Lasagna

The lasagna recipe in this post draws inspiration from two lasagne recipes in Giuliano Bugialli’s classic Bugialli on Pasta (1988). One version hails from Naples and the other from Calabria.

Bugialli introduces the Neapolitan form:

“The well-known and very popular Lasagne imbottite, using long lasagne strips alternating layers of pasta with manifold ingredients, such as Napolitan ragù, tiny meatballs, sausage pieces, slices of mozzarella and hard-boiled egg (sic), ricotta, and grated Parmigiano is Naple’s version of the elaborate baked pasta made for the festivities of Carnival time. Such festival dishes once had a special meaning and were really made just at one time of year. Not only Carnival but each holiday season and even each saint’s day had its special dishes that were for just such an occasion, and they varied among the different regions and towns. But now one finds Lasagne imbottite on menus all over and at most times of the year, since the special meaning of such dishes has faded.”

Bugialli next turns to the Calabrian version:

“The Lasagne imbottite from neighboring Calabria is different. The fresh pasta is made with rougher semolina flour, whereas the Neapolitan is made with normal all-purpose flour; the little meat balls are made with pork rather than beef; the grated cheese is more likely to be pecorino; there is a simple tomato sauce rather than the Neapolitan ragù; and along with mozzarella, ricotta, and hard-boiled eggs is a special vegetable stuffing including dried porcini, artichokes, peas, and aromatic vegetables flavored with bay. A grand dish to celebrate Carnival, it is called in dialect form by the name, Sagne chine.”

The lasagna featured in this post borrows certain elements from both the Neapolitan and Calabrian dishes but more resembles the latter version (albeit simplier). I make a fresh egg pasta using 00 flour but add semolina to the dough. I form tiny pork meatballs that I poach in a simple tomato sauce. For cheese, I employ fresh homemade ricotta and heaps of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. I often sauté sliced mushrooms in butter to join the polpettine, tomato sauce and cheese in a six-layer lasagna. I omit the mozzarella and hard-boiled eggs favored by both the Neapolitans and Calabrians.

Here’s a little more detail if you want to try my take. I include links to previous posts to truncate these instructions.

For the Pork Meatballs

15 grams panko flakes, finely ground

50 grams whole milk

1.5 grams fennel seed, roughly ground

30 grams white onion, finely minced

12 grams butter

.35 gram fennel pollen

5 grams grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

4.5 grams kosher salt

5 grams sugar

1 gram freshly ground black pepper

5 grams tomato paste

1 gram toasted onion powder (I use Burlap & Barrel brand)

.5 gram garlic powder (Again, Burlap & Barrel brand)

225 grams ground pork

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, hydrate panko in milk. In a small pan, sauté minced onions in butter until onions are translucent and soft. Put cooked onions on a small tray and place the tray in the freezer to quicky cool. Add the remaining ingredients to the panko/milk mixture, remembering to add the cooled sautéed onions placed in the freezer. Mix the meatball ingredients together. (I usually fry a bit of the meat mixture to see if I need to adjust for salt and/or sugar.) Using wet hands, form approximately 40 tiny meatballs weighing between 5 to 7 grams each and measuring about 1-inch in diameter. Place meatballs on parchment paper-lined tray, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until use.

For the tomato sauce

½ white onion, diced

28 ounces whole peeled tomatoes (I use Bianco DiNapoli brand), crushed by hand or cut into small pieces with kitchen scissors

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

In a 26cm enameled cast iron Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add diced onions, salt and pepper to taste. Sauté onions until translucent and soft. Add tomatoes and remaining tomato liquid in can to the pot. Simmer tomato sauce, covered with lid slightly ajar, for 10 minutes. Add uncooked meatballs and shake pot to settle meatballs into the tomato sauce. Bring tomato sauce back to an low simmer, cover with lid lightly ajar, and cook for another 8 to 10 minutes. Use a kitchen thermometer to verify the meatballs are cooked (160°F). Cool sauce to room temperature and refrigerate, covered, a day or two until assembling the lasagna.

For the Ricotta

See recipe for fresh ricotta (here). I use around 275 grams of ricotta when I make this lasagna. Refrigerate ricotta until assembling the lasagna.

