pasta Archives - attheitaliantable.com

August 25, 2016 by Gina Stipo 1 Comment

Amatrice and its gift to Italian culinary history: Amatriciana

Such sad news this week coming out of Italy. As beautiful as the country is, it sits on several tectonic plates which are on the fault line between Europe and Africa. This means that the earthquakes that routinely happen are usually shallow, which cause more damage to the surface than the really deep quakes that happen in Asia or California. The one this week was only 6 miles below the surface and basically leveled several old towns in the mountainous regions of the Appenine mountains of Lazio and Umbria.

Especially noteworthy is the tiny town of Amatrice, high in the mountains and accessible only by a few old roads. I made a pilgrimage there, years ago, in a quest to better understand the pasta sauce amatriciana, which is common on menus in central Italy and is said to have originated in Amatrice. I found a sleepy little town and only one place open for lunch, but the proprietor was happy to discuss the history of amatriciana sauce.

It was developed hundreds of years ago by the shepherds who spent months in the pastures with the sheep, traveling to high mountain meadows in the summer to follow the grazing animals and cooking for themselves. The original recipe was simple: cured pork cheek (guanciale), onions and aged pecorino cheese. These were staples that the shepherds could carry with them and quickly turn into a simple sauce for pasta. As time went on, the tomato gained popularity and was added to the dish.

It is easy to complicate with the addition of sausage or white wine or parsley, but the original recipe is simple and requires only a few ingredients, provided the ingredients are of excellent quality: pork cheek or pork belly (guanciale or pancetta) which has been cured with lots of black pepper; sliced or chopped onions; aged pecorino cheese such as pecorino romano which is generously grated over the top. Tomato sauce is optional but I like to use it.

Amatriciana is traditionally tossed with bucatini pasta, a thick spaghetti with a hole through the middle. Made with semolina and water, it comes dried in a box and can be found in specialty stores and is a common pasta in the Rome area. You can use another dried pasta such as spaghetti or spaghettini, but I like to use homemade spaghetti alla chitarra, made with semolina, water and olive oil, and cut by hand on a chitarra, or “guitar”. It’s commonly used in the Abruzzo area just to the south, which sustained a major earthquake in 2009.

The 50th annual sagra of spaghetti all’Amatriciana was scheduled for this weekend. Sadly, I doubt the town will ever recover to hold another one. At the Italian Table will be making this pasta all weekend and raising a toast to the people who survived while saying a prayer for those who lost their lives. God bless all those in central Italy who are affected and all those who are there helping and giving aid.

Pasta all’Amatriciana

1/4 cup olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, chopped

8 oz guanciale or pancetta, cubed

6 cups tomatoes, crushed with juices

1 cup grated pecorino cheese

sea salt

The pork cheek or belly should be well cured with black pepper and very fatty. If you can’t find that, use the fattiest pancetta you can get and add black better while it’s sauteing.

Sauté the guanciale or pancetta in a medium sauce pan, using a small amount of the olive oil. Remove to side and sauté onion and garlic in olive oil until soft, adding additional olive oil if necessary. Return the meat to the pan, add the tomatoes and salt and freshly ground pepper, simmer for 30 minutes. Toss with cooked spaghetti, or use the more traditional bucatini if you can find them. At the restaurant, we use homemade spaghetti alla chitarra. Serve with lots of grated pecorino romano cheese.

October 2, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Pasta of Campania

Quick! What are everyone’s two favorite Italian foods??!!

I hear you, I hear you shouting “PIZZA AND PASTA!!!”

Well you can thank the Napolitani for that, because both pizza and pasta originate in Naples and weren’t widely known, eaten or cooked outside of the south until after World War II. American GI’s are credited for increasing the awareness of pizza, but pasta is a different story.

