July 7, 2023 • 39 mins
When in Rome.. you must try its iconic pasta dishes! Discover the key ingredients, origin stories and legends behind the classic pasta dishes of Rome - cacio e pepe, alla gricia, carbonara and amatriciana - with our friend and Testaccio local Nesim Bekalti from Full Belly Tours
Read the full episode show notes here > untolditaly.com/181
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Join our mailing list and get our FREE Italy trip planning checklist - subscribe here | Join us on tour: Trip schedule | Discover our Trip Planning Services | Visit our online store | Follow: Instagram • Facebook • YouTube • Italy Travel Planning Community
The Untold Italy travel podcast is an independent production. Podcast Editing, Audio Production and Website Development by Mark Hatter. Production Assistance and Content Writing by the other Katie Clarke - yes there are two of us!
Read the full episode show notes here > untolditaly.com/181
Support the show
Join our mailing list and get our FREE Italy trip planning checklist - subscribe here | Join us on tour: Trip schedule | Discover our Trip Planning Services | Visit our online store | Follow: Instagram • Facebook • YouTube • Italy Travel Planning Community
The Untold Italy travel podcast is an independent production. Podcast Editing, Audio Production and Website Development by Mark Hatter. Production Assistance and Content Writing by the other Katie Clarke - yes there are two of us!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is the Untold Ithai Travel Podcastand you're listening to episode number one hundred
and eighty one. Zaatuti and benVenuti to One Told Italy, the travel
podcast to where you go to thetownsend, villages, mountains, the lakes,
(00:21):
hills and coast lines of Bella,Italia. Each week, your host
Katie Clark takes you on a journeyin a search of magical landscapes, history,
culture, wine, gelato, andof course, a whole lot of
pasta. If you're dreaming of Italyand planning future adventures there, you've come
to the right place. Chow benVenuti. Friends, are you ready to
(00:53):
head back to Rome today to learnall about its delicious pasta dishes? Direct
from Rome? My friend ze Bakautifrom Fullbelly Tours is back to give you
the lowdown on the eternal cities iconicpasta dishes, their history, real,
somewhat embellished and untold stories of theirorigins and how they relate to one another.
(01:14):
As we say a lot on thispodcast. To understand Italy and the
Italians, you need to understand theirfood as it is such an indelible part
of their culture and more importantly,it's a critical part of their regional identity
and the source of much rivalry andconjecture. So let's dive in and learn
about some monthe coutura, one ofmy favorite Italian words, and the many
(01:36):
wonders of Roman Pastor Benato Nazim.Chiao and welcome back to the Untold Italy
podcast. Thank you, Katie.It's good to be back. Oh.
I had so many wonderful messages aboutour last episode that we did together that
I couldn't wait to help you backon the show. How are things going
for you these days? Things aregoing incredibly Ever since the last episode came
(02:00):
out, I have been happily,very very busy with work. Yeah.
Actually, I can't believe how littlethings are going good for you. I'm
so happy to hear it. Andof course we do catch up in Rome
in It was April, wasn't it, And it was super super fun and
so listen. Okay, for thepeople that missed that last episode that you
(02:21):
are, which is one hundred andsixty nine, in case anyone missed it,
would you be able to just letthem in on the secrets of Nazim
and what you do? Absolutely so. My name is Nasi Maccauty. I
am Roman, but not Italian.My father's from Tunisia. My mom is
French raised in the US. Iwas born in Washington, DC and raised
(02:44):
here in Rome. I have alwaysworked in hospitality. Cooking is my true
passion, and I spent most ofmy life bouncing around the world working in
kitchens. Moved back to Rome sevenyears ago and fell into food tours and
loved it so much that I endedup starting my own food to our company
called Fulbelly Tours. And that's whatI do all day every day. Now.
(03:07):
I just get to talk incessantly aboutfood and drink, which is kind
of what I do in my owntime. So very happy and you do
it so well, you do itreally well. Now, last time we
were in Rome, I learned alot and there was one particular thing.