For the Pasta

165 grams Central Milling Organic Type 00 Normal Flour 

35 grams Giusto’s Gourmet Semolina Flour

2.3 grams sea salt

107 grams of an egg mixture (about 1 large egg and 2 egg yolks)

For this lasagna, I follow the pasta dough recipe in Andreas Papadakis’s Tipo 00 (here). I use my Imperia R220 Manual Pasta Machine to laminate and roll per Papadakis’s instructions. I stop rolling when reaching my machine’s No. 2.5 setting. This produces a pasta sheet approximately 1.5mm thick. The rollers on the R220 are a little over 8-inches wide. I cut the pasta sheet into six 8-inch by 8-inch squares.

For the Mushrooms

Using a damp towel, clean approximately a dozen Cremini mushrooms. Towel dry and slice off the end of each mushroom stem. Slice the mushrooms and sauté in 4 tablespoons of butter. Add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. (I often add shiitake mushroom power (here) while sautéing the mushrooms.)

For Parmigiano-Reggiano

Using the fine-shred side of a box grater, grate 300 grams of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

Assembling the Lasagna

I usually make the lasagna’s ricotta, meatballs poached in tomato sauce and mushrooms a day or two in advance. I assemble the lasagna the day before baking and serving. 

With the ricotta, meatballs/tomato sauce, mushrooms, and Parmigiano-Reggiano ready, here’s my process.

1. Bring a pot of well-salted water to a boil. Fill a wide mixing bowl with cold water and ice cubes to shock the par-boiled pasta sheets. Cook each pasta sheet for approximately 1 minute. Using a spider strainer, transfer the pasta to the ice water bath. Remove the parboiled pasta from the ice water and lay it on a kitchen towel and pat dry. Repeat with remaining pasta sheets.

2. Butter a deep, square baking dish with interior dimensions of 8” x 8” x 2”. (I use an Emile Henry Modern Classics Square Baker with a 2-quart capacity.) Spoon enough tomato sauce to lightly cover the bottom of the baking dish. Keep in mind you need enough tomato sauce for each layer and the top of the lasagna.)

3. Place a parboiled pasta sheet on top of the tomato sauce. Spoon another thin layer of tomato sauce on the pasta. Scatter meatballs—five or six—over the pasta sheet, dot with ricotta, add some of the cooked mushrooms and dust with a handful of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Place a sheet of pasta on top of the base layer and evenly press down on the pasta sheet.

4. Repeat using the remaining ingredients. Top the final layer with tomato sauce and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Dot with small pieces of butter. At this point I usually slice the lasagna into 6 to 8 portions. This makes serving easier after baking. Cover the assembled lasagna with aluminum foil and refrigerate until ready to bake.

5. A couple of hours before baking, take the lasagna out of the refrigerator. When ready to bake, put oven rack in middle position and pre-heat the oven to 375°F. Bake the lasagna, covered with aluminum foil, for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake the lasagna for another 30 minutes. Let lasagna rest after baking for 10 minutes.

Making a lasagna from scratch takes time. But prepping components early and assembling your lasagna a day in advance pays dividends on serving day: feeding friends and family becomes less hectic.

I frequently play around with some of the lasagna’s ingredients. Sometimes I use wide strips of homemade pasta in place of large sheets. I might use Pecorino Romano instead of Parmigiano-Reggiano (or even a mixture of the two cheeses). I often swap out the mushrooms for thick slices of artichoke hearts poached in a rich chicken stock until the slices are almost soft. Sometimes I even make things even easier by using store-bought ricotta and replacing the homemade meatballs with chucks of sausage squeezed out of its casing. Easier is often just as delicious! Enjoy!

Ricotta Cavatelli

In my previous post (here), I shared a recipe for homemade ricotta. Let’s now use fresh ricotta to make cavatelli with a BeeBo cavatelli maker.

I own two hand-cranked cavatelli machines: a vintage BeeBo and a Demetra. In my opinion, the BeeBo bests the Demetra. The Demetra features a sturdy build but, in my experience, its suction cup foot often fails to secure the machine even to a clean and flat stainless-steel work counter.

