invented this one cleaning out a friend's refrigerator one night on B'way and 107th street above Cannon's bar, when on a trip home to NYC was asked to cook for my friends. The dish later became the "signature" pasta dish at Riera's Restaurant on Solano Ave, in Berkeley, CA.
Fresh egg fettuccine
butter
evoo
sheep's milk (ie real) imported Feta, high fat like Corsican
minced garlic
fresh tomato chunks that have been chopped from peeled and most juice and seeds removed ripe tomatoes
bacon slices cut in hunks, or pancetta cut similarly
shredded fresh basil
fresh ground pepper
With a bit of evoo in a med-hot saute pan, fry the bacon or pancetta until almost crisp
Get the fettuccine boiling (takes about 5-7 minutes)
Put the minced garlic in with the bacon and cook until redolent (but not at all browned) and the bacon is crisp
Add a spoonful or two of the pasta boiling water into the pan, along with feta crumbled or cut to smallish pieces, swirl: as the feta melts partially it will make a creamy sauce
Add a small walnut sized hunk of sweet butter and the tomato hunks, while continuing to swirl the pan.
Now the pasta should be ready, and as you drain it (but not till dry you want a bit more of the pasta boiling liquid for the sauce) toss in the fresh shredded basil first, plenty of it, and then the fettuccine. Toss or swirl well.
Plate and grind fresh pepper over it to taste.
This dish makes your classic Carbonara wince in shame.
Give it a try.
We had a great menu at Riera's - not too big, with an awesome fresh pasta list of Emiligia Romana style Lasagne Bolognese al Forno, of course Bolognese, fresh seafood over fresh linguine, Alfredo, Marinara, etc...
And this dish, we called it Pasta della Casa, outsold them all and always received rave reviews. Plates came back to the kitchen wiped clean with our home made Panne Integrale.
Do NOT salt the pasta boiling water or the dish itself (until the very end as needed), it tends to be salty enough just from the bacon and feta.
Don't be skimpy with any ingredient, but the whole of it should have a nice balance. It might need a squeeze of a lemon wedge for juice/ acid balance just before adding the pasta. Taste the sauce to see.
It's like with fresh squid.
It's either super quick flash heat or super long simmer, as far as I can tell, anything between you get chewy.
But there is nothing like the smell of italian style squid sauce for pasta.
Good observation. Squid is particularly unforgiving.
I've got a huge bag of lovely sugar snap peas to cook up later this week, and was thinking about some or another pasta dish. No mushrooms? Love the combo of sugar snap or snow peas with mushrooms and pasta.
Look forward to hear how it works out.
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Your recipe is on my calendar for dinner Monday
Look forward to hear how it works out.
I've got a half pound of frozen homemade pasta dough. The only thing is, I'm probably going to fudge on the feta- I've got crumbles from Costco. Is that a deal breaker?
BlueLou, big feta lover here (feta, with fresh sliced tomatos, olive oil, red wine vinegar and some pita: fantastic quick lunch) so I'm going to try your creation next week. Big thanks.
Quote:
In comment 14467045 Bill in UT said:
Quote:
Your recipe is on my calendar for dinner Monday
Look forward to hear how it works out.
I've got a half pound of frozen homemade pasta dough. The only thing is, I'm probably going to fudge on the feta- I've got crumbles from Costco. Is that a deal breaker?
Doesn't matter where you bought the feta, what matters is if it is a high fat content sheep's milk feta.
Use cow milk "feta" - which, as noted, cannot even legally be called feta in the EU - and you're dead to me Bill. I take no responsibility for how your dish comes out.
CHP I'm a big feta lover myself. TJ's imports an excellent one from Israel, that they sell in approximate 1 lb blocks, that is a high content Sheep's milk Feta. I use it many ways - in salads, frittata, omlettes, with pasta, on panini... It is outstanding in my vegetable based white lasagne as well.
So how did he explain we used a French cheese in our signature pasta dish? He called it "Sardinian-style Sheep's milk Feta".
As if 90% of fookin' Americans can peg Corsica as a French territory, but Sardinia (Sardegna) as Italian.
Most average Americans have a hard time pegging Wyoming right on an untitled outline map of the continental US, and can't name and locate more that one third of the continental sates on that map.
But he wouldn't call the cheese we used "Corsican" in print!
Use cow milk "feta" - which, as noted, cannot even legally be called feta in the EU - and you're dead to me Bill. I take no responsibility for how your dish comes out.
Point taken, Lou :)
Quote:
Use cow milk "feta" - which, as noted, cannot even legally be called feta in the EU - and you're dead to me Bill. I take no responsibility for how your dish comes out.
