Rustic Italian Food Read online

  PANNOCCHIA PIZZA

  Skip all the other toppings. Instead, sauté 2 tablespoons corn kernels and some snipped fresh chives in a little olive oil. Grill 1 trimmed scallion until it just starts to go limp, 1 minute per side, then coarsely chop it. Spread a thin layer of Rich Corn Crema over the dough. Top with ½ cup cubed fresh mozzarella and bake until crisp. When the pizza comes out of the oven, spoon on the corn mixture, the grilled chopped scallion, and ⅓ cup diced buffalo mozzarella.

  TRENTINO

  Skip all the other toppings. Instead, cut 4 fresh figs in half lengthwise and grill, cut side down, over medium-high heat until browned, 1 to 2 minutes (or broil cut side up 4 to 6 inches from the heat until browned). Toss with 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, ½ teaspoon balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Arrange the figs, cut side down, on the dough round and scatter on ½ cup crumbled Gorgonzola and ⅓ cup diced fresh mozzarella. Bake until crisp, then top with 4 very thin slices of Beef Speck or purchased pork speck.

  SARDINIAN

  Skip all the other toppings. Instead, slice half a small zucchini into thin rounds and bake on a baking sheet in a preheated 350°F oven until soft, 2 to 3 minutes. Mix together 2 tablespoons ricotta cheese, ⅛ teaspoon chopped fresh chives, and ⅛ teaspoon chopped fresh parsley. Layer the pizza with ¼ cup diced fresh mozzarella, 2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan, the zucchini, and dollops of the ricotta. Bake until crisp, then top with 1 to 2 teaspoons very thinly sliced bottarga (Sardinian sun-dried fish roe).

  NUTELLA

  Skip all the other toppings. Stack two balls of Romana pizza dough directly on top of each other and roll out to a 12-inch diameter. Dimple the dough with a pizza dough docker (a roller with long spikes on it; see Sources). Bake the dough stack until it puffs but doesn’t brown too much, 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from the oven and, using a long, serrated knife, cut the dough in half horizontally (essentially separating the two dough rounds). Scrape out the loose dough from the inside of each round with a spoon. You want to make it thinner, almost like a cracker. Spread the inside of one of the rounds with a layer of chocolate hazelnut spread such as Nutella. Put the other round back on top. Bake again until nicely browned, 1 to 2 minutes. Remove and dust with confectioners’ sugar. Cut into wedges like a pizza.

  BEVERAGE—Medici Ermete, Lambrusco di Salomino di Santa Croce 2009 “Concerto” (Emilia Romagna): Throughout Italy, Lambrusco is the wine to drink with Roman pizza. It’s frothy, cold, inky purple in color, and loaded with tart berry fruit.

  Part Skim Is Part Insane

  The mozzarella we use on our pizza is very specific. It’s usually aged for forty-eight hours before the cheese maker sends it to us. This makes all the difference in the world. We can tell when they are running behind and send us mozzarella that has been made the same day or only aged for twenty-four hours. It starts to break down when the pizza goes in the oven and it separates. Instead of creamy, it comes out grainy. It’s important when making a simple pizza like Margherita to find handmade mozzarella from a reputable cheese maker. The store-bought vacuum-sealed stuff just will not do for this preparation. And please, if you are thinking of using part-skim mozzarella, stop thinking.

  Lombarda Pizza, a variation of Margherita Pizza

  Mortadella Pizza

  Mortadella PIZZA

  I make all sorts of dishes with my homemade salumi. Pasta sauces, ravioli fillings, and pizzas top the list. When I make a pizza with sausage, I think about what’s in the sausage and how to play off the flavors. Mortadella has pistachios, so I like to drizzle on some chopped pistachios and extra-virgin olive oil. When you buzz them together in a food processor, the oil picks up a beautiful green color. And because this pizza has a fair amount going on (the sausage, the cheese, the pistachios), I like to use the Naples dough, which holds all the ingredients a little better than the thinner Roman dough.

  MAKES ONE 12-INCH PIZZA

  1 round Napoletana Pizza Dough

  ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

  ½ cup cubed fresh mozzarella

  2 ounces thinly sliced Lamb Mortadella or purchased pork mortadella

  ½ cup shelled pistachios

  ¾ cup extra-virgin olive oil

  Remove all but the bottom rack in your oven and put a baking stone on the rack. Preheat the oven to 500°F for at least 30 minutes. If you have convection, turn it on to help brown and blister the top of the pizza.

