Bottega - Michael Chiarello [4]
You’ll also want a few specialty olive oils in your pantry. There’s olio nuovo (in Southern Italy; in Northern Italy it’s called olio novello). This “new” oil is the first press each year, and it’s much more raw, pungent, and rustic in character than older oil. At Katz and Company (which makes a good one), they call it December’s New Oil, because that’s the only month it’s available. This is a finishing oil (don’t cook with it), and it’s fantastic with bruschetta or drizzled over white beans or a steak. You’ll want to use it quickly before the flavor fades.
Late-harvest olive oils are more delicate, lighter in color, and fruitier. They’re a good choice for seafood or other mild dishes.
Store big containers of olive oil in the refrigerator to keep the oil from going rancid.
Olives
These days, my favorite olives are grown locally and water-cured right here at Bottega. I also buy kalamatas from Greece, gaetas from Italy, and picholine olives from France. All three of those are brine-cured. I also like the wrinkly dry-cured (also called oil-cured) olives that you find throughout the Mediterranean. I gently heat these dry-cured olives in olive oil with some herbs, red pepper flakes, and a strip of orange or lemon zest and serve them warm with cocktails.
Except for the olives I buy for Crispy Blue Cheese–Stuffed Olives, I prefer olives with pits, because the pit helps preserve the olive’s flavor and texture. Most olives can be pitted easily; if the pit is stubborn, smash the olive lightly with a cleaver to loosen its hold.
Pasta
No matter how good your sauce, if the pasta is limp or slippery, the dish will be a disappointment. I’m a pasta lover and make my own fresh pasta when I can, but I’m also a working dad who has dried pasta at the ready. I buy Italian brands from artisan producers such as Rustichella d’Abruzzo. Pasta made by Barilla, another Italian producer, can be found readily in grocery stores and is much better than most of what sits on the shelves. Both brands put their pasta through bronze dies instead of Teflon-coated ones; this gives the pasta a textured surface (you can see the texture under a magnify-ing glass). Both brands also dry their pasta very slowly for a final product that comes out of the water with some “chew.” This gives the cook a little leeway: you can leave a high-quality pasta in the hot water for a few extra minutes while you perfect the sauce, and it won’t lose shape or texture.
If you love pasta as much as I do, you’ll want different pasta shapes in your pantry. I like sea-food sauces with long noodles such as spaghetti, spaghettini, or linguine. I’ll choose penne or rigatoni when I’m making a chunky sauce. Riso, ditalini, and acini de pepe are soup pastas, ideal for floating in broth. Pastina is, for me, the most comforting of pastas, and it’s a natural for the Calabrian Wedding Soup.
Polenta
Polenta is merely ground dried corn. The flavor of your polenta relies on the flavor of the corn before it’s dried and the fineness of the grind. The creamy, fantastic polenta at Bottega results in large part from good fortune: I was lucky to have found an heirloom corn that has been used in polenta for many generations. I’m hopeful that this polenta will soon be available to the home cook. For now, look for fine-ground polenta like the kind available from Anson Mills (see Resources). If you’re buying polenta from a grocery store, look for Italian polenta, which is generally more finely ground. (Finely ground means smoother polenta.) Fresher grains mean better-tasting polenta, so keep opened packages in the refrigerator and make sure to use them within 6 months of opening.
Rice
I stock two short-grain rices for my risotto: Arborio and Vialone Nano. Arborio is available in most grocery stores; you may need