Pappardelle al sugo di coniglio

Well, the second time out with the pasta maker attachment was a success. It sort of all came together.

M offered to cook me eggs on Saturday morning. Nice of her, but there was the problem of no eggs in the house. So, I was dispatched to get some eggs and some cheese while M made coffee and sauteed the mushrooms and peppers. I had wanted to go to the butcher up the road to get the farm fresh eggs I love, but D'Agostinos is right across the street, so I went there instead.... and walked out within three minutes. Anything above factory farmed was over $5.00 for the dozen. Some dozens were north of $6.00! Totally disgusting and shameful. Especially when the butcher down the street carries those big, beautiful, hand-gathered eggs for $3.50 a dozen.

When I walked in, Mr. Simchick was trimming what looked like a cut-up rabbit. I said, "What is that, a rabbit?" He said, "Yes, would you like one." I didn't see how I could refuse. I'm only one man. What can I do? I also took a dozen eggs, and they'd just finished baking a spiral cut ham. It was steaming on the countertop. I told them a few slices and went next door for cheese, already plotting the Sunday dinner in my head.

I got some gruyere at Ideal Cheese, and a small tub of oil-cured olives. I normally don't like their bitter, pasty texture, but knew that they'd plump up and become sweet when braised in tomato with that rabbit.

Breakfast was great in its own right. I ended up cooking the scrambled eggs, adding some of that spiral-cut ham, and following the technique I've been using recently of stirring vigorously rather than allowing large curds to form. I had added some water to the eggs, which I probably won't do again, because they did give off a bit of water on the plate. I left them quite moist, something we've not really been worrying about, given the freshness of the eggs. M loved them. As I was watching, she sort of disappeared into the eating experience. It's a fascinating transformation. When I really hit the mark, she eats in a completely different way. Not any faster or slower, but more intently.

I kept back some of the ham for use with the rabbit. Here's how I did it:

Pappardelle: 2 x-large eggs to 1 cup flour. This is a learning experience. The normal recipe is 5 eggs to 3 cups flour (a pound), or 2 large eggs to 1 cup flour. I ended up having to put more flour into the mix. I'm also having trouble getting down the mixing technique. But it's pretty forgiving. I put in more flour until it came free of the board, then kneaded it for a good ten minutes, adding flour whenever it stuck. Then, wrapped in plastic and left to rest for a half hour at room temp. Fed the sheets through the rollers, folding in thirds and rotating a quarter turn. I've seen other recipes that stress folding in thirds and re-rolling each time you put the rollers down to the next notch. I don't know that this is exactly necessary. It might result in a bit more toothsome noodle, but delicate is okay as well.

1 rabbit, cut up and trimmed
1 tbsp. neutral oil (like vegetable or light olive)
2 medium yellow onions, diced
2 cloves garlic (I would've preferred more, but that's all I had)
1 14 oz. can diced tomatoes + 1 cup water (I used whole San Marzanos and a potato masher, but the flavors in this dish are strong enough that that wasn't strictly necessary. I also should've used a big can rather than small.)
1 cup oil-cured black olives
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp mirto, an herb from Corsica, reminiscent of herbes de provence, which can be substituted.
1 Star brodo stock cube
salt and black pepper


I seasoned and floured the rabbit pieces (cut up for me) and browned them in two batches in oil in the bottom of the pressure cooker, which was not really necessary, as I had all day to do the sauce, but I hadn't used it in a while. I set the rabbit aside and I sweated the onions in the remaining oil, adding the garlic once they'd softened. Then, the remaining ingredients went in. I re-added the rabbit and brought it to a boil, then pressure-cooked for 20 minutes. The "sugo," or juice, was a little watery, so I left it open and sprinkled a little Wondra flour in there to give it some body to the sauce. I also let it simmer uncovered for a while. I find this a lot with pressure cooker food. If you give it a little time to readjust back to natural atmospheric conditions after depressurizing, it will often "relax" and become identical to the long-braised dishes that the pressure cooker is meant to approximate.

I hand-cut the pappardelle with a pizza wheel, boiled it for barely a couple minutes. I took it right out of the water into warmed bowls and ladled over the sugo, which was saucy, but not thick, leaving the meat in the pot. A few little shreds of meat came along with the sauce, but that's not really the point. The point is to use the pasta to soak up the flavor that's come out of the meat, then eat the meat as a secondo. I did this. M got stuck on the pasta, which she loved.

