Saturday, February 28, 2009

Pasta alla Mafia

As I said in my last post, I've been cooking from Anna Del Conte's Portrait of Pasta, a nice book. I borrowed it years ago from the library, made the Horace pasta and another one, both were excellent, then returned the book and didn't make the Horace pasta for a while. I didn't know I copied the recipe into a file on my computer. So recently I checked and found the file. I like chickpeas, and leeks are nice because they keep for a while in the fridge. Then just a few days ago I saw a copy online for $1.25 shipped so I bought it.

The recipe I made last night is in del Conte's ``modern'' recipes section. She calls it Pasta alla Mafia because of its Sicilian origin but doesn't explain the title beyond that. I've always had a fascination with the Mafia, with all gangsters. Three of my favorite movies are John Woo's ``A Better Tomorrow'' trilogy.



(3:03 is a classic shot. But looks like you can watch the whole thing on Youtube now. Which I might do. A Better Tomorrow has scenes in Hong Kong restaurants, it makes me want to make Chinese food again. But I'm prevented. Maybe I should go through that list of recipes that don't use many Chinese ingredients from Dunlop a little more tonight.)

So back to Pasta alla Mafia. I visited Sicily once, I kept thinking whether to go to Corleone or not, in the end we didn't. Not that anyone would mistake us for Mafiosi. But many parts of Sicily were beautiful. I remember walking around in Palermo behind our hotel, which near the Quattro Canti, trying to reach the harbor to get on a hydrofoil to some island, the buildings were old, run-down, but full of character. A little like Napoli --- the pizza in Napoli was monumental.

For this Sicilian recipe you need anchovies. Anchovies have been defamed in the United States. This is probably due to incompetence. Anchovies are probably awful if you don't know what to do with them; I know what to do with them, and because I learned from Hazan, I've never tasted a bad dish with anchovies in it --- in fact I've tasted few bad dishes at all. But I remember when I was a kid and would've parroted the idea that anchovies are awful to anyone who asked me. Only the UK eats worse than us here in the US --- the Italians and French know what to do with anchovies. But ignorance is hard to overcome. If you don't want to use anchovies in this recipe, leave them out. Put in canned tuna instead if that makes you feel better. If you want to learn to use this fine ingredient, then my advice is to get a glass jar of imported Italian anchovy fillets in olive oil. I keep mine in the fridge but I doubt it's necessary.

Pasta alla Mafia

You need anchovies, pitted olives, chilies, citrus rind/zest, spaghetti, garlic, olio. You take the citrus rind and zest and put them in a saucepan with the olio and let it mingle. Bring the pasta water to a boil. Chop the chilies, garlic and olives. Add the chilies and garlic to the oil. Throw the pasta into the water, take out the citrus rind and heat the pan. When the oil is hot, add the anchovies, and mash them up with a wooden spoon until they're just a paste. Add the olives. When the pasta done, toss everything together.

Mangiare.

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