"Testarolo" with Pesto Sauce

Ok, this is from the series "Italian Recipes Most Non-Italians (and even some Italians) Don't Know"!

A great summer recipe if you have a bumper crop of basil in your garden or if you can buy fresh basil in large quantities. This recipe requires a food processor, unless you want to use a mortar and pestle.

The "Testarolo" is a typical flat bread of the Lunigiana region of Tuscany. That would be the most northern tip of Tuscany that borders on Liguria to the east and Emilia Romagna to the west. Basically it is a batter about the consistency of pancake batter that is cooked on a terracotta (or cast iron) "testo", a special baking dish used directly on hot coals. Fortunately, for me, I can buy it at the grocery store. 

If you can't find a "testarolo" or don't want to make one fresh, you can serve your pesto with pasta.

Ingredients:

This will make a large quantity of pesto, which you can keep for several days in the refrigerator.

about 2 cups of loosely packed fresh basil (about 2 ounces)

a scant half cup of extra virgin olive oil

about 6 walnut meats (the original recipe calls for pinoli nuts, but in my house no one likes them so I use either walnuts or pecans)

1 clove of garlic

50 grams Parmigiano or Grana Padano cheese (about 2 oz)

pinch of sea salt (regular will do)

Wash and dry the basil leaves

break the cheese up into small pieces, remove skin from garlic clove

Place the nuts, garlic and cheese in the processer and process on high until it starts to form a crumbly paste

Add about half of the basil, half of the oil and the salt to the processor. Process on high until a cream starts to form.

Add the rest of the basil and oil to the processor and process on high until the pesto is the consistency you want.

It should look something like this. 

Put a large pot of water on to boil, and if you are using a testarolo cut it into 1" pieces 

When the water comes to a boil, add the cut up testarolo. It only has to boil for a minute or two. Drain as you would for pasta, season with pesto (you will need about 1/3 of the amount this recipe yields) and serve.

If you are using pasta, cook 4 servings of pasta according to the package directions, season with about 1/3 of the pesto sauce and serve.

Buon appetito!! 

What exactly is "authentic" Italian cooking??

Well! A lot has happened since my last blog post in September 2012!! I would like to share a personal note with you before I get to my cooking craziness for the day!
 I left Italy for the states in early November to spend some time with my Dad and mom. Daddy's health had been failing quickly in the months prior to my trip and every time I would talk to him, he would ask me, "when are you coming?" I really didn't know when would be the best time.. I was thinking about Christmas with the family. Then one day when he asked me when I was going to go "home" for a visit, I said "in the fall, Dad. I'll be there in the fall". I really hate to fly... and I kept putting off purchasing that ticket. I had a knitting workshop planned for mid October and I knew that if I didn't pick my dates soon.... so in mid October, right before leaving for the workshop I got online and purchased my tickets, with a departure date of November 8th. I really didn't pick that particular date.. I just put in the first week of November as my departure and the second week of December as my return. Then, with incredible logic ;) I picked the cheapest flight that Lufthansa had! God works in mysterious ways, and most of the time we are not privy to his plans! I was able to spend about 2 months with my Dad and mom. When I saw that Dad was failing fast, I changed my return flight so I could be with him and my mother as long as they needed me. Daddy went "home" to his Father on December 18th. Had I waited for Christmas I would have missed out on a couple of great months with my parents. Mom came back to Italy with me in mid January and we continued our mother-daughter visit on into mid February. One of the things I enjoyed doing most with my mom was going into town every morning to "shop"... we would go to the green grocer and look at what was available, build our lunch and dinner menus around what we saw there. Then off to the baker for some fresh bread, then maybe some fresh pasta and so on. So you see in the end this little personal note of mine ties in with my question: "what exactly is "authentic" Italian cooking?"

