Gramigna al Ragù di Salsiccia

My February 2013 post (here) covers making fresh gramigna in a torchio pasta press. Home kitchens, restaurants and cookbooks typically pair the sprout-like shaped gramigna with a sausage ragù. I listed a number of gramigna recipes from various sources including a recipe from Trattoria da Gianni a la Vécia Bulàgna in Bologna that Slow Food Editore published in its Italian-language cookbook entitled La Pasta [2010]. Of the sauces that I have tried with gramigna, this version remains one of my favorites. The simple ragù, although rich, tastes bright and not heavy. Here’s my translation of Gramigna al Ragù di Salsiccia from La Pasta.

Time to prepare and cook: 1¼ hours

Serves: 6

800 grams gramigna

600 grams pork sausage

1 small carrot

½ onion

½ celery rib

500 grams tomatoes, peeled

a glass of dry white wine

Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

extra virgin olive oil

salt

Prepare a battuto with onion, celery and carrot and lightly brown in a frying pan with a little oil. In the meantime, skin the sausage, break it up in the pan, brown it for a few minutes over medium heat, mixing to combine the ingredients and pour in the wine.

Once the wine has evaporated, purée the tomatoes, pour them into the pan and simmer over low heat, covered, for one hour, checking that the sauce doesn’t get too dry and adding a little water, if necessary. Taste the sauce and season with salt.

Boil the gramigna in a large pot filled with salted water for 5 to 6 minutes, draining when al dente. Coat with the sauce and finish with a generous grating of Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Notes

As used in the above recipe, a battuto is a finely diced mixture of vegetables that, once cooked, become the flavor-base of countless Italian soups, stews and sauces. In her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking [1992], the great Marcella Hazan writes: “At one time, the nearly invariable components of a battuto were lard, parsley, and onion, all chopped very fine.” Today, more often than not, a recipe calling for a battuto dispenses with the lard and cooks the chopped vegetables in olive oil or butter. Hazan continues: “When a battuto is sautéed in a pot or skillet until the onion becomes translucent and the garlic, if any, become colored a pale gold, it turns into a soffritto.”

When I make Gramigna al Ragù di Salsiccia, I cook the vegetables for about 10 to 15 minutes over medium-low heat. After creating the soffritto, I turn the heat up to medium to brown the crumbled sausage. I use a dry Orvieto, about 200 ml or so, to deglaze the pan.

Finally, the La Pasta recipe suggests cooking the gramigna for about 5 to 6 minutes. That time frame sounds a little too long to me. Taste the pasta as you go. I typically cook fresh gramigna for about 3 minutes after the pasta water has returned to a boil.

Gramigna

Gramigna, like toppe (here), traditionally contains a blend of durum-wheat flour, type 00 flour and eggs. In her Encyclopedia of Pasta [2009], Oretta Zanini De Vita writes that you find the fresh version of gramigna (“little weeds” in Italian) in Emilia-Romagna and in its neighboring regions of the Marche and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Outside of Italy, the small, sprout-like shape rarely appears as fresh pasta. Even finding the dry, factory made version can prove difficult here in the states. Why seek it out? The shape has an affinity with its traditional sauce—a sausage ragù(here)—and makes a unique and deeply comforting dish. As Lynne Rossetto Kasper writes in The Splendid Table [1992], gramigna is “Emilian coming-home-to-mother food.” Who wouldn’t want to eat Bolognese comfort food?

Like many Italian pasta shapes, gramigna evolved over time. The earliest homemade version was shaped by rubbing a hard dough over a large-hole grater. Graters gave way to home pasta presses mounted on walls or tables. When extruded, the fresh homemade and dry factory versions look similar, but expect the homemade pasta to look less uniform.

Luckily, making fresh gramigna at home is remarkably easy with a torchio or other type of pasta extruder. The bronze die does all the tricky work of creating a thin, curvy tube. Emiliomiti (here) in San Francisco sells a number of gramigna dies; I use No. 138. The only real secret to making gramigna in a torchio—like most extruded shapes—lies with the dough: it must be dry or the gramigna will stick to each other when extruded and cut.

The following dough represents somewhat of a departure from other torchio dough recipes I have shared on this site. The ratio of flour to liquid for my gramigna dough is 2 to 1. This mixture starts out extremely dry and I only knead the dough for 20 seconds or so. The approach in a nutshell: mix the flour and eggs together and wrap the dough in plastic wrap to hydrate for approximately an hour. Here are the ingredients and a detailed description of the process that I use to make gramigna in a torchio.

150 grams Caputo tipo 00 flour

50 grams Giusto Extra Fancy durum flour

100 grams of a beaten egg mixture comprised of 1 medium egg and 2 medium egg yolks

1) Weigh out the flour and sift into a heavy mixing bowl.