My BeeBo came with a small recipe booklet. I didn’t pay attention to it for years. However, while researching ricotta cavatelli recipes, I learned that a number of talented chefs swear by the BeeBo’s ricotta dough recipe.  Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo in their The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual (2010) write “[o]ur [ricotta] cavatelli recipe—which we learned from the pamphlet in the BeeBo box—is on page 100.”

In Pasta By Hand (2015), Jenn Louis introduces her ricotta cavatelli recipe as follows:

“This Italian dumpling is one of the first I learned how to make. One year, my husband bought me a hand-crank cavatelli machine for my birthday. We now use that machine at Lincoln, and it has been repaired and rewelded twice because it gets so much use! The recipe for ricotta cavatelli in the booklet that was included with the machine yields perfectly tender and flavorful dumplings.”

Here’s Louis’s take on the BeeBo ricotta cavatelli recipe.  I include her instructions for using a stand mixer and I offer some BeeBo-specific recommendations. 

500 g / 3½ cups + 1 tbsp all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1 tsp kosher salt

480 g / 2 cups whole-milk ricotta cheese, homemade or store-bought

55 g / ¼ cup whole milk

1 egg

Sauce of your choice (suggestions follow)

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment, combine the flour, salt, ricotta, milk, and egg. Knead on medium speed for 10 minutes, until fully combined and the dough is mostly smooth. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and dust with flour.

Uncover the dough and place it on a work surface lightly dusted with flour. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough to approximately ¼-inch thickness. As best you can, square off the sides of the dough sheet to form a rectangle. Cut the dough into strips approximately ½-inch wide.

Attach your cavatelli machine to a sturdy work surface. Feed the dough strips into the machine by cranking the machine’s handle. Cavatelli will fall out of the machine’s round head onto your work surface. Put the cavatelli on the prepared baking sheets and shape the remaining dough. Make sure that the cavatelli don’t touch or they will stick together. After processing all of the dough, Louis writes that you should have enough ricotta cavatelli to serve 8.

To store, refrigerate on the baking sheets, covered with plastic wrap, for up to 2 days, or freeze on the baking sheets and transfer to an airtight container. Use within 1 month. Do not thaw before cooking.

To cook, bring a large pot filled with generously salted water to a simmer over medium-high heat. Add the cavatelli and simmer until they float to the surface, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove immediately with a slotted spoon and finish with your choice of sauce. Serve right away.

Louis recommends pairing ricotta cavatelli with these traditional sauces (recipes that Louis shares in Cooking By Hand): pesto; tomato sauce; guanciale, tomato, and red onion; brown butter with sage; fonduta; gorgonzola cream sauce; liver, pancetta, and porcini ragú; rabbit ragú; lamb ragú; or beef ragú. 

I frequently sauce ricotta cavatelli with leftover meat and braising liquid from a previous meal. A favorite combination includes chopped meat from chicken thighs braised in stock with sliced artichoke hearts and porcini mushrooms.

Making cavatelli with a BeeBo is so easy. Through experience I found that the key to crafting perfectly formed cavatelli with a BeeBo is rolling and cutting the strips of dough to just the right thickness and width. I find that the sweet spot is a dough strip that is approximately ¼-inch thick and ½-inch wide. But, don’t worry, even misshaped cavatelli taste great.

A couple of final notes. The BeeBo ricotta cavatelli recipe easily scales up and down. I often halve Louis’s recipe to feed 4. And I find that a stacking set of gyoza trays work really well when storing pasta. Three of these trays easily accommodates over one pound of cavatelli.

Pasta Day 2024

Here in the United States, 17 October's National Pasta Day has come and gone. However, it’s not too late to commemorate World Pasta Day on 25 October 2024. The good folks at Emiliomiti are offering 20% off all standard pasta dies. This sale ends on 27 October, so if you are in the market for a new pasta die, check out https://pastabiz.com.

To mark Pasta Day(s), I am sharing a list of my go-to pasta-related books, both reference and culinary. These titles hold pride of place in my collection. If you dig around this site, you will see that I frequently reference many of these books.

To keep this post short, I will not cover the “why” behind my list other than to say each enriches my understanding of pasta cookery.

An A-Z of Pasta by Rachel Roddy, Fig Tree / Penguin, 2021.