I am by no means a food snob! However... authentic is a hard word to use when describing an ethnic recipe. Let's take Pasta alla Carbonara for example. How do you fix it? Bacon, onions, cream, eggs, cheese? or maybe just bacon no onion, white wine, eggs cheese? However you fix it, I am willing to bet it is a far cry from the "authentic" recipe, which is often contaminated even in Italy!
I don't want to write a treatise here on pasta alla carbonara.. so suffice it to say that the recipe probably originated among the "carbonai" from the Lazio region of Italy. The carbonai were men who went into the hills, collected wood, made carefully constructed mounds out of it which then then allowed to burn very slowly to make charcoal. this was a long process and they would spend weeks or even months away from home. Their food was very simple and based on whatever they had with them, usually eggs (they probably brought chickens with them for the eggs), guanciale (a cured fatty meat made from pig's jowl) conserved with salt and black pepper, "cacio" (a sharp, hard cheese made from sheep's milk) and pasta. They would render the guanciale in a frying pan over the fire, boil the pasta; when the pasta was cooked they would add it to the pan with the guanciale, crack a couple of eggs over it, add a good grating of "cacio" - toss and eat. A far cry from the not so authentic dish proposed in the menus of many "authentic" Italian restaurants!


Well, today... I made a not so authentic, but very Italian pasta and beans dish (pasta e fagioli). I found beautiful fresh borlotto beans at the grocery store this week (mom would call them "fagioli della Regina" - the queen's beans, a colloquial name for this variety of borlotto beans). The price was right, they are delicious and nutritious.. so into my cart they went! Today I decided to make them with "maltagliati" - a homemade pasta that you cut with a knife into little squares or diamonds without the aid of a pasta cutter, hence "maltagliati" or... poorly cut! I have always seen this dish made with onions, beans and tomato sauce. The pasta is usually the typical egg pasta, cut by hand into diamonds. But I prefer my beans "in bianco" or white, with no tomato and I love pasta made with buckwheat flour! So here goes my not so authentic, but very Italian pasta and beans recipe!

 Ingredients for 2 people

For the beans
about 1 lb of fresh unshelled borlotto beans (the weight includes pods and all, forgot to weight them after they were shelled!)
2 or 3 cloves of garlic
a couple of sprigs of Italian parsley (not the curly kind, but the kind with flat leaves, not to be confused with cilantro)
salt to taste
black pepper to taste
extra virgin olive oil to taste

Shell the beans and put them in a pot with enough water to cover them by about 2 inches. Salt the water to taste, bring to a boil and cook for about 30 minutes or until you can squash a bean against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. When the beans are cooked, add salt if needed, add the garlic cloves, peeled but not cut, 2 or 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Cover and set aside.



For the pasta
about 3 to 4 oz. of flour, I used half buckwheat and half white, but if you can't find buckwheat flour you can use all white, or half whole wheat and half white.
1 egg
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

So, I unauthentically put the flour, egg and oil into my food processor and processed it for about 30 seconds on high. 

This what your dough will look like, more or less.

Remove from processor to a wooden board, add a bit of flour and knead it for about 5 minutes until it is smooth

This is what it will look like - it should be fairly soft, but not sticky

Now use a pasta machine to roll out the pasta. I make mine pretty thin. This is up to you. I don't like my homemade pasta too thick.

Now you should have sheets of pasta that look more or less like this on your board.

 Use a very sharp knife to cut the sheets of pasta into diamond shapes that are about 1.5 x 1.5"









The diamonds or squares should be more or less this size.

Dust with flour so they don't stick together. Now bring your beans back to a boil. You may or may not want to remove the garlic cloves. i take them out so I don't have to hear someone complain "why do I always get the garlic?!" Smash some of the beans against the side of the pot for a creamier consistency. Add just enough water to cover the beans and when it comes to a boil, add the pasta. If you use buckwheat or whole wheat flour, you should let the beans and pasta cook for about 4 or 5 minutes. If you use white flour, it should only take a minute or two.

Continue to stir as the pasta cooks so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot. You may need to add some water if it is too thick or is sticking to the pan. You can make it as soupy or as dry as you like it. We like it creamy but not soupy. Add the minced parsley. Taste it and correct the seasoning. Serve with a swirl of olive oil and Buon appetito!!

Rainy Day Sandwich

Contrary to popular opinion it DOES rain in sunny Italy!! This is the view from my window.. I can hardly make out the mountains through the clouds!
Sometimes you just want a good sandwich.. and today is one of those days!
But.. I had no sandwich fixings in my fridge!! This is where living in the city is a real boon!
Fortunately - for me - there is a great Deli across the street so... I ran across the street in the middle of lunch time traffic and in the rain to Pasquale and Ida's Pizziccheria (the colloquial tuscanism for Deli which literally means - a place to pick, as in "I'll just pick"!)...

