Pasta Sauces | Live For Pizza

June 7, 2013

Walnut Pesto

Pesto is a beautiful sauce combining fresh basil, garlic and parmesan with a base of nuts and oil. Tangy and flavourful, if you need an excuse to grow some basil plants this is it! Pesto goes well on pizza or pasta and makes a great dip to serve with cheese and crackers. I use walnuts here but any nut can be used really – pine nuts are used in a lot of traditional recipes. Lightly toast the nuts first by tossing them in a pan over low-medium heat until just starting to change colour. Pine nuts burn very easily and taste awful when burnt, so keep an eye on them. A food processor works well but I like using a mortar and pestle – after all the words pesto and pestle share a root word. If a food processor is used I suggest blending cheese and nuts first until the consistency of bread crumbs, then adding oil and lemon juice and finally the basil, pulsing until the basil is in small pieces – don’t take it so far that there’s no specks of basil left.

Depending on the ingredients on hand flat leaf parsley can also be added. Lemon is not completely traditional but I like the extra kick of flavour, and it makes up for not using as much raw garlic as some recipes.

Ingredients

1-3 cloves of garlic, to taste
1 chunk of parmesan or grana padano cheese, around 50g/2 oz
a handful of toasted walnuts, pine nuts or other neutral flavoured nuts.
1/3 cup good olive oil
juice of half a lemon
1 good bunch of fresh basil
salt

Method

Pick basil leaves off any large stems. Dice or grate the cheese. Add a pinch of salt, nuts, garlic, cheese and basil to a large mortar.

Start pounding and stirring until the ingredients are fairly well broken down and mixed together.

Add olive oil and lemon juice and continue to mix. until the mixture is fairly smooth.

May 13, 2013December 10, 2019

My Recipe For Spaghetti Bolognaise

A staple in my families diet is some variation on bolognaise sauce – a rich, tomato and meat based sauce (although we do a vegetarian version with red lentils too) plus whatever vegetables are around, served with pasta. Zuchini, eggplant, capsicum and mushrooms all make an appearance at times but this is the classic version that we make for pure comfort food. My recipe probably isn’t far from many others – it isn’t a complex dish but so rewarding to make well with good fresh ingredients. I don’t use a lot of meat because I think the sauce should accompany the pasta but not dominate it. Traditional bolognaise recipes sometimes add a little milk or cream when nearly finished – I haven’t tried that yet because I like the rich version so much! Traditional recipes also use chicken liver, but at risk of excluding myself from the rest of the foodies I’m not a huge fan of eating offal.

Note – Katie Caldesi writes in The Italian Cookery Course that smoky bacon is overpowering in bolognaise sauce but I don’t agree (although the book is excellent). However if smoky bacon isn’t liked it can be replaced with a good non smoked bacon or similar cured pork, like pancetta, guanciale, or even diced salami.

Ingredients

1/2 kg (1lb) ground beef – as often as not I use packaged mince from the supermarket but when I have time to grind my own the difference is very obvious.
1 rasher good smoky bacon
1 stick celery
1 carrot
1 onion
2 tins plum tomatoes or tomato passata
1 glass red wine
1 small sprig rosemary – about 1 tsp when diced fine
1 generous pinch dried oregano – the stuff to look for comes from the flowering heads and is a tan/green colour, crumbly with a pungent smell. Plain dried oregano leaves don’t have so much flavour.
1 pinch chilli flakes
1 bay leaf
3 cloves garlic
olive oil
salt and pepper

Method

Dice carrot, onion, celery and bacon as fine as practical. Add to a large saucepan or frying pan over medium heat with 2 tbsp olive oil, bay leaf and finely chopped rosemary.

Stir regularly until well cooked, about 10 minutes. The onion should look translucent and starting to brown and the other vegetables should look soft. Remove the vegetables and set aside.

Add 1 tbsp olive oil to the pan and tip in the ground beef. Stir now and then until the beef is well browned.

Crush and dice garlic and add to the pan together with the vegetables and 1/2 glass of wine. Scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen all the tasty browned bits. Stir the mixture over medium-high heat until the wine is bubbling. The rest of the wine is for the cook to drink while they are hard at work!

I picked up the next step from FX Cuisine . Tip about 1/2 cup of tomato mixture in to the pan and stir until most of the liquid has boiled off. Continue to stir for a minute over high heat. Concentrating and browning some of the tomato like this adds another layer of flavour.

Add the rest of the tomatoes, chilli flakes and oregano. Use a spatula to smash the tomatoes until large chunks are broken up. Half fill the cans with water, swish around, and add the water to the pan too. Reduce to medium heat and simmer for 45 minutes or more, until fairly thick. If the sauce boils down and becomes too dry before 45 minutes is up, add just a little more water. When done, taste and add as much salt as is needed.