I don't know if you remember that. You explained to me about a particular
pasta dish and I was just mymind was blown and I was like,
(03:30):
of course, of course, that'sthe magic trick. And I like to
think I'm a pretty good cook andknow some tricks, especially when it comes
to pastors. But listeners, letme tell you, Naseem has quite a
few. More So what I've doneis I've asked him back today to share
some of these secrets with you sowe can learn about pasta and specifically the
pasta dishes of Rome. So doyou want to take it off, Naseem
(03:53):
and I think you had some insightsinto the origins of pasta. Absolutely,
so we will be focusing today onthe foremost famous Roman pastas, which are
catchup papy, Gricha, carbonara,and Amadrishana. There is a fun link
between these four pastas where if youstart with the ingredients that go into the
(04:15):
first one, Casia Baby, whichare pigorino romano, cheese, pasta,
the cooking water from the pasta,and black pepper, and you add one
ingredient, you get grisha. Dependingon what you add tagrisha, you get
either carbonara or a madrishana. AndI will be elaborating on this shortly,
but I figured to be able totalk about these dishes, we have to
(04:39):
talk about the ingredients pasta first andforemost. There's a big misconception, or
rather a lot of people credit theinvention of Italian pasta with Marco Paulo,
the famous explorer coming back from China, in the late twelve hundreds, and
he brought back the knowledge of howto make noodles, and that's how pasta
(05:00):
became. But the first written recordof pasta actually dates back to over three
thousand years ago, when Greek andEtruscan cooks made a large flat sheets of
unleavened dough called laganon that were thenboiled, dressed, and stacked. About
twelve hundred years later, in ancientRoman times, they referred to a similar
(05:23):
dish called lagana, which reads isa very lavish version of this layered pasta
dish containing stews made from both meatand fish. Lagana is one letter away
from lasagna, so is thought tobe the ancestor of the modern lasagna la
Bolognese, which was layered and thenbaked again in Anamon. The first actual
(05:45):
record of noodle light pasta dates backto eleven fifty four or so before Marco
Polo came back, in the writingsof the our geographer Idrisi, who mentions
the tria, which was a threadshaped dough that was prepared in Sicily and
in fact nowadays Palata was famous fora type of pasta called vitmicha l d
tria. Pasta as we know todayI prepared with semolina and water, is
(06:11):
thought to have been invented by theArabs, in particular by nomadic tribes of
the desert who made the first bucatiniby drying the dough around very thin strands
of straw. And so it's thoughtthat it was the Arabs who introduced pasta
to Sicily during their occupation of theisland, and it then spread to the
rest of the country. And I'msure that when Macobollo came back he did
(06:32):
introduce different versions of the long noodlesthat were popular in China. It was
actually in Naples in the sixteen hundredsthat is credited with popularizing pasta on a
massive scale. Following a famine thathappened due to boom and population and an
increasing Spanish taxation who controlled the areaat the time, the consumption of meat
(06:55):
and bread decreased dramatically, being replacedby pasta, and the invention of the
now modern machinery that extrudes the pastathrough bronze dyes made this product easier to
mass produce and therefore even cheaper thanit already was, making it exponentially more
popular. And this is also whythe best dried pasta in this country now
(07:17):
comes from the region around Naples,Grandiano being the town that's most famous for
it. And coincidentally, this isthe same time period that tomato sauce was
born, because tomatoes were only broughtinto Italy in the mid fifteen hundreds because
prior to the discovery of the Americas, potatoes, chilies, corn, and
(07:40):
tomatoes were not found anywhere outside ofthe Americas, which is funny because tomatoes
are probably the ingredient that is mostassociated to our diet, not to our
immin Italian. That's a bit aboutthe history of pastas we know it.