American Sfoglino by Evan Funke with Katie Parla, Chronicle Books, 2019.

Bugialli on Pasta by Giuliano Bugialli, Simon & Schuster, 1988.

Cooking By Hand by Paul Bertolli, Clarkson Potter, 2003.

Encyclopedia of Pasta by Oretta Zanini De Vita, translated by Maureen B. Fant, University of California Press, 2009.

The Geometry of Pasta by Caz Hildebrand & Jacob Kenedy, Quirk Books, 2010.

Pasta by Missy Robbins and Talia Baiocchi, Ten Speed Press, 2021.

The Pasta Codex by Vincenzo Buonassisi, Rizzoli, 2020.

Pasta Grannies by Vicky Bennison, Books One and Two, Hardie Grant, 2019 & 2022.

Sauces & Shapes by Oretta Zanini De Vita and Maureen B. Fant, W. W. Norton, 2013.

Happy Pasta Day, everyone!

Tipo 00 - The Pasta Cookbook

In my last post (here) I wrote that I ordered Andreas Papadakis’s Tipo 00 – The Pasta Cookbook (Allen & Unwin, Australia) from Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York City. Papadakis co-owns and is the chef at Tipo 00, a pasta bar in Melbourne, Australia. With Papadakis’s fine dining background and his restaurant’s pasta-centric focus, I looked forward to diving into his new cookbook.

Tipo 00 looks splendid with its handsome teal blue cover, clean layout and especially lovely and instructive photographs by Mark Roper.

Papadakis divides Tipo 00 into eight main chapters: How to Make Pasta; Long Pasta; Pasta, Filled and Shaped; Risotto; Home Classics; Not Pasta; Tipomisu and Other Desserts; and Basics and Other Essentials.

I found something worthwhile in each of these sections. But what really interests me is Papadakis’s master pasta dough recipe.

Many restaurant-based cookbooks offer up a luxe egg yolk-rich dough recipe. Some examples: Rich Table (210 grams all-purpose flour to 12 large egg yolks); Flour + Water (360 grams tipo 00 flour to approximately 18 to 20 yolks); and Missy Robbins’s Pasta (500 grams tipo 00 flour to approximately 24 to 26 yolks).

I appreciate that these recipes document a restaurant’s process. It is interesting to understand a Michelin-star chef’s pasta ratios.  But using 24 to 26 egg yolks to make pasta is something home cooks would likely not entertain. So finding a pasta dough recipe from a great chef that offers a more accessible balance of egg and yolk and flour for the home cook feels welcoming.

Papadakis’s introduces Tipo 00’s master pasta dough like this:

“We use a lot of different doughs to make our pasta in the restaurant, but this is a good universal recipe. For home cooks, the main thing to note is the dryness of the dough—I believe that many recipes for making pasta at home produce a dough that is too wet. This might be easier to roll and shape, but it won’t have the right strength. If your pasta dough is too wet, once you put the rolled and cut or shaped pasta in boiling water to cook, it quickly takes on the consistency of a dumpling.”

Papadakis’s dough gains its strength, in part, from a 70:30 ratio of tipo 00 flour to semolina flour. Adding semolina allows the pasta maker to “reduce the amount of egg yolks needed to bind the dough, and so the pasta will be less rich and eggy.” Papadakis warns that this drier dough might prove a challenge for smaller home pasta machines. His restaurant employs an Imperia R220 Manual Pasta Machine to sheet its dough.

I made Tipo 00’s master dough following Papadakis’s recipe to the letter. I usually use my mixer’s paddle/beater attachment to bring my pasta dough together, but I trusted Papadakis’s instructions and employed a dough hook per his recipe. To help ensure proper dough hydration, I typically slowly add egg to flour. But again, I heeded Papadakis’s process and simply added the egg mixture into a flour well that I formed in the mixer’s bowl.

In the end, the recipe worked out great. My dough didn’t look quite as dry as the dough pictured on page 22 of Tipo 00, but this might be because I used a double milled rather than a course semolina flour. 

I also followed Papadakis’s rolling and folding instructions. They produced a beautiful pasta sheet that neatly fit the width of my Imperia R220 machine.

