Genovese Ragù

Genovese finished dish

This dish, paradoxically, is from Naples. It is a bit of an institution there. Many families cook it for Sunday lunch. It is a type of “white” ragù, that is it is cooked for a long time without tomatoes. It will taste even better if you make it the day before, and heat it up before serving. It is usually served with ziti, broken in half, but any tubular pasta, such as penne or rigatoni will do. Some versions cook the beef as a whole piece, and serve the meat as the main course, but this recipe cooks it until it breaks down into the sauce.
The origins of the name are a bit of a mystery. Some say it was first prepared in the port of Naples, where it was popular with sailors from Genoa. Others say it is a dish originally prepared by cooks from Genoa.

Genovese ingredients

• 500 g beef (topside or rump)
• 450 g onions
• 60 g celery
• 60 g carrots
• 1 sprig rosemary
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 litre beef stock

Finely chop the carrots and celery and thinly slice the onions.

Genovese chopped veg

Chop the beef into large cubes.

Genovese meat

Saute the carrot and celery for a few minutes in a pan big enough to take all the beef.

Genovese browning veg

When they have taken some colour, turn down the heat and add the onions. Stir With a wooden spoon until the onions have softened.

Genovese onions

Add the beef, rosemary and bay leaf. Cook over a very low heat for at least 3 hours. Check every half and hour or so, and add a little stock if it starts to get dry.

Genovese adding beef

After 3 hours add the rest of the stock and continue cooking until the beef has completely disintegrated and the sauce is thick and tasty.

Genovese end of cooking

Serve with ziti, snapped in half before cooking.

Insalata Caprese – Authentic recipe

Insalata Caprese finished dish

From Campania. This salad is named after the island of Capri, in the Gulf of Naples, near to Sorrento. Versions of this dish can be now be found in “Italian” restaurants all over the world. It is extremely simple, just “mozzarella”, tomatoes and good extra virgin olive oil.

As always, the quality of the ingredients is very important. First the “mozzarella”. The name should technically be reserved for buffalo milk cheese. Cows milk cheese is known as “fior di latte”. The milk used is not as important as the freshness. In fact Accademia Italiana della Cucina recommends using a cow’s milk cheese from Agerola or Sorrento. Most people here insist on eating it on the day it is made. Mozzarella made the day before is only good for pizza. If all you can find is supermarket cheese with a shelf life of up to a month, it wont be worth making this dish, make a pizza instead 🙂 Slice into fairly thin slices, about half a centimetre or a quarter of an inch.

Next, the tomatoes. Again, use the best you can find. Try to find them about the same size as the cheese. This makes the presentation nicer. Slice crossways into slices of about the same size as the cheese.

Arrange them on a plate, alternating the tomato and mozzarella. Add a generous amount of fresh basil and drizzle with olive oil. You can season with a little salt if you like.

The Academia suggests an alternative method where the cheese and tomatoes are diced.

The salad will taste much better if you serve it at room temperature, not straight from the fridge.

Unlike most salads in Italy, this is served as a main course, rather than a side dish.

Insalata Caprese ingredients

 

Neapolitan mixed fritters

Mixed fritters finished dish

Pasta cresciuta. From Naples. My local pizzaria here in Bari is Neapolitan and cooks what the locals regard as “thick” pizzas. The Barese go there when they want some foreign food 🙂 They also cook a few specialities from Naples, such as arancini and this dish. Pasta cresciuta means “grown dough”, because the batter contains yeast. You can cook them without a filling, or with some of the more  traditional ones such as courgette flowers or anchovies. Alternatively experiment with what you have to hand. The batter will make about 60-80 pieces.

Mixed fritters ingredients

• Sun-dried tomato halves, soaked to soften
• Courgette (Zucchini) flowers picked over to make sure they don’t contain any insects etc.
• Large sage leaves
• Anchovy fillets
• Oil for deep frying (traditionally olive oil, but sunflower oil is acceptable)

For the batter

• 1 cube of fresh yeast
• 320ml lukewarm water
• 300g oo flour
• A pinch of salt

First make the batter. Dissolve the yeast in the water. Sift the flour into a bowl and add the salt. Make a well in the centre and add the yeast mixture. Beat it with a whisk until smooth. Cover and leave in a warm place for 1 – 2 hours to rise. It should about double in size.