Bring your largest pot of water to a rolling boil and add a few tsp salt. Cook pasta until done. This sauce is great with a pasta with some body like fettucine or tagliatelle. Normal spaghetti doesn’t really do it justice despite the name of this recipe – I served it here with fresh bigoli made with semolina, a very fat type of spaghetti with rough edges. I’ve seen the wisdom of tossing cooked pasta through the sauce to coat it well – the extra flavour in each mouthful is hard to argue with. Use tongs or a pasta server to lift a serve of pasta into each bowl, then spoon more sauce over the top.

Serve with grated parmesan and cracked black pepper.

If you liked this…

Spaghetti Bolognese? No Thanks! – A great little Kindle ebook for $3.50 from an Italian about which recipes are and aren’t authentic – I enjoyed it. You can read Kindle books on PC, even in a browser directly now so you don’t need an actual Kindle.

All about bolognese sauce on Wikipedia – interesting historical facts for real food nerds

Maggie Beer’s version, with chicken liver

This version adds cream at the end and combines pork and beef – worth trying

April 12, 2013December 10, 2019

Pasta Alla Norma

First off I have to give credit to the incomparable FXCuisine, where I got this recipe for Pasta Alla Norma. If you haven’t seen his site, check it out.

Pasta Alla Norma is a Sicilian dish, simple to make but deliciously rewarding. It is made up of good pasta – usually larger shapes like penne -topped with a simple tomato sauce, ricotta salata, basil and fried eggplant (aubergine). I made this when I wanted to offer a good dinner to guests but I was in a hurry that day as this is so simple to make – I made the sauce the day before to save time.If you can find a bronze die pasta it will have a better texture for the sauce to stick to, but don’t sweat it too much!

Ricotta salata is a salted and aged version of ricotta. I couldn’t find any at short notice so I used normal ricotta and while the dish was good, I thought it needed an extra kick that the ricottta salata would have provided. I added some fresh grated parmesan and I recommend using that or pecorino with your ricotta if you can’t find ricotta salata either. I’ve also seen versions of this recipe calling for capers which would have the same effect – you want a punchy, salty ingredient to go with the smooth flavours of eggplant. Serious Eats suggest trying a saltier cheese like sheeps milk fetta as another option. I took this advice for my second attempt at the dish and it was excellent – I mixed equal parts creamy fetta and ricotta, then used that in place of ricotta salata.

The dish is best with a simple but tasty tomato sauce, something like a good can or 2 of tomatoes blended up (I use my own preserved tomato sauce) and simmered with some tomato concentrate, garlic, salt and pepper and herbs. I think at a pinch you could use a good jar of simple tomato passata from a store, with a bit of salt and pepper.

Ingredients

2 Eggplants (aubergines), firm/young ones if possible, diced/sliced
500g / 1lb good quality pasta – penne, macaroni or other larger shapes
4-5 Cloves of garlic
3 Tbsp olive oil
About 2 cups of pasta sauce of your choice (see above)
250g / 1/2lb Fresh ricotta or ricotta salata or ricotta mixed with fetta (see above)
Fresh grated parmesan or pecorino to serve
1 Small bunch of basil

Method

Prepare or heat up the pasta sauce.
Fill a large saucepan nearly to the top with hot water and put it on the stove, high heat. Stir in 1/2 tbsp salt. Put the lid on while it comes to a boil.
Crush and dice the garlic. Add to a large frying pan with the olive oil over medium-low heat, and cook stirring occasionally until the garlic is just golden brown. Remove and discard the garlic (the flavour is now in the oil).
Add the eggplant to the frying pan and cook, stirring and turning until it is all nicely browned. Keep the heat fairly low, you want it to cook through and get golden brown on the outside without burning. This step might take 10-15 minutes.
While the eggplant cooks and as soon as the pot of water is boiling vigorously tip in the dried pasta and stir well. After 8 mins or so start tasting a piece now and then for done-ness. Cook until done how you like it – not so long that it starts to get very soft and lose its shape. When cooked, ladle the pasta out into a strainer using a slotted spoon and set aside.
To assemble the dish, ladle some pasta into each bowl, then top with a good splash of pasta sauce. Crumble over the ricotta and parmesan/pecorino. Use kitchen scissors to snip little bits off the bunch of basil, adding around 1 tbsp to each bowl. Finally, top with the cooked eggplant.

When eating, you stir the ingredients through so you get a bit of everything in each mouthful – the different flavour combinations are mouth watering.