Bigoli Revisited

Since my first post on making fresh bigoli (here), I’ve expanded my collection of bigoli dough recipes. These recipes come from both classic Italian cookbooks (such as Ada Boni’s Italian Regional Cooking [1969] and Giuliano Bugialli’s Bugialli on Pasta [1988]) and from new cookbooks (such as The Italian Academy of Cuisine’s La Cucina – The Regional Cooking of Italy [2009] and Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy’s The Geometry of Pasta [2010]). Still, recipes for fresh bigoli remain rare in English-language cookbooks. My hope is that as the cooking public’s interest in Italian regional cuisine, especially pasta, continues to climb, and as the Internet makes the previously hard-to-find torchio pasta press readily available (here), we will see more recipes for fresh bigoli in new cookbooks.

And why not? Making fresh bigoli offers a number of advantages over buying dried bigoli—if you can find it—or using dry, whole-wheat spaghetti. Fresh bigoli has a firm yet chewy texture missing from dried pasta. Making bigoli also gives you complete control over how your pasta tastes. 

Given that variations abound in regional Italian cooking, it’s hardly surprising that the bigoli recipes I’ve collected contain a broad range of flour options. Ada Boni’s recipe for fresh bigoli in her Italian Regional Cooking calls exclusively for “all-purpose (plain) flour”. (The Italian Academy of Cuisine’s recipe in La Cucina’s also calls for 100% all-purpose flour.) Oretta Zanini De Vita’s Encyclopedia of Pasta describes bigoli’s ingredients as “[g]enerally whole-wheat flour made from durum wheat, but sometimes soft-wheat flour….”   Jacob Kenedy’s bigoli recipe in The Geometry of Pasta has two variations: one with 100% whole-wheat flour (for the “staunch traditionalist”) and another with whole-wheat and a little added semola.  The Italian-language La Pasta [2010] from Slow Food Editore contains seven recipes for fresh bigoli using a range of farina di frumento (wheat flour) from tipo 00 (highly refined flour) to farina integrale (ground whole-grain flour). What can you take from this? Unless you’re a “staunch traditionalist” or just a dogmatist, experiment freely and use whatever flour option tastes best to you.

I’ve tried a number of different ratios of whole-wheat to all-purpose flour to achieve a pasta that meets my taste. I hit upon the following dough recipe for bigoli because it has a distinctive yet balanced whole-wheat flavor. When processed through my Bottene torchio the dough transforms into a rough-textured noodle characteristic of pasta extruded from a bronze die. The following recipe serves 2.

• 125 grams Caputo tipo 00 flour
• 75 grams Giustos organic whole-wheat flour, fine
• 2 large eggs [approximately 120 grams]

1. Weigh out the flour, mix them together and sift the flour blend into a heavy mixing bowl.

2. Make a well in the flour and add the eggs. Beat the eggs with a fork and incorporate them into the flour with the fork until a crumbly mixture forms. Clean the dough off your fork and add it to the bowl.

3. 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 is too dry and will not come together, add a quick spritz or two of water from a spray bottle.)

4. Turn your dough onto a clean work surface. Wash your hands to remove any dough before kneading.

5. Begin to knead the dough ball by forcefully pushing it down and away from you with your palm’s heel. Fold the dough back over itself toward you. Slightly turn the dough counterclockwise, and knead again. Knead until the dough becomes quite firm (generally between 10 to 12 minutes). The dough should weigh approximately 300 grams.

6. Wrap the dough in plastic. Let the dough rest at room temperature for about 20 minutes.

7. Attach your torchio to a work surface and insert your bigoli 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. Cut to your desired length—I aim for 12 inches—and dust the cut pasta in a bowl containing flour to prevent sticking. Place the floured bigoli on a dishtowel. Continue turning the torchio handle and cutting until the dough runs out.

