Marcello's Spaghetti alla chitarra with courgettes and prawns

Fresh juicy prawns and a saffron stock - the keys to this dish

The best dish of a weekend in Bologna in October 2009:

‘This is tough’, I wrote then. ‘The gnocchi at Melloncello, the tortellini at Godot Wine Bar, the guinea fowl at Valsellucro, the mortadella lasagne at Caffe Concerto: these all rate highly. But ultimately, the prize for best dish of the weekend goes to the Locanda del Castello at Palazzo Rosso, Sasso Marconi for spaghetti alla chitarra with courgettes and prawns. Marcello dall’Aglio says that the key to the dish is the prawn stock and the saffron which holds everything together. Everything was just right and perfectly balanced: the tiny cubes of grilled courgette and the plump juicy prawns. Is it Bolognese – yes, of course, fresh water fish have long been a part of the tradition. And to complete the pleasure, the spaghetti came with a glass of Tenuta Bonzara’s reserve merlot, a revelation if you are underwhelmed by merlot like the two guys in Sideways’.

That was nearly two years ago. Since then, I’ve had the same dish on every visit to the Locanda. It’s an understated Italian classic, depending on a few choice ingredients artfully combined. It seems to work by sleight of hand but every element makes its contribution: fresh, quickly cooked prawns, garden fresh courgette, the best olive oil and above all the stock. This must be deeply flavoured and it should be combined with a small amount of fresh breadcrumbs to give it body. Spaghetti alla chitarra is right for this dish but linguine is almost as good and easier to get hold of.

Ingredients

1 onion

1 ½ cloves of garlic

6tbl good olive oil

100g fresh tomatoes

pinch saffron

25g chopped parsley

4 bay leaves

2 courgettes

250g uncooked, peeled tiger prawns – fresh or frozen

50g white breadcrumbs



Method

1. Begin by making the stock. Remove the heads and carcases from the prawns.  Fry the onion and one clove of garlic in 3 tablespoons of olive oil until they soften and begin to colour then add the prawn carcases and contain to fry. After a few minutes add the tomato, saffron, half the parsley and bay leaves, and half a litre of water and bring to the boil. Cook hard for 20 minutes and then strain the mixture into a bowl, using a spoon to push the liquor through a sieve. You should have about 300ml of stock.

2. Chop the courgettes into small matchsticks or cubes  and fry them fast in the remaining olive oil until they begin to brown. Set aside.

3. Remove from the pan and add the prawns and half a garlic clove finely chopped. Fry until the prawns are pink all over. Set aside.

4. Put the linguine on to boil in salted water. It will take about 12 minutes to reach al dente. As the pasta is coming up to being cooked, re-heat the pan used to fry the prawns, add a spot more olive oil and add the breadcrumbs. Fry them, gathering up all the pan juices as you do so. Then add the stock and cook until you have a smooth sauce.

5. Drain the pasta, add in the sauce and use it to coat the linguine. Then add back the prawns and courgettes and briefly re-heat, finally adding the finely chopped parsley.

6. Serve.

Lasagnetta al ragù di faraona – Guinea fowl lasagne

-a speciality of Vicolo Colombina, Bologna

We were so taken by this dish when we ate it last month in Bologna that we had to have the recipe immediately. Gianni Fruzzetti, the co-owner and sommelier, complied explaining,

‘We wanted to test the frontiers of the traditional approach, and this dish does that. For a start, it uses guinea fowl instead of beef or pork; there are just three layers, so it’s very flat compared with traditional lasagne. And it doesn’t use béchamel sauce. It’s an express dish, that takes just ten minutes, and it’s more digestible than the traditional version.’

Gianni Fruzetti - departing from tradition

Basically, you roast the bird, take it off the bone and shred it, and add it to a traditional ragu base – the battuto – of onion, carrot, celery, garlic – and then cook the sauce long and slow. In the restaurant kitchen, when the order comes through, they cook the lasagne sheets quickly, add sauce, grated parmesan and a kind of sauce made by mixing finely grated parmesan and water. The dish is placed under the grill to brown and then it’s ready. The recipe below is adapted for home cooking.

Another bird that could stand up to the long slow cook is duck, but don’t substitute chicken.

Enough for 4

Ingredients

1 guinea fowl

5tbl olive oil

30g butter

salt and pepper

6 bay leaves

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

3 sticks celery

2 carrots

4 slices smoked bacon

150ml passata

125ml white wine

100g grated parmesan

175ml warm water

16 sheets of lasagne


Method

1. Season the guinea fowl all over with salt and pepper and place in a roasting bag along with half the butter and half the olive oil plus the bay leaves. Put the roasting bag in a roasting tray and place in a re-heated oven at 170 degrees for 45 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil and butter in a large heavy-based saucepan. Add the onion finely chopped and gently fry over medium heat for about 7 minutes until soft and beginning to brown.

