It might be generational, or, perhaps, philosophical, but there are, on the one hand, those who enjoy and appreciate handmade things, and the art and craft they require to make, and, on the other, those who prefer their things machine-made, reliable, and standard. The ‘things’ here could be quite literally anything. My father, who, to me, is the quintessential scientist and pragmatist, believes that most, if not all, advances for the betterment of mankind have come as a result of the increased use and application of machines, technology and science. In fact, he would argue, I’m sure, that this blog is evidence of the fact that even something as Luddite as cooking can be improved through the application of technology, though regular readers – with good reason – may not agree.

My mother was cut from very different cloth however, and, though a nurse who believed sincerely in the power of modern medicine, sanitation and inoculation, she was a true amateuse of a hand-turned chair-leg, a cut-glass goblet, and, much to the detriment of my appearance during my tender years, a hand-knitted sweater.  She was also a great lover of gardening, baking bread and, despite the fact that it rarely worked, yogurt-making. I think it’s from her that I get most of my culinary instincts, as the very notion of spending three or four hours in the kitchen doing anything would horrify my dad.

Pasta-rollers, like all machines, were invented for three main reasons: (1) to produce more quickly what used to take a long time (2) as a uniform-quality product, and (3) so that the resulting free time could be spent either more enjoyably or industriously. The assumption behind it seems to be that it makes it easier to make something that is typically quite tricky, and that the making of it by hand was a laborious pain in the ass. Those who have used a pasta roller, whether the hand-crank variety or the KitchenAid attachment, know, as we do, that it is a fabulous invention and enables even the busiest gastronome to home-make great fresh pasta in a relatively short time. They might also have found that it is actually fun to use because it combines the joy of mixing a dough by hand with the ease and convenience of not having to roll it out and cut it yourself.

Taking this notion of fun to its logical extreme this past weekend, I decided to devote my entire Sunday to doing the whole thing – the mixing, the rolling and the cutting – by hand. In spite of the recipe book’s warning that it was a painstaking exercise, I had little idea of what I was getting into. I now have a profound appreciation both for labor-saving machines, and the unique taste, texture and satisfaction derived from hand-rolled pasta.

But it is more than that. I learned something about myself on Sunday. In some ways, it was a revelation. I had always thought that I appreciated handmade things, particularly food and wine, with the all patience, care and skills that their creation implies, but I had never actually tested myself to see if I could enjoy hand-making something that required real patience and physical effort.  And, while there certainly were moments in which I did not enjoy being patient or the physical effort, on the whole, I really did find the process to be incredibly rewarding – relaxing almost. Not only did I (eventually, and with several abortive attempts) make some absolutely first-class pasta, but I learned a new technique and was, in the end, able to enjoy the fruits of my labor in a way I never have before.

Pici Keen

Famous for the lavish displays of wealth and the beautiful arts of the Renaissance found in Florence, Siena, Lucca and Pisa, Tuscans are, by contrast, rather austere in their culinary inclinations with their love of simple grilled meats, stewed beans and saltless bread. Such austerity requires the freshest and best ingredients in order to be delicious, and, fortuitously, Tuscany offers these up in great bounty. Similarly, it often requires great effort and technique.

So it is with Pici (also known as pinci — hand-rolled, eggless Tuscan thick spaghetti — perhaps the best example of this cucina povera (poor man’s cuisine) — utilizing only 00 flour, water, green Tuscan olive oil and a lot of time and effort. Indeed, it is my belief that what the poor, historically, lacked in wealth they more than make up for in patience, and disposable time. Originating from the Val d’Orcia region (the area between Montalcino and Montepulciano), pici are usually eaten with a rich meat sauce, often containing porcini mushrooms, but any hearty meat or game ragu would be a good choice.

The duck ragu recipe below is typical of the region of Arezzo which is the area where we got married in June 2007, and making it engendered all those kinds of warm feelings one gets from a house filled with delicious smells and the wonderful memories of the time of our lives.

