Read Saveur: The New Comfort Food Online
Authors: James Oseland
Saveur: The New Comfort Food (11 page)
Chef Gabrielle Hamilton of the New York City restaurant Prune shared this recipe for pasta, which she tosses in brown butter and pine nuts, and then tops with sunny-side-up eggs, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and nutmeg.
Kosher salt, to taste
8 oz. fresh pasta, such as fettuccine or tagliatelle
(see recipe for Homemade Tagliatelle)1 cup unsalted butter
¾ cup pine nuts
4 eggs Freshly ground black pepper, to taste Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and nutmeg, to taste
Serves 4
1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add pasta; cook, stirring occasionally, until al dente, about 4 minutes. Set a strainer over a bowl; drain the pasta, reserving ½ cup pasta cooking water, and set aside.
2. Melt butter in a 12-inch skillet over medium heat. Add pine nuts and cook, stirring often, until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer pine nuts to a bowl. Working in two batches, crack eggs into butter and cook, spooning butter over yolks, until whites are set but yolks are still runny, about 3 minutes. Transfer eggs to a plate and keep warm. Add pasta and half the pine nuts to skillet and toss until hot. Stir in some of the reserved pasta water to create a sauce, and season with salt and pepper.
3. To serve, divide pasta between 4 serving plates and top each serving with a fried egg. Sprinkle pasta with remaining pine nuts, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and nutmeg.
Cook butter long enough to see it sputter and foam, and something wonderful occurs. The color deepens to a golden brown, and the scent evolves from unctuous to toasty. This is brown butter, what the French call beurre noisette (literally, hazelnut butter), named both for its nutty color and flavor. It’s also one of the simplest and most rewarding sauces a home cook can make.
When butter melts in a pan over heat, its butterfat separates from its milk solids and the water evaporates out, leaving behind a more concentrated, buttery liquid. The solids sink to the bottom of the pan and begin to caramelize, taking on an increasingly darker hue and richer flavor. A pale brown color will correspond to a faint nutty taste, while a deeper shade means a more profound flavor. (Don’t let your brown butter get too dark, or the milk solids will scorch and the sauce will taste acrid and burnt.) It’s important to remove brown butter from the pan as soon as caramelization is achieved; pour it into a small bowl so that the sauce doesn’t continue cooking in the pan. Otherwise, you can stop the cooking process with the addition of something acidic; a squirt of lemon juice does the trick (while also balancing out the richness of the sauce). The addition of chopped parsley and lemon juice turns brown butter into the classic French sauce known as beurre meuniere, a traditional pairing for fish. Brown butter works well on its own, as a sauce for pasta or a garnish for fish or vegetables; it takes well to accompaniments like grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano, pine nuts, and spices like nutmeg and mace. Brown butter also brings a welcome depth of flavor to many baked goods, like pecan pie and shortbread.
It’s the archetypal family meal, a layering of sauce, cheese, and pasta that is uncomplicated and appealing. This lasagne is a vegetarian take on classic lasagne bolognese. Here, meat’s savoriness is replaced with earthy shiitake mushrooms, and the noodles aren’t boiled before baking, so they still retain some of their bite when they come out of the oven.
12 tbsp. unsalted butter
12 sun-dried tomatoes
1 shallot, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
½ cup flour
5 cups milk
1 tsp. ground nutmeg Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
2 lbs. shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and quartered
½ lb. spinach, chopped
6 cloves garlic, chopped
3 tbsp. chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 tbsp. chopped oregano
1 tbsp. chopped rosemary
1 tbsp. chopped thyme
1 tbsp. tomato paste
5 cups whole canned tomatoes, crushed
1 lb. lasagna noodles
2½ cups grated Grana Padano or Parmigiano-Reggiano
2½ cups grated fontina
Serves 6–8
1. Grease a deep 9 x 13-inch baking pan with 1 tbsp. butter; set aside. In a bowl, cover dried tomatoes with 1 cup boiling water; soak for about 20 minutes. Drain, chop, and set aside.