The main four pastas that I said, we're going to be talking about our
cuship, Gricia, carbonara, andamatri shana, but we can't talk about
(08:05):
these without first talking about the twomost important ingredients, which are piccolino romano
and one chili. So pigorio romanois a sheep's milk cheese. In fact,
piccolino tells you that it's a sheep'smilk cheese because pecora in Italian means
sheep and so there are dozens,to not say hundreds of types of piccolino
(08:26):
in this country that range from young, melting cheeses all the way to dry,
crumbly aged cheese. Is like piccolioromano. Piccorio romano has actually been
made for over two thousand years,and even in ancient Roman times was such
an important source of nutrition that Romansoldiers were given twenty seven grams a day,
(08:46):
that's about an ounce in their rations. Well, I don't know if
that's enough. I agree the sheep'smilk is saltier, more acidic than cow's
milk, so piggotio romano is consideredsalty. Italians talk about savory food in
(09:07):
terms of sweet and savory. Whenthey say sweet, it has nothing to
do with the sugar content of thefood. It just means it's the more
delicate of the two options. Soin this case, piggotio romano, which
is made from sheep's milk, whichis saltier and more acidic than cow's milk,
is considered salty, whereas batamid jodijano parmesan cheese is made from cow's
(09:28):
milk and is considered sweet. Andso, depending on what you were cooking,
you would use one or the otherto highlight either the sweet or savory
notes in the dish. Piggotino isthe one that we use for our local
pastas, and so Roman pastas tendto be very punchy, very in your
face. There's nothing subtle about ourcuisine here. The other most important ingredient
(09:50):
is called one chili, and it'sthe cured pork jowl. The jowel is
the cheek and part of the neck. This is a perfect exam pull of
a throwaway cut of the animal.The head. The people that could afford
the more noble cuts of meat didn'tparticularly care about. And then some genius
realize that if you harvest the cheekand treat it with the same love and
(10:11):
care that we do pun shita,which comes from the belly, which is
our equivalent to bacon, or pushootwhich is the ham, you get a
product that nowadays here in Rome wevalue even more than these quote unquote fancier
cuts. One shale is a lotmore intense in flavor than pun shitta.
It does contain a lot more fat. So one of the keys to making
(10:35):
these dishes correctly is to render outone shale on the lowest possible flame,
because you want the fat that itgives off to render very slowly and to
not burn because you want it toretain its flavor and it's delicious perkiness.
Yes, this is one of thekey things Zimo. Having this discussions,
(10:56):
I think people get really impatient,not looking at myself, but I'm looking
at myself and they're like, comeon, what's going on with these rendering
and they maybe chain the heat upand to try and get it going,
or they just don't bother to renderit properly, and it's like the no
no, no, no, no, no no no. This is where
things go wrong. Absolutely. Soif ever you eat one of these pastas
(11:18):
to contain the one Charlie so giddyChaka bonado or Manti shana and it tastes
a little acrid or a little burnt, it's because they rendered out the one
chillie very quickly. If you cookit off the way say you would bacon,
the fat that burns and is smokingis actually breaking down and is becoming
(11:39):
bitter. Now, if you're justcooking something like bacon that you're then going
to take out and pat right withthe paper towel, you're not necessarily going
to taste that. But since thefat that the one Charlie gives off is
just as important. An ingredient addsa little crispy bits themselves. If you
cook the one childie on two higherflame, the fat will start to break
down and burn. Every fat hasa smoke point, which is the temperature
(12:01):
at which a fat starts to burnand break down. And it's very easy
to see if you've reached that pointor not. Just look at your pan
and if the one shot or whateveryou're cooking is frying very intensely and you
see smoke coming off of the oil, then you've passed the smoke point.
And yes, and it's actually why, for example, extrarigin olive oil and
(12:24):
butter have fairly low smoke points,and it's why some people will add a
little drop of vegetable oil or peanutoil to those kinds of dishes if you're
trying to do it very high heatcooking, because vegetable oil and peanut oil
have very high smoke points and sowill help for these dishes not to burn.
