Winter foods you really CAN do

All over Italy, millions of Italians are on their summer vacations. They are huddled on the beaches and scattered on mountaintops, in the traditional holiday that gives them a break from summer. This year, however, a cold mass moved in and they are all freezing. This meal, written up for winter, I made this week and it was just the perfect thing. No, it isn’t like January now. The windows are still open a crack, the heat isn’t on and I am not wearing twinsets and socks, but it’s gray and cool and having the oven on for a while feels pretty darned good.

I am republishing this at the request of Ruth, of Presto Pasta Night. This will be a long post, because it is about cooking one thing that you can eat in more than one way. It’s cheap, easy and some of my favorite cold weather indulgence. Remember, once a week you can go to Once upon a Feast and see pasta recipes from the world, not just Italian pasta, either, but ways to use bean thread, rice noodles and every sort of noodle that exists.

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This is brasato of pork spare ribs on polenta and with grated Parmigiano Reggiano. Here is how I made three single meals of it. It can be expanded to any size you like.

1 pound of lean pork spareribs
1 large onion cut into spears and then those halved
salt
1 whole clove of garlic
a handful of flatleaf parsley
2 allspice berries
2 cloves
1/4 cup of fortified wine, like Martini and Rossi or sherry or whatever, but NOT sweet
1 large 18 ounce tin of peeled whole tomatoes.
I heated a heavy iron pan to quite hot and then seared the ribs until
they were browned. Remove the ribs to a plate, and put the onions into
the fat the ribs gave up, adding about 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and stirred
them around until they were transparent and starting to brown. Add the
garlic and stir in a bit. Add the wine. Put the ribs back in, then
the allspice, the cloves, the parsley and stir about. Add about
another 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Pour the tin of tomatoes over all.
Bring to a simmer, then put a lid on and reduce the heat the minimum
possible on your stove. You don’t have to do anything else, as the long cooking will do all the work.
Leave them alone for a couple of hours,making sure that they don’t dry out and burn on. Add a bit of water if
they seem in danger.

The polenta is made according to the directions on the package , and I use Valsugana, which takes eight minutes to cook. If you use the thirty minute kind, you may want to make extra to cool into a block that you can slice and use for other dishes. There are any number of them here on Think On It, and one memorable restaurant dish I loved consisted of a roasted quail perched on a slice of toasted polenta and surrounded by salsa verde. Go with it.

I ate that version two times, even though I don’t like leftovers, because this is one of those dishes that gets tastier after a day or so in the fridge.

Then today, when there was pretty much only the sauce left, I decided it would be a great day to make tagliatelle for the sauce. People make such a thing out of making pasta. That’s just wrong! I watch an Italian cooking show sometimes, and in the twenty minutes they have to prepare a whole meal, they can make fresh pasta, a sauce, then cook and serve it in twenty minutes. So can I, and so can you. I never buy egg pasta.

My secret is a pasta rolling machine. It is cheap and sturdy and YOU MUST NEVER WASH IT. How about that? Something you don’t have to clean up. Otherwise you have to roll it out with a rolling pin, letting it rest if it doesn’t behave, cut it by hand. Get the little roller!

Here is where it starts.

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That is merely 100 grams of plain flour, an egg and a pinch of salt. I stir it around with a fork until the flour starts to soak up the egg. Then with floury hands I start to knead it until it doesn’t have lumps and graininess and looks like this.

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Remember, this is a single serving if you are eating only pasta. The recipe is expandable to whatever amount of dough you can handle. Every 100 grams of flour gets an egg and a pinch of salt. That’s it! You can also see that my dough scraper gets lots of use.
The pasta roller has a wheel with numbers on it. You always start with #1. Cut that ball into two pieces and put it into the slot and turn the crank. It will roll right through and turn into a strip. Fold it to make a short piece again and roll it through again. Fold and roll about 12 times. It will become flexible and smooth and almost like damp skin. Every once in a while you may want to lay it in some flour on the counter to keep it from getting sticky.

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No brushing it with basting brushes, no cutting off irregular edges, just fold and roll. I am making homemade pasta and I have no desire to have it look like factory made pasta. When it has become slick and soft, start changing the numbers to 2, then 3, etc. until you get to #6. This shot is just as I am thinning it down.

When you get to #6, it will be very long. Lay it on the floury counter and cut it in two to make it shorter. Then change the crank on the machine to the cutting part and run that through the wide noodle slot. And when you have done it all, you will have this.

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Start warming the sauce you want to use. Put a big pot of water on to boil. When the water is boiling hard, throw about a heaping soup spoon of salt into it, or the amount you like if it’s more than that. Pick up these lovely tagliatelle and lay them into the boiling water, then give them a good stir or two. They will be cooked in just about one minute. Don’t wander off!

Drain them and immediately put them into the pan in which you have heated your sauce. Toss about, serve them immediately.

Not bad, eh? My sauce from the brasato is a pretty chunky sauce, so yours may look more refined, but these tasted good!

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And the clean up? I brushed the flour off the pasta roller and put it back into the cupboard. I used the dough scraper to scrape up every scrap of flour from the counter. A quick swish with a damp sponge finished it off.

As always, click to see bigger photos.