  Place the dough round on a well-floured rimless baking sheet. Arrange a few slices of mortadella over the dough. Scatter the Parmesan and mozzarella over the mortadella. Slide the pizza onto the hot stone and bake until the cheese melts and the crust is golden brown, 5 to 7 minutes.

  Meanwhile, buzz the pistachios and oil in a food processor until the nuts are coarsely chopped, about a minute.

  Transfer the pizza to a cutting board and drizzle with about 1½ tablespoons of the pistachio mixture (save the rest for another use). Cut into wedges.

  MARINARA PIZZA

  Skip all the other toppings. Instead, thinly slice a clove of garlic and warm it up in a little olive oil in a pan, 2 to 3 minutes. Ladle ½ cup of Hand-Crushed Marinara Sauce over the dough round, then scatter on ¼ teaspoon dried oregano. Spoon the warm garlic and oil over the pizza and bake.

  QUATTRO FORMAGGIO

  Skip all the other toppings. Instead, top with ⅓ cup each robiola cheese (or ricotta), goat cheese, diced fresh mozzarella, and grated Parmesan.

  PESCA

  Skip all the other toppings. Instead, cut a peach in half and grill one half, cut side down, over medium-high heat until lightly grill-marked, 1 to 2 minutes (or broil cut side up 4 to 6 inches from the heat until lightly browned). Then slice thinly and scatter over the dough round. Add 2 tablespoons chopped roasted mushrooms (see recipe for Roasted Mushrooms in Foil) and ½ cup diced fresh mozzarella. Bake until crisp, then top with a few thin slices of Lardo or purchased lardo.

  PERA

  Skip all the other toppings. Instead, scatter on a thinly sliced pear half, ½ cup diced provolone, and ¼ cup finely chopped Shortcut Guanciale.

  BEVERAGE—Mastroberardino Lacryma Christi 2008 (Campania): This regionally specific pairing perfectly matches the Naples dough. It’s a plump, fresh, and fruity wine. But if you’re craving a Coca-Cola here, don’t fight it. Or put a spin on it with San Pellegrino Chinotto, a malty dark soda flavored with a small, bitter citrus fruit of the same name.

  PASTAS

  Flour, Extruded Pasta, Rolled Pasta, Hand-Rolled Pasta, Pasta Water, Which Oil?, Opposites Attract, Getting Floury with the Kids, Parmigiano

  • • •

  EXTRUDED PASTA

  Basic Extruded Pasta Dough

  Rigatoni with Swordfish, Tomato, and Eggplant Fries

  Rigatoni with Chicken Livers, Cipollini Onions, and Sage

  Candele with Duck Bolognese

  Fusilli with Fava Beans and Pecorino

  Macaroni with Bigeye Tuna Bolognese

  Bucatini alla Matriciana

  Tonnarelli Cacio e Pepe

  Spaghetti in Parchment with Clams and Scallions

  ROLLED PASTA

  Basic Egg Pasta Dough

  Fettuccine with Pork Ragù and Stone Fruits

  Goat Cheese and Beet Plin with Tarragon

  Robiola Francobolli with Chanterelle Mushrooms and Thyme

  Mortadella Tortelli with Pistachio Pesto

  Caramelle di Zucca Ravioli with Amaretti

  Salt Cod Ravioli with Marjoram

  Escarole Ravioli with Pine Nuts and Honey

  BAKED PASTA

  Veal Cannelloni with Porcini Béchamel

  Fazzoletti with Swiss Chard and Sheep’s Milk Ricotta

  Semolina Gnocchi with Oxtail Ragù

  Lasagna with Zucchini and Stracciatella

  Eggplant Lasagnette alla Parmigiana

  HAND-ROLLED PASTA

  Orecchiette with Veal Ragù and Bitter Greens

  Spinach and Ricotta Gnudi

  Garganelli with Gorgonzola, Ra
dicchio, and Walnuts

  IN THE SUMMER OF 2009, I went on Iron Chef against Michael Symon. It was Battle Veal. We’re not talking veal ribs or veal breast. No, this was a whole side of veal. One hundred and fifty pounds! It was as if someone handed you a calf and said, “Do something with it.” I had my chefs Jeff Michaud and Brad Spence with me. I also brought a new pasta extruder that we got for Vetri restaurant. I’ve always had these monster pasta extruder machines that took up loads up precious kitchen space. We had just purchased a little tabletop model that you could plug into a regular outlet. It was small but really powerful, and I was excited to use it for cooking demonstrations. But we had just gotten it in and hadn’t used it before. I remember talking the company, Arcobaleno, into giving us a great deal on it. We told them we were going to use it on Iron Chef and show the United States how great this pasta machine was.