3. Add the finely chopped celery, carrots and garlic, and cook for another couple of minutes.

4. Add the bacon cut into small cubes and cook until it begins to brown.

5. Pour in the wine, raise the heat to drive off the alcohol, then add the passata and stir thoroughly.

6. Remove the guinea fowl from the roasting bag, conserving the juices and adding them to the saucepan. Remove the flesh, discarding skin, ligaments and bone, and chop it into small cubes. Add it to the saucepan

7. Bring the saucepan to the boil, and then lower the heat and cook, uncovered, at a lazy simmer, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through the surface, for 3 hours or more.

8. Prepare the parmesan ‘sauce’ by processing 50g of parmesan and the water to create a creamy consistency.

9. Cook the lasagne until it is al dente, strain and lay out on a clean tea towel.

10. Grease an oven-proof dish with a spot of olive oil then place a layer of lasagne in the bottom. Spread over this some sauce then some of the parmesan. Create three layers of pasta and sauce, finishing by spreading the parmesan cream across the top together with some of the grated parmesan.

11. Place in the oven at 180 degrees for 30 minutes until it is browning and bubbling.

Tortellone ai piselli e fave con burro e menta - Broad bean and pea tortellone with mint butter

Peas, broad beans and mint mark the beginning of July in our garden. There is something irresistible about the combination which draws me back to it, in different forms.  I’ve used the two vegetables before to make a sauce for pappardelle (see the recipe on this blog), and here they are again as the filling – with ricotta – for tortellone. A couple of tips:

1. when you make the pasta, ensure that you knead it until stickiness becomes elasticity – that will make rolling out much easier

2. skin the broad beans before you process them.

Enough for 8 (or freeze a batch)

Ingredients

400g OO pasta flour

4 medium eggs

1tsp salt

150g skinned, podded broad beans

100g podded peas – or frozen peas

100g ricotta

1tsp salt

75g butter

75g grated parmesan

12 leaves mint shredded



Method

1. Combine flour, eggs and salt to create a ball of dough.

2. Knead until the dough loses its stickiness and becomes elastic. Wrap in cling film and rest in the fridge.

3. Cook all but a handful of beans and peas, reserving the rest.

4. Skin the beans.

5. Process the beans, peas, ricotta and salt until a smooth mixture. Load into a piping bag with a 0.75cm nozzle.

6. Roll out the pasta dough until it is thin enough to see the shape of your fingers through it.

7. Cut out 5cm squares. Pipe a squirt of filling about the size of a broad bean on each square.

8. Close the pasta to create a triangle, at the same time pressing down the filling away from the apex.

9. Wrap the tortellone around your finger and press the ends together. Aim for about 10 per person but you may as well make more if there is enough pasta and filling. The extras will keep for a day in the fridge or you can freeze them in a single layer.

10. Heat a large pan of water and when it is boiling tip in the tortellone plus the reserved peas and beans. Check after 5 minutes – they need to be al dente but not too much so. Strain.

11. Heat the butter in a frying pan large enough to hold all the tortellone, or use two pans, or do two batches.

12. Toss the tortellone in the butter, adding the shredded mint and the parmesan. Serve.

Learning to make pasta – the proper way

Alessandra Spisne and her daughter Stefania

A morning in La Vecchia Scuola, Alessandra Spisne’s celebrated cookery school (writes Liz). There we met Tim and Janet, two Canadians from Toronto with a passion for pasta. That’s why they are spending five days of their holiday learning how to make pasta.



Breaking the eggs into the flour 'nest'



After donning the school’s t-shirt and yellow cap, they do what they do every day here: they create a 500g nest of flour and break five eggs into it. No olive oil, no semolina (‘that’s not traditional Bolognese’), no extra yolks, just flour and eggs.


Breaking the eggs with a fork, they gradually work in the flour until they have a ball of dough.

Looking for San  Luca

Over at the next table, Massimo, who is doing the three month professional course, is rolling out his 500g and five eggs into a intensely yellow, incredibly thin oval. That’s what Tim and Jackie hope to achieve by the end of the week, a sheet or sfoglio of pasta so delicate that they can see San Luca – the church on the hill overlooking Bologna - through it.

Even though they are only here for a short time, they are taught to professional standards and learn how a real Bolognese kitchen works, with its separate spaces for the pasta maker and the sauce makers. In fact, many restaurants have a pasta workshop in another building where the sfoglina – the pasta maker – toils alone making tagliatelle and gramigna (a kind of curly macaroni that accompanies a sausage sauce), as well as the filled pastas.

The next step for Tim and Jackie is to knead the dough they have made. For this you need clean dry hands and just a little flour on the rolling board – just how much  you need to knead depends  on the season and the humidity. Today is hot and clammy, tough conditions for apprentice pasta makers.

Kneading the dough

Their task is to make tortellone, pasta filled (in this case) with a mixture of potato, parmesan and finely chopped parsley. Luckily you don’t have to roll the pasta as thin for tortellone as you do for the smaller, finer meat filled tortellini or  for tagliatelle.

