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07/20/2006 Archived Entry: "Eat Like a Neapolitan: Three Recipes"

These are the recipes I demonstrated at the New York offices of Regione Campania, the Italian region of Campania in southern Italy -- you know, the much beloved food on which my book Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania is based.

My mandate from the region of Campania office was to show off canned San Marzano tomatoes, the best in the world; the great dried pasta di Gragnano, for which Naples is revered all over Italy, and the olive oils of Campania, many of which are from small estates and pressed with the latest hi-tech crushers and centrifuges to keep the oil cool and pure.

Sugo di Pomodori Pelati
(Tomato Sauce from Canned Tomatoes)

Makes about 2 cups,
enough to sauce 12 ounces of pasta, serving 4

This is the most basic of all tomato sauces, called simply “tomato sauce” in Campania, not marinara. Marinara would properly be a sauce with some seafood content. The name means “wife of the fisherman.” In Campania, marinara would have a bit of anchovy, or canned tuna. If you add olives and capers, that can be called marinara, too. It is also called puttanesca, in the whore’s style. Many myths and legends have been woven about that name. You can read all about it in “Naples at Table.”

More to the immediate point, this simple tomato sauce, based on canned tomatoes, takes only about 12 minutes of simmering in an open skillet for it to become divinely delicious. If you want to use fresh plum tomatoes – around here, their season is just beginning now -- you’ll have to cook the tomatoes for 2 or 3 minutes longer – maybe 5 minutes longer – but that’s all. You can peel and seed them if you wish, but I often don’t bother peeling them. To seed them, cut them in half the long way and squeeze the seeds out. If you are making a smooth sauce, passed through a food mill, peeling is totally unnecessary, as the peels will be left behind in the food mill.

Campanians rarely combine garlic and onion in the same dish. I choose to use onion when I prepare a simple tomato sauce for pasta. When the sauce is for a seafood dish, or perhaps a fish second course, I use garlic. As for herb, with onion, in winter I often use dried oregano, because I don’t have fresh basil. In summer, I would use basil. When making a garlic-seasoned sauce for seafood, I use freshly chopped parsley, but parsley is good with onion, too, especially in winter.

2 to 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 small onion or 1/2 medium onion, finely chopped (about 1/2 cup) or 1 large clove
garlic, lightly smashed
1 28-ounces can plum tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon salt
Hot red pepper flakes or freshly ground black pepper to taste

In a 10-inch skillet, combine the oil and onion and cook over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until the onion is fully tender, 8 to 10 minutes. If the onion begins to color before it is tender, add water by the tablespoon.

Or, over medium-low heat, combine the oil and the garlic. Cook the garlic, pressing it into the oil a couple of times to release its flavor, until it barely begins to color on both sides. Remove the garlic.

For a smooth sauce, use a food mill to puree the tomatoes directly into the pot. Stir well. Add the salt and either hot red pepper flakes or black pepper to taste. Increase the heat slightly and bring to a brisk simmer. Adjusting the heat as the sauce cooks down, and stirring frequently, simmer briskly for about 12 minutes, until the sauce has thickened and reduced.

Sometimes you will want a chunky sauce, not a smooth puree. Instead of pushing the tomatoes through a food mill, turn the whole can of tomatoes, drained or not, into the pot with the oil. Using the side of a wooden spoon, a wooden fork, or an old-fashioned American potato masher, break up the tomatoes as desired, then proceed as above. Italians might just crush the tomatoes in their hand.

Season with herbs and other condiments according to the recipe you are preparing. For the most basic spaghetti sauce, add a few torn basil leaves or a tablespoon of finely cut parsley to the sauce about 2 minutes before it is done.

To multiply the recipe: The recipe can be doubled or tripled, but you don’t necessarily have to multiply the oil by as many times. Use your judgment and taste. A larger quantity of sauce will take longer to cook.

Paccheri con Ricotta e Sugo di Pomodoro
(Big Macaroni Tubes with Ricotta and Tomato Sauce)

Serves 6

This is excerpted from “Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania.” Paccheri, also called schiaffone, means slaps. (I believe the Yiddish word for slap, patchke, must be related.) They are the largest of pasta tubes, so large they collapse when cooked, and when lifted with a fork, with sauce sticking to them, they make a sound that I suppose one could construe as a “slap” sound. In any case, Neapolitans do. It is a very popular pasta form in Campania, where it is most often served with a seafood sauce. In “Naples at Table” I offer a recipe with monkfish and calamari from Da Gemma, a popular restaurant on the main piazza of Amalfi. This recipe, using tomato sauce and ricotta blended together, is one of my favorite, easy summer pastas. It was suggested to me many years ago while having coffee with a friend from Sorrento. Actually, we were at a café on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where her son lives. It was August in New York, meaning it was 104 degrees with 95 percent humidity. “If you were home in this miserable heat, what would you be eating?” I asked my friend. This dish was her immediate answer. In addition to it being quick and easy, it is just as delicious at room temperature, and so you can prepare it in the morning when the heat has not yet reached its peak.

