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.

Horace's Chickpeas, Leeks and Pasta Soup

So tonight I'm setting up a beautiful chickpea and leek pasta soup based on a recipe I found in Anna Del Conte's excellent book Portrait of pasta. This is a great cookbook because it has a section of historical recipes and they've all been great, and it's fun to read about dishes that some historical figures might've eaten.

So the chickpea and leek pasta comes from Horace's Book I, Satire VI, Non Quia, Maecenas. It's a charming poem, Horace's Satires are available for free download from Project Gutenberg, which is one of the best sites on the Internet. So in this Satire, Horace is talking to the rich Maecenas, whoever that was, and says that although Maecenas is rich, he is content with his life. Horace talks about his father:

If I have lived unstained and unreproved
(Forgive self-praise), if loving and beloved,
I owe it to my father, who, though poor,
Passed by the village school at his own door,
The school where great tall urchins in a row,
Sons of great tall centurions, used to go,
With slate and satchel on their backs, to pay
Their monthly quota punctual to the day,
And took his boy to Rome, to learn the arts
Which knight or senator to HIS imparts.
Whoe'er had seen me, neat and more than neat,
With slaves behind me, in the crowded street,
Had surely thought a fortune fair and large,
Two generations old, sustained the charge.
Himself the true tried guardian of his son,
Whene'er I went to class, he still made one.
Why lengthen out the tale? he kept me chaste,
Which is the crown of virtue, undisgraced
In deed and name: he feared not lest one day
The world should talk of money thrown away

and then goes on to talk about how he whiles his days away in the Forum and the Circus, and sometimes winds down back at his house to a dish of chickpeas (vetch,) leeks and pasta. (Though I don't get how if his father was poor, he could afford to have sent him with a group of slaves behind him. But anyway.)

The leek and chickpea is what I will have tomorrow. It's a tasty dish. Here's an adaptation of Del Conte's .. adaptation of Horace? I use a slow cooker for all my beans --- I can't have beans without the slow cooker now

Horace Chickpea and Leek Pasta

You will need 1/2 box or more pasta, 1-2 leeks, 2-3 tomatoes, 6 ounces chickpeas, 1-2 bay leaves, parsley, salt, pepper, and 1 stick of celery. Soak chickpeas overnight, change the water once, drain and rinse (I do this in my slow cooker bowl.) Cut the white part of the leek into small rings. Add the leek, tomatoes, chopped celery, bay leaf, salt, and lots of ground pepper to the soaked chickpeas. Cover, boil, lower and simmer --- I slow cook on low all day, Del Conte says simmer 3 hours. Do not uncover.

When the chickpeas are tender and you're ready to eat, boil the pasta, drain, and fry it in olive oil. Add the fried pasta and oil to the soup and cook until the pasta is tender. Add the chopped parsley and serve with grated parmegiano on the side.

Aio e Oio and Salsa di Pomodoro

Now that you have a little equipment, you need some ingredients. One of the most reliable daily foods is spaghetti. Once you learn how to make it, you can always make it. You can have vegetables and meats in the sauce, its basically a 1-pot meal. Here's 2 that are the height of simplicity, and they're tasty. When you go grocery shopping, you will need:

• several boxes of spaghetti --- whole wheat if you like
• a few heads of garlic
• cans of peeled tomatoes --- ones that say 'Product of Italy' are best but you can use American. It may have some basil in it. You can also use fresh roma tomatoes, they give a different flavor.
• saran wrap
• a few onions
• butter
• olive oil
• hot chilies
• salt (good sea salt is cheap in Asian markets.)
• A small block of parmegiano

That's it. Now you can make:

Aio e Oio --- Raw Garlic, Chili and Oil Sauce

This is the simplest. If you pull on the bumps under the skin of the garlic, you find little cloves, about 20, in each head. Peel the 'paper' off and chop a few cloves. Chop a few hot chilies. Fill your largest pot 2/3 full of water, cover and bring it to boil on high heat, throw a handful of salt in. (For the garlic chili and oil recipe you need extra salt in the pot, since sprinkling salt in at the end doesn't work very well.)

I find that a 1lb (500g) box of spaghetti makes 4 meals. What I do is I open the top of the box, put my left hand over the opening, and turn the box over so that the spaghetti is resting on my hand in the box. Then I can let a little bit of the spaghetti out and eyeball how much 1/4 (or 1/2 if cooking for 2) of the box is.

Take how much spaghetti you're going to cook and throw it in the pot; it might not fit in --- don't break it --- just push on it with your wooden spoon, it softens quickly and will go in.

Boil the spaghetti uncovered on high heat. After 5 minutes, take a fork and pull out a single strand and take a small clean bite off the end. If you see the faintest core of white and the rest of the spaghetti clearer, then its done. It probably won't be after 5min, so every minute or 2 after that take another strand and check.

Get the colander ready in the sink.

When its done, dump the pot out over the colander to catch the spaghetti. Put the spaghetti back in the put, throw the garlic and chilies in there, and then pour out as much olive oil as you like to make it glisten as you toss the spaghetti --- roughly 1 tablespoon per person. You might want to eat this only for dinner since your breath might have a bit of garlic on it.

Variation: Aio e Oio (Cooked)

Do everything as before except, as the spaghetti is boiling, heat your frying pan, pour some olive oil in and the garlic. It should sizzle and turn a little golden, then turn it off. When its a bit cooler, throw in the chilies ( chilies burn easily, the smoke is powerful and makes you cough and your eyes water.)

When the spaghetti is done, then toss with the cooked garlic and eat as before.


Finally, the last thing you can make is the classic tomato sauce.

Salsa di Pomodoro (Simple Tomato Sauce)

Now tomato sauce is easy. You can buy a jar of it in the grocery market, but that's not what I'm going to write about here. The jar is fine, but once you open it, you have to finish it soon, and the jar sauce generally isn't so great that you keep coming back for more tomorrow and the day after. Its better when you make it, and its simple classic.

Peel off the skin of the onion. For each you will need 1/4 of the onion, the rest you can saran wrap back into the fridge.

In your saucepan, melt some butter on medium-low (about 1 tablespoon per person.) Put in some of the peeled tomatoes (about 1/4 of the 28ounce can per person). Put in the onion. Taste a teaspoonful. Cook on medium low.

Meanwhile shred some parmegiano, get the pot of water boiling for the spaghetti, and cook and drain the spaghetti. Taste the tomato sauce from time to time.

After about 20 minutes you will see the tomato sauce is thickened, shinier. Taste it again, see if its done. Take it off by 30 minutes at the latest and toss with the spaghetti, put parmegiano and mix. Cut in some more butter if you like.