As the students cut the sfoglio into small squares, they are told not to waste any of the pasta. ‘You’ve worked hard to make it’, says their teacher Simone, ‘so you want to use every scrap of it’. They work the off cuts into the squares, which makes the pasta thicker but for tortellone this is less critical. Another clever tip is about preparing the potatoes for the filling: they put them once cold through a ricer, skins and all, and what comes out is just the potato. To this they add parmesan, parsley and an egg, and then mix well before putting the stuffing into a piping bag.

End result

Learning to use the piping bag is an art in itself. But once mastered it takes no time to pipe a blob of filling onto every square. Folding over the pasta and then forming the distinctive tortellone shape takes a bit longer. Watching the students grappling with the pasta and the filling you can see why it took Nonna years to perfect hers.

Ragù di coniglio con pappardelle - Rabbit ragù with pappardelle

Tastes better with pasta you made yourself

For richly flavoured stews and pasta sauces, it’s hard to beat game. Since they are becoming more widely available, I wanted to add rabbit and boar to the growing collection of Bolognese classic recipes here. Specialist butchers, rather than supermarkets, are your best bet and even if they don’t have game on display, they can usually obtain it for you. I know wild sounds better than domesticated or farmed but the latter is what you will get and in this case that is not a bad thing; the meat will be healthy and may even taste better than the more athletic wild version.

Let’s start with the rabbit. The secret is to begin by browning the meat and then adding it to the classic ingredients of the ragù: onion, garlic, carrot, celery plus lots of bay and rosemary and some bacon or pancetta. You don’t need to cook the rabbit for very long – an hour at the most – otherwise you will end up with stringy meat. Remove the meat from the bone and add it back to the ragù and you are ready to serve it with the pasta. I had a lot of help in the kitchen on Saturday so I got two of my assistants to make some pappardelle, the wide pasta that traditionally accompanies game sauces. You will need a pasta machine or a rolling pin and strong arms.

Serves 4

Ingredients

300g pasta flour

3 large eggs

1tsp salt

1 whole farmed rabbit

3tbl olive oil

100g streaky bacon or pancetta

1 large onion

2 carrots

2 sticks of celery

2 cloves of garlic

1 glass of dry white wine

1tbl rosemary

6 bay leaves

500ml chicken or ham stock

4tbl tomato paste

salt and pepper

Method

1. To make the pasta mix the flour, salt and eggs and knead for about 10 minutes until you have an elastic mass. Cover in cling film and refrigerate for an hour.

2. Roll out the pasta until it is half a centimetre thick then cut into eight pieces and put each through a pasta machine until they are as thin as the narrowest setting. Cut into ribbons 2.5cm wide.

3. Heat the olive oil in a large casserole over a medium-high heat. Add the rabbit cut into three or four pieces and brown all over. Remove.

4. Add the bacon, carrot, celery, garlic and onion – all finely chopped - and fry until they are soft and begin to colour. Add the wine and raise the temperature to drive off the alcohol.

5. Add back the rabbit plus the bay leaves, the rosemary finely chopped, the tomato paste and the stock. Bring to a simmer and cook, covered, for an hour until the rabbit meat is easy to slide off the bone.

6. Remove the meat, take it off the bone and chop into small dice. Combine the meat with the sauce, and add some more water if the sauce is too dry. If the sauce is too wet, drive off some of the liquid before adding the rabbit meat back. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

7. Cook the pasta in plenty of boiling, salted water until al dente, and then drain. Combine with the ragù and serve.

Macaroni con patate al forno – Marcaroni and potato gratin

March brings the uplifting prospect of longer days, daffodils and cherry blossom. And sometimes the shift to more spring-like weather. But not this year, so far. We woke to a deep frost on Saturday morning and a biting wind so I took refuge in this winter-warmer dish raise my spirits, and maybe yours as well if you are in the northern hemisphere north of Rome. As a variant you could add crisp pancetta or bacon to the final mix, but it’s not essential. Preparation time is about 25 minutes and cooking time 35 minutes which gives you time to set the table and pour a glass of wine.

Ingredients (serves 4 generously)

500g potatoes

200g macaroni

50g butter

50g flour

500ml milk

100g parmesan

2 egg yolks

½ tsp nutmeg

1 large onion

20g butter

1tbl olive oil

parsley

salt and pepper

Method

1. Peel and dice the potatoes, and boil until al dente in salted water. Strain

2. While the potatoes are cooking, make a béchamel sauce by melting the butter, stirring in the flour and gradually adding the milk already warmed until you have a smooth sauce. Then stir in the egg yolks, half the parmesan, the nutmeg and finely chopped parsley. Season to taste.

3. Put the macaroni on to cook.

4. Fry the onion finely sliced in the remaining butter and the olive oil until it begins to caramelise (for maximum flavour).