  After figuring out how to lift the side of veal to the table, we went at it. Jeff was set to make the pasta, and we started rolling. The thing is, all pasta machines are a little different, and if you’re not used to how they work, a little too much water in the dough—or not enough—can be a real problem.

  Anyway, I started butchering the veal, Brad was mixing up some sauces, and Jeff dove into making the extruded pasta. Fifteen minutes later, I heard Jeff yell, “Fuck!” I looked up from the veal and saw him banging the pasta machine with a big cleaver. I was like, “Dude, what’s up?” “The machine is jammed up,” he said. I started laughing. Brad was making his sauces, looking over his shoulder, saying, “You guys alright? You guys alright?” The cameras were rolling. Time was ticking away.

  This happens now and again. If you don’t have enough water in the pasta dough, the auger mixes the flour into cement. Not only will the dough not come out of the machine, but it will lock it up. The only way to get the machine going again is to open it up, take it apart and turn the auger in the opposite direction, picking out the hardened dough. That whole process was not going to happen in 60 minutes on Iron Chef. So I went over and tried to figure out how to fix the problem another way. I must have been there for 20 minutes. And there’s Alton Brown on the microphone, saying, “They better stop messing with that pasta machine. They’re not gonna make anything.” His voice was piercing into my head like a bullet: “They’re not gonna finish. They have to move on. I’ve never seen anything like this on Iron Chef, ladies and gentlemen.” The whole time, I was thinking, “Will you shut the hell up already and let me work!” Finally, I said to Jeff, “Fuck it. Just make pappardelle.” He did, we hauled ass, and needless to say, we finished—with seven minutes to spare—so early that Alton didn’t know what to say. In the end, the judges gave us the nod. But later, when I heard back from Arcobaleno, I learned that pasta-extruder makers get pretty pissed off when you go on national television and bang their machine with a cleaver. Just sayin’!

  FLOUR

  Maybe it was all our sweat in the Iron Chef kitchen stadium that caused the pasta machine to lock up. Flour is very sensitive to moisture! Whether you’re using high-protein flour or low-protein flour, it will inevitably absorb some of the moisture in the air. If it’s really humid, it can make a big difference in how much water you add to your pasta.

  That’s especially true for extruded pasta dough, which only has two ingredients. Extruded pasta differs from fresh egg pasta in that it’s made with only coarse semolina flour and water instead of fine all-purpose flour and eggs. The sandy-textured semolina dough is forced through an extruder that shapes it into long strands like spaghetti or short shapes like rigatoni.

  Semolina is the endosperm of durum wheat, which means it’s the part that takes up most of the grain’s bulk. That part is bright yellow and usually coarsely ground, like cornmeal. Semolina is what gives extruded pastas like spaghetti and rigatoni that incomparable “al dente” chewiness. Water is the only other ingredient, so you have to carefully watch how much you add.

  The dough for egg pastas that will be rolled into lasagna sheets and cut into fettuccine is a little more forgiving. And it uses different flour. For my basic egg pasta dough, I like to use tipo 00 flour as the primary flour. Tipo 00 is Italy’s all-purpose flour, and like American all-purpose flours, it is very finely milled. If you need to substitute, American all-purpose flours are the best stand-in because they have a similar protein content to tipo 00 flour (8 to 10 percent). For a little extra chew, I like to use a mixture of tipo 00 and durum flour in a ratio of about 3 to 1. Keep in mind that durum flour and semolina are a little different. They’re both milled from durum wheat, but durum flour is finely ground and has a light tan color, while semolina is coarsely ground and has a bright yellow color.

  EXTRUDED PASTA

  When I cooked in Italy, I made extruded pasta in every shape imaginable, from short tubes to long strands. When I got back to Philadelphia, I made mostly rolled pastas like pappardelle and ravioli. But I missed the chewy texture of extruded pastas. So I started experimenting. I thought, there’s gotta be something better than the boxed stuff, right? It’s true that some boxed pasta extruded with bronze dies can have a great rough surface to it. But I found out that the most important thing wasn’t the dough itself or the extruder but how to dry the pasta properly. Extruded pasta dough is nothing more than semolina and water mixed in a bowl. You add just enough water so the mixture looks like loose, damp sand. Then you knead it a little bit with your fingers until it clumps together and feels like wads of sandy, dry bubble gum when pinched between your fingertips. Depending on the humidity in the air, you add more or less water to get the consistency right. Too dry is better than too wet, because if it’s too wet, it will gum up the extruder machine.