Now, that's definitely not something thatyou should do with these recipes because
(12:46):
the fat the one shot leave yourselftastes spectacularly good. So the main thing
is chop it up. It's downto personal preference whether you like it's sliced
thinner or whether you like it slicedchunkier. Although in average how and to
prefer the chunkier version here in onbecause we do like kind of thick,
chewy textural pastas around here. Andthe most important thing is to render it
(13:09):
out on a very low flame.So chop it up, toss it in
the pan, started on like amedium flame, and then once it starts
to become a little translucent and yousee a little fat start to give off,
lower it to the absolute minimum andbe patient. This can take anywhere
from twenty minutes to a half hourif you're not doing a lot of one
(13:31):
chilide to up stirred a pot ofone chilide, I had like three full
ones in there for nearly two hours. But I promise your patients will be
rewarded because the fact that it givesoff will be just as flavorful and delicious
as the little crispy bits of onechild itself. So that is the first
point. It's also I cannot stressenough that the quality of each ingredient that
(13:54):
you buy it to make these disheshas to be spectacular. If you make
these ishes with some like random nonItalian supermarket brand of pasta and some like
cheap, overly salty piccoli no romanoand preground pepper and bacon, it's not
(14:15):
going to taste particularly good. Thereare so few ingredients that go into these
dishes that if you don't have thecorrect quality ingredient, dishes won't taste right.
And it's unfortunately why it's so hardto find proper Italian food outside of
this country. If you don't haveaccess to the same quality ingredient, each
dish is so simple that it justwon't taste the same. For this kind
(14:37):
of stuff, please go out andbuy it. Like the fancy Italian pasta.
Try to find a place that hasgood Italian pork products. Now,
I will say this, if youcan't find one, Charlie, use panchitta.
If you can't find panchita, it'sokay to use bacon, but try
to use the most natural version soyou don't want the like make pull glazed
(15:01):
twice smoked kind of stuff. Justgo for a simple salt and pepper cured.
It'll still taste good. Okay,The most important ingredient for all four
of these pastas is the piccoli noromano. Know that we're sneaky in this
country. We keep the good stufffor ourselves and we export the inferior goods.
(15:22):
So the piccolino, which in theice is often simply called romano cheese,
the stuff that you find abroad willrarely be of the same quality as
the stuff that you find here.Furthermore, a lot of piccoli no romano,
which is supposed to be made fromthe milk of sheep that are raised
locally, is actually made from sheepthat are raised in Sardinia. The landscape
(15:45):
in Sardinia being drier and more arid, the resulting milk is going to be
saltier and more acidic, and sothat will throw the balance of the dish
off as well. Here in Rome, we say that to judge piccoli no
romano, you judge it on howsweet it actually eats. So if you
can cut a chunk off and eatit and it's not too salty, that's
(16:07):
a really good thing, whereas thecheaper stuff tends to be a little overly
salty. And a trick that peopleuse here that you can use at home
is to mix a little bit ofpatmid channel or Grana Padano, which is
a cheaper version of pramid channel thathad a little sweetness to kind of balance
out that overly strong peggordino. Yeah, that's actually really true. I think
(16:29):
when we buy pecorino here in Australia, it's definitely super salty, and yeah,
I think it's definitely worth keeping aneye out for. I mean even
I know here that we have producersthat make their own pecorino here and it's
probably better. I mean it's notgoing to be pecorino romante, but I
mean if you can find something that'sbeen made, you know, closer to
(16:52):
home, you probably be better off. I think, you know, if
it's a really good producer. Yeah, and also try a buying the preground
stuff, because especially a cheese that'sas strong as people dromano, can age
very quickly and become too strong,and so it'll keep better in a chunk
(17:15):
that you can then grind at homeor have them grind for you in the
store right as you're buying it.The stuff that's preground gets funkier just as
it sits in the container. Andthey also tend to add anti caking agents
to preground cheeses, which will belike you know, adding kind of cornstart
(17:36):
or these kinds of thickeners to thedish, which will also throw the balance
of the dish completely off. Butthis is the grating of the cheese.