We ate it with grated Parmigiano. Italians say that pasta dishes based on game and fish should not be cheesed. I think everything tastes better with a little Parm, especially when there're tomatoes involved. It counters their acidity and makes the whole thing just... better. And this isn't really game.

Looking forward to a couple more great meals out of this one recipe.

Pasta Fresca!

I ordered a couple dozen pears from Harry & David to be delivered to M's folks place on Cape Cod for Christmas. They arrived too early, so I called and complained. They promised another batch to arrive closer to Christmas. No charge. Now, I never thought fifty pears was what I wanted for Xmas, but it's what I got. Or at least what the whole family got. They were awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I regret not saving one, the reasons for which become apparent below.

M got me a pasta roller attachment for her Kitchenaid mixer. They're traditionally sold with two noodle cutters, one narrow, one wide, but I told her not to bother with these. If I'm going to the trouble of making pasta fresca, it's gonna be a something stuffed, and if it's not stuffed, I prefer hand-cut tagliatelli and papparedelle to uniform noodles. So why clutter the kitchen. I went through a couple of cookbooks and my recollections of various meals in and out of Italy and came up with a must-try list.

• pappardelle con tartufata - With the Italian truffle spread, butter and cheese. If this were made just with truffles, many would say to omit the cheese. I say go make your own pasta to leave the cheese off. Jacques Pepin tells a great story where he and his wife ask for cheese on a fish pasta dish in a restaurant. The waiter corrects them, saying it's not done, but they insist. He informs the chef who storms out asking who dares sully his creation with inappropriate cheese. The chef takes one look at Pepin, gulps, says it's no problem and retreats to the kitchen. I like the taste of truffles and cheese. And besides, tartufata is mostly mushrooms.
  
• "pepperdelle" con olio, pomodoro, e pecorino - Ever since I made the bagel pappa di pomodoro, I've thought the combination of pecorino, black pepper, and tomato was a lovely balance, particularly with a silky or oily texture to back it up. I've found a recipe for black pepper pasta. Once I get a little experience under the old belt, I'm going to attempt this, probably with big sheets of hard, salty pecorino shaved over the top.
  
• fagottini con pere e formaggio - little bundles stuffed with ricotta and a chunk of ripe pear, served with a cooked radicchio cream sauce. These were the original dish (with a slightly humorous name in English, though "fagot" in English means bundle) that made me fall in love with Osteria del Ponte. I imagine the difficulty here is in keeping the bundles closed when you boil them.
  
• ravioli di zucca - Years ago, I had squash ravioli at Barolo, a restaurant in Denver. Three big, floppy, irregular trapezoids of pasta, stuffed with a very thin layer of sweet, spicy squash--it barely accounted for half of the entire thickness of the ravioli, and melded perfectly with the browned sage butter it was served in. I had this long before I ever got acquainted with real Italian cooking and I could sense even then that this was something true. This is the one bow to familiar dishes I'll probably make with fresh pasta. Because when you cook the familiar, your dish falls into a continuum between the best and the worst your guests have ever had. Hopefully, you can be on the top end of the scale. You'll rarely be the best, so why even compete in the "spinach-ricotta ravioli" division? Why not do something new?
  
• maltagliati - The name means 'badly cut'. This is, I guess, what you cook up for the kids with the leftovers from making the mezzelune for the guests. Basically, it's irregularly cut noodles. Bits and pieces. Pastasciutta (dry pasta) is the essence of industrial food: mass-produced, totally uniform. (Too bad other industrialized food hasn't maintained the same purity.) I think was I was latching onto with those irregular ravioli was the fact that they'd obviously been created by a human, not a machine. Don't get me wrong. I love dry pasta for its infinite combinations, but the same impulse that made me shy away from the uniform noodle cutter attachments makes maltagliati attractive.
• lasagne in brodo - I had this in Lubriano, cooked by my friend Vivian. It's truly an amazing recipe, somewhere between soup and layered pasta, with meatballs and sliced hard-boiled egg! Labor-intensive, for sure, but impressive. Could even make it more special with the addition of a peeled soft-boiled egg on top too enrich the broth.
  