Here’s Papadakis’s master pasta dough recipe, which serves 4 to 6, with his rolling and folding instructions. The asides are Papadakis’s.

350 g (12 oz) ‘00’ flour

150 g (5½ oz) durum wheat semolina flour

1 teaspoon sea salt

65 g (2¼ oz) egg yolk (from about 3-4 eggs)

190 g (6¾ oz) whole egg (about 4 eggs)

If using an electric mixer, place both flours and the salt in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment. Make a well in the centre and add the egg yolk and whole egg. (I find it easier to weigh the egg yolks in a clean bowl first and then the whole eggs to the same bowl up to the total amount of eggs, which is 255 g (9 oz) for this recipe. The total amount of egg is the important part.) Mix on slow speed for 8-10 minutes, until you start seeing large crumbs forming and the dough starts coming together. Transfer the dough to a clean benchtop and knead by hand until it comes together. Don’t expect it to be really smooth, as this is a drier dough—it will come together more and get smoother in the rolling process.

To make the dough by hand, combine both flours and the salt in a mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the egg yolk and whole egg. Mix with a fork until just combined, then transfer to a clean benchtop and knead by hand for 6-8 minutes until the dough comes together.

If the dough seems too dry and won’t come together, you can spray it a couple of times with your spray bottle of water—just be careful not to overdo it and make the dough too wet, since it will become more hydrated and softer as it rests.

I like to shape the dough into a roughly rectangular block, rather than a ball, as I find it easier to feed through the pasta machine later. Wrap your dough really well in plastic film, making it as airtight as possible (at the restaurant we use a vacuum sealer).

If you are planning to make your pasta straight away, let the dough rest for at least an hour at room temperature—but ideally refrigerate it overnight, then take it out a couple of hours before rolling and cutting to let it come back to room temperature.

To make the rolling more manageable, it’s best to work with a relatively small amount of dough, so divide it in two before you start. (If you are not using all the dough at once, you can refrigerate the rest of it, tightly wrapped, for up to 3 days.)

Rolling and Folding the Dough

Set up the pasta machine on a solid benchtop. Using your hands or a rolling pin, flatten the dough enough that it will go through the widest setting on the pasta machine, then pass it through the rollers two or three times, going down one notch each time.

Bring both sides of the dough to the centre, so they meet in the middle, then fold in half to create four layers of dough.

Roll the dough through the widest setting again, then repeat the folding and rolling process one more time—but this time bring one third of the dough into the centre, laying it over the middle third, then cover with the last third to create three layers.

Flatten the dough again, so that it will go through the widest setting on your machine, then pass it through the rollers, going down one notch at a time; it should be smooth by now and starting to become elastic. Keep going until the pasta sheets are the thickness you need.

I followed Papadakis’s advice: I let the dough rest one hour at room temperature and worked with only half of my dough (storing the remainder in the refrigerator.) I finished rolling my pasta at a setting between 3 and 2 on my R220 machine. I let the sheets dry out for a bit on each side. I then dusted the pasta with some flour and stacked the sheets on a tray that I lightly covered with plastic film and stored in the refrigerator. An hour or so before cooking, I cut the pasta into tagliatelle.

My family really enjoyed the taste and, especially, the texture of Papadakis’s pasta. The noodles had an excellent firm bite and delicious flavor. I will definitely add this pasta dough recipe into my repertoire.

Tipo 00 contains a large number of pasta dishes that I look forward to trying: Squid ink tagliolini with calamari; Asparagus ravioli with parmesan cream; and Cannelloni with smoked eggplant & ricotta. If you are looking for a solid pasta cookbook to add to your collection, check out Andreas Papadakis’s Tipo 00.

Pembroke 2021 Soft Red Winter Wheat

Most flour milled for pasta, whether fresh or dried, comes from hard wheat. However, in pasta making, exceptions prove the rule. Certain soft wheat varieties and even seeds (e.g., buckwheat) also make delicious pasta (e.g., Red Russian soft red wheat (here) and buckwheat (here)).