This is the bit that blew mymind this year that I had no idea.
I was literally sitting there going whatwait, what is he? What
is he is? So tell everyoneabout the findeness of the grinding, because
(17:56):
I did not know these, Sotoo achieve the correct texture of the sauce,
the cheese has to be ground ina specific way. It's the same
way that you get cheese ground inany store here in Italy. If you
ask for graded pamajano or great ambiguity, you know they have a machine that
grinds it into this very fine powder, what we would say a navy in
(18:22):
Italian, as if it were snow. And it's the kind of consistency that
you get if you grade it onthe rough part of the box grater,
the old box graters, the onesthat if you slip and you hit your
knuckles, it'll like completely shred yourknuckles. So you want to grade it
on that side, and you wantit to be a very fine powder.
You don't want the shavings, andyou don't want to use a microplane.
(18:45):
The microplane being that more modern graterthat's used a lot in professional kitchens that
gives you these nice fluffy ribbons ofgrated cheese. Microplane is fine if you're
adding, like hard grade cheese isto cold things, because you'll get these
beautiful, nice pillowy kind of cloudson top. But if you use a
(19:07):
microplane to put it on top ofsomething that's hot, the steam from the
dish is going to actually have thatnice fluffy mound collapse on itself and it
will become this stringy mass of likeplastic e cheese that won't incorporate into the
sauce. Now, if you can'tget your hands on some like pregraded or
there isn't a place that has agrater for you, you can just use
(19:33):
your food processor or your blender.So you can use either your food processor
or a blender and pulse the cheeseuntil you get that kind of desired consistency.
But that's one of the most importantthings, because if you don't have
the cheese in the right form,then the dish won't come out properly,
so you want this very fine groundcheese, which will make it emulsify better
(20:00):
in the sauce. There is astep in proper pasta cookery called mante katura,
which is the step of dressing thepasta with the sauce. This is
normally done by the cook in thekitchen. You take the pasta out of
the cooking water a couple of minutesbefore it reaches undanti, because the pasta
will keep cooking as you do themantaka tura, and you normally toss it
(20:22):
directly into the pan with the sauce. You saute it a couple of times
so it starts to absorb the sauce. Because the first thing that a starch
wants to do when it comes outof a boiling cooking medium is to absorb
the next liquid it comes into contactwith, which is why you should go
from the pot directly into the panwith the sauce and not rinse it with
(20:44):
cold water and set it aside.One of the cardinal rules of pasta is
the sauce can wait for the pasta. The pasta cannot wait for the sauce
specifically for that reason. Okay,by rinsing it and setting aside your water,
logging your pasta so it won't orbas much sauce. And you're also
diluting the flavor of the pasta itself because you're rinsing it with bland water.
(21:07):
And since it's the flavor of thepasta that you're trying to highlight with
a little bit of condiment, byrinsing your pasta, you're killing its flavor
essentially. I've just got these visionsof these pasta that's been doust in cold
water with the sort of soggy guanchainand the clumpy cheese, and it's like,
no, yeah, no, Andthis may very well happen the first
(21:30):
time you guys try these dishes.Just try, try again, and with
the tips that I will tell you, you will achieve perfection. It may
take a couple of tries, butit's actually easier than one would think if
you use the following tricks. ForkI should pick it. Once you grind
the cheese properly. You want tomake a thick paste like a cheese paste.