5. Now assemble the ingredients, placing them in a well greased baking dish. Strain the macaroni and add to the potatoes, then amalgamate with the sauce and the onion. If you are using pancetta, add it at this stage.

6. Scatter the remaining parmesan on top and place in a moderate oven – 170 degrees C. with a piece of foil to protect the top of the dish. Remove the foil after 20 minutes and allow the dish to brown which should take a further 10-15 minutes.

Tagliatelle ai funghi porcini – Boletus mushrooms and pasta

Funghi porcini – boletus – are justly highly prized for their taste, smell and appearance. Fresh ones like these – bought in the market in Santa Cruz, Tenerife – produce the most wonderful sauce for pasta. Cut them in half, slice them thinly, then sauté with onion, garlic and bacon. The dried porcini you can readily find in supermarkets are not a patch on freshly picked ones but they will do at a pinch along with maybe some chestnut mushrooms. If you know of a simpler, more delicious pasta dish, please let me know.

Ingredients

300g tagliatelle or pappardelle

1 large onion

150g bacon or pancetta

300g porcini

1 clove of garlic

1 bunch of parsley

2tbl olive oil

40g butter

salt and pepper

50ml double cream

parmesan to grate

Method

1. Put a large pan of salted hot water on to boil; heat four serving bowls.

2. Chop the onion, garlic and bacon finely and sauté until soft in the olive oil.

3. Chop the mushrooms into fine slivers and add to the onion mixture with the butter, and sauté until the porcini are soft.

4. Put the pasta on to boil. Finely chop the parsley.

5. Drain the pasta when it is cooked and add the mushroom mixture and the cream, combining them all. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the parsley just before serving.

6. Pass the parmesan.

Pasta con cavolo verza e prosciutto - Pasta with savoy cabbage and prosciutto

There may be a simpler and more effective recipe for macaroni. In the meantime, this one will have to do. It uses one of those excellent Italian winter vegetables, savoy cabbage. The main thing is not to stew the cabbage. If you shred it finely, it will get all the cooking it needs while retaining flavour and texture. You can use pancetta or bacon if you prefer but grill it until it is crisp. Equally, you can use penne or broken up spaghetti instead of macaroni.

Ingredients

120g prosciutto or pancetta or bacon

300g macaroni or penne

salt and pepper to taste

200g savoy cabbage

1 onion

1 clove garlic

30g butter

20g flour

100ml milk

50g parmesan

30g parsley



Method

1. Grill the prosciutto, and shred it when it’s cooled down.

2. Put the macaroni on to boil in salted water.

3. Add the savoy cabbage finely shredded as you drain the pasta – it will get all the cooking it needs.

4. In the pasta pan melt the butter, add finely chopped garlic and onion and fry for a couple of minutes until it begins to colour.

5. Add the flour to make a roux, then add the milk to make a loose béchamel, then the parmesan and the pepper.

6. Return the macaroni and savoy cabbage to the pan and combine with the sauce, adding the chopped parsley, then the grilled prosciutto.

7. Serve before the cabbage loses its crispness.

Tortelloni di zucca e mascarpone - Butternut squash and mascarpone tortelloni

For an experiment we decided to try the River Cafe recipe for butternut squash tortelloni. In particular, we wanted to see how the fresh pasta turned out. In Emilia-Romagna all the sfogline we have consulted or seen in action have told us that the recipe is one egg per 100g of flour and nothing else apart from salt. Whereas the River Cafe recipe is for a mixture of whole eggs and egg yolks plus olive oil. Giorgio Locatelli claims to have made pasta with 52 yolks to a kilo of flour when he worked in Rebuchon in Paris.

Anyway, the pasta part of the River Cafe recipe works well but to intensify the flavour of the filling, we had to radically reduce the amount of parmesan and mascarpone in the filling and to roast the butternut squash.

Ingredients

for the pasta

350g type 00 flour

2 medium eggs

5 medium egg yolks

½ tbl sea salt

½ tbl olive oil

for the filling

0.75k butternut squash or pumpkin

50g butter

2 large garlic cloves, finely sliced

salt and pepper

200g mascarpone

200g parmesan

½ nutmeg

for the sage butter

1 bunch fresh sage

100g clarified unsalted butter

Method

1. Using a mixer or processor, combine the flour, salt, olive oil and eggs. Using a dough hook, knead slowly for 10 minutes until you have a smooth ball of dough. If necessary add another egg yolk.

2. Dust the work surface with flour, then knead the dough for 4 minutes until it is completely smooth. Wrap it in cling film and put in the fridge.

3. Roast the butternut squash in a medium hot oven for 30 minutes. Then scoop out the pips, scoop out and mash the flesh.

4. Fry the garlic in the butter and add to the squash. When cool stir in the mascarpone, parmesan and nutmeg. Season to taste.