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

And what sauce should you have ready? That’s entirely up to your taste. Most bigoli dishes in English-language cookbooks serve the pasta in either a duck (in some form: broth, meat and/or giblets) or a salted anchovy sauce. Oretta Zanini De Vita writes that in Padova bigoli is traditionally served with chicken giblets. The Italian-language La Pasta from Slow Food Editore pairs bigoli with regional sauces that feature: brined lake bleak; salted sardines; uncured freshwater sardines; goose; duck; and a ragù made with a pork mixture used to stuff a salumi.

Geragoor

This is the third post in an ongoing series on Armenian food. I previously shared recipes for cherog, an Easter yeast bread, and for rice pilaf. Next up, a recipe for an Armenian lamb and green bean stew, or geragoor, from my paternal grandmother.

I grew up eating this dish at my grandparent’s house. Whether served alone as a weekday supper or as part of a more elaborate celebratory meal, the basic ingredients remained the same: lamb, a featured vegetable (usually green beans), onions and tomatoes. Growing up I thought this dish was exclusively Armenian; it is not. Many Mediterranean and Near Eastern countries have similar rustic lamb and vegetable stews with an onion and tomato base. Penelope Casas’s The Food & Wine of Spain [1983] has a recipe for Cordero al Chilindrón that pairs red peppers with lamb, onions and tomatoes. Richard Olney’s Provence, The Beautiful Cookbook [1993] shares a French version of this dish called Ragoût D’Agneau Aux Artichauts that contains artichokes. Paula Wolfert’s Mediterranean Grains and Greens [1998] includes a Tunisian variation that features cactus pads. Each version is a simply seasoned combination of a limited number of regional ingredients.

More often than not my grandmother made her geragoor with green beans. If she didn’t like her green grocer’s bean selection she’d opt for the vegetable that looked the best: leeks, squash or, my favorite, okra (bamia in Armenian). On a rare occasion she used potatoes in place of vegetables; when she did she seasoned the geragoor with dried purple basil.

Although the stew’s vegetables might vary, its meat does not: my grandmother used lamb shoulder. I’ve tried the dish with leg of lamb and didn’t like the results; I think the leg is too lean for this dish. Although I sometimes cut cubes from a boneless shoulder, typically I use lamb shoulder blade chops cut widthwise into thirds. This recipe serves 4.

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 lamb shoulder blade chops, each chop cut widthwise into thirds by your butcher, trimmed of excess fat with bones retained
• 1 large yellow onion, halved then sliced
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
• 1 pound green beans, topped and cut in half
• 4 medium tomatoes (approximately 1 pound), peeled and chopped reserving juice
• Water as needed

Heat oil in a heavy 5½-quart casserole over medium-high heat. Add lamb and brown meat. Add the sliced onions, season with salt and pepper, and cook until the onions soften. Add green beans and chopped tomatoes with their juice. Add a little water as necessary, but keep in mind that the onions, beans and tomatoes will give up liquids to form a sauce. After the stew comes to a simmer, cover the casserole and reduce heat to low. Simmer the stew for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Adjust seasonings to taste.

Some notes and thoughts. If using bone-in shoulder blade chops, be mindful that small (and often sharp) pieces of bone may turn up in the finished dish. Whenever I serve this dish I emphatically warn: “Look out for bones!”

When I have the time, I’ll salt the lamb the night before (using about 2 teaspoons of medium-grained sea salt) and leave the meat uncovered on a cooling rack inside the refrigerator. This step helps the lamb to brown and deepens the meat’s flavor. Make sure to cut back on the amount of salt when seasoning the stew to account for the well-salted meat.

Don’t forgo this dish if tomatoes are not in season; good-quality canned tomatoes work nicely. The stew tastes different, but still extraordinarily good.

I began this series on Armenian food to memorialize certain family dishes that, through the passage of time, risked fading away. Ironically, often the simplest fare, like this geragoor, faces the greatest risk of being lost; past generations often fail to memorialize the simplest recipes. I can hear my grandmother now: “Why write it down, janig? It’s so simple?” Yes, it is simple. But wonderfully special in its simplicity and its ability to comfort, it’s a dish worth memorializing and saving.