Learning a new skill, and in this case, a new recipe, is a matter of managing to overcome self-doubt. Before you attempt making pici, I would highly recommend you try making a regular long pasta with an egg dough, so that you understand how it should feel and look. It will also allow you to develop a sense about the right elasticity of a good dough which will be useful even though Pici dough is a very different creature altogether.

If you follow the exact instructions below, you’ll probably find that your dough feels too dry and too heavy. Do not be afraid to add more water and more oil as you see fit because eggless doughs can easily become brittle when allowed to be too dry. However, do not abandon hope. I urge you to stick with the basis of the recipe (allowing for various seasonal, regional, altitudinal and indoor-outdoor climactic conditions) and overcome your fears of impending culinary disaster, as they will not materialize. If it feels too dry, add more water. Too wet, add flour until it feels right. One word of caution, though: be sparing in any additions of liquid or lipids because at the hand-rolling stage you will be adding extra olive oil to reduce friction and facilitate the rolling process, and you don’t want to find at that stage that you have to start all over again.

Also, do give yourself plenty of time. An otherwise lazy Sunday afternoon is perfect for this, as not only does the pasta make a perfect Sunday night dinner, but, more importantly, it gives you time to rest as you go along. Making enough pici for four people can be a tiring business, even if there are two of you on the job. One final proviso, do not treat pici like regular fresh pasta — i.e. sprinkle it liberally with flour and allow to set-up and dry for a while prior to cooking. I refer to my earlier comments when I say that pici can dry out and become brittle very quickly, so when you make them, plan to eat them within, at most, a couple of hours. This might appear like a disadvantage but it’s not because once cooked they are probably more robust than regular pastas and even reheat remarkably well.

So, please try making this dish. The sauce is easy and indescribably good (I know everyone says that about their food, but, really, this is very special), and the pasta is a great reward for some hard graft both corporeally and in that it offers a real sense of achievement. By the time you’re done, you’ll have sore shoulders but will have mastered the rolling technique perfectly. As a result, pasta-making will have transcended the bland uniformity of the machine-age and become what all good food should be: absolutely unique and deeply personal.

As with a few other fellow bloggers, we were lucky to receive one of my favorite “blog freebies” to try recently – truffle products by La Boutique de la Truffe.  Cha-ching!  As some know, for most of us, blogging will barely help us buy a cup of coffee at a year’s end – that is if you have an ad up.  When we get offered to test out powdered sauces (gag) we usually pass, but when truffles were offered I jumped up and down like a little schoolgirl.  I know truffles seem to be that annoying foodie buzz word that gets all us food-lovers screaming like Beatles fans in the 60’s, but I still say they are worth the hype.  It is obvious we like them – a lot.  You’ll find truffle recipes all over We Are Never Full: like here and here and here. And if you indulge and buy something from La Boutique, it is an investment and one that will pay off in big flavor that really can not be duplicated any other way.

La Boutique de Truffe started in 2003 by a French immigrant, Cèline Labaune, who had a “passion for truffles” (straight from the media kit).  Why am I telling you this? Because if I am going to spend $35 for a 3-ounce pot of truffles, it helps to buy them from 1) someone who is passionate about them and 2) someone who is French and knows her stuff.  It used to be very difficult to get good quality truffle products here in the US and I can say, without hesitation, that the truffle products we received from La Boutique were very good.  Yes, it is still expensive but a little does go a long way.

For this quick dish (bite me Rachel Ray – this is a real 30 minute meal), we paired the nice truffles with an easy cream sauce with walnuts and bought fresh ravioli from our local Italian shop. If you don’t have a local Italian shop, it’s ok, you can use your favorite store-bought variety or even make your own. To top the ravioli, we only used a small amount of the Truffle Carpaccio we were lucky to try out.  While we were in Italy a while ago, we purchased a few white and black truffle products at an amazing store (where we dropped quite a few euro at, but it was worth it) -  Tartufi Morra in Alba.  For much more than La Boutique charges, we purchased an excellent tube of white truffle paste which lasted us more than a year – and which we sadly finished up with this dish.  I recommend buying this one from the La Boutique website – it is super strong and really, really lasts.