2. Make the béchamel sauce: Heat 8 tbsp. butter in a 4-qt. saucepan over medium heat. Add shallots and carrots and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the flour and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Whisk in milk and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, bring to a simmer, and cook, whisking occasionally, until thick, about 25 minutes. Add nutmeg and season with salt and pepper.
3. Meanwhile, make the tomato sauce: Heat the olive oil and remaining butter in a 6-qt. pot over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms; cook, stirring, until tender, about 10 minutes. Add the dried tomatoes, spinach, garlic, parsley, oregano, rosemary, thyme, and tomato paste and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes. Add the canned tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes. Set the tomato sauce aside.
4. Heat the oven to 375°F. Spread 2 cups of the tomato sauce in the prepared baking dish. Cover with a layer of noodles. Spread 1 cup béchamel over top; sprinkle with ½ cup of each cheese and 2 cups tomato sauce. Repeat layering 2 more times. Top with the remaining noodles, tomato sauce, béchamel, and cheeses. Cover with aluminum foil, transfer to a baking sheet, and bake for 1 hour. Uncover and raise oven heat to 500°F. Bake until golden brown and bubbly, about 15 minutes. Cut into squares and serve.
Tagliatelle alla Ragù Bolognese
This recipe for a hearty ragù, paired here with ribbons of tagliatelle pasta, came from Alessandra Spisni, who owns a cooking school in Bologna, Italy. Slow, low cooking thickens the sauce and marries the flavors of savory beef chuck and bright aromatics; making a double batch means that you can set aside some for use in a lasagne or another dish. Homemade pasta makes it all the more delicious; on the following pages, you’ll find instructions on how to roll out, cut, and cook your own tagliatelle.
½ cup butter
3 small yellow onions, minced
2 medium carrots, minced
2 ribs celery, minced
2 lbs. ground beef chuck
½ cup dry red wine
2¾ cups canned tomato purée Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 lbs. fresh tagliatelle or fettuccine Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, for serving
Serves 8
1. Heat the butter in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Add the onions, carrots, and celery and cook, stirring frequently, until vegetables are somewhat softened, about 8 minutes.
2. Raise the heat to medium-high, add the beef, and cook, stirring constantly, until the meat is broken up and just cooked through, about 7 minutes. Add the wine and cook, stirring occasionally, until evaporated, about 4 minutes. Stir in the tomato purée and 1½ cups water and bring to a boil over high heat.
3. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, partially covered, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is thick, about 2 hours. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Bring a 6-qt. pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook, stirring, until al dente, or according to the package directions. Drain the pasta, transfer to a bowl, and toss with about half of the ragù, reserving the rest for another use. Serve warm with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.
The meaty wonder that is ragù alla bolognese may be the most famous pasta sauce in all of Italy, but other styles of ragù (which are sometimes called sugo) have similarly deep roots in other parts of the country. One of the most distinctive hails from Naples: ragù alla napoletana is a thick, robust tomato-based sauce cooked for hours with pork ribs, meatballs, fresh and cured sausages, and plenty of bones, which not only flavor the sauce but also lend it body. The thick sauce is tossed with hard durum wheat pasta of various shapes, from tubular penne rigate to spaghetti, and showered with grated cheese, often a pungent sheep’s milk variety. There are countless other ragù in the southern part of Italy, including Sicilian and Calabrian versions made with meaty fish like tuna and swordfish. Unlike their counterparts in the north of Italy, virtually all southern ragù are heavy on tomatoes. In other parts of Italy, the type of meat is often the distinguishing characteristic of the sauce. In the province of Verona, for example, horse meat is a traditional ingredient, and Tuscans and Umbrians are partial to game, including duck, hare, and wild boar. Roman versions are often made with cured meats, and in Abruzzo and Molise, two provinces that sit adjacent to each other in the east-central part of the country, ragù of lamb and pork are the norm; they’re often flavored with rosemary and served with pasta that’s been cut with a tool with strings like a guitar called a chitarra, which creates rough edges to which the sauce clings beautifully.