Fortunately - for me - there is a great Deli across the street so... I ran across the street in the middle of lunch time traffic and in the rain to Pasquale and Ida's Pizziccheria (the colloquial tuscanism for Deli which literally means - a place to pick, as in "I'll just pick"!)...

and this is what I came home with! 1 etto (that would be 100 grammi - that whole decimal think in the 60s and 70s paid off for me!) of delicious boiled ham, 4 slices of aged Fontina cheese, (yep, I can buy my lunch meats and cheeses by the slice if I want!), A piece of fragrant freshly baked focaccia, a tube of mayo (yep, they sell may in a toothpaste sized tube here - haha tricks you into thinking that you won't eat too much, I guess!) and a bag of the latest in San Carlo potato chips - lime and pink pepper (superb, I might add!).

I added some sliced tomato between the ham and the cheese, slathered on the mayo... like that old rye bread commercial... "it makes a nice sandwich"

Added some chips... and... Buon Appetito ,,,,

and here's to a sunny tommorrow in Lucca! The sun is already peeking out trhough the clouds and I can see my mountains behind the church cupola and steeples!!

Eggplant, Olive and Tomato Sauce - Today's Quick Recipe

Eggplant, Olive and Tomato Sauce
 for pasta or rice

Today was a "take a look in the fridge and see what I can come up with " day! I saw that I had an eggplant and spicy green olives - my wheels started turning and here is what I came up with!

Ingredients for 2

1 medium eggplant
about 1/2 cup of green olives, if you can find the spicy kind - good, otherwise the ones stuffed with pimiento will work fine.
about 1/2 cup of tomato sauce or canned Italian plum tomatos
1 clove garlic
Extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste
freshly grated parmigiano cheese

First cut the eggplant in quarters lengthwise and then slice each quarter in half again lengthwise. Now cut each wedge into about 5 chunks so that each piece had one side with the skin still on it - this keeps the eggplant from falling apart in the sauce! Coarsely chop or slice the olives.
Saute the eggplant in a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil with the garlic clove in a large non-stick frying pan. Stir from time to time so that all sides of the eggplant chunks get browned.

** Does it really make a difference if I don't use extra virgin olive oil? the answer, in my book, is YES!! I would even go as far to say that using Spanish or Greek or Californian olive oil will change the taste. Which is not to say that these oils are equally delicious. However oils from different olives or different regions DO taste different and different grades really do make a difference. If you prefer a lighter, less "olivy" taste - go ahead and use olive oil in the place of the extra virgin.**


When the eggplant is nicely browned on all sides. Add the chopped or sliced olives olives and toss to mix. Now add the tomato sauce. If you are using the plum tomatoes you don't have to blend them, I just kind of squish them through my fingers (wash your hands!) right into the pan. Check for salt and pepper and correct the seasoning. Turn the heat to low and let the sauce simmer. It will be a thick and chunky sauce, not liquid.

Put a pot of water on to boil for your pasta or rice. I made both today, my husband wanted whole grain rice, I wanted rigatoni pasta! When the water boils, cook the rice or pasta. (This is a great way to use left over white rice, even if it's left over from the Chinese take-out you had last night!)

Drain and add the pasta or rice to the frying pan with the sauce. Turn up the heat for a couple of minutes and toss the pasta or rice with the condiment so that the flavor soaks in! That's it! Transfer to plates and serve with freshly grated parmigiano cheese!

Buon appetito!

Tired of the same old noodle??

Well! It has been a long, hot summer here in Lucca with temperatures in the high nineties and even 100° for the last 2 and a half months!
I really do not do well in the heat... and so I have sorely neglected my blogs and have been spending most of my time sitting on my sofa in my cool living room knitting!

But the temps are down and today while I was making some tagliatelle for lunch I decided to experiment with "decorating" my pasta!
It is really quite simple... after you have rolled out your pasta to the thickness you want, arrange some basil leaves (or parsley, or sage or any other herb leaf) on half of a sheet of pasta. I discovered that this works best if the leaves are face down, if they are face up they tend to curl.
Then fold the other half of the sheet over the leaves, gently tamp it down and pass the folded sheet through the rollers of your pasta machine one or two more times on the same thickness. The result is beautiful!!

