Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [85]
5. Return the sauté pan to the burner over medium heat. If you were making the first part of the sauce in advance, reheat the anchovies gently, stirring with a wooden spoon. Add the broccoli florets, the diced stalks, and the hot chili pepper. Cook the broccoli for 4 to 5 minutes, turning it from time to time to coat it well.
6. Toss the entire contents of the pan with cooked drained pasta. Add both grated cheeses, and toss thoroughly once again. Serve immediately.
Ahead-of-time note The sauce may be prepared a few hours in advance up to this point, but do not refrigerate the cooked broccoli.
Tomato and Anchovy Sauce
For 4 servings
1 teaspoon garlic chopped very fine
⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil
4 flat anchovy fillets (preferably the ones prepared at home), chopped coarse
1½ cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1 pound pasta
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
Recommended pasta First choice would be thin spaghetti, spaghettini, to which the only satisfactory alternative is the thicker, standard spaghetti.
1. Put water in a saucepan, and bring it to a lively simmer.
2. Put the garlic and oil in a sauté pan or another saucepan, turn the heat on to medium, and cook and stir the garlic until it becomes colored a very pale gold.
3. Place the pan with the garlic and oil over the saucepan of simmering water, double-boiler fashion. Add the chopped anchovies, stirring and mashing them against the sides of the pan with the back of a wooden spoon until they begin to dissolve into a paste. Return the pan with the anchovies to the burner over medium heat and cook for half a minute or less, stirring constantly. Add the tomatoes, salt, and a few grindings of pepper, and adjust heat so that the sauce cooks at a gentle, but steady simmer for 20 to 25 minutes or until the oil floats free from the tomatoes. Stir from time to time.
4. Toss cooked drained pasta with the entire contents of the saucepan, turning the strands so that they are thoroughly coated. Add the chopped parsley, toss once more, and serve immediately.
Ahead-of-time note The sauce may be prepared several hours in advance and gently reheated when the pasta is nearly ready to be drained and tossed. Do not refrigerate.
PESTO
Pesto may have become more popular than is good for it. When I see what goes by that name, and what goes into it, and the bewildering variety of dishes it is slapped on, I wonder how many cooks can still claim acquaintance with pesto’s original character, and with the things it does best.
Pesto is the sauce the Genoese invented as a vehicle for the fragrance of a basil like no other, their own. Olive oil, garlic, pine nuts, butter, and grated cheese are the only other components. Pesto is never cooked, or heated, and while it may on occasion do good things for vegetable soup, it has just one great role: to be the most seductive of all sauces for pasta.
It is unlikely that any pesto will taste quite like the one made with the magically scented basil of the Italian Riviera. But never mind, as long as you have fresh basil, and use no substitute for basil, you can make rather wonderful pesto anywhere.
Genoese cooks insist that if it isn’t made in a mortar with a pestle, it isn’t pesto. Linguistically at least, they are correct, because the word comes from the verb pestare, which means to pound or to grind, as in a mortar. They are probably right gastronomically, too, and out of respect for the merits of the tradition, the mortar method is described below. It would be a greater pity, however, to pass up making pesto at home because one has not the time or inclination to use the mortar. The nearly effortless and very satisfactory food processor method is therefore also given.
Note The pecorino cheese known as fiore sardo, which is used in the Riviera for making pesto, is much less harsh than romano. But up to now at least, romano is the one that is