5. If rolling by hand, roll the dough out on a floured surface until you can see a patterned tea towel through it.

6. If using a machine, flatten the dough and cut it into four, then put each quarter through at each setting, gradually reducing the setting until you have the thinnest.

7. Cover the pasta with a tea towel to prevent it drying out.

8. Take a strip of pasta and distribute a teaspoonful of the filling every 4cms using a teaspoon or piping bag (much easier).

9. Take another strip of pasta and lay it over, squeezing the two strips together, working from one end to the other, and using your fingers to exclude the air as you do.

10. Use a small cutting circle to cut out the tortelloni. Or, if you prefer, a square.

11. For the sage butter, heat the clarified butter in a large frying pan and when hot add the sage leaves for a second or two. Remove from the heat. Remove the sage.

12. Boil the tortelloni in plenty of salted water for three or four minutes.

13. Briefly sauté the tortelloni in the butter.

14. Divide the pasta between four warm bowls and place a sage leaf or two on each.

Prawn tortellini with chickpea puree

Before midnight mass on Christmas Eve many Italian families sit down to a fish dinner. In Bologna, this might consist of prawn tortellini followed by salt fish. (The recipes are given separately here.) The tortellini are light and delicate and come served on a bed of pureed chickpeas if you are lucky enough to find this dish on the menu at Marcello dall’Aglio’s La Locanda del Castello in Sasso Marconi.

Salt fish is not widely available here but you can make a more than passable version at home using fresh cod and sea salt. This could be fried, deep fried in a light batter or, as in this case, used to make croquettes. It is accompanied by an irresistible sauce made out of roasted baby tomatoes, red onion and roasted pureed red peppers.

The tortellini are best prepared ahead because they are tricky to make at the last minute. You could also prepare the salt fish dish and its sauce in advance so if you really were coming back for dinner after midnight mass it could be on the table in minutes.

If you consider tortellini too fiddly, you could make a larger filled pasta or even serve the prawn filling between two small sheets of pasta, but it will be less delicate.

The chickpea puree needs careful preparation. Chickpeas and aubergines are two foods that are too often poorly prepared because they are taken for granted. Soak the chickpeas overnight. Bring them to the boil and then immediately put in a very slow oven for several hours or simmer on a low gas. They hate rapid boiling and tense up. If you live near a Spanish or Portuguese shop, you could buy a jar of sumptuous cooked garbanzos.

Preparation time: in inverse proportion to the time taken to down the tortellini.

 

Ingredients (for four generous portions)

for the tortellini pasta

300g pasta flour

3 whole eggs

3 egg yolks

½ tsp salt

for the tortellini filling

200g uncooked large prawns

2 tbsp olive oil

25ml brandy

50g ricotta

 

4 spring onions

salt and pepper

for the chickpea puree

150g chickpeas

4 cloves of garlic

3tbsp extra virgin olive oil

50g parsley

salt and pepper

for sauteeing

2tbsp olive oil

 

25g butter

Method

1. The day before, soak the chickpeas in plenty of warm water

2. The next day, bring the chickpeas to the boil along with the garlic, then immediately transfer to a slow oven (140 degrees C.) or a low gas so that the chickpeas simmer.

3. Make the pasta by combining all the ingredients and kneading until the dough is elastic and no longer sticky, 10-15 minutes. Wrap in clingfilm and transfer to the fridge.

4. Remove the intestinal channel and shells from the prawns and quickly fry in olive oil until they turn pink. Add the brandy and flambé.

5. Chop finely or process along with the ricotta, spring onion, adding salt and pepper. Place in the fridge.

 

6. When the chickpeas are soft, strain them and process with the peeled garlic, olive oil, parsley, salt and pepper.

7. Roll out the pasta dough using a rolling pin or a machine until it is almost transparent. You will have a number of wide strips of pasta that you should cover with a cloth to keep them moist until you come to use them.

8. Mark out 4cm diameter circles using a pastry cutter. Place a half teaspoon of filling in the centre of each one. Fold the pasta over to make an envelope and pinch it together ensuring that no air is trapped inside.

 

9. You can finish there or you can make the characteristic shape of tortellini by wrapping the pasta around your finger so that the two wings touch and then are pressed together. It will help if you gently push the filling into a fat little cord shape once you have created the envelope.

 

10. Heat the puree in a dish over a pan of simmering water or in a microwave. Put on a salted large pan of water to boil, reduce to a rapid simmer and add the tortellini a few at a time.

11. Depending on the fineness of your pasta, they will take 4-6 minutes to cook to al dente. Try one after four minutes. Strain them when they are cooked.

12. Heat a oil and butter in large frying pan, tip in the tortellini and sauté for two minutes.

13. Place a mound of puree on each plate, flatten it slightly with a spoon so that it provides a platform for the tortellini.