You could wow a few guests with this super simple dish – they’ll feel special because they’ll think you spent a lot of money on them but, in reality, per person it’s not a real bank-breaker.  But they don’t have to know… right?

On our honeymoon, almost exactly two years ago today, we arrived in the fair city of Verona thoroughly pissed off. And then things got worse. It wasn’t as if the day had started badly either: waking in Bologna; leisurely sipping a doppio espresso; before strolling along Via Pescherie Vecchie to buy a small, crusty loaf, a giant, but sweet tomato, an immoderately-sized leaf-wrapped burrata, and a serrated knife; then, wandering into the Piazza Cavour to make ourselves nearly sick with buttery cream cheese curds washed down with a half-bottle of bardolino. All in all, a pretty reasonable opening gambit.

I don’t even recall at what point things began to go west, but the supposed simple hour and a half drive between the two cities took us more like four. So, in late afternoon, we lurched into Verona hot, tired, stiff, and needing to pee. And then we couldn’t find our hotel. Another hour of angrily trawling the Veronese streets in our banana-hued rental car, grinding gears, and now with excrutiating pee pains, we finally found it – closed. No amount of banging on the door, honking of the horn or screaming at the windows produced a response. Despairing, I relieved myself copiously in the hotel’s flower bed and, looking up with an air of contentment, spied a large pink elephant beaming at me from across a field. Salvation arrives in many guises, and drawn towards it, things immediately improved.

With a free bottle of valpolicella, a purring welcome from a friendly ginger tom, a pair of iridescent peacocks puttering outside, and a room for the night with breakfast, Hotel Elefante saved us from sleeping in our car and, perhaps, from premature marital counselling. Having regained at least partial equilibrium, we made for the city center dressed for the theatre.

Skirting the wholly-invented balcony of the wholly-invented Capulet family, we ducked down Via Portici and into a restaurant filled with lovers pawing each other under the table and, like cartoon dogs, sucking-up the same strand of spaghetti. Still too flustered to entertain any romantic notions, we ordered what turned out to be a vast portion of fegato di vitello alla Veneziana or Venetian-style calves’ liver, which, with its heady richness of garlic, sage and cream, would have rendered senseless even the most amorous couple. Things continued to improve after dinner as we shuffled onwards to the arena di Verona and, cooling our tails on its ancient bleached limestone blocks, watched an epic performance of Puccini’s La Bôheme that somehow provided much-needed perspective on the day’s minor tragedies.

Periodically, we’ll laugh (or grimace) at our haplessness that day, but as time passes, we’re more apt to remember the liver than the liverishness. During a recent lunch at the very respectable Aperitivo here in Park Slope, Brooklyn, we ate a delicious adaptation of that dish over linguine with a nice dry Valpolicella that was reminiscent of our pre-opera meal in Verona. Here it is, recreated for your visual pleasure. Feel free to eat it on a balcony or at a banquet for quarreling clans, just don’t expect to be feeling frisky afterwards.

As you may be able to tell, if you are a regular reader of this blog, we love mint.  We use it often in the summer because it grows like a freaking weed.  Because we live in Brooklyn, we barely have any outdoor space (but are very fortunate to have any). Yet, in that small space, we have many, many planters.  Over the years, we’ve managed to inadvertently kill many varieties of plants, flowers and veggies but nothing will kill our mint.  One season, a few things died unexpectedly and we thought maybe it was the soil (we coined the term “soil of death” during this depressing time – witty, I know).  The “soil of death” was most definitely used when we planted the mint and even that crap couldn’t kill it!  Mint is too often underused in cooking, which I don’t understand.  There are a quite a few varieties of mint and some people feel very strongly about it, usually either loving it or hating it (except when it’s used in their mojito or julep).  I love it but love it equally as much in my savory foods as  in sweets or alcoholic bevy’s.