Point taken, Lou :)
I looked at the container and it says something about Europe, but lists the ingredient as milk. I assume that means it's cows milk
You have 5%, 10%, 15%, and ~30% brined cheeses, but if they are cow milk based they'll call them "Bulgarian cheese" - Bulgarit in Hebrew.
Then of course we have fetas too, called feta, but specified to the majority milk content as Sheep's or Goat's. The Sheep's milk Feta is usually 24% Fat and the Goat Milk Feta 18%.
I use only the 24% fat Sheep's Milk feta for everything except crumbling on salads.
Is the label rubbed off?
If it's produced in Europe and labeled feta it has to be a majority sheeps milk product.
Is the label rubbed off?
If it's produced in Europe and labeled feta it has to be a majority sheeps milk product.
Just says President- Europe's Leading Cheese Experts
I will pass this along to my son who is a sous chef for a restaurant group in Denver.
Really appreciate it Buon Appetito
And BlueLou'sBack Thanks so much for your phenomenal recipe
Are you still producing your wine in Isreal?
Regarding squid. I never settled on any particular recipe. But as a young kid I'd get a flashlight and night spear them.
But, I'd say tomatoes yes with squid and garlic yes, and clean the squid properly and fully. Yes on the heads as well, of.course.
Save tenticles obviously.
I mean, tons of garlic, fresh, good tomatoes, black pepper, olive oil, squid, and time.
If going quick your talking seconds...otherwise hours.
If not, just follow the 1st part of any tomato concasse recipe or video, up until the cooking part.
Tomato concasse - ( New Window )
Link - ( New Window )
I wouldn't have to kill you for it though.
I wouldn't have to kill you for it though.
So I was careful, as the link says, not to roast the tomatoes.
I spent the afternoon wondering what I would tell you if I didn't really care for the dish. Fortunately, I don't have to worry about that. It was OUTSTANDING. First of all, my wife doesn't love cream sauces. So this was a plus for her. She loved it, I loved it. Thank you, Lou.
So I'm mostly a follow the recipe guy. For those of you like me, here's what I used.
Bacon- I used four strips of thick cut. Next time I'll use 6.
5 cloves of garlic, sliced not minced. I love garlic
4 roma tomatoes- maybe a little tomato heavy, if you like them do 4, otherwise 3.
Just under 8 oz feta.
1/2 pound fresh fettucine.
I didn't have fresh basil and forgot to add the dried basil.
I think that covers it. Great dish, Lou. The ball is in your court, Drew :) And don't make it fish that I can't buy out here :)
Do try getting the fresh basil into it next time. You can even shred some into the leftovers for a nice kick.
The pepper really helps too in this dish, but I think I grind fresh black pepper into all my pasta preps.
I'd prolly prefer the slightly less amount of tomatoes too... but the dish needs to work for each cook at their own discretion.
Thanks for the report back!
I made this last night. Used cherry tomatoes and pancetta. Stopped at the store for the right Feta cheese and picked the basil fresh from the garden.
Absolutely fantastic!
I really like carbonara, but we rarely have heavy cream on hand and the rest of the family isn't big on peas (which I like in carbonara). This was a quick, easy meal and we would normally have all the ingredients on hand. I usually have Feta around and the kind I buy is the good stuff. Several years ago, I stopped skimping on two things. Cheese and fresh meat. Sure, getting peccorino romano is a bit pricier, but it is better than wood pulp.
Awesome share Lou
I made this last night. Used cherry tomatoes and pancetta. Stopped at the store for the right Feta cheese and picked the basil fresh from the garden.
Absolutely fantastic!
I really like carbonara, but we rarely have heavy cream on hand and the rest of the family isn't big on peas (which I like in carbonara). This was a quick, easy meal and we would normally have all the ingredients on hand. I usually have Feta around and the kind I buy is the good stuff. Several years ago, I stopped skimping on two things. Cheese and fresh meat. Sure, getting peccorino romano is a bit pricier, but it is better than wood pulp.
Awesome share Lou
Thanks for the feedback, and of course you're welcome. As I mature (in my early 60s) I find little as gratifying as sharing my knowledge.
As for the pancetta and cherry tomatoes - that might be the most Italian spin possible for the dish at this time of year when "normal" vine tomatoes, even the "early girl" variety, are rarely properly ripe. And when you chose what's best "in season" one is absolutely "cooking authentic Italian."
For an interesting twist, try grating a touch of nutmeg on it...
Very early on in my career as a chef, I learned the absolute crucial necessity of best ingredients.