Spritz

A new cookbook deserves the attention of anyone interested in Italian food. Russell Norman’s Polpo [2012] includes Venetian small-plate dishes (cichèti or cicchètti) served in the wine bars (bàcari) of Venice. Although not technically a regional cookbook—Norman subtitled his book “A Venetian Cookbook (Of Sorts)”—Polpo embraces the spirit of Venetian food.

No doubt Polpo will receive a fair amount of review because its design exposes the signatures and their stitching normally hidden—some might say protected—behind a book’s spine. It’s a pretty gutsy move for a trade book, let alone a cookbook destined to work (and often to get dirty) in a kitchen. But as Norman points out in a short film located on his restaurant’s website [polpo.co.uk], if you open the book to any page, the book remains flat and open.

In addition to an Introduction and Gazetteer (“a short and subjective guide to some of Venice’s wine bars and restaurants”), Polpo covers cichèti, breads, fish, meat, vegetables, desserts, and drinks. Some of these recipes are uniquely Venetian, such as Sardèle in Saór Crostini (Sweet and Sour Sardines on Toast), Baccalà Mantecato (Salt Cod Spread) and Fegato alla Veneziana (Liver Venetian-style). Many of the other recipes come from different parts of Italy or simply have an Italian spirit. However, all of the recipes share a direct approach where success depends in large part on excellent-quality ingredients. Polpo specifies ingredients that are reasonably available in Britain, the cookbook’s country of origin; United States readers shouldn’t have any significant problems finding ingredients over here.

And what of pasta? Not terribly much, I’m afraid. With its focus on bàcari fare, the book doesn’t contain many pasta dishes. In fact, Polpo has only a few. One of these is Bìgoli in Salsa. Although Polpo the restaurant makes its own whole-wheat bigoli in a torchio (here), Norman doesn’t include this fresh pasta recipe. Damn. Instead, he writes you can “simply use a dried wholegrain spaghetti like all Venetian bàcari do.” No doubt this is true.

I’ll admit being disappointed upon learning that Polpo does not contain a fresh bigoli recipe. I needed a drink to lift my spirits. Thankfully Polpo does include a good Spritz recipe. Norman writes a “Spritz is a mixture of white wine (sometimes sparkling Prosecco is used), a bitter such as Campari or Aperol and a splash of soda water. The garnish should always be a slice of lemon and sometimes an olive too.” Wait! Always a slice of lemon? (And not an orange slice!) And sometimes Prosecco?! Norman continues: “[o]f course, there are many ways to make this drink and you will always find someone with a strong opinion telling you that it must be made this way or it should only ever be made like that…Well, this is how we make ours.”

For one:

• Ice
• 1 large green olive, drained of brine
• 75ml white wine—something simple from Veneto like a Garganega or a Pinot Bianco
• 50ml either Campari or Aperol
• Splash of soda water
• 1 slice of lemon

Take a large tumbler and fill it with ice. Push a large green olive (not one that has been kept in oil) onto the end of a cocktail skewer and pop it in the bottom of the glass. Pour the wine. Pour the Campari or Aperol. Add a short squirt of soda water and then a slice of lemon.

A Spritz tastes like a wonderful Italian holiday and is the most delightful of drinks.  I prefer the really bitter, stronger Campari version; I think the Aperol kind tastes a tad too sweet. I often use Prosecco in place of white wine and soda, and always garnish mine with an orange slice and a huge green olive. (Whoever came up with the idea of pairing a briny green olive with an orange slice in a bright, bitter, red-orange drink deserves a medal and a pat-on-the-back.) Jacob Kenedy’s Bocca Cookbook [2011] also has a delicious Spritz recipe. And a family hero, Enrico Casarosa, has a fantastic riff on the Spritz in his charming book The Venice Chronicles [2008].

Although a British publication, a good independent bookseller can find a copy of Polpo for US readers. The book deserves a broad audience. One final thought: Jenny Zarins’s elegant photographs in this handsome book transport you into a soft, lovely Venetian landscape. She has taken some of the most beautiful photographs of Venice that I have ever seen.