(21:55):
There's a couple ways of achieving thisin the kitchen. What we would
normally do Italian kitchens have big doubleboilers where we cook the pasta that has
starchy pasta water continuously in it.So you would get some of that starchy
pasta water, you would put itinto a large bowl, and you would
add a lot of cracked black pepper, like freshly cracked black pepper. If
(22:17):
you want to go above and beyond, you can even toast that pepper before
grinding it. You'll get even moreflavor from the pepper. And you crack
it into the hot starchy pasta water, and you'll get extraction of flavor from
that hot water from the pepper itself. Then when it's cool to room temperature,
you start adding handfuls of this gradedpiccoli no amano, remember, ground
(22:40):
like snow, stirring until it formsa thick paste. Then, when the
pasta is about two thirds of theway through the cooking process, what you
would traditionally do is you would takesome of the cooking water. You would
put it in a pan. Youwould take the pasta out, put it
into the pan with the cooking water, and you'll finish the cooking in that
pan. So you'll cook it fora couple more minutes. Say you're doing
(23:03):
spaghetti, which takes boat between nineand eleven minutes, depending on the thickness.
About six minutes in you would putsome cooking water into the pan.
This is separate from the cooking waterthat you made the cheese paste out of.
You take the pasta out of thecooking water, you put it into
the pan, and you start cookingit down in the pasta water. As
the pasta water reduces, the starchesthat the pasta has gived off are going
(23:26):
to thicken it. And so whenyou get this like creamy, thicker consistency,
you then add the cheese paste,you stir, and it'll turn into
this lovely sauce. Traditionally, youwouldn't even have to use the cheese paste.
You could just put the grated cheesedirectly into the pasta and the thicker
sauce at that point. But doingthe cheese sauce first is a trick that
(23:49):
should help things go easily, becauseif you just add the cheese directly to
the pan, you risk having thecheese congeal. Like I was talking before
with the microplane stuff. Yeah,well I think that's happened to me.
Yeah yeah, And unfortunately, likeespecially like the first time I tried to
make cut a pivot. It happened, so you know if it happens to
(24:11):
you, don't worry. It's perfectlynormal. The easiest way to do it
is you make that cheese paste ina bowl that's larger than the amount of
pasta you're going to cook. Whenthe pasta is maybe one minute away from
being cooked, you take it outof the cooking water from the pasta and
you put it into that cheese pasteand you want to stir like a lunatic
(24:33):
for twenty thirty seconds, which iswhy you want a really big bowl so
the pasta doesn't fly ever. Yourand the heat from the pasta will melt
the cheese and we will keep givingoff a little more starch as you stir,
and it'll turn in lovely, creamy, luscious sauce without the addition of
any other ingredients. Get into thehabit whenever you drain your pasta. Before
(24:56):
doing so, get a coffee cupand fill with that pasta water. That
start che Pasta water can help youin a number of situations. For example,
if you do get the clumpy cheesemixture and another couple of handfuls of
cheese, a little more pasta waterand stir and it should turn back into
(25:17):
a sauce. It won't be quiteas successful as if the cheese had not
congealed, but it'll be easier thanstarting over, okay, because I can
just see myself just you know,doing the congealed cheese and just going oh
no, cutting off a chunk ofRoman Soldiers sized cheese and just sitting there
maching on that, wondering what todo. So these chips are very welcome.
(25:41):
Yeah, I have done that aswell, I must admit, in
frustration for this kind of pasta.I find that long noodles tend to work
very well because the slipperiness that theyhave and the fact that they're constantly twirling
in and out of each other willmake them month. Cat would add the
dressing more easy, and so it'seasier to get this creamy sauce for the
(26:06):
grisha, which is caschet papy.Those four ingredients plus one challette that has
previously been rendered out. It's theexact same process, only when you add
the pasta to the black pepper cheesepaste. You also add the one chalette,
and I like to add all ofthe fat that it gives off.
