negroni (part two)

If you scroll back through these posts (a highly recommended activity) along about April, 2009, there is a post featuring the classic Italian drink: the Negroni.

It's colorful (deep red in color actually) history of its discovery and acceptance is detailed in that blog: from the Campari bar in Florence in the 1860's through Count Negroni in the early 1900's.

The drink, pictured above, consists of equal parts of Campari, sweet vermouth, and gin, plus a slice of orange, generally.

Now, thanks to an article in the recent La Cucina Italiana, we have another variation, the Sbagliato, which translates into the 'mistaken' Negroni. According to the magazine, in a bar in Milan, the proprietor reached for a bottle of spumante rather than gin. The bubbly was tried, and received wholehearted approval.

Here is the official Sbagliato formula, courtesy of La Cucina Italiana:

one ounce campari
one ounce sweet vermouth
one ounce dry spumante (prosecco)

Fill a rocks glass with ice, add the Campari, vermouth and spumante in that order. Stir and add an orange slice.

Eccola! . . . perfect for summer.

Classic Rome, or Roman classics

We recently had lunch at a relatively new restaurant in San Francisco, Chiaroscuro (www.chiaroscurosf.com), where the menu featured three Roman classics: tagliolini cacio e pepe; tagliolini alla carbonara; and spaghetti alla chitarra all'amatriciana. Plus they had a "trilogoia", which was a tasting of all three of these delights, which I had. This was a beautiful presentation and a tasting delight. I was transported back to one of my favorite places: the Piazza della Rotunda.

You may prepare all of these classics yourself: go to www.classicpasta.com, and on the home page there will be this article on Rome, and the recipe links. Enjoy!

risotto with mushrooms and pancetta

One can not have too many recipes for risotto with mushrooms. It is hard to imagine any other foods that meld so perfectly. There are several risotto recipes available on www.classicpasta.com, but true to our calling, here is another.

This recipe comes from Janet Moga, of the East Bay, who has tested (and corrected) many of the recipes on the site. She uses slightly more dried porcini than we, but both are excellent -- your taste.

If you have truffle oil available, here is a great chance to use it.

The recipe: http://classicpasta.com/risotto_mushroom_and_pancetta.htm

best minestrone ever

The winter season is soup season of course, and here is our favorite of all the many and varied minestrone recipes out there. This is quite a hearty version, and, for us, when we get the beans "just right" it is a perfect balance: not too thick but definitely not too liquid!

The recipe is on classicpasta.com, and here is the link:

www.classicpasta.com/minestrone.htm

We used a short cut that really works when we last did this soup. We did not have time for long soaking, so we used Lidia's quick soaking method. Put the beans, after cleaning, in a pot of water with the water covering the beans by at least two inches. Turn up heat and boil. When you get to a boil, continue the boil for one minute. Turn off and let sit, uncovered, for an hour.

Works perfectly!

butternut squash soup

Welcome to our mangia italiana blog for 2010.

Let's keep in touch . . . we promise to keep you supplied throughout the year with a steady influx of information, tips, ideas, discoveries and suggestions concerning all food Italian. (If you haven't done so, scroll back through previous blogs to see the variety and quality of the information herein). Our goal is to provide you with three new blogs a week. So do stay connected!

Now is the time for the great winter squash explosion. Butternut squash is obviously one of our favorites.

Here is a great butternut squash soup recipe we have adapted from Faith Williger's "Red, White and Greens." The original recipe is from Fabio Picchi, chef at the famed Cibreo in Florence.

We add a little cream to the soup at the end which he doesn't. Take your pick. Any squash will do -- acorn for example -- butternut is our favorite.

The complete recipe is on http://www.classicpasta.com/, the best site on the web for all things pasta. Here is the link:

http://www.classicpasta.com/butternut_squash_soup.htm

While you are on the classic pasta site, browse for a moment. Go to "pasta" and then click on "ravioli" on the right hand side of the page, and then "butternut squash ravioli". Another taste treat!

pesto time

All of that wonderful basil that has been growing in our garden all summer needs to be used before the nights turn chill and it starts to get a little bitter. Carol (left), one-half of classicpasta.com, and her good friend Judy got together so Judy could learn to make pesto. One of Judy's, and our, favorite dishes is halibut a la Carol, which we will divulge in a subsequent blog. It uses pesto to a beautiful result.

