Pasta is cooking for comfort
Apple pie, roasted chicken, meat loaf…they are comfort foods but in the end, they all want to grow up to be a good dish of pasta.
Just think of the solace provided to mankind by spaghetti carbonara, fettuccine alfredo, macaroni and cheese, lasagna, ratatouille, spaghetti & meatballs… well, you get the idea. The list goes on, stretching back in history.
No one can point to a specific point in time when pasta was born, mostly because it is so simple (flour and water and sometimes egg) that many cultures developed something similar before written history. The only thing for sure is Marco Polo did not bring it back from China. Records show that pasta was well established in Italy by 1279 while Polo did not return to Venice until 1298.
The term noodle refers to the same magical mix of flour and water but usually signifies thin strips floating in soups in European dishes and the many types of noodles in a broth featured in Asian cuisines.
The pasta world is spilt into fresh and dried. In America, most eaters often think only of spaghetti and little elbows in Mac and Cheese, but this simple flour and water mixture has been transformed into a whole universe of shapes.” The Oxford Companion to Food” lists more than 38 different pasta shapes and is still counting. Shapes range from Agnolini (a stuffed egg pasta from Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna) to Ziti, a tubular pasta that is a specialty of Naples.
The store-bought dried pasta is made from durum (hard) wheat, a high-gluten flour called semolina. This hard wheat requires industrial-strength machines to mix and the best pasta is extruded out bronze-cut dies that leave a slightly coarse exterior to the pasta—making them the best vehicles to capture the sauce. They also have temperature-controlled rooms to slowly dry the pasta so it doesn’t break—so kids, do not attempt this at home!
For Italians, the pasta shape dictates the sauce. For example, Giuliani Hazan (son of the famous Italian cookbook author Marcella Hazan) and author of “The Classic Pasta Cookbook” is almost dictatorial in his precise list of sauces for each type of pasta, such as olive oil and tomato sauces for long pastas. He is perfectly clear that butter- and cream-based sauces are best for ribbons, such as taliatella and pappardelle. Marrying a form of pasta with a particular sauce is an art that Italians seemed to have born with. Or, at least they never show doubt.
To learn about fresh pasta at the source, I took a class during a vacation in Rome a few years ago. The directions had me go to a nondescript condo, then walk five floors up (nope, they forgot to build an elevator) but the effort was rewarded with an open air kitchen overlooking the city. The young Italian woman teaching the class explained she grew up eating fresh pasta almost daily. Her momma would wait until she called to say she was leaving school and by the time she was home, the water was boiling and the just cut pasta ready to drop in. “You should wait for the pasta, not the other way around,” she said.
The recipe is ridiculously easy to remember; as long as you embrace metric measurements (the Italians could not understand why we cling to ounces and cups when it is so easy to multiple and divide grams. I didn’t have a good answer and bought a kitchen scale with metric.)
She positioned a large, smooth plywood sheet on top of the table so everyone had a solid surface that was easy to clean up. We intently followed her directions (included in the recipe below) in creating the well of flour and incorporating the eggs and splash of olive oil with a fork. The key, she said, was practice.
We used hand cranked pasta machines (in Bologna I took a handmade pasta class where we could only use the traditional 38 inch long Mattarello (a thin wooden rolling pin ) which felt like trying to drive a Greyhound bus when you had only handled a Volkswagen before; the instructor had to jump in save me from a crash). The ultimate goal, no matter what device you use, is to have the pasta sheet thin enough you can see the grain of the table through it.
Dried pasta
Spaghetti alla Puttanesca
There seems to be a story behind every sauce in Italy and this name translates as Whore’s spaghetti. Diane Seed in her “The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces” explains that in the 1950s. Italy’s working girls became known for a sauce they made “when time and ingredients are in short supply.” Other writers say that in the 1950s Sandro Petti, owner of the popular restaurant Rancho Fellone on the Italian island of Ischia, invented it. One night, some hungry customers arrived late, begging Sandro to rustle something up from the kitchen. Although he had run out of food he didn’t want to disappoint his guests so he pulled together what he could from his bare cupboards. Of course, that doesn’t explain the name, but why ruin a good story?