Some people will use it a littlemore sparingly that is completely done to personal
(26:30):
preference, and then same thing startsstirring like a lunatic. The extra fat
from the one schallette will actually makethe sauce emulsify more easily, so it
should actually be easier to achieve agrisha than it is to achieve a cashete
paper okay, And in fact,the simpler the dish, often the harder
it is to achieve correctly, becausethere's nowhere to hide. In this case,
(26:53):
there's no delicious pork fat to makeeverything okay, even if you do
get the clumpy strings of cheese.The grischa is actually the jump off point
for the next two recipes. Grichais often referred to as a tomato less
amatri shana or an egg less carbonada, and it actually predates both of those
(27:18):
recipes, so Kashapib was one ofthe first to have been invented. Most
locals will tell you that the originof this dish is normally tied to the
Transumansa, which is the traditional twiceyearly migration of sheep and cows from the
mountains in the plains. This happensin the winter and from the plains back
to the mountains in the summer.During this journey, the shepherds needed preserved
(27:41):
foods that were easily transportable, andso dried spaghetti, h pegorino, and
black pepper were all perfect candidates.One chai, the cured pork chow,
is also a perfect ingredient for this. There are actually suggestions that the copious
amount of black pepper the recipe callsfor because here in Rome we don't often
(28:03):
use black pepper. We normally dosalt and a pinch of chili flake for
seasoning when we cook, but whenwe use black pepper we use a ton
of it as an active ingredient,and so there are suggestions that the large
amounts of black pepper the recipe callsfor it was actually to keep the shepherd's
warm, as pipperine, which isthe active ingredient in black pepper, is
(28:25):
similar to capsaicin, which is theactive ingredient in chilis, and that it's
an irritant to human beings and it'swhy it triggers mild heat experience when consuming
it, but obviously less than thechili pepper. However, some say that
the first to create this kind ofdish were noblemen who to differentiate the dish
(28:47):
from the common peasant fare of boiledpasta with grated cheese, added foreign spices
which until the seventeen hundreds were harderto come by, more expensive, and
imply wealth and status. In fact, in the North there are many pasta
dishes segri pasta dishes that are finishedwith cinnamon and sugar, which were the
(29:11):
equivalent fancy ingredients that they would addto show that there was some status okay,
and they had money to throw around. Basically, the Grisha is thought
to have been born in a towncalled Grishano, which is very close to
Amatrisha, which is the town thatgave birth to the Amatrishana, and that's
(29:33):
the most probable origin of that dish. They also hypothesize that it could refer
to the bread and food retailers inRome that were called Elgricho. However,
since in the town of Grishano everyeighteenth of August they actually do the Sagra
de la Grisha, which is likethe local celebration for that pasta dish,
(29:56):
it seems that that's the town thatactually gave earth to the dish. Have
you been to that sagara? Unfortunately, not. I actually only found out
about it when I was doing researchfor the podcast, but I really really
want to go. Unfortunately, thisyear I'm going to be in Sardinia,
where you can starting out the pecorino. Yes, I will bring back other
(30:21):
types of piccarina to compare, butyeah, it's definitely on my calendar of
things to do for next year forsure. Kind of kicking myself for not
leaving two days later, but Ican't complain. So the grisha is the
jump off point for the last twodishes that I was talking about, the
Carbonada and the Amatrishana. The gartBonada, which is probably the most famous
(30:44):
Roman dish, especially internationally, alsohappens to be the most butchered Roman dish
internationally, many places considering it tobe a cream sauce with bacon. If
you want to anger a Roman,tell them that you put cream and your
carbonara. You'll see, like thenervous ticks start to appear, the veins
will start to bulge in their forehead. The edition of cream is actually a
(31:10):
trick so that the eggs don't scramble. Okay, But researching the origins of
the carbonada, which is actually themost disputed out of all of these.
Up until the nineties, even manyfamous established Italian chefs, some of which
are considered to be like the forefathersof Italian cuisine as we know it nowadays,
(31:30):
would add cream to their carbonada.Yes, I was very surprised in
reading this and the first written recipesfor the carbonada. The first one was
actually in an American cookbook where theywere talking about an Italian tratoria. I
think it was in Chicago or Boston. Don't quote me on it, but
(31:52):
it's somewhere in the US where therewas a restaurant, an Italian restaurant those
making the dish kind of as weknow it out with panchita eggs, black
pepper and piggolino cheese. The firstItalian written recipe that's found was found in
like fifty four I think, andcalled for panchita, grier cheese and garlic.