We make pesto with the basic Marcella method, and a slight variation. This is her blender pesto from "The Classic Italian Cook Book" and "Essentials." There have been a few bursts from some with "make-it-authentic" zeal that call for using the actual mortar and pestle (from which pesto gets its name). But the blender is what is now used in almost all of Italy, and it works fine, without all the mortar-pestle effort.

• two cups fresh basil
• one-half cup olive oil
• two tablespoons pine nuts
• four cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
• one-half teaspoon salt
• two tablespoons freshly grated Pecorino Romano or Pecorino Toscana (or Parmesan)
• three tablespoons of butter, softened

Gently tear the leaves of basil into small pieces (about the size of the smallest full leaf). Carol, generally in a hurry, skips this labor and just puts the basil leaves, as is, into the blender. Put the basil, the olive oil, the garlic, the pine nuts and the salt into a blender. Blend at high speed. Using a spatula, halt from time to time, and spatula the ingredients down into the center of the blender, to get a uniform, complete blend.

When well blended, one can go to (1) completion or (2) freezing for use later in the winter.

For completion (to use right away), put the blended pesto in a bowl, add the cheese and work it in with a wooden spoon. Easy to do (although one can just add the cheese to the pesto while in the blender and blend there). When the cheese is evenly distributed, add the softened butter and also mix it in with the wooden spoon.

Marcella suggests, very wisely, that when one is cooking the pasta, reserve a tablespoon of the pasta liquid and add it to the pesto, and stir, just before adding the pesto to the pasta.

Freezing

Ah, pesto in the winter, tasting as fresh (almost) as when it was prepared in the summer. To do this, halt when you have blended well the basic pesto, before adding cheese and butter. Take the pesto and put it into a freezer jar, preferably small, seal well, and freeze. Carol also takes the basic pesto blend and spoons it into an ice cube tray, providing many small cubes of pesto ready to be used at different times. Works beautifully.

Then, when it is pasta time, have the frozen pesto already thawed (takes about five seconds in the microwave)) and then beat in the cheese and butter and serve. This just sparkles with flavor!

There are plenty of wonderful pasta and pesto recipes in www.classicpasta.com.


Next: pesto in its native habitat --Portofino!

Tupper Lake

This isn't exactly the Lake Country of Northern Italy: actually it is the lake country of Northern New York. The publisher, Pietro, is comporting himself on Big Wolf Lake, near Tupper Lake, in the beautiful Adirondacks, on a very recent vacation.


However, even though we were far from a friendly Italian deli, we ate fine. The local Tupper Lake grocery had a wide variety of Buitoni pasta, and also a butcher who made wonderful sausage. Plus it was late in the summer, almost Labor Day, and the tomatoes were ripe and flavorful.

It did not take much to improvise successfully.

For a pound of penne, we took about a quarter cup of olive oil, added about five cloves of garlic, finely chopped, and then about thirty seconds later, an onion, also finely chopped. We let the onion get quite soft, almost starting to carmelize, when we added a half pound of this wonderful sausage, which we has also chopped. We cooked this over medium-high heat. The key is to continually pound the sausage with a wooden spoon as it cooks, to really break it up.

When the sausage was brown we added about four ripe tomatoes, which we had diced. We brought this mixture to a boil and then turned it down to a good simmer, about eight minutes, until the tomatoes had broken down. We added a good dose of salt and some freshly ground pepper, and stirred vigorously.

Meanwhile, of course, we had the penne in boiling water. When the penne were ready, we drained them (saving a cup of the liquid) and added them to the sauce, stirring well. If dry, we added some of the reserved water.

Then we did our special trick: cover the pasta and sauce, turn up the heat and steam vigorously for about a minute. This gets the pasta steaming hot, of course. And serve with plenty of freshly grated parmesan.

Not quite Lake Como cuisine, but not bad!