AUNTIE PASTA: Sardinian Sapore

SARONNO, Italy – My cousin Joanne wrote to me a while back asking if I could convert the metric measurements in some of the recipes I post on the blog to American measurements. It’s a problem since I live in a place where everything is metric and I’ve never really had much faith in the conversion tables, so my suggestion to her was to buy a small, inexpensive food scale. 

Italian Tuna Fish

Believe me, living in a metric world has been difficult for me as well, and to this day I still don’t know how tall I am or how much I weigh, a small detail that seems to make Italian medical professionals a little suspicious of my mental capacity. I found it depressing that my dress size has gone from a perfectly acceptable 11 to a monstrous 48 and my bust line grew from a 34 to a whopping 86. It was the same with the lira, which took me forever to adjust to and just as I was getting the hang of thinking of 20,000 lira as pocket change, they went and converted our currency to euros. So I get it. I’m just not quite sure what to do about it.

I’ve tried to solve the problem by offering recipes that don’t need exact amounts, recipes that you can customize to your taste by adding a little more or a little less of an ingredient depending on what you have on hand. One of my favorite flexible recipes is pasta with tuna. This is an absolutely delicious thing to eat if, and it’s a big if, you use Italian tuna fish packed in olive oil. I know the trend in the U.S.A. is to use low fat, low salt, packed in water tuna, but unfortunately it has absolutely no taste. No, I take that back, it does have a taste, it tastes like cardboard, which is why you usually have to gop it up with mayo and other flavor enhancers.

The Real Deal

Today’s recipe calls for Malloreddus, (gnocchetti sardi)  a type of small pasta that originated in Sardinia. You can use any type of pasta you want, including spaghetti, but small, firm pasta, like Malloreddus, are really the best. If you don't mind paying a little more, buy Ventresca tuna. This tuna comes from the belly of the fish, it’s what sushi bars call toro. It has a creamy texture and a deep, buttery flavor and the less you do to it the better. This recipe also calls for pesto. If you have it on hand, great, use it, but it is not essential. What is essential is a top quality virgin olive oil, preferably from Liguria.  

This is an easy, no cook (except for the pasta) recipe that you can whip up in 10 minutes. 

PASTA with TUNA

Ingredients for 4 people

350 g of Malloreddus pasta (Sardinian gnocchetti)

200 g of tuna or ventresca packed in olive oil

 5  cherry tomatoes

 120 g of pesto

 Extra virgin olive oil  

salt

Preparation

Drain the tuna or ventresca and cut it into small pieces. Wash the cherry tomatoes and cut them in half or in quarters, depending on how big they are. Put the tuna and the tomatoes in a large serving bowl and add three teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt. Mix well.

Cook the pasta in boiling water. When cooked, but not overcooked – they should be al dente – drain them and add them to the tuna and tomatoes. Add two teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil and the pesto. Mix and serve immediately.

AUNTIE PASTA: Black is Back

SARONNO, Italy - Spaghetti with squid ink sauce is a culinary extravaganza that you will find in the most humble of trattorias and the most chic – and expensive - restaurants from Venice to Palermo.  

 Pasta with Squid Ink Sauce

There is a drawback however. You have to have a lot of confidence to eat this dish in public. The intensely black ink turns your teeth a ghoulish black color that really puts a damper on table conversation. And if that is not embarrassing enough, the delicious flavor is so addictive it keeps you slurping away at the spaghetti until you have devoured every strand. 

I’m not talking here about the black colored spaghetti that you often see in gourmet food shops. That’s sissy stuff. I’m talking about the real deal, spaghetti dressed with a sauce made from the ink extracted from squid caught in the Mediterranean Sea.  

If you order this dish in a restaurant, you can tell immediately which one it is. If it is colored spaghetti, the spaghetti itself will be jet black, otherwise it’s the sauce that’s black.

Pasta colored with Squid Ink

In Andrea Camilleri’s popular crime novels, Sicilian police Inspector Salvo Montalbano will stop in his tracks for a good meal, especially if it is that exquisiteness, spaghetti in squid ink prepared by his boss’ wife. In fact, he will do just about anything to appease the cranky Superintendent in order not to jeopardize an invitation to their table.

The dish affects a lot of people that way. My love affair with spaghetti al nero di sepia goes back a long way, at least more than twenty years. It was one of my first food discoveries when I moved to Italy and started to shop at the open air fish markets in Santa Margherita Ligure and Rapallo. 

Sorry Squid, You would Never Win a Fish Beauty Contest

 You will find packages of black squid ink, also called cuttlefish ink, in the refrigerated section of Italian specialty shops, or ask your fish monger. In Italy it is sold in packages of 4 individual packets of 4 grams each.  

Here are two recipes from the back of the package of squid ink that I bought: one for spaghetti and the other for risotto. Italian recipes tend to be quite general and assume you have a basic knowledge of how things culinary work, I've added a little additional info in parentheses to clarify some points, but since I am so bad at converting metric measurements to US measurements, found a web site you might find useful: http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/cooking-conversions/gram-conversions-general.aspx

Spaghetti al Nero di Seppia

(serves 4)

Finely chop an onion and two cloves of garlic and fry them in a little (extra-virgin) olive oil. (until they become soft and translucent). Add 300 grams of squid, either rings or cut into pieces. Cook the squid with the onion and garlic for a minute or two, then add a glass of white wine and 8 grams of squid ink (two packets) and continue to cook until the squid is tender (about 15 minutes). 

In the meantime, cook your spaghetti al dente. When it is cooked, drain it and add it to the sauce and squid. Let it all cook together for a couple of minutes. Serve very hot.

Risotto al Nero di Seppia

(Serves 4)

Finely chop an onion and two cloves of garlic and fry them in a little (extra-virgin) olive oil. (until they become soft and translucent). Add 300 grams of squid, either rings or cut into pieces. Cook the squid with the onion and garlic for a minute or two, then add a glass of white wine and 8 grams of squid ink (two packets).   

After about 5 minutes add 5 handfuls of rice (Aborio or Canaroli are both good for risotto), and cook on a low flame for about 15 minutes. Add fish broth (as needed) and a pinch of hot red pepper or black pepper. Serve very hot. 

You can also make these dishes adding fresh, rough chopped tomatoes to the onions and garlic, and at the end put in a handful of chopped parsley. Whatever way you chose what you will create is an deliciously intense culinary potion worthy of a medieval sorceress (or sorcerer).

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