I recently received a large bag of Pembroke 2021 soft red winter wheat from my good friends at the Manley Farm in Lexington, Kentucky. Pembroke 2021 takes its name from the Pembroke silt loam soil series prevalent in the main wheat-producing area of Kentucky. Because regional farmers often grow wheat in rotation with corn and soybean, their wheat and corn crops become susceptible to Fusarium head blight (FHB), a disease that overwinters in corn stubble. Researchers developed Pembroke 2021 to resist FHB yet have high yield potential.

 

The Manley Farm’s Pembroke 2021 wheat berries make great flour for pasta. I milled 300 grams of Pembroke 2021 in my Komo mill set to fine. I then sifted the ground berries with a No. 40 and No. 50 screen producing approximately 100 grams of flour. I used a medium egg and a little milk to bring the dough together and kneaded by hand for 8 minutes. After resting at room temperature for 30 minutes, the soft wheat dough easily rolled out with a pin with no spring back.

 

I used my hand-cut noodles to make Chicken and Noodles based upon a recipe in Paul Fehribach’s new cookbook Midwestern Food (2023). The soft noodles had a yielding texture and mild wheat flavor in this homey, comforting dish.

 

Here’s Fehribach’s recipe that makes between 3 and 4 quarts serving 6 to 8.

 

1 medium fryer chicken, about 3½ pounds

2 to 3 quarts water

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 large eggs

2 tablespoons whole milk

3 teaspoons kosher salt, divided

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

 

1. Rinse the chicken under cold running water in a clean sink. [See note below.] Place in a 4-quart sauce pan or small stock pot and add enough water to just cover. Bring to a boil over high heat, skimming any foam or scum that rises. Once it boils, immediately reduce heat to medium or medium low to maintain a low boil. Cook for 1 hour or more, until the chicken is starting to fall apart. Remove from heat and use a spider to remove the chicken to a platter and allow to cool for a few minutes.

 

2. While the chicken is cooling, make the egg noodles. Place the flour in a medium mixing bowl, and make a little well in the center big enough to hold the eggs. Crack the eggs into the well, along with the milk and 1 teaspoon of salt. Using a fork, beat the eggs, then gradually begin pulling flour into them little by little. When the mixture becomes too thick to work with a fork, finish mixing with your hands. Continue mixing until all the flour is incorporated, then knead inside the bowl, adding small amounts of flour if need to prevent sticking, for a minute or two until you have a smooth ball. No need to knead any longer than that. Cover with plastic wrap and rest for 15 minutes.

 

3. On a well-floured surface, roll out the noodles to the desired thickness; about 1/8 inch is usually ideal. Use a pizza cutter to cut them into the desired shape. I usually cut them about ½ inch wide and the full length of the rolled dough. But make them any width and length you like. Leave them liberally floured to prevent sticking while you pull the chicken and finish the broth.

 

4. Pull the meat from the chicken bones, removing and discarding the skin as well. Shred the chicken with a fork and reserve on a platter. Return the cooked broth to the heat, making sure you have 2 quarts or slightly more. Add a little extra water if needed. Add the remaining 2 teaspoons salt and pepper, and bring to a rolling boil. Drop the noodles in at once and give a quick stir to make sure they don’t clump. Reduce heat to medium low and cover the pot. Steam the noodles for 5 minutes, add the chicken, stir, replace the lid, and steam for 5 more minutes. Remove from heat, stir, and allow to steam off heat, covered, for 10 more minutes. Then serve!

 

Note: The Food and Drug Administration recommends against washing raw chicken due to the risk of transferring dangerous food-borne pathogens through splashed water. Another warning: even though Fehribach clearly writes “steam the noodles” and not boil the noodles, I advise not turning your back on a covered pot of cooking noodles, even whilst on a medium low heat. The starchy mixture might choose to boil over.

 

I plan on using home-milled Pembroke 2021 flour to make other pasta shapes suited to a soft wheat dough. Oretta Zanini De Vita’s Encyclopedia of Pasta (2009) offers some suggestions. One piqued my interest: ciriole, a long noodle made with soft flour and water, hand rolled into a sheet, cut into strips that are rolled again by hand to form “long irregular spaghettoni”. Zanini De Vita writes that ciriole, “an old name for a small thin white eel”, is found in Tuscany and Umbria and served with local sauces. In Terni, find the noodles served in a sauce of pioppo mushrooms. Butter-cooked mushrooms, by-the-way, make a delicious additional ingredient in Chicken and Noodles.