Mixed fritters batter

Heat a pan full of oil to a medium heat, about 180°c. If the oil is too hot the fritters will be raw on the inside and burnt on the the outside. If the temperature is too low they will be soggy. A litte experimentation may be needed to get it right.

Mixed fritters cooking

To make plain fritters, drop tablespoons of the batter into the hot oil. Cook until they are lightly browned, turning once. You are aiming to keep a reasonably soft texture. Think savory doughnuts. Drain on kitchen paper. Dip the various fillings into the batter and continue as before.

They are best eaten hot, but may also be eaten cold.

Pasta with beans and mussels

Pasta with beans and mussels finished dish

Pasta con fagioli e cozze.  From Naples. This is a variation on the classic Neapolitan dish of pasta and beans. The pasta is cooked in the sauce which makes it very tasty. Serves 4.

• 700g mussels, cleaned
• 1 clove of garlic
• 50 ml white wine
• 450g cooked cannellini beans (You can use canned if you like)
• 200g chopped tomatoes
• 200g short pasta such as ditali, gnochetti sardi etc
• 100ml vegetable stock
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley
• Red chilli to taste, fresh or dried

Pasta with beans and mussels ingredients

Soften the garlic in a little olive oil. Add the mussels and the wine, cover and cook over a high heat until the mussels have opened. About 5 minutes

Pasta with beans and mussels opening the mussels

Remove the mussels from their shells and strain and reserve the cooking liquid.

Pasta with beans and mussels cooking the pasta

Heat some olive oil in a pan and add the beans. Stir in the tomatoes, the reserved cooking liquid and the stock and bring to the boil. Add the pasta and cook until it is done (refer to the packet for cooking times).

Remove from the heat, stir in the mussels and sprinkle with the chopped parsley and chilli

Slow Cooked Octopus “alla Luciana”

“Purpo” alla Luciana. From Campania. A nice way to cook a large octopus. Very simple, but delicious. The octopus ends up very tender and the liquid it produces makes a very tasty sauce. Serves 3-4

Octopus Luciana ingredients

• 1 Octopus weighing about 1kg – cleaned and tenderised.
• 1/2 glass olive oil
• Parsley – chopped
• 1 clove of garlic – chopped
• Salt and pepper

1. Remove the eyes and beak from the octopus.
2. Place the octopus in a (preferably) terracotta pot. The pot should be just larger than the octopus so it’s a reasonably tight fit.
3. Add the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Go easy on the salt though.
4. Cover the pot with aluminium foil or grease proof paper and tie as tightly as possible with kitchen string. Cover with a lid.
5. Cook over a very low heat for two hours. Shake the pot from time to time to prevent sticking.
6. Remove the foil, add the garlic and parsley, and cook for another few minutes.
7. Serve hot or leave to cool in the cooking liquid and serve cold as an antipasto.

Octopus Luciana finished dish

Neapolitan meatloaf – Authentic recipe

Polpettone alla napoletana. This is a tasty and economical recipe. In Naples it is also known as ‘polpettone in salsetta’ – meatloaf in sauce. The sauce is used to dress pasta for the first course and the meat is eaten as the second course. The recipe calls for buffalo mozzarella and Neapolitan salami, but I’m sure it would be fine with whatever you have handy. Thank to Gino for the advice. Serves 4-6.

Meatloaf ingredients

• 500g minced beef
• 4 eggs
• 50g cooked ham (about 2 slices)
• 50g Neapolitan salami (optional)
• 40g parmesan, grated
• 40g pecorino, grated
• 50g buffalo mozzarella, sliced (not too fresh)
• 2 cloves of garlic, whole but lightly crushed
• Flour
• 100g stale bread
• 400g chopped tomatoes
• 50g concentrated tomato puree
• A large sprig of basil, torn
• 2 tbsp chopped parsley
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper

• Hardboil 2 of the eggs and allow them to cool.Slice them thinly.
• Moisten the bread with a little cold water and break into small pieces.
• Mix together the meat, the raw eggs, the bread, the parmesan, the pecorino and the parsley. Season with salt and pepper. Knead with your hands until all the ingredients are incorporated.
• Spread the paste on a square of kitchen paper to form a 2cm thick rectangle.  Cover with the slices of ham, the salami, the mozzarella and the sliced eggs.