Many are used to sage brown butter sauces so we figured why not try it with mint?  It was delicious.  The heating of the mint mellowed the flavor and added a fabulous “clean” flavor to the dish. It also balanced the creaminess of the butter and paired well with the cheese.  We added some breasaola because we had to use it up before it went off but if you are veggie, you can totally have a fabulous meal without it.  I think some pancetta or guanciale could work as well.  We found fresh fava beans which are still in season and they gave the dish a bit of chew.  Don’t be scared off by making your own gnocchi.  You can follow our easy-to-read instructions.  Gnocchetti just refers to the size – we cut our gnocchi much smaller than we usually do about 3/4 an inch long.  We decided not to run each gnocchi over a fork, hence why they don’t have their traditional ‘ridges’.

So embrace your mint, give it some love.  Hell, you don’t even need to tend to it in your garden unless it’s taking it over and killing your other plants (which can definitely happen).  If it is, make a huge batch of this dish, make a giant vat of mojitos and forget your problems.

This dish was so easy, I could have cried as I cut my onions. I had a hankering for fresh crab and, because it was a weeknight, I saved time and energy by purchasing already shelled crab (not to ever be confused with something that makes me want to gag called krab).   This dish actually raised my mood from not-too-hot (about a 3 on a scale from 1 to 10) to feeling incredibly good (a good 9/9.5).  Sometimes a good dinner can just do that.  The lemon brightened the finished product up, the fennel gave it a bit of crunch and sweetness.  Crab and fresh cherry tomatoes always remind me of warm summer days which, naturally, make me smile.

If we had any leftovers I would’ve loved to have tasted it cold. I actually think it could make a great may0-less pasta salad.  You could also chop up some sauteed softshell crabs and use them instead of the fresh crab.  Maybe I’ll wait for a real summer day to give that a try.  Until then, I urge you to give this a try!

Recently, I’ve been noticing many, many food blogs posting recipes utilizing a certain brand of pre-made “fresh” pastas: nothing like a Foodbuzz promo to bring the best out of the food bloggers. Many came up with very creative recipes using a store-bought, pre-made pasta (a difficult compromise for many hardcore pasta lovers). [In case you were wondering, no, Foodbuzz didn't send us any Buitoni products, and yes, you do detect a hint of bitterness.] A prize of All-Clad Copper Core pots and pans is a pretty damn good prize to inspire the Sandra Lee in all of us. (An Aside: Speaking of Ms. Sandra Lee, has anyone seen that horrid “Kentucky GRILLED Chicken” commercial?  We wonder if she is going to take a bucket of that chicken, open up a bag of arugula, throw on some Seven Seas Italian Dressing, and then craft one of her cleverly-branded “tablescapes” featuring giant papier mâché heads of the Colonel?)

After seeing all these different recipes utilizing store-bought pasta (and upset at having been left-out of this Foodbuzz freebie), I was reminded that the average American still thinks that making homemade pasta isn’t possible, and I was determined to prove them wrong. Although I do understand that there is a time and a place for store-bought stuffed pasta and Semi-Homemade/Sandra Lee nights, I also believe that creating homemade, fresh, stuffed pasta is much, much easier than most people think.

The key is in the stuffing. If you can make a delicious stuffing for ravioli, agnolotti, tortellini, cannelloni or any other shape of stuffed pasta your little heart desires, the hardest part is over. If you don’t have a pasta roller (or a rolling-pin), buy some wonton wrappers and do it that way. The key is that you’ve done it – you made it, the stuffing is fresh and includes zero preservatives. You get to control what goes in the stuffing. Get creative ’cause the possibilities are endless.

Although I did make my own pasta for this dish, the star was the stuffing. It was super simple, quick and very easy to make. We happened to find fresh porcini’s in our local market (a freaking miracle) for about $35 a pound, so we bought two ($8!) and decided to blend those with some rehydrated dried ones and a bit of good old (and too often underappreciated) white button mushrooms. A bit of butter, some fresh parmigiano, garlic, shallots and sage, and you’ve got a fab-u-lous, fresh filling for pasta.

Bottom line, if you haven’t tried making your own stuffed pasta, give it a try. Please. Just try.

After that kick-a$$ cheesecake we devoured I figured that free pasta would pale in comparison.  Boy was I wrong.  As most of you know, we prefer savory food over sweets and I’d take a big, steaming bowl of perfectly al dente pasta over a cheesecake any day.  I’m serious here.  Garofalo’s pappardelle from their “signature line” did the trick. We paired this fabulously tasty pasta with a hearty Sausage Ragu and it held up while adding that perfect chew to the dish.