If you try to make for example Fettuccine Alfredo with anything but real imported Italian Parmesan (it doesn't have to be Reggiano, but at least Grana Padano or another very similar well aged cheese) but sub in let say American "parmesan" produced in Wisconsin, you get library paste suitable for book binding or recovering for the "sauce" of Alfredo.
Even nutmeg - I always used whole nuts and grated it myself. Probably added close to 5 minutes work on the large batches of Bolognese I used to make, but worth the effort.
That's why I wrote that Bill in UT would be "dead to me" if he used a cow's milk feta in the dish.
Second, no, you don't drain the bacon or pancetta. I wouldn't call the dish fatty, and it seems to me the fat from the butter and what melts out of the Feta is more than the bacon or pancetta fat - maybe that gives one a pointer for the relative amounts of the base ingredients. But the flavor of the pig fat is crucial to the dish as part of that triumverate of fats - pig, sheep's milk, and butter. It works because of the pasta water, which is a bit starchy or course but not at all fatty (oh, didn't mention, neither salt nor oil in that pasta water.)
But perhaps what I call fatty and you call fatty are two different things; certainly it's a rich dish. But it's lighter than Carbonara, with its wallop of heavy cream, egg yolk, bacon and parmesan, for sure!
For the life of me, I am 100% certain the original prototype created by the "see what you've got in the fridge method" contained bacon. None of the group of friends who lived in that apartment were ethnically Italian. But in the restaurant I just don't remember if we used bacon or pancetta. I think bacon, but not 100% certain.
The fresh basil was the lone ingredient NOT in my friends' fridge that day, so that was the inspiration of what would pull the dish together and elevate it to something kinda special, but it was almost an accidental addition. Walked half a block to the nearest small grocery seeking fresh Italian flat parsley initially. But at the grocery, there were big beautiful bunches of fresh basil and it clicked - basil, not parsley!
For those of you who cook like this, I'm sure the process rings a bell to something lovely you've concocted at one time or another.
Lastly, it's funny how menu planning and prep work in a restaurant and how one dish can lead to another. Another "creation" of mine was veal scallopini with a sauce of demi-glace, white wine, shallots, pine nuts, diced tomato hunks, shredded basil reduced and mounted with butter and lemon juice. We called it "Veal Boccincini" and I created it out of curiosity if there was a nice scallopini prep that I could make mostly with mise-en-place ingredients already on the line.
Heavy cream?! That's not carbonara! Egg yolk, guanciale, black pepper - that's carbonara.
It's actually a dish contrived after WWII according to my fast research, just after the liberation of Italy from the Facists/Germans, so actually smoked bacon and powdered eggs, American products shipped for the troops and I gather starving populace, were used in its initial concoction.
Eh, if a dish has been around only ~75 years, I wouldn't get too hysterical about it's rigid execution.
Or - just add "my" to definitive statements about Carbonara.
Terrific. Next time im going to either switch fresh pasta supplier or try dry pasta
I also agree with Gatorade. Don't use heavy cream in my version of Carbonara (one of the worlds great dishes, imo).
Fully agree on spending the money on the right cheese/meat
Yeah, I was going to mention that as well - what you were describing is more of a della nonna than carbonara.
It's actually a dish contrived after WWII according to my fast research, just after the liberation of Italy from the Facists/Germans, so actually smoked bacon and powdered eggs, American products shipped for the troops and I gather starving populace, were used in its initial concoction.
Eh, if a dish has been around only ~75 years, I wouldn't get too hysterical about it's rigid execution.
Or - just add "my" to definitive statements about Carbonara.
The postwar thing is a myth. It's simply coincidence that the dish began to gain popularity in Rome in the years following WWII, but that had more to do with Neapolitans relocating to Rome at that time than it does with GIs repurposing their rations. Could you even imagine carbonara with powdered eggs?
And that said, it's still a hard no for me on heavy cream. Pork-infused alfredo would be more accurate in that case. Is it delicious? Sure. But it's not carbonara.
My Grandmother was from East-Central Italy. Ironically, she grew up on the hilltop across from Tony in Ninerland's ancestors in Macchia Valfortore.
When she made pasta, it was usually spaghetti al olio (usually with anchovies), or cavatelli and broccoli with raw garlic and oil. Or a red sauce - hommades with a fresh tomato-basil sauce from the garden or thicker Sunday gravy with sausage, bracciole, pork and meatballs.
She never made carbonara or alfredo or even pesto sauce. So I'd usually try those out at restaurants - probably getting an Americanized version.
I never knew what they were talking about with gabagool, mutts, or pasta fazool.