2) Place a cup on a scale and tare the scale. Crack and add the whole egg and two egg yolks into the cup. If the eggs weigh less than 100 grams, add egg whites or water to reach a weight of 100 grams. Remove the cup from the scale and mix to blend the whole egg and egg yolks (and water, if using).

3) Make a well in the flour and add 100 grams of the egg mixture. Incorporate the mixture into the flour with the fork until a crumbly mixture forms. Clean the dough off your fork and add it to the bowl.

4) Holding the bowl with one hand, reach into the bowl with your other hand and continue to mix the dough by hand. The goal is to incorporate all of the flour in the bowl into a rough dough that holds together. (If this mixture remains too dry and will not come together, add a quick spritz or two of water from a spray bottle.)

5) Turn your dough onto a clean work surface. Knead the dough a couple of times and tightly wrap the dough in plastic wrap. Let the dough rest at room temperature for about 1 hour.

6) Attach your torchio to a work surface and insert your gramigna die. Unwrap the dough and lightly dust it with flour. Roll the dough into a thick cylinder and slide this into the torchio’s chamber. Insert the torchio’s piston into the machine’s chamber and turn the torchio’s handle until the pasta extrudes from the die. (Don’t be surprised by the amount of effort necessary to operate the press. The dough that travels through the bronze die is hard and dry.) Cut the gramigna into approximately 1½-inch long pieces and place on a baking tray covered with semolina flour. Continue turning and cutting until the dough runs out. You will have enough pasta to serve 4 as a starter or 2 to 3 as a main course.

To cook the pasta, bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. Add the fresh gramigna, stir the pasta and when the water returns to the boil, cook for approximately 3 minutes. Taste to determine if the pasta is ready. If so, drain and add the gramigna to your ready sauce, mix the two together and cook the pasta and sauce for a minute or two.

More often than not the sauce accompanying gramigna contains pork sausage. Kasper’s The Splendid Table contains a recipe for Gramigna alla Salsiccia e Vino (Gramigna with Wine-Braised Sausage). Giuliano Bugialli’s Bugialli on Pasta [1988] features a recipe for Gramigna al Sugo di Salsicce (Gramigna with Sausage-flavored Sauce). In The Geometry of Pasta [2010] Jacob Kenedy serves gramigna in a cabbage and sausage sauce made with milk and butter.  The Italian-language La Pasta [2010] from Slow Food Editore includes a recipe from Trattoria da Gianni a la Vécia Bulàgna in Bologna entitled Gramigna al Ragù di Salsiccia (here) that features—surprise—sausage. Vegetarians take heart: Zanini De Vita writes that during the summer the pasta may be cooked directly in a light (sausage-free) tomato sauce.

Chikin Mito Boru

I don’t know…I want to be more healthy. I want to eat better…you know, eat healthier…not all that pasta. Like Japanese food.

­­­Bob Harris (played by Bill Murray), Lost in Translation [2003]

Over the last few years, a number of talented cooks have offered up books that focus on simple Japanese food. Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat wrote Japanese Hot Pots [2009] and The Japanese Grill [2011]. Elizabeth Andoh followed up her award-winning Washoku – Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen [2005] with Kansha – Celebrating Japan’s Vegan and Vegetarian Traditions [2010]. Lastly, Nancy Singleton Hachisu recently authored Japanese Farm Food [2012]. Although each of these authors writes with a distinctly different voice and each has a slightly different focus, their works achieve a shared goal: to introduce a simple and direct type of Japanese food.

Consider these recipes from Nancy Singleton Hachisu’s excellent Japanese Farm Food: Okura No Ohitashi (Thinly Sliced Okra with Dried Bonito Shavings) contains raw okra, dried bonito shaving (katsuobushi) and soy sauce. Sukesodara No Miso Yaki (Miso-broiled Cod) calls for miso, sake and cod. Tamago-kake Gohan (Raw Egg on Hot Rice) has…well, you get the picture. You can almost prepare each dish from their English titles alone.

A wonderful thing about this type of Japanese food is that a healthy, satisfying and flavorful dish quickly comes together if you have certain food staples available, such as konbu (dried seaweed, sometimes spelled kombu), dashi, soy sauce, mirin, sake and miso. Of these ingredients only dashi requires some thinking ahead (assuming that you’re not using some instant powder-ized stuff). More often than not I make a batch of this fragrant, umami-rich stock (here) for a weekend meal and freeze the leftover stock for use during the coming week. (If necessary, dashi keeps in the freezer for up to 3 months.)