I know I go on and on (and on) about how important perfectly al dente pasta is to me, but I can’t imagine wasting a fabulous sauce on a crappy, soggy bit of pasta.  Too often if you follow the instructions on the back of a box of pasta you’ll be left with it way overcooked.  My rule of thumb is to always subtract two minutes from the given instructions and usually I get the perfect chew.  This time I decided to test Garofalo’s (hey, it was free) to see if their instructions were bang-on. 8 minutes is what it said and 8 minutes was all it needed.  Maybe they got it right because this pasta is actually made in Italy, “near the ruins of Pompeii”.  It actually tastes like it is made in Italy.  The other thing I love about Garofalo pasta is that they offer “different” pasta shapes besides the obvious penne, spaghetti and linguine.  Some of these specialty cuts include schiaffoni (large oval-shaped noodle) and calamarata (like thick-cut calamari rings).  These are the types of shapes I want to eat when I’m bored of the norm.

No lie – I highly recommend this pasta, especially along with our deliciously hearty sausage ragu.  In fact, I’m writing the rep from the company to ask where I can get some in Brooklyn.  I have a feeling I’ll have to harass the manager at my local grocery store to order some, but it will be worth it.

PAPPARDELLE WITH SAUSAGE AND PEA RAGU (serves 4)

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. pappardelle (dried or homemade)
• 1 lb. ground sausage meat (or sausage links taken out of the casings)
• 1 onion, finely diced
• 3 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 1 teaspoon fennel seed, crushed
• 1 28-oz. can of crushed tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
• 1 cup of red wine
• 1 cup of peas (I used frozen)
• basil
• salt and pepper

What to do:

1. Saute your onions and garlic in some olive oil for a few minutes to get some color on them.  Add the sausage meat and break up with a wooden spoon.  Allow to brown for 2 to 3 minutes and then add the fennel seed and stir.
2. Add in the red wine and stir into the meat.  Allow to cook down for a minute.  Add the whole can of tomatoes.  Let this cook on medium-low and stir.  It will cook for about 20-30 minutes until all the flavors come together.
3. While the ragu comes together, boil some salted water.  About ten minutes before you’re ready to eat, boil your pasta till al dente and add directly into the ragu along with a 1/4 ladel-full of pasta water. Add peas.  Cook for 30 seconds, toss in some basil and plate.  Serve with parmigiano reggiano. Enjoy!

In my opinion, infectious enthusiasm should be treated in exactly the same way as all infectious diseases; i.e. quashed ruthlessly with whatever combination of chemicals is necessary. With that statement out there, it’s probably unnecessary to further outline my feelings towards TV’s favorite, lovable faux-Cockney, Jamie Oliver. However, and as I have referred to in at least one other post, I grudgingly concede that he can cook, so from time to time – against my better judgment – I find myself thinking I should try some of his food…

… Just not today. Instead, I took (okay, stole) inspiration from one of his earlier shows – in which he made lunch for an Italian-British restaurateur who gave him one of his first breaks in the food biz - and made a tagliatelle and parsnip dish I am going to call my own regardless of its similarities to his.

You’ll notice that it’s parsnips again - our attempts at seasonal eating continue. The key to the dish is texture, so your parsnips have to be sliced finely enough to resemble the cooked pasta under your teeth – a mandolin or a vegetable peeler are your friends here. Then, only when it’s in your mouth do you taste the parsnip-y sweetness vs. the smooth starchiness of the pasta. Visually, squid-ink pasta makes the dish look more arresting, but regular would do fine too.