Adapted from “The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces” by Diane Seed
There are many variations of this famous sauce, but if they don’t have these ingredients in some amount, keep looking.
For four people
500 g/1 lb spaghetti
Nice pinch of kosher salt
20 ml/1 ½ T olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, minced
3 anchovy fillets, finely chopped
400 g/14 oz can diced tomatoes
120 g/4 oz pitted black olives in brine (not the tasteless ones sold in tin cans) cut in half.
60 ml/4 T capers, drained of their brine
Handful of chopped Italian parsley
Bring a large pot of water to boil. While waiting for the water to heat, bring a medium sauté pan to medium and drizzle in the oil. Once the oil starts to shimmer a bit, add garlic and anchovy fillets and stir. Cook gently until they are almost melted. Now stir in the chopped tomatoes with their juice, the black olives and capers. Cook for about five minutes. Cook pasta according to the package directions. When ready, drain pasta and add to the sauce. Mix well, bless with some chopped parsley and serve.
Fresh pasta
For two people (yes, everything is in twos)
200 grams of “00” type flour from Italy (Or, all-purpose flour, but you can feel the difference)
2 fresh eggs, room temperature
2 T extra virgin olive oil (yes, you should spring for Italian)
2 pinches of kosher salt
Place the flour in the middle of your counter and create a wide hole in the center. Crack the eggs and slide them into the hole, add oil and salt. Gently beat the eggs with a fork to combine. Use the fork to scape a little of the flour from the well, mixing and adding, until all ingredients are combined. Knead the dough on the floured surface until smooth and elastic (fold the dough, press down on the dough, quarter turn, repeat). Add a sprinkling of flour if necessary to keep the dough from sticking. Once it is elastic, form it into a ball, cover with plastic wrap. Place it in the fridge and let it rest at least 30 minutes or come back tomorrow.
When you‘re ready, let the dough warm up on the counter as you search for your pasta machine. If you have a hand crank pasta machine, it helps to convince someone to turn the crank while you feed the dough. I bought a pasta roller attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer since I usually work alone. Divide the dough into two and press one into a rectangle and keep the other half covered with plastic. Set the machine on the widest setting, run the flatten dough through by its shortest side, fold the outer thirds over the middle third, and run the narrow end through on the same setting for two or three more times. Once it feels smooth you can run it through the rollers without folding, getting it to a thin sheet. You don’t have to get it to the final setting. If the noodle gets too long to handle, cut the sheet in half and cover one with plastic and roll the other.
Now is the time to dust off the pasta-cutting attachment that came with your machine. Once attached, feed your thinly rolled sheet of pasta into the cutting attachment, catching the falling strands by draping them over the back of your hands like you’ve seen on Top Chef. (Again, it’s really helpful for that other person to turn the crank). Toss the noodles in semolina on sheet pan so they dry but don’t stick together as you finish the rest of the dough.
The pasta was served with a simple and well known sauce: salsa all'amatriciana. Originally from the town of Amatrice in the Lazio region of Italy, it’s considered a classic in today’s Rome.
Salsa all'amatriciana
Adapted from Walks of Italy tour
For two people
150 grams Guanciale (cured port cheek) yes, you could use bacon but they will never let you back into Italy
400 g/14 oz can diced tomatoes
1 cup of dry white wine (white wine paired with this dish is perfectly acceptable so you might as well buy a nice Soave, subtract one glass for the sauce and enjoy the rest with the meal).
150 grams grated Pecorino Romano
Remove the skin and cut the guanciale into small, even pieces. Fry the guanciale in a hot pan. Do not add oil; the guanciale brought its own fat with it. When it is crispy and gold, simmer with wine. Wait until the alcohol evaporates completely (just a few minutes) and add tomatoes. Stir and let cook for 15 minutes and taste.
Cook your freshly made spaghetti in salted water for two to three minutes only. Reserve a cup of cooking water, then drain and toss the pasta into the pan with the Amatriciana sauce and shower with Pecorino. Add a splash of the cooking water (which has starchy, salty goodness) to make the sauce more creamy, if you like.