• casoncelli alla bergamasca - These are gyoza-shaped, stuffed with braised beef or veal, raisins, and crushed amaretto cookies, sauced with sage butter and pancetta. Had these at Osteria del Ponte in Italy, but didn't know the ingredients. If I'd known them, I probably would've enjoyed the dish more. As it was, I didn't really like it as much as the others.

This is sort of getting at the heart of stuffed pasta's appeal. It's what Michael Pollan in the Omnivore's Dilemma calls "good to think." The book is incredible, by the way, and highly recommended. He uses "good to think" as the pair of "good to eat" mostly to indicate that you feel good about the provenance of the food you are eating (e.g., that the cow was humanely slaughtered, or that the vegetables weren't trucked in from California). Stuffed pasta is often "good to think" as well. Usually, it's not much to look at, and the fillings are almost necessarily a fine paste of various indistinguishable ingredients, none of which can be too strongly flavored for fear of overwhelming everything else, including the pasta and whatever sauce it comes with. But at the same time, there's so little of the stuffing that you really can't put any great number of things in there or they're all going to disappear. So you almost have to bank on the diner's knowledge of what's in the pasta to heighten their enjoyment, because it's unlikely that they'll be able to pick out more than a couple ingredients, and if they do, it probably won't be a pleasant sensation.

I've found a few other stuffed pasta terms, but they seem to fall into a few groups (limiting myself here to those that are stuffed and boiled):

• crimped - Ravioli, lunette, and ravioloni. These are two separate sheets filled and sealed together. Suited to industrial production.
  
• folded - Mezzelune, casoncelli, and quadrucci. This is a single piece folded over and sealed.
  
• origami - tortellini, agnolotti, and tortelloni. In the tortelli family, the piece is square, and it folds over to a triangle, two points of which are folded together. This makes sense as there would not be any maltagliati left over with cutting square sheets.
• bundled - Fagottini and perline. These are pieces with a dollop of filling around which the pasta is gathered. I'm still unclear on how these don't end up coming undone in the water. There might be considerable trial and error here.

That last point also brings up the fact that the best and easiest probable use for pasta fresca is in lasagne. Multi-layered lasagne with a light topping is a real treat, with no boiling needed, no chance of explosion, and a heavy satisfaction factor.

Phew! I never suspected when I sat down to list some of my pasta fresca ambitions that this would turn into a meditation on what it is, but I suppose I should always be prepared for that. If anyone has any ideas about other stuffed or fresh pasta I should try, let me know.

We had the pappa al pomodoro again last night, cold, with olive oil and crumbled pecorino fresco. It was so freaking good. So here's the real recipe. I can't vouch for what it's like made with bagels from other places than Tal. It's a lot like gazpacho, but richer and rounder.

Pappa di Beighel al Pomodoro con Pecorino Fresco
Serves 6

1 large can San Marzano whole plum tomatoes
1 plain bagel, cut half, then each half into 12 wedges.
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
14 ice cubes (1 tray)
Salt and black pepper to taste

extra virgin olive oil
pecorino fresco (maybe could substitute crumbled goat cheese)
fresh basil or parsley

1. Place a seive over a bowl and empty can of tomatoes into it. One by one, remove tomatoes from seive, removing any remaining skin, then halving them in your hand with a dinner knife, squeezing them gently into the seive to remove most seeds and juice. Place on cutting board. Once you've halved all the tomatoes, chop them coarsely and re-add them to the strained tomatoe puree/juice in the bowl. Discard seeds and skins.
2. Heat olive oil in heavy-bottomed, nonreactive pan. Add garlic and saute until golden brown.
3. Add tomato mixture and bagel pieces.
4. Add 1-2 cups water or stock. Stir until the bagel pieces have soaked up all the liquid. Only add as much water as you need to make sure the bagels get well-softened.
5. Bring to simmer, cover and cook 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. This will be where the crumb separates from the crust of the bagels. The crumb should dissolve and make the soup silky, whereas the crust should form small, chewy, dumpling-like chunks.
6. Remove from heat, add one tray of ice cubes and stir until melted.
7. Adjust seasoning and chill well.
8. Serve drizzled with a lot of good olive oil, crumbled cheese, chiffonaded basil.