Tagliatelle Neri con Nastri della Pastinaca (Black Tagliatelle with Parsnip Ribbons)

Ingredients

• 1lb black (or regular) tagliatelle
• 1 large or 2 small parsnips, skinned and sliced into thin ribbons
• 3-4 asparagus spears, sliced into ribbons
• 4tbsp good olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped finely
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes/peperoncino
• 1 splash (c. 1oz) dry white wine
• 1 tsp chopped parsley
• 1tbsp grated parmigiano-reggiano or pecorino romano

Recipe

1. Place pasta in boiling salted water and cook for seven minutes
2. In the meantime, heat large skillet/saute pan to medium high and add oil.
3. Hit pan with garlic and peperoncini and allow to flavor oil for a couple of minutes. Do not allow garlic to color.
4. Toss in parsnips and immediately hit with white wine. Stir.
5. Timing is important here. Pasta must be nearly done when parsnips go in pan or it’ll all be overcooked.
6. Drain pasta and toss in with parsnips until well combined and all is coated with oil/wine sauce. Add some pasta water if you’ve not enough liquid.
7. Kill the fire and hit dish with parsley and grated cheese. Plate quickly and enjoy the dramatic contrast of black pasta and creamy parsnip.

Now, class, a second super-sauce that you all must know how to make is another one of the mother sauces, béchamel. Béchamel is the base of many other classic sauces including Sauce Mornay and the delectable cheddar cheese (AKA, Mac-n-Cheese) sauce.  It has become like my buddy, friend and confidant over the past few years because it works with so much.  It took some practice, but I now am able to make a great béchamel by eyeballing instead of having to annoyingly look at a Julia Child recipe.  I really recommend you practice your béchamel-making too, class, as soon as you can.  Class dismissed. I know I’m not breaking ground here with this recipe, but I decided to take the basics of the velouté and the béchamel and blend them to make what I am coining (please correct me if there is a traditional word) a velamel.  This definitely isn’t as earth-shattering as the discovery Heather made with her tomato béchamel, but I tried. I knew I wanted a creamy pasta sauce but I didn’t have cream. Instead, I made a béchamel and then added some porcini broth/stock to create the pasta sauce.  It was a fabulous sauce and perfectly thick without having that heavy-cream feel.  Plus I was able to convince myself that it was less fattening.

Now I’m sure some of your are thinking, porcini stock, wtf. I understand your pain. I wish there would come a time when we were able to buy fresh porcini’s as easily as we can buy brown mushrooms. But, until that day comes, I’m stuck using dried porcini’s.  Besides utilizing the water used to rehydrate the porcini’s as part of the base for my ‘velamel’, I also pulled a Sandra Lee and used some of these great Porcini Stock Cubes by STAR.

These cubes pack a punch and, I’m sure are filled with crap like MSG, but I don’t care. They worked really well with this dish.  I don’t know how easy these stock cubes are to buy in the states, but I have found them for sale in an Italian specialty shop in Philadelphia, Manhattan and Brooklyn. You can also order the plain mushroom version here, but the porcini cubes seem to be difficult to purchase on the web.  Please don’t hate on me for using these stock cubes. You could probably use vegetable stock or some veal stock to make this sauce. With some meaty mushrooms, you’ll enjoy this big bowl-o-pasta as much as I did. So try yourself some “velamel” next time you want a creamy pasta sauce.You’ll be glad you did.
PASTA WITH MUSHROOM BECHAMEL SAUCE – serves 3 to 4
Ingredients:

What to do:

1. Combine milk and mushroom stock. In a separate pan (or even in a glass bowl), heat up your milk/stock mixture (feel free to heat up in the microwave for a few minutes until very hot). 
2. Meanwhile, in a new pan, melt your butter on medium-low until melted.  Once melted, add the flour and stir until it’s all combined and smooth.  Allow to cook together and continue to stir for about 5 minutes. 
3. Slowly add in the milk/stock mixture, starting with one cup.  Using a whisk, stir constantly until the milk/stock mixture is absorbed into the flour/butter mixture.   Turn the heat up to medium-high and add in some more of the milk/stock mixture, stirring all the way.  Bring the mixture to a boil and then lower to medium and allow it to bubble away at a happy simmer.  Cook on medium for about 10-15 minutes so it thickens up a bit. 
4. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg and taste to see if it needs any extra seasonings. Throw in the parmigiano reggiano and stir. 
5. Cook your pasta.
6. Add about 1 cup of your mushroom bechamel into a big bowl. When your pasta is finished, add to the bowl along with the rehydrated porcini’s and toss.  Plate and top with some extra parmigiano reggiano and some dried