National Pasta Day 2023

17 October 2023 is National Pasta Day! And World Pasta Day quickly follows on 25 October 2023. The good people at Emiliomiti are offering 20% off standard pasta dies from 11 October through 25 October 2023. Definitely worth checking out if you have an extruder. Go to Emilio’s PastaBiz site here.

 

To mark National and World Pasta Day, here are some photos from A Serious Bunburyist’s pasta vault. Enjoy some pasta today, everyone!

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

In my 11 February 2023 post, I promised to share a quintessential American recipe with historical ties to the Venetian torchio pasta press. This recipe for Baked Macaroni and Cheese comes from Jubilee – Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking (Clarkson Potter, 2019) by the Julia Child Award winning author Toni Tipton-Martin.

In the recipe’s introduction, Tipton-Martin highlights James Hemings’s role in establishing macaroni and cheese’s American roots. She writes:

 

“Hemings was an enslaved chef in Thomas Jefferson’s home who mastered the sophisticated techniques of French classical cooking in Paris, including the operation of a ‘maccaroni’ press. As Monticello’s chef de cuisine, Hemings handwrote his recipes; the ones whose records have survived include fried potatoes (French fries), burnt cream (crème brûlée), and ‘Nouilles a maccaroni’ (macaroni noodles). It’s known that he prepared a ‘macaroni pie’ for a White House dinner in 1802. The macaroni recipe turns up topped with grated cheese following its publication in The Virginia Housewife published in 1845 by Mary Randolph, a Jefferson relative.”

 

Tipton-Martin goes on to document macaroni and cheese’s development by Black chefs, but for our pasta-making purposes, let’s peel off here. To create Nouilles a maccaroni, Hemings used a torchio that Jefferson purchased in Europe. The Library of Congress holds Thomas Jefferson’s drawing of a macaroni machine and instructions for making pasta, ca. 1787.

 

Here is an image of an antique torchio attributed on Flickr to the collection of the Museo di Serravella.

 

 

And, finally, Bugialli on Pasta (1988, Simon and Schuster) contains a photograph of the great Giuliano Bugialli using an “antique Bigolo”.

 

 

Tipton-Martin’s recipe for Baked Macaroni and Cheese serves 8 to 10. 

 

Softened butter, for the baking dish

1 pound elbow macaroni

2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

2 cups shredded Jack cheese

1 stick (4 ounces) butter, melted

½ cup sour cream

3 large eggs, well beaten

1 (12-ounce) can evaporated milk

½ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

¼ teaspoon white pepper

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Paprika

 

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Generously butter a 13 x 9-inch baking dish.

 

2. Bring a large pasta pot or saucepan of generously salted water to a boil. Add the macaroni and cook until al dente. Drain.

 

3. In a large bowl, combine the Cheddar and Jack cheeses. Measure out 1 cup of the cheese mixture and set aside for the top of the dish. Layer the remaining combined cheeses and macaroni in the buttered baking dish, beginning and ending with the macaroni.

 

4. In a medium bowl, whisk together the melted butter, sour cream, eggs, evaporated milk, ½ teaspoon salt (or to taste), white pepper, and cayenne. Pour the cream sauce over the macaroni and cheese. Top with the reserved 1 cup of cheese and sprinkle generously with paprika. Place the dish on a rimmed baking dish to catch any juices that spill over.

 

5. Bake until the cheese is bubbling and the top is browned and crusty, 30 to 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and let stand 10 minutes before serving.

 

Using dried commercial pasta speeds up the dish’s preparation. However, if you own a torchio, you can make approximately one pound of pasta using the following ingredients: 300 grams “00” flour, 2 medium eggs, and 2 medium egg yolks. (I weigh the eggs and egg yolks shooting for a total egg mixture weight of approximately 150g.) Back in 2019 I wrote about a bronze 6mm ridged macaroni die (here) that I bought from Emiliomiti during its World Pasta Day sale. Although a little on the small side, this shape definitely works in this dish. I’ve also made this recipe using pasta from my lumache die.