2 cups tomato sauce with basil (see previous recipe)
1 cup ricotta
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or pecorino, or a combination
1 pound paccheri or other large tubular pasta, or perciatelli (bucatini)
or mezzanelli, or lasagne broken into 2 to 3-inch lengths
Freshly ground black pepper
A few leaves of finely cut or torn fresh basil
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or pecorino, or a combination

Prepare the tomato sauce. Or reheat. Keep it hot, but not simmering.

Put the pasta water to boil.

In a pasta serving bowl, combine the ricotta and the grated cheese. Work them together with a spoon or fork until well blended.

Cook the pasta in plenty of salted, boiling water until al dente. Before draining it, scoop out about 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water.

Pour about half of the hot tomato sauce into the cheese mixture in the bowl. Add most of the torn basil. Stir well.

Add the drained, hot pasta to the sauce, then black pepper to taste. Toss well, adding hot pasta cooking water by the tablespoon if a looser, creamier texture is desired (the sauce tends to thicken as it cools in the plate, so 2 or 3 tablespoons are usually a good idea.)

Serve immediately, preferably in hot bowls, each portion topped with a little more tomato sauce and with additional finely cut basil, if desired. Pass grated cheese and the peppermill.

Zuppa di Cozze
(Mussel Soup)

Serves 4

Zuppa is not exactly soup. However, it is a dish with enough broth to be poured over something that will sop it up. There are ways other than this recipe for making a zuppa with mussels or clams, but this way requires only one pot. I demonstrated this with mussels at the Regione Campania office, where my mandate was to use the wonderful pomodorini di collina – cherry tomatoes – from Campania. But the dish can just as deliciously be made with canned plum tomatoes and with clams instead of mussels. Or a combination of mussels and clams, or, as I made this a few nights ago, with a piece of monkfish that I cooked along with the sauce. I first poached the monkfish in plain, lightly salted simmering water for about 3 minutes -- to make it easier to cut off the unsightly and tough film-like grey skin. Then I cut the monkfish crosswise into ¾-inch thick slices. These slices are what add to the pan with the tomatoes. It takes the same 12 to 15 minutes of cooking that the tomatoes do. If you add mussels or clams in addition, add them when the fish is tender. Another three minutes, which is what is needed for the shellfish, won’t overcook monkfish, a very firm flesh.

Save some of the cooking water from par-poaching the monkfish. It will be handy if you want to thin out your zuppa at the end, to make it less saucy and more soupy. How much liquid the mussels give off depends on the mussels. Some of them these days don’t give much.

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 or 3 large cloves garlic, lightly smashed
1 28-ounce can pomodorini di collina (Italian cherry tomatoes)
Big pinch hot red pepper flakes, or ½ dried hot red pepper, crumbled
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup finely cut parsley
2 to 3 pounds mussels, cleaned

Optional:
1½ cups fully cooked cannellini beans or other white beans or pinto beans
(can be 1 15-ounce can)
or
4 large slices pane biscotato or freselle
or
2 cups small macaroni, such as ditali or tiny shells
or
Cooked slices of potato

Plus:
4 to 6 rounded tablespoons freshly grated pecorino

In a deep, 10-inch sauté pan or stove-top casserole, warm the olive oil and smashed garlic together over low heat. Let the garlic cook until beginning to become golden on both sides, smashing the garlic down from time to time to release its juices.

As soon as the garlic starts to color, remove it or don’t, then add the tomatoes, hot pepper, and salt. Increase the heat to medium and simmer the tomatoes briskly, uncovered, for 8 minutes, stirring and smashing the tomatoes from time to time..

Stir in the parsley, then add the mussels. Cover the pot and let the mussels steam for 2 to 3 minutes. They should be open.

To serve, you can leave all the mussels in their shells, or remove some of them. Then either add the beans and heat through, or pour the zuppa over hard bread placed in the bottom of a soup or shallow pasta bowl. Or stir in cooked pasta, or pour over sliced potatoes, also arranged in the bottom of a soup or pasta bowl. Sprinkle with grated pecorino.

When eating, make sure to use the cheese-flecked shells as spoons to scoop up some broth, so you can lick off the pecorino, too.