I went ahead and cut the sheet into tagliatelle, but you could use these sheets of pasta to make beautiful first dishes. You might want to try cutting them in 6" - 8" lengths. Then gently boil, spread with a ricotta filling, roll them up and bake in a hot oven 400°F for about 10 minutes to set the filling and serve with a cream sauce and freshly grated parmigiano cheese or even with a delicate tomato sauce.
Or you might try making a vegetable lasagna with a light bechemel sauce.

I am thinking about trying this with edible flower petals! Rose, violet or nasturtium petals in a variety of colours in tagliatelle served with a delicate shrimp and cream sauce. Sounds delicious to me!

Use your imagination and have fun!!

Here are a few photographs illustrating the steps.

 Roll out your pasta to the thickness you want.
Arrange the leaves FACE DOWN on half of the sheet  - I took the photo before I realised that they would curl and I did turn them over before proceeding.

 Fold the other half of the sheet over the leaves and gently tamp it down to set the leaves. Now pass it through the rollers on the same thickness you used before. I passed it through twice (on the same thickness)

And that's all there is to it!
Have fun!

Sunday Dinner on a Wednesday Afternoon

 When I was a child, growing up in Missouri, our classic Sunday Dinner (served when we got home from Church at about 1pm) was spaghetti with sauce made with meatballs, sausage and braciole. I can vaguely remember my Italian grandmother Paolina making homemade tagliatelle and seeing them hanging on a broomstick supported between two chairs! This meal brings back great memories - just the aroma of the sauce cooking makes me feel at home wherever I am!
This is my version - I think each of us takes our mother's recipe and we add our own special touches! My mom is a great cook and her good meals are appreciated by all who eat at her table! I learned to cook from her and I appreciate all the things she has taught me - in the kitchen and out of it!!




So here we go! I start by making my braciole (called "brajols" by the "americani" in South Philly!)
I use slices of young beef, I put some fresh garlic, parsely, grated parmigiano cheese and freshly ground pepper on each slice, then roll it up and secure with a toothpick.

Next I make my meatballs. I use lean, good quality ground beef. Here I used about 1/2 pound of meat, 1 fressh egg, about a cup of grated cheese (we like our meatballs cheesy!) about 1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs (unseasoned!), fresh chopped parsely, 1 garlic clove finely chopped or pressed through a garlic press,  freshly ground pepper. I generally don't put salt, as the cheese is already salty enough!

I mix it all together with my hands - fundamental! and then make smallish meatballs - about the size of a golf ball.

 I also use fresh pork sausages. Here in toscana they are seasoned with salt, pepper and a mix of spices they call "droga" here. ;)

 When all the meat is ready, put a couple of tablespoons of extravirgin olive oil in a large saucepan along with a small onion or 1/2 large onion and a couple of cloves of garlic. When it starts to sizzle I start adding my meat, keeping the heat at medium to prevent the meat from sticking.

 Slowly brown the meat and if you want, add a splash of white or red wine at the end of the browning. Next blend  1 large can of plum tomatoes - if you can find San Marzano Italian tomatoes, use them! Add the pureed tomatoes to the browned meat along with several leaves of fresh basil.

 When it comes to a boil, lower the heat to simmer and cover but not tightly. I usually rest a wooden spoon across the top of the pot and rest the lid on it.

 Now it's time to make the pasta! For the four of us I used 3 eggs, about 2 and a half cups of semolina, a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of extravirgin olive oil. Mix into a firm, "silky" dough and allow to rest for about 10 -15 minutes. Then, if it is sticky, knead in a bit more flour. I use a manual pasta machina - you can see this recipe for the method

By the time you are finished making the pasta, the sauce should look about like this. The whole process took me about 2 hours from starting with the raw meat to getting it on the table!

 Take the meat out of the sauce to serve with the pasta or after the pasta with a tossed saled.










Season the pasta with the sauce and transfer to a large serving tray. Fix a gravy bowl with extra sauce in it for those who like more sauce on their pasta! Serve with lots of freshly grated parmigiano cheese and as Julia Child might have said had she spoken Italian instead of French... BUON APPETITO!





ps - instead of dessert I served fresh pineapple and strawberries after the meal!