Pasta e fagioli – Pasta and beans

Meat-free winter comfort food, as many versions as there are comuni in Italy. Here it is Bolognese style, in other words, with quite a lot of parmesan and more than a hint of balsamic. The beans I used were gigantic runner beans, harvested when the pods had yellowed and stiffened in October, but you could use borlotti beans just as well, or even chick peas. Equally, you can use almost any kind of pasta - I used some home made pappardelle. The quantity of garlic may seem excessive but slow cooking mellows it. In the photo, I served the dish with a dollop of pesto on top but that is optional.

You can watch a different version being prepared, espresso at http://fooyoh.com/nowwatch/watch/EzOxrjiYL3s

Ingredients

200g dried beans

4 bay leaves

1 head of garlic

1 onion

3 sticks of celery

2 carrots

4tbls olive oil

1 can chopped tomatoes

2tbls good balsamic vinegar

50g parsley

200g pasta

75g parmesan

Method

1. Soak the beans overnight. The next day bring them to the boil in fresh water with bay leaves and garlic, then place them in a slow oven for several hours to soften. Then strain and keep warm, discarding the bay leaves. Squeeze the garlic out of its skin and add to the beans.

2. Meanwhile, finely chop the vegetables – onion, celery and carrot – and gently fry in olive oil with the lid on until they soften and begin to brown. Now add the chopped tomatoes and balsamic vinegar and half a cup of water, bring to the boil and simmer for an hour until the ingredients have amalgamated to form a sauce. Add the beans and the finely chopped parsley.

3. Cook the pasta until just al dente, drain and add to the sauce and the beans. Stir in the parmesan.

Lasagne verdi al forno

It is the ragù above all that marks this dish out as Bolognese. That plus the sheets of spinach-flavoured egg pasta that provide the platform for the meat sauce and the béchamel.

Lasagne stands on its own. It doesn’t need garlic bread and boring side salads even if these are regarded as essentials in Pizza Hut. Italians might follow it with a simple salad, but not always. Marcella Puppini – more about her next week – fondly remembers Sunday lunch at her nonna’s when lasagne was followed by roast chicken.

Cooking tips: Balance is crucial; ragù, béchamel and pasta have equal billing. So you don’t want to end up with a sloppy mix. And don’t believe those who tell you that the pasta does not need pre-cooking. Since it takes time to make the three separate components you may as well make a job lot and have some in the freezer for another day. I used a baking dish 28cm x 25cm x 5, which contained enough for 4 (massive) -6 (reasonable) portions, and there was still enough left over to make another smaller dish for the freezer.

Preparation and cooking time: set aside 2 ½ hours if you intend to make your own pasta. In fact, set aside 2 ½ hours whatever you do because the ragù needs to cook for two hours, and you’ll need time at the beginning to prepare it and time at the end to assemble the lasagne. Add 30-40 minutes for baking. So call it three hours.

Ingredients

For the ragù

75g butter

50ml olive oil

450g beef coarsely minced

150g unsmoked bacon or pancetta chopped

1 large onion finely chopped

2 carrots finely chopped

3 celery stalks finely chopped

2 cloves garlic

150ml red wine

150ml milk

1 can chopped tomatoes

salt and pepper to taste

For the bechamel

80g butter

80g flour

800ml milk

4 bay leaves

thimblefull nutmeg

75g grated parmesan

For the pasta

400g dried lasagna sheets

or (to make it at home)

400g OO pasta flour

150g Spinach, finely chopped

4 whole eggs


Method

1. Make the ragù by frying the beef on a medium high heat in a third of the butter and a third of the olive oil until it begins to colour. It may be best to do this in two batches because if you crowd the pan, the temperature drops and the meat stews rather than browns.

2. Remove the meat using a straining spoon and then add and fry the bacon or pancetta.

3. Remove the bacon and add the onion, celery, carrot and garlic plus the remainder of the olive oil, put the lid on and gently cook until the vegetables are soft – about 15 minutes.

4. Add the wine and cook on a high heat without the lid for five minutes.

5. Return the meats to the pan and reheat.

6. Add the milk and cook until it has been absorbed.

7. Add the tomatoes, season with salt and pepper.

8. Make the béchamel by melting one third of the butter in a saucepan and then adding the flour gradually to form a smooth paste.

9. Heat the milk in the microwave or in another pan and gradually add it to the flour to form a smooth emulsion. Use a wooden spoon to work any bits of flour into the sauce. Add the bay leaves.

10. Cook the sauce on a gentle heat for 10 minutes, taking care to stir it constantly.

11. When it is ready grate in the nutmeg and season to taste.

12. If you are using bought dried or fresh pasta, cook in plenty of boiling water for the time specified by the manufacturer.

13. If you decide to make your own pasta, begin by cooking the spinach in nearly all the remaining butter until it is reduced to a dry mass. Squeeze any moisture out of the spinach and food process so that it is a smooth puree.