With konbu and miso at hand—both of which store extremely well—you are ready to make this simple, easy and comforting dish from Japanese Farm Food: Chikin Mito Boru (Simmered Chicken-and-Miso Meatballs). The recipe’s length speaks more to Hachisu’s detailed instructions rather than the recipe’s complexity. The process in a nutshell: simmer chicken dumplings in a simple konbu and green onion stock enriched with miso. Hachisu’s recipe serves 4.

Stock

1 (3 by 6-inch/7.5 by 15-cm) piece of konbu

6 tablespoons brown rice miso

¼ head of napa cabbage, quartered lengthwise (about ⅔ pound/300g)

3 thin negi or 6 fat scallions

Meatballs

1 pound (500 g) course-ground or hand-chopped chicken thigh

2 tablespoons chopped scallions or negi (whites and green tops)

2 tablespoons brown rice miso

1 tablespoon finely grated ginger

1 tablespoon potato starch

Fill a medium-sized, heavy pot with 2 quarts (2 liters) of cold water. Drop the konbu and negi into the water and bring to a simmer. Measure the miso into a large soup ladle and dip the ladle slightly into the simmering water to wet the miso. Whisk enough hot water into the miso so that the miso will not leave lumps when fully submerged into the simmering konbu stock.

Prepare the meatballs while you are waiting for the water with konbu and negi to come to a simmer. Dump the chicken meat into a large mixing bowl and add the scallions, miso, grated ginger, and potato starch. Mix well with your hands to distribute all the aromatics.

Form ten 2-inch (5-cm) diameter meatballs by tossing the meat between your two palms. The shape does not need to be perfectly round but it is important for the outer surface to seal. The surface should be slick and glossy.

Lay the lengthwise-cut napa cabbage quarter wedge on a cutting board, remove the core with a V cut, and slice crosswise into thick strips (about ¾-inch/2-cm). Add to the simmering stock and bring to a simmer.

As soon as the stock begins to simmer again, drop as many meatballs as can comfortably cook in your pot (they should not be crowded when they rise to the surface) and cook at a lively simmer until the meatballs pop up, about 6 minutes or so. Check for doneness by catching up one with a wooden spoon and pressing gently on the meatball. It should not have a lot of give but should not be rock hard.

Spoon up 2 or 3 meatballs into a small bowl along with some of the napa cabbage and a little broth. Serve with a bowl of rice.

I’ll be the first to admit that this homely dish won’t win any beauty contests while cooking or after serving. But its warming and comforting taste more than compensates for its plain appearance. The stock quickly comes together and perfectly compliments the soft-textured, flavorful dumplings. Served with rice and a vegetable dish, you have a near perfect meal.

Some notes and thoughts on the recipe. Although Hachisu might be able to mix and form her meatballs in the time it takes for the stock to come to a simmer, I don’t possess such dexterity; I prepare the meatballs before starting the stock. Immediately following the recipe, Hachisu offers up variations on the dish. One of her suggestions is to cut the negi into ¾-inch (2-cm) lengths or the scallions into 2-inch (5-cm) lengths, and add them to the soup with the napa cabbage. I recommend this option as the whole onions make cooking and serving the dish a little awkward. Finally, I cook the meatballs an additional three to four minutes (whether they need it or not; I’m not keen on even the remote possibility of eating undercooked chicken).

Once you have the basics behind this recipe under your belt, you are ready to experiment with your own variations: perhaps use dashi made with bonito flakes as stock; try ground pork instead of chicken; and/or reach for an egg in place of potato starch. Sweet young white turnips nicely augment (or even stand in for) cabbage. I might try a savoy rather than a napa cabbage. Leeks would taste good, too. I’ve made the dish with yellow miso, although Hachisu’s recommended brown rice miso tastes very good.

As an aside, Japanese Hot Pots by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat has a recipe for Chanko Nabe—they subtitle the dish Sumo Wrestler Hot Pot because a wrestler provided them with the recipe—that resembles Chikin Mito Boru. Both recipes contain nearly identical chicken dumplings, but Ono and Salat’s version poaches the dumplings in chicken stock flavored with sake. Their version goes on to include a host of other ingredients (including fresh pork belly and tofu) intended to sate the hungry sumo wrestlers (and others) that dine on this dish. If you want to use different ingredients, feel free to experiment. You can also make these nabe dishes as Spartan or bountiful as you want.

Chikin Mito Boru exemplifies the type of direct, simple yet satisfying food you will find in Japanese Farm Food and Japanese Hot Pots as well as the Elizabeth Andoh’s works mentioned above. All of these cookbooks are clearly a labor of love and they deserve a wide audience.  If your New Year resolution involves eating better, check out these books.