Meatloaf with filling

• Using the kitchen paper to help, roll up, pressing together firmly, to form the meatloaf.

meatloaf ready to cook

• Dust with flour and fry the loaf in olive oil in a large pan until it is browned on all sides. Lower the heat, cover and continue cooking for 30 minutes.
• In a seperate pan, fry the garlic for a few minutes in 3 tbsp of olive oil. Add the tomatoes, the tomato puree mixed with a little water, the basil and a pinch of salt. Cook for 5 minutes.
• Add the tomato sauce to the meatloaf and cook for a further 30 minutes.
• When the meatloaf is cooked, remove it from the sauce and allow it to cool slightly. Slice into 1-2cm slices and serve with a little of the tomato sauce.

Meatloaf with tomato sauce

Puttanesca authentic recipe

Pasta alla puttanesca from Campania. The translation of the title of this dish is “whore’s pasta”! There are a lot of stories as to how it got its name, but one of the most common is that it was a dish that the working girls could quickly prepare between customers. Another version is that is was cooked in brothels so customers would be lured in by the enticing aromas. I don’t really buy that one. I think food would be the last thing on the customers minds 😉 It is a relatively modern dish, probably dating back to the end of the second world war. Both Lazio and Campania claim it as their own. This is the Campania version. The recipe comes from Accademia Italiana della Cucina.

A note about the olives. Use the best you can find. Don’t use pitted black olives as properly matured olives are too soft to have their stones removed mechanically, so they will almost certainly be green olives which have been dyed with ferrous glucomate (E151, a synthetic coal tar).

Puttanesca ingredients

Serves 5

 

• 500g bucatini, linguine, spaghetti or similar
• 500g peeled tomatoes (fresh or tinned)
• 2 anchovy fillets (salted or in oil)
• 100g good quality olives, rinsed. The recipe calls for Gaeta olives, which of course can be green or black, but I have only ever seen this dish prepared with black olives. You can leave them whole or stone them and roughly chop. I prefer half and half.
• 50g capers, rinsed and roughly chopped. The recipe doesn’t stipulate salted or in brine. I prefer the salted variety
• 100g olive oil. This seems a lot but you need a fair amount to allow the anchovy fillets to dissolve properly. Use less if you wish
• 1 clove of garlic, peeled and lightly crushed
• 1 chilli (fresh, dried or a good pinch of chilli flakes)
• Chopped parsley

 

 

 

1. Gently fry the garlic, chilli and anchovy fillets in the oil. Mash the anchovies with a wooden spoon until they have completely dissolved.
2. Remove the garlic. You can also remove the chilli if you don’t like it too hot. If you prefer a really fiery dish, crush or finely chop the chilli before frying.
3. Add the tomatoes, olives and capers. Mash the tomatoes thoroughly with a fork and cook over a medium high heat for 15 to 20 minutes.
4. Cook the pasta until al dente, drain and add to the pan with the sauce. Toss the pasta with the sauce and heat gently for a couple of minutes.
5. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

 

 

Pasta Puttanesca

 

Black tagliatelle with prawns

Tagliatelle nere con gamberi. From Campania. You can get black tagliatelle in larger supermarkets or good delis. I made my own. Just add a sachet of cuttlefish ink to the basic pasta recipe.

Black tagliatelle with prawns ingredients

Black tagliatelle

Serves 4

• 350g black tagliatelle (dried)
• 450g chopped tomatoes or tomato pulp
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and lightly crushed
• 400g prawns, shelled weight
• a handful of rocket, chopped
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• salt and pepper

• Fry the garlic cloves in the oil until lightly browned. Remove the garlic and discard.
• Add the chopped tomatoes, season with salt and pepper and cook over a high heat for about 10 minutes.
• Add the prawns and cook until the prawns are done. Not too long as you don’t want them to shrivel.
• Stir in the rocket and serve with the cooked pasta.

Black taglatelle with prawns