Pasta e Fagioli made with fresh buckwheat noodles

I used to think that making home made pasta ("homemades" if you were raised in South Philly) was really a long and drawn out process, but I realised that the long drawn out part was related to the quantity of pasta you have to make! Now that my kids have flown the coop and it's just Franco and me, making home made pasta is really a snap. Usually 1 large egg and about 1 cup of flour is more than enough for the two of us. And if you are really lazy you can throw the ingredients into a food processer - et voilà - your dough is done in about a minute! And if you have a pasta machine, it really only takes 30 minutes or less from start to finish. I am not talking about electric extruder type machines that can cost over a hundred dollars, but one of those stainless steel manual machine that rolls and cuts your dough into either narrow (tagliolini) or wide (tagliatelle) ribbon noodles. You can buy one in the housewares section of most department stores. 
What I love most about cooking, aside from the delicious results, is the creativity! 
Once you learn the basics, you can pretty much wing it and mix ingredients and ideas to come up with your own particular twist to an old recipe. Today I decided to bring together two really traditional dishes to create my own version of pasta and beans, using pizzoccheri instead of the more traditional durum wheat pasta.
Pasta e Fagioli - pasta and beans - is a traditional meatless Italian dish. Very hearty and very healthy. It can be fixed in a variety of ways, depending on the regional recipe you choose. It can be rather brothy and eaten with a spoon, or quite thick in consistency and eaten with a fork. My father-in-law, being from Campania, followed the Neapolitan tradition and cooked the pasta with the beans, resulting in a thick, hearty one dish meal. I prefer my pasta and beans "in bianco" - that is with no tomato sauce added. I season it with extra virgin olive oil, lots of garlic and chopped fresh parsely. 
I love home made pasta. I particularly love "pizzoccheri" which are short ribbon noodles made with buckwheat flour and are typical of the Lombardia region of Italy, more specifically the Valtellina. It is a traditional pasta with a very long history, probably dating back to the mid 1500s when buckwheat was first introduced into the Valtellina area. Buckwheat is grano saraceno in Italian, used to make buckwheat flour - furmentùn or farìna négra - in the local dialect. Now the traditional recipe for using pizzoccheri is very rich and includes cabbage, lots of butter, 2 or 3 types of fatty local cheeses and potatoes. But today I am making them with beans!

So let's get started.

If you are starting with dry beans, you should start the night before and soak the beans overnight. Then the next day, cook them until done. Season with salt, pepper, olive oil, garlic and parsely. If you are using canned or fresh beans, they don't need to be soaked over night.

Rather than the typical pizzoccheri made with white flour, buckwheat flour and warm water, I opted for making them with 2/3 cup buckwheat flour, 1/3 cup semolina flour, 1 large egg, 1 T olive oil, and water as needed. I mixed together the flours, the egg and the oil to obtain a rather stiff dough. I added about a tablespoon of warm water as I was mixing because the dough was a bit too stiff. You need to work the dough about 5 minutes by hand. If you have a food processor or kitchen-aid go ahead and use it to make the dough.
Let the dough rest for about 10 min.

I cut my dough in several pieces before I start rolling it out, to save time as I go along. We are looking for a rather thick noodle. 

My pasta machine can roll the pasta out to 8 thicknesses. 

For these noodles I stopped at the 5th thickness setting. I usually roll all the pieces on one setting, and then go on to the next, and so on. This way I don't have to keep resetting the thickness.

The sheets of dough should be "translucent" and about 1/4" thick. 

When all of the sheets have been rolled out to the right thickness, cut the sheets in to about 4"  lengths. We are looking for a short noodle that will amalgamate well with the cooked beans. 

I usually let the sheets of dough dry for about 10 to 15 minutes before cutting them so the noodles don't stick together. At this point put a large pot of water on to boil. 

I don't cook the "homemades" together with the beans because the results would be too starchy. I cook the noodles separately for about 1 minute - that's all fresh pasta takes - and then add them to the beans and cook for about another 30 seconds so all of the flavours blend together.

Drain the noodles and add to the beans, stir over high heat for about 30 seconds, taste and correct the seasoning. You may need to add some more extra virgin olive oil. That's it! 

And as Julia Child would have said had she spoken Italian... BUON APPETITO!