Pates
Studio Nouvelles Images
Buy this Art Print at AllPosters.com

La Belle Cuisine - More Pasta Recipes

   Fine Cuisine with Art Infusion

"To cook is to create. And to create well...is an act of integrity, and faith."

Alain Ducasse's Olive Mill Pasta

"Life is a combination of magic and pasta."
~ Federico Fellini

Recipe of the Day Categories:

   Recipe Home

   Appetizers

   Beef

   Beverage

   Bread

   Breakfast

   Cake

   Chocolate

   Cookies

   Fish

   Fruit

   Main Dish

   Pasta

   Pies

   Pork

   Poultry

   Salad

   Seafood

   Side Dish

   Soup

   Vegetable

   Surprise!

Ducasse Flavors
of France

The Provence of
Alain Ducasse

Your patronage of our affiliate partners supports this web site.  We thank you!

Liguria
George Bates
Buy This Art Print At AllPosters.com

Pasta From the Italian Riviera
The New York Times, March 13, 2002
By Alain Ducasse, written with Florence Fabricant

“I prefer dry pasta, macaroni, to fresh noodles. One of my favorites is a short twisted kind called strozzapreti. And I like to cook it the way I learned from the farm families who have mills for pressing olives for oil in rural Liguria on the Italian Riviera. They cook pasta like a risotto.
I've been doing it for years now, and I would not cook macaroni any other way.
What happens is this. You do not boil the pasta in water first. Rather, you start with some of your seasonings, the ingredients that will make up your sauce, like olive oil, onions, garlic, tomatoes and herbs.
In Liguria, they also use potatoes and even big white beans. They cook the beans first, of course.
Once these ingredients have started to soften and perhaps taken on a bit of color, you add the pasta and stir it around. Then you begin adding stock, about a cup at a time, stirring everything together.
After 15 or 20 minutes your pasta is cooked and is coated with just enough sauce - richly concentrated, almost creamy and perfectly seasoned. It is a sauce that has picked up the flavor of the macaroni and blended it with your other ingredients.
You have taken advantage of the pasta's natural starch, like the starch in arborio rice when you make risotto.
You have to use a high-quality hard-wheat pasta, a pasta made with old-fashioned bronze dies. It's usually labeled "artisanal." That kind of pasta has the best flavor and also a rougher texture, so it can grab the sauce. You couldn't cook spaghetti
this way, but almost any short-cut pasta, penne, for example, or gemelli or fusilli, would work.
I've served this pasta at my restaurant in Monte Carlo. But it is really a modest dish, one that I would make at home and one that the housewives in Liguria serve as the mainstay of a meal. These women are the keepers of the best Italian cooking. A preparation like this also illustrates the deep connection to the actual process and pleasure of preparing food, something that is essential to me.
You're not just standing there waiting for a big pot of water to boil, and then waiting for the macaroni to cook, and then applying a sauce. You are participating every step of the way, stirring, seasoning, reducing the liquid, enjoying the warmth and aromas around you, trusting your palate and then sharing what you have prepared with others. It's what I adore about cooking.”
 

Olive Mill Pasta

Time: 45 minutes
Yield: 4 servings

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons butter
2 medium-small onions, minced
 1/4 pound fingerling potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/4-inch thick
5 1/2 cups, approximately, vegetable or light chicken stock
14 ounces artisanal strozzapreti pasta
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 medium-size ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, juiced and diced,
or 2/3 cup diced sun-dried tomatoes, not oil-cured, covered with
boiling water and drained
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
8 branches fresh basil or arugula, leaves removed and slivered,
stems lightly crushed
1 bunch scallions, trimmed, slant-cut in 1-inch pieces
3 ounces freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, about 1 cup

1. Heat 1/4 cup oil in a 10-inch sauté pan. Add butter. When it melts, add onions and potatoes. Cook, stirring gently, over medium heat until they
begin to turn golden.
2. In a small saucepan, bring stock to a slow simmer.
3. Add pasta to sauté pan, and stir gently. Lightly season with salt and pepper, and add tomatoes, garlic and basil or arugula stems. Add 1 1/2 cups stock. Cook, stirring gently, until nearly all stock has evaporated. Add scallions and another cup of stock, and cook, stirring, adding additional stock from time to time, so there is always some liquid in the pan, until pasta is al dente, about 18 minutes. Remove garlic and herb stems.
4. Fold in cheese and all but 1 tablespoon remaining oil. Add slivered herbs. Season with additional salt and pepper if needed. Transfer to warm soup plates, taking care that the ingredients are well distributed. Drizzle remaining oil over each and serve.

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Featured Archive Recipes:
Marcella Hazan - Matching Pasta to Sauce - 3 recipes!
Rao's Pappardelle with Hot Sausage Sauce
Maccheroncini Campolattaro Le Sirenuse
Rigatoni in a Woodman Sauce (Lidia Bastianich)
 

Index - Pasta Recipe Archives
Recipe Archives Index