Dried pasta has long been a staple of southern Italy but is a fairly new addition to the northern Italian diet. Northern regions like Tuscany, Lombardy and the Veneto have always relied on bread, polenta and rice for their starches, with fresh egg pasta made on Sundays and holidays. As southern Italians moved north to find jobs in factories after WWII and brought their favorite food staple of dried semolina-based pasta with them, it began to be sold and eaten in the homes of northern Italians as well.

Where two generations ago few Italians north of Rome ate dried pasta, now Italians everywhere don’t feel complete unless they’ve had at least one plate of pasta a day. Large pasta companies like Barilla and DeCecco, among others, opened massive factories in the north to keep up with the demand.

But if you truly want to understand pasta, you must go south to the area around the Bay of Naples.

Gragnano, along with the neighboring town of Torre Annunziata, has been a pasta-making center since the late 1800’s and was designed with pasta in mind. Located on the eastern side of the Bay of Naples under the shadow of a volcano, the constant sea breezes and humidity were ideal for drying pasta. The fertile valley of Vesuvius, with its volcanic soil, was ideal for growing durum wheat, and the fresh water from the mountains combined to produce the perfect pasta. On the banks of a river lined with mills for grinding durum wheat into semolina flour, the streets lie perpendicular to the Sorrento coast to take advantage of the constant sea breezes that were used to dry the strands of pasta. There are many old photos from the early 20^th century showing racks and racks of long spaghetti lining the streets and balconies, drying in the open air.

It’s a more hygienic operation these days with the pasta being made and dried indoors, but on an artisan scale. Using time honored methods for extruding and drying the pasta, the pasta of Gragnano differs dramatically from modern industrially produced pasta in two important ways: adherence of the sauce and chewiness.

Modern pasta factories use Teflon dies to extrude pasta shapes, which makes the pasta slick, allowing sauce to slide off rather than adhere. The artisan method utilizied in Gragnano uses original bronze dies which are inherently rough, catching the dough and texturing it, which makes the pasta hold onto its sauce better.

The other important difference is the drying time. In modern factories, where time is money, pasta is dried in large ovens for 2-4 hours, depending on the shape and thickness. In Gragnano they understand that long, slow drying results in denser, more elastic pasta, which when cooked has a satisfying chewiness. Drying times can be anywhere from 10 hours to 7 days. Here time isn’t money, it’s quality.

Gragnano has several artisan pasta factories that you can tour to experience first hand the hot and humid environment necessary for making excellent pasta. The valley of Vesuvius is no longer used to grow wheat, they turn to vast fields in Canada for that. But the local water and the pride in Campania’s pasta culture and history combine to offer a product which has no equal in the north.

May 17, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Duck eggs and pasta

While there are many different types of pasta in Italy, the most luscious is that made at home with soft “00” flour and fresh whole eggs. The fat of the yolk gives the pasta added elasticity and richness. Throughout Italy, the duck egg is the most prized for making pasta. Hard to come by, duck eggs aren’t for sale, you just have to know someone with a duck. Luckily I know Novelia.

Novelia is my friend from Abruzzo whom I visited recently, and while she doesn’t have a duck, she knows someone who has a duck. It’s all about who you know in Italy. Well, this duck of a friend of a friend is having a pretty good spring and has been producing a lot of eggs. Novelia had been given three of them. If you can get your hands on a duck egg, it is a treasure to be guarded and protected and sometimes shared. Since she could use only two and as she shares my passion for pasta, she also shared her treasure.

I carefully brought the treasure home in a nest I made in the car, double wrapped in aluminum foil and plastic.

I introduced it to the hen eggs and let it lord over them for the night, then the next morning we made pasta.

One large duck egg is equal to about four medium hen eggs. The shell is more compact and heavier than a hen’s, the white is clearer and thinner and the yolk is denser and stickier. Encased in an elastic sack that’s thicker than a hen’s, the yolk yields to the touch before breaking and oozing slowly out of its encasing. The pasta was soft and beautiful, we used about 3 cups of “00” flour and kneaded it until it was satiny and elastic.