I’ve talked about my sweet ‘ole grandmom, Anna, a few times on this blog. This was a woman who waited tables at the Golden Nugget (now Bally’s Grand) casino (R.I.P.) in Atlantic City until she retired at 76. This is the same woman who would wear winter gloves in the summer because her tiny hands would get cold. Once she angrily blamed the family for “stealing” her gloves, only to open up the dishwasher to unload and found them stuck to a few plates. This was also a woman who would wrap up uneaten meals and sandwiches from her shift at the restaurant and pawn them on us. This was also a woman who was so excited to get 8 free place settings of Golden Nugget-labeled china before it became Bally’s (thank god she did not feature these prominently in her non-existent china cabinet!).

This was also a woman who would cook for her family every night but passed virtually no family recipes on to me. I still get sad that I didn’t push her more to try and remember all her old-school recipes before she died. She loved to say in her deep, raspy voice, “Oh, Amy, ya know I don’t remember how to do that!”. But even into her final years, Anna could still make a few of her classics really, really well, and without a recipe. One of my favorites was her ‘Scarole soup – that’s Italian-American speak for “Escarole Soup” or, as it is often called in my family, Italian Wedding Soup.

When researching about the origins of Italian Wedding Soup I discovered that, duh, this is only loosely based on a traditional Italian soup called Minestra Maritata and has nothing to do with weddings (the name literally means a marriage of soup). Minestra Maritata is a Neapolitan soup made with greens and meat, hence the “marriage” of those two ingredients.

In my Italian-American fantasy, my great grandparents on my grandmom’s side came from Naples and brought their Minestra Maritata recipe with them to the new world. Over time, the pieces of meat became tiny meatballs and the greens were the cheap and delicious escarole. Too bad… I’ll never be able to ask my grandmom if my fantasy is true! There are many variations of this soup but, of course, I think Anna’s is the best. You could have this done from start to finish in about 1/2 hour.

ANNA’S ITALIAN WEDDING SOUP (AKA ‘SCAROLE)

Ingredients for Meatballs:

• 1/2 pound minced veal
• 1/2 pound minced pork
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 1/4 cup parmigiano reggiano
• pinch of garlic powder
• pinch of onion powder
• 2 tablespoons of parsley
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs (maybe more if mixture is too wet)
• salt and pepper

Other Ingredients:

• 8 to 10 cups of chicken stock
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 head of escarole, bottom chopped off and greens cleaned (chop in half if you don’t like long greens)
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 3/4 cup parmigiano reggiano
• 1/2 box ditalini pasta (some people use pastina)

What to do:

1. To make meatballs: Add all the top ingredients together and mix with hands. Pinch a bit of the mixture and roll into a small ball. Each meatball should not be more than an inch wide.
2. Heat up a bit of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pan and fry the baby meatballs on each side – about 3-4 minutes. Remove from pan and drain on some paper towels.
3. Meanwhile, in another pot, add a bit of oil and saute the onion and garlic for a few minutes until a bit softer. Add the chicken stock and keep at a simmer. Add the escarole.
4. Add the pasta, stir it around and allow to cook in the stock – keep aware of the time so you don’t cause the pasta to go mushy. About two minutes before the pasta is done, add the meatballs back to the pot.
5. Beat together the two eggs along with the parmigiano reggiano. When pasta is done, kill the heat and slowly add the egg/parmigiano mixture to the soup while stirring.
6. Serve in big bowls with some crusy bread and a glass of chianti.
7. Be aware that the pasta keeps soaking up the liquid after cooking, so this is a soup that needs to be eaten immediately. Alternatively, you could cook the pasta separately and add in as much of it as you want to, reserving some for leftovers so they aren’t soggy.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• Chicken with Figs
• South African Hot Toddies
  
• Fried Lamb Chops with Balsamic Rosemary Reduction
• Italian Roasted Pork with Salsa Verde