Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [112]
THE OTHER INGREDIENTS
3 to 3½ cups Swiss chard stalks (leafy tops completely removed), cut into pieces 2 to 3 inches long and about ½ inch wide
Salt
1 cup potatoes, preferably new, peeled and sliced ¼ inch thick
4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter
4 large garlic cloves, lightly mashed with a knife handle and peeled
2 dried or 3 fresh sage leaves
A 12- to 14-inch oven-to-table baking dish and butter to smear it
¼ pound imported Italian fontina cheese, sliced into thin slivers
⅔ cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
1. Making the pizzoccheri noodles: Pour the buckwheat flour and the unbleached flour onto a work surface, and mix them well. Shape the flour into a mound with a hollow in the center, put the eggs, milk, water, and salt into the hollow and combine with the flour, then knead as described.
2. Roll out the dough, either by the machine method, or by the hand method, keeping it somewhat thicker than you would for fettuccine. Let it dry for 2 or more minutes until it is no longer so moist that it will stick to itself when folded and cut, but without letting it get so brittle that it will crack.
3. Loosely fold the machine-made strips or hand-rolled sheet of dough into a loose flat roll as you would for cutting tagliatelle. Cut the rolled-up dough into 1-inch wide ribbons, and cut each ribbon diagonally in the middle to obtain diamond-shaped noodles that are 1 inch wide and about 3 to 3½ inches long. Unfold the noodles and spread them out on top of a counter lined with clean, dry cloth towels.
Ahead-of-time note The pasta can be prepared up to this point days or even weeks ahead of time. See instructions on drying pasta for storage. Bear in mind when cooking it later that dried pasta takes longer than the freshly made.
Cooking the Pasta
1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. Wash the cut-up Swiss chard stalks in cold water.
3. Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil, add 2 tablespoons salt, and as soon as the water resumes boiling put in the chard. When the chard has cooked for 10 minutes, put in the potatoes, setting the pot’s cover on slightly askew.
4. While the chard and potatoes are cooking, put 4 tablespoons of butter and the mashed garlic in a small skillet and turn on the heat to medium. Cook the garlic, stirring, until it becomes colored a light nut brown, discard it, and put in the sage leaves. Turn the leaves over in the hot butter once or twice, then remove the pan from heat.
5. Thinly smear the baking dish with butter.
6. When both the chard and the potatoes are tender—test each by prodding it with a fork—drop the pasta into the same pot. Cook the pasta until it is slightly underdone, very firm to the bite, molto al dente. If freshly made, it will take just a few seconds. Drain it immediately together with the chard and potatoes, and transfer all ingredients to the buttered baking dish.
7. Over the pasta pour the garlic and sage butter, tossing thoroughly to coat the noodles well.
8. Add the sliced fontina and grated Parmesan, mixing them into the pasta and vegetables. Level off the contents of the dish, and place on the uppermost rack of the preheated oven. Remove after 5 minutes, allow to settle for another 2 or 3, then serve at table directly from the dish.
Orecchiette
APULIA, the region that extends over the entire heel and half the instep of the boot-shaped Italian peninsula, has a strong tradition of homemade pasta. Unlike the tortellini, tagliatelle, and lasagne of Emilia-Romagna, Apulian pasta is made with water instead of eggs, and the flour is mostly from their native hard-wheat variety, rather than from the soft wheat of the Emilian plain. Apulian dough is chewier, firmer, more rustic in texture. It is perfectly suited to the strongly accented sauces of the region.
The best-known shape of Apulian pasta is orecchiette, “little ears,” small disks of dough given their ear-like shape by a rotary pressure of the thumb. In the recipe that follows, hard-wheat flour is mixed with standard, unbleached flour to make a dough easier to work.
For 6 servings
1 cup semolina, the yellow flour