Fresh Pasta Dough

Following is a basic recipe for the dough for whole egg pasta, used for making homemade tagliatelli, papparadelle, spaghetti alla chitarra and all stuffed pasta shapes.

1½ cup “00” flour or 1¼ cup all purpose flour

2 large eggs

Use 1 egg for every 2 people you are cooking for. If you can get a duck egg, it should feed six people. Place flour in a bowl or on the board or table, make a well in the center, add the eggs and beat with a fork or two fingers, mixing the yolk and white together and gradually incorporating the flour. When the dough starts to come together, form it into a ball, gathering and scraping up all the loose ends of dough. Knead it until it’s smooth and elastic. If the dough is at all sticky, add additional flour, just enough to keep it from sticky to your hands and the board. The dough should be smooth, satiny and stiffens the more you work with it. Depending on the humidity and the size of the eggs, you may need more or less flour, which can be determined while you work it. When the ball is smooth and elastic, cover with plastic wrap and let it rest at least 10 minutes. Use a pasta machine to elongate and shape the sheets of pasta.

January 25, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Faella, Pasta of my childhood

When I was young and we went to visit my paternal grandparents in Brooklyn, I would go with my Grandma to make her shopping rounds in the neighborhood. She stopped at the bakery to get the Italian braided bread topped with sesame seeds and at the butcher to get the right cut of meat for the braciole; then we’d go to the deli to pick up locally made Italian salami and mozzarella as well as dry goods brought over from Italy. I remember the package of pasta that she always chose: white paper encasing long spaghetti, simple blue and red letters and a clear plastic window so you could see what kind of pasta you were getting. It wasn’t a brand my mother bought and I’ve never seen it in a store since that time.

Until two years ago when I was walking through Naples, and in the window of a little alimentari, a small shop serving the needs of a typical Napolitano neighborhood, I saw a big display that looked so familiar I stopped dead in my tracks. FAELLA, the white packaging with blue and red letters said, and I recognized it immediately as my grandmother’s favorite pasta. Someone, somewhere, was still making the pasta I ate when I was a kid. I had to find them.

I talked to my friend SabatoAbagnale, the head of Sorrento’s Slow Food chapter. Yes, he said, he knew Faella well, it being one of the original artisan pastas from the nearby town of Gragnano (see a previous blog for more on this pasta town). So Sabato and I made an appointment to visit Faella’s production facility, where they still had in use some of the original machines from the early 1900’s.

We met Mario Faella, the 95 year old son of the original owner, who still came down to the factory every day to oversee operations—not because they needed him, he said, but because he enjoyed being there among the action. He’s a legend, charming and polite. Mario kindly took me on a tour, showing me how they made and dried spaghetti and it felt like coming home.

I wanted to tell him what drew me to his factory, why Faella pasta meant something to me and how happy I was to come to Naples and still see the same brand my grandmother used 50 years ago in New York. So I said, “My grandmother was originally from Montella (a town in the mountains an hour away) but she moved to America, and when I was growing up I remember she always used Faella pasta. I didn’t know it was still around, I only just saw it in a store last week in Naples.”

Mario looked me clearly in the eye, his finger pointing to the heavens, and he started his story: “There was a young man, who was the son of our manager, Domenico Letterese was his name, but he didn’t like working in the factory, he didn’t want to study. And my father said to him ‘Domenico, if you don’t want to study you have to take our pasta to America!’ This was before the war. So Domenico took our pasta on the boat in big trunks and sold it to a man who had a store in Brooklyn, and for years we sold our pasta to that one store in Brooklyn!”

“That’s where my grandmother bought it!” I said excitedly. “She lived in Brooklyn! My grandmother bought your pasta from that store!”

All those years, four degrees of separation between me and this charming old man whom I’d never met before, making delicious pasta at his family’s factory in a small town on the coast of Sorrento for my family to enjoy a taste of the old country in Brooklyn.

And now you can once again get Faella pasta on the shores on America, through www.gustiamo.com. Tell them Gina’s grandma sent you!

Buon Appetito! Gina