About the only bastardization was a zucchini stew my Grandmother used to make. They called it "Jumbot", which I'm sure isn't the right spelling. Italians don't use "j's" that much!
The only cold cuts we had around were capricola and mortadella. My Grandfather used to make and then hang his own salami and soppressata in the attic. I can't imagine getting by cutting off mold to eat something today!!
My Grandmother never wrote recipes down. I've been able to duplicate her pizza frite recipe, her past sauces and her pizza. Never have been able to make anything close to her pasta fagioli though.
I never knew what they were talking about with gabagool, mutts, or pasta fazool.
About the only bastardization was a zucchini stew my Grandmother used to make. They called it "Jumbot", which I'm sure isn't the right spelling. Italians don't use "j's" that much!
The only cold cuts we had around were capricola and mortadella. My Grandfather used to make and then hang his own salami and soppressata in the attic. I can't imagine getting by cutting off mold to eat something today!!
My Grandmother never wrote recipes down. I've been able to duplicate her pizza frite recipe, her past sauces and her pizza. Never have been able to make anything close to her pasta fagioli though.
When people talk about "aged beef" and the flavor of the Porterhouse at Peter Luger's I am always reminded of the great writer Joseph Mitchell who published for years in The New Yorker magazine.
Your comment about "cutting off mold" brought me right back to one or another of Mitchell's great stories chronicling the meat markets and restaurants in NYC in the 30s and probably before and after... almost 100 years ago.
A properly aged steak apparently, at least once upon a time but I swear Luger's steak has that flavor, has been cut out of a side of beef that is covered aggressively in a fuzzy green-gray mold.
One of Mitchell's great stories about meat in NYC - - ( New Window )
IIRC they give you a few shots for free, and then insist you subscribe. I am not now testing that theory since I've read a great deal of what Mitchell published in THE NEW Yorker at least twice as I once owned one of his collected stories/articles books. I gave it to my brother in NJ who has quite an interest in NYC history, after reading it cover to cover maybe 3 times.
I often wonder how a fabulous collection of stories, written in great prose, gets 6 reviews of 5 stars and one 3 star. Well in this case the 3 star reviewer acknowledged the stories are "great writing" but gives only 3 stars because he/she "wasn't drawn in... because of the lack of snap, crackle and pop of modern storytellers". His loss, I'm sure.
Up in the Old Hotel - Stories by Joesph Mitchell, reviews - ( New Window )
I thought dry aged cuts have to be trimmed before cooking to remove the mold or fungus?
I never knew what they were talking about with gabagool, mutts, or pasta fazool.
I think it has to be a Sicilian thing. None of my Italian relatives ever pronounced anything that way, but my family is from right along the border between Emilia-Romagna and Umbria.
Even my Great-uncle Johnny, who actually grew up in Italy (oddly enough, was born in NY but his family moved back to Italy when he was little, came back to the US in the '30s because his parents didn't want him to have to go to war) never said anything like gabbagool or mutts.
Too expensive for us (the restaurants wherein I was chef) to purchase, I used to "age meat" in a non mold producing way.
After removing meat from cryovac plastic wrap we received it in, we wrapped it in a clean napkins and placed in the coolest section of our fridge, towards the back. We changed the napkins every 2-3 days, as they would get soaked with bloody water after a day or two each time. Essentially, we allowed the low humidity condition of the frige the chance to remove water from the meat, which made it more tender after at least a week (preferably 2-3) of dry-aging. The clean napkins (or towels) sped up the process, and helped prevent bacteria (or mold?) from accumulating on the surface of the meat.
The worst thing you can do is serve any animal flesh (aside from fish obviously) too soon after it has been killed and butchered. I have a funny story about that for another thread some time. Funny in retrospect, anyway.
I never knew what they were talking about with gabagool, mutts, or pasta fazool.
About the only bastardization was a zucchini stew my Grandmother used to make. They called it "Jumbot", which I'm sure isn't the right spelling. Italians don't use "j's" that much!
The only cold cuts we had around were capricola and mortadella. My Grandfather used to make and then hang his own salami and soppressata in the attic. I can't imagine getting by cutting off mold to eat something today!!
My Grandmother never wrote recipes down. I've been able to duplicate her pizza frite recipe, her past sauces and her pizza. Never have been able to make anything close to her pasta fagioli though.
When we make salami or any dry-cured meats, they are generally sprayed down with a mold solution. That mold is "good mold" and it helps prevent growth of "bad mold" and also provides a little flavor (supposedly). But if you go to a place that makes there own stuff, you can see lots of charcuterie hanging in the fridge all covered in white mold.
Nu?