14. Mix 4 whole eggs with 400g of OO pasta flour plus a pinch of salt. Add the spinach to the dough and thoroughly amalgamate. Knead the dough until it is smooth and springy. Cover in cling film and set aside somewhere cool for half an hour then roll it out into transparent sheets. Cut these into rectangles 8cm x 12cm. and cook in plenty of gently boiling water for 3-4 minutes. Strain and lay flat on a teacloth.

15. Butter an oven dish and arrange sheets of pasta so that they cover the bottom and hang over the sides (these overhanging bits will eventually form a crusty top of the lasagne).

16. Cover with a thin layer of ragù and béchamel and sprinkle on some parmesan.

17. Repeat with another layer of pasta – without the overhangs – and the two sauces and the cheese.

18. Finally, fold over the overhangs and cover with a layer of béchamel and the rest of the cheese.

19. Bake in an oven at 170 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes with the lasagne covered with a piece of foil for the first 20 minutes. The lasagne should be brown and bubbling.

20. Serve by itself. Nothing else is needed.

Pappardelle with broad bean and pea cream

Summer is coming to an end but there are still broad beans in the shops. Broad beans make an irresistible sauce to accompany pasta. They need careful handling so that they don’t become a claggy mess. This recipe combines them with peas, butter and mint to make a cream. And by not draining the pasta completely, a couple of tablespoons of the cooking water is used to dilute the cream so that it sticks evenly to the pasta, rather than sitting in clumps around the bowl.


Ideally, the pasta should be broad like pappardelle but you could use tagliatelle instead. A good brand of shop bought like Cecco is fine – Buitoni is not – or you could make your own if you want therapy and exercise and the sheer pride of serving home made pasta. But be careful: If it is too thick it will take so long to cook that it will pass the al dente stage and become pappy (perfect food for chickens or dogs).

Enough for 4 as a first course.


350g without pods or skins (about 700g in pods) broad beans
125 g – fresh or frozen peas
60g butter
60g parmesan
4 tablespoons double cream
To taste salt and pepper
A few leaves mint
400g pasta – bought

or

300g OO pasta flour
3 large eggs
½ teaspoon salt


1. Cook and skin the broad beans. Reserve a third of the beans. Cook the peas.

2. Add butter to the vegetables and briefly cook to melt the butter and combine the beans and peas.

3. Using a hand held liquidiser, coarsely chop the beans, peas and butter, then add half the parmesan, the cream and season to taste.

4. Put a large pan of salted water on to boil. Shop bought pasta will take about 10 minutes, home made half that time.

5. Just before you empty the pasta into a colander, scoop out a cupful of the water.

6. Drain the pasta and return to the cooking pan.

7. Now stir in the bean and pea cream, the reserved beans and the mint. Add as much of the reserved cooking water as you need to thin the sauce so that it lightly coats the pasta. Serve into bowls. Pass grated parmesan.

If you decide to make your own pasta, amalgamate the flour, salt and eggs in a bowl, knead until the pasta is springy and no longer sticky. Wrap in clingfilm and leave to rest in a cool place for an hour, then roll out using a pasta machine or rolling pin until the pasta is almost see-through. Roll up the pasta and cut it with a sharp knife to produce 2 cm wide noodles.

Garganelli con gorgonzola, pancetta, pere e noci - Pasta tubes with gorgonzola, bacon, pears and walnuts

This is a very easily and speedily concocted dish and is common in Bologna even if not totally native. While the pasta is cooking you can prepare the sauce. The cheese will melt into the pasta but all the sauce ingredients should remain distinct. The combination is sublime, a combination of salty, creamy, crunchy and sweet. If you or your guests are allergic to walnuts, substitute slivered almonds lightly fried in butter. There is no substitute for the gorgonzola.

Cooking hints: This is one of those occasions when you should buy the fresh pasta if it is available. Dry garganelli isn’t always made with egg, as it should be.

Preparation time: 25 minutes

150g streaky bacon
350g garganelli
2 pears
200g walnuts
200g gorgonzola


1. Grill the bacon until crisp and then snip into thin pieces with scissors, or serve as a slice.
2. Put the pasta on to boil.
3. Peel and dice the pears. Shell the walnuts. Cut the gorgonzola into dice.
Drain the cooked pasta and briefly combine with the rest of the ingredients in the pan.
Serve each portion as a mound with the bacon on top, as a slice or in pieces.
That’s it.



Wine match: how about Rosato Letizia, made by Letizia Gaggioli at Zola Predosa? Or, failing that, a full bodied rose like Villa Maria, made from the syrah grape?

Lasagnette di zucchini - Courgette lasagne

Like many simple dishes, courgette lasagne can be tricky to do well. What you are aiming for is a balance between the pasta, the béchamel sauce and the courgette. So, do

1. ensure that you use egg pasta and that you parboil it for four minutes

2. ensure that the flour is cooked out of the béchamel and that it has the consistency of thick pouring cream

3. grill the courgette until it is soft and caramelised. The photo below shows how it should look.