  But making the dough isn’t the really important part. The trick is drying it. At first, I just hung the pasta to dry on racks. This was in the middle of winter and I didn’t take into account that the humidity was very low. The air was dry and when I came into the kitchen the next morning, all the pasta was cracked. After doing some more digging, I found out that the professional pasta makers, the artisan extruded-pasta makers, have extensive rooms that dry the pasta slowly in an environment with precisely controlled humidity and temperature. The big commercial pasta companies speed up the process by using high heat to dry the pasta faster.

  But drying it slowly gives you much better texture, because it ends up with a higher moisture content than industrial boxed pasta. When cooked, you can tell the difference right away. Pasta that’s dried slowly feels so much better between your teeth. It gives only gradually. It chews leisurely and never feels rubbery. During cooking, it also sloughs off a little more starch into the pasta water, which makes the pasta water better for thickening sauces.

  That’s the texture I was going for. I tried everything. After hanging the pasta at room temperature, I tried covering it in plastic wrap or with a kitchen towel at room temperature to trap some moisture. Then I put a humidifier in the room for extra moisture. Then I froze it both covered and uncovered. Nothing worked! I was baffled and frustrated and ended up leaving the pasta uncovered in the refrigerator one day by accident. The next day, it was perfect!

  It turns out that refrigerator air has just the right temperature and humidity to slowly dry the pasta. You can leave it in the fridge for 4 to 5 days and it continues to dry out gradually but still holds enough moisture that it won’t crack. Now, I adjust the cooking time based on how long the extruded pasta has been sitting in the fridge. If I make it in the morning, refrigerate it, and cook it that night, it’s done in 2 minutes. If I leave it in the fridge uncovered for another day, it’s done in 3 minutes. Another day, 4 minutes—and so on. It’s a pretty basic way of thinking: for every day the pasta dries in the fridge, add 1 minute of cooking time. It’s not a perfect system; you still need to watch the pasta as it cooks, checking its texture now and then, and adjusting the cooking time. But for making and cooking extruded pasta at home, it’s the best method I’ve found.

  Now I love making extruded pasta—especially with
my kids. KitchenAid has a pasta press attachment, so you can make spaghetti, macaroni, bucatini, rigatoni, fusilli, and a few other shapes. I encourage you to give it a try. It’s so easy. It helps to soak and clean the auger right after you use it. But if you’re not able to, take apart the pasta press attachment and let it dry for a few hours or overnight. The dried pasta dough will crack right off.

  If you’re tempted to go for something premade instead of homemade, skip the extruded pasta in the refrigerated cases of supermarkets. Boxed dried artisan pasta from Italy is better—particularly if it’s extruded with bronze dies and dried slowly. Setaro, Latini, and Rustichella d’Abruzzo are a few good brands.

  ROLLED PASTA

  The dough for fresh egg pasta is a little different. Instead of high-protein semolina, it uses lower-protein all-purpose flour and eggs. I also add a little durum flour for extra chew and use only egg yolks with a little olive oil for richness. You knead for a few minutes until the dough is smooth and silky. You should develop just enough gluten in the dough so that it pulls back gradually when you stretch the dough between your hands.

  The best roller out there for home use is the KitchenAid attachment (no, I don’t have an endorsement deal with them!). Forget the hand-crank rollers; they are just too much work and very inconsistent. To help the dough roll easier, bring it almost to room temperature before rolling and lightly dust it with flour as you go. Start on the widest roller setting, then gradually crank it down to a narrower setting each time, rolling the pasta once on each setting until you get to the narrowest setting. I always finish on the thinnest setting. Usually I roll each piece of dough 8 to 10 times. It may seem too thin, but it’s not. You should be able to see your hand through the dough when you hold it up to the light like seeing someone through a shower curtain. Just go slowly and dust the dough with flour so it doesn’t stick to the rollers. For each piece of dough, you should end up with a pasta sheet 4 to 5 feet long. Give yourself plenty of counter space to work on!