slices or so per person, a lot of carbs. But it's so good, especially with some sea salt and good olive oil, occasionally you have to just let it slide.

Serves 4 as a side salad, with some leftover

Ingredients:
1 loaf Italian bread, or equivalent volume of ciabatta or other rustic bread
2 large ripe tomatoes or equivalent weight of smaller ones
Handful of fresh basil
1 cucumber
1/2 to 1 cup olives, briny or oil-cured
Good Tuscan extra virgin olive oil
Optional: red or white wine vinegar
Sea salt & pepper to taste

Take your bread and make sure it's hard and thoroughly dry one way or another. I leave the crust on because I don't mind the contrast of the toasty tasting pieces and whiter pieces, and also because the founders of this recipe wouldn't have wasted anything. They might have used the crust for something else though, which you can too (crackers, bread crumbs). Cut it roughly into chunks a couple inches on each side. Prepare a large mixing bowl or deep dish with some water and place the bread in it and make sure the bread is submerged. Do it in batches if necessary.

Feel the bread after a couple minutes to judge whether it's soaked and softened yet. It should go from hard and unyielding to spongy. If it is soaked through, remove it. If not let it sit for up to twenty minutes. With moderate pressure in your hands squeeze out about 3/4 of the liquid in the bread. You're never going to get it dry, but you want it to stop dripping when you apply moderate pressure.

Place all the drained bread on a platter or in a food processor. If using the machine, pulse it a couple of times very briefly to chop it into irregular but mostly uniform in size pieces. By hand tear the pieces apart and place them in a salad bowl. Drizzle a generous amount of the olive oil on the bread, and vinegar if you like, then gently mix.

Prepare the other ingredients by chopping them into pieces similar in size to the bread. Add them to the bread and dress with more oil (don't be stingy), and vinegar if you'd like. Season to taste with salt and pepper and mix gently so as to keep the bread fluffy. This salad improves over time whereby the bread soaks up the liquid exuded by the other ingredients, melding flavors. You can prepare it several hours in advance, or the day before. Serve at room temperature or only slightly below.

There are all kinds of variations and additions: canned tuna, hard boiled eggs, beans, cheese, fennel, bell pepper, onions, arugula, corn, herbs galore, etc. Or make it apropos for another season like asparagus and favas in the Spring, roasted vegetables like cauliflower and broccoli in Fall or Winter.

Happy Birthday Mom Saponare!