I’ve found that a lower layer of leek and spinach adds variety to the dish but be careful not to brown the leek so that its flavour drowns out the more delicate courgette. To assemble it, I start with a layer of pasta which I leave to overhang the dish on all sides. Then there’s the leek and spinach on a bed of sauce, followed by more sauce, another layer of pasta and the courgette. Finally, fold the overhanging bits in, fill in any gaps with more lasagne sheets and finish off with a thick layer of béchamel. This last is vital to ensure that the pasta cooks well so reserve 40% of the sauce for this last bit.

Crumbs, that sounds a bit complicated. Once you get going, it’s anything but and you get a cheap, appetising dish that feeds four well. If it’s a primi, it could be followed by a piece of grilled meat or fish. If it’s a secondi, it could be preceded by a salad. Or you could do it English caff style, with garlic bread and chips. (A joke.)

I used a well greased dish approximately 24cms x 28 cms.

4 medium Courgettes

130g Butter

100g Plain flour

1 l. Milk

100g Parmesan grated

To taste Salt and pepper

Grated to taste Nutmeg

2 Leeks

200g Spinach

12 sheets Egg pasta lasagna



1. First, slice and grill the courgettes. Cut each one into two or three tubes and then slice each one lengthwise into 40mm. thick strips. Heat and oil a griddle and grill the strips on each side until they are soft and brown.

2. Make the béchamel by melting the butter in a large saucepan, stirring in the flour and cooking them into a smooth paste – or roux - over a low light. Then heat the milk and gradually add it to the roux, stirring it all the time with a wooden spoon while the sauce thickens. Bring it to a slow simmer, stirring around the bottom of the pan to prevent it sticking, and cook it for four minutes. Stir in the parmesan and season with salt and black pepper and a good grating of nutmeg, to your taste. Taste to ensure that the sauce is well cooked. It may need another minute or two.

3. Clean the leeks and spinach thoroughly. Chop the spinach roughly. Slice the white and light green part of the leeks across into 50mm. chunks. Fry them in 30g of butter. When they are soft add the spinach and cook until it too is soft, ensuring that there is no liquid in the bottom of the pan.

4. Boil a large saucepan of water, and parboil the pasta six sheets at a time. When it is ready, lift it out with a draining spoon and drop it into a bowl of cold water. Lift it out and leave it to drain on a teacloth.

5. Grease an ovenproof dish with butter, then lay two sheets on each side of it so that they overhang the side, meeting in the middle of the bottom of the dish. Place a sheet lengthwise at each end of the dish so that there is a complete layer of pasta on the bottom of the dish.

6. Spread a layer of sauce over the pasta, then cover this with a layer of leek and spinach.

7. Lay three sheets of pasta across the dish, then add the layer of the griddled courgette.

8. Fold over the overhanging pasta and complete the pasta layer with one or two sheets of lasagne.

9. Finish with a smooth layer of the sauce.

10. Bake in an oven pre-heated to 160 degrees for 30 minutes or until it starts to go brown and crispy.

Wild garlic tortelloni with asparagus

The season for wild garlic is now upon us but do not delay because it is all too short. Finely chopped and combined with ricotta and parmesan, it makes a gorgeous filling for tortelloni but its pungency needs to be offset by spinach.

You can often find it by roadsides and alongside streams in the country. Drive with the windows down so that you can sniff it out. Last Sunday I found young wild garlic growing in clumps under the trees just down the lane from where I live. In another week or two, the white flowers begin to appear that signal late middle age and then decline, so do not delay in your search.

Makes enough for 4.

80g Ricotta

40g Parmesan finely grated

80g Wild garlic finely chopped

80g Spinach

Salt and pepper

Nutmeg to grate

8 spears Asparagus

60g Butter

300g Egg pasta ready made

1. Blanch the spinach for 1 minute in plenty of boiling water. Strain, drain thoroughly and chop finely. Place on a kitchen towel to absorb any remaining moisture.

2. Combine in a bowl the wild garlic, spinach, ricotta and parmesan, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Finally grate in half a teaspoon of nutmeg.

3. Take the ready made egg pasta and roll out into sheets about 8cms wide and 30cms long.

4. Use a 6cm pastry cutter to make 48 discs.

5. Place a teaspoon of filling on 24 of the discs and cover each one with another disc. Pinch the two discs firmly together. Don’t delay in doing this or you might find that the pasta has become too dry to fix together.

6. Put on a large pan of water to boil. When it boils turn down the heat to a brisk simmer and cook the tortelloni in four batches, draining each one thoroughly.

7. Now melt 40g of butter in a wide frying pan and slip in the tortelloni, sautéing them in the butter for a minute. If necessary, if the pan won’t hold the pasta in a single layer, do this in two batches.

8. Cut the asparagus into 3cm lengths, discarding the woody stems of the asparagus spears. Melt the remaining butter and fry the asparagus gently until it is cooked al dente.

9. Serve 5-6 tortelloni onto each plate and add the asparagus on top.