(32:16):
So carbona as we know it hasa very disputed origin. The most
credited story nowadays has to do withthe American Army and the rations of bacon
and powdered egg yolks that American soldierswere given, apparently once they took over
(32:38):
the town of Brimi, which isfurther north than Rome, where the meeting
of the British and the American armies. They hired a cook from Bologna to
make a meal for them, acelebratory meal. And so he got the
very good quality bacon from the Americansand this powdered yag yok. They had
(33:00):
good quality heavy cream, and sohe makes these dishes, adding some local
cheese and then finished it with blackpepper because he said it added like a
nice stepth of flavor to it.He was then hired to become the official
cook for the joint Allied forces.They then went to Rome. He was
(33:20):
in Rome for a couple of years, and that's when the dish was popularized
in Rome. That's why it's thoughtthat it's a Roman dish. A lot
of locals aren't very happy with thisexplanation because it means that Rome's most famous
pasta, the dish was made bya Bolognese cook with ingredients from the American
Army, which you can imagine mostItalians are not particularly happy about. I
(33:44):
was recently told by a very goodfriend of mine who's family has owned dozens
of restaurants. He grew up inrestaurants. He told me that the carbonada
actually originates as a kind of workcontract between the farmer that needed his wood
(34:06):
to be turned into coal and thecarabonado, which was the person that would
turn it into carabone an Italian meanscoal, and so this is a very
lengthy process. You have to makea big pile of wood, you have
to start the fire, then youhave to cover it with a tart normally,
and then cover it in dirt,and it has to sit for up
(34:29):
to a week and the slow smolderingturns the wood into coal. The carbonado
had to be on premises at alltimes to not start wildfires and to make
sure that the wood didn't actually burn, and so the farmer would give them
at the beginning of this process adozen eggs, one char, a big
piece of pigotio romano of some blackpepper, and a big bowl to mix
(34:52):
it in, as well as apock to cook it. So the carabonado
was like the unofficial work contract whereyou were providing the person with the food
necessary to last the week in theforest while he made the cold And he
assured me that his grandmother was doingthis way before World War two. This
(35:15):
is one of the fun things aboutthis country, where it's often hard to
pin down an actual explanation for wherea lot of food comes from. Often
they're being a more picturesque explanation andthen sometimes a possibly more factual one.
Yes, well, I would liketo hear the Bolognese react to a Roman
(35:37):
version the Bologny sauce. Well,it's funny we do in their eyes,
butcher lasagna because the traditional lasagne ismade with layers of ragou which is the
meat, sauce and bechamel, andthen they are graded Permesan cheese. That's
how they make it in Bologna.Here in Rome we omit the Beschemel and
(35:58):
we just put a ton of mozzarella. Now, since I grew up here,
I admit that I had more biasedtowards the Roman kind. I'm sorry
Bologna, but yeah, we havealready destroyed all sorts of stuff in their
eyes so well, even no nowhere my mother in laws from, they
put eggs like cut up, slicedtub boiled eggs in the lasagna. And
peas. Oh, I've had peasand mushrooms in lasagna here in Rome.
(36:23):
One of the most delicious lasagna thatI've ever had was actually in Naples.
There they make lasagna with dried sheetsof pasta which are just made with flour
and water. It's like the curdyones that you find in the US,
which I thought was like an Americaninvention, but it's not. And they
actually make it with their version ofragu, which is I think what gave
(36:44):
birth to the American Sunday gravy,where you take ribs, sausages, chunks
of beef, pork, porkskin,and tiny meat balls and you raise them
for ten hours in tomato sauce,and then they take all of that meat
and they turned that into lasagna withlittle bits of horrid wild eggs and cheese
and stuff. Oh yes, Iforgot the little meat balls from my because
(37:07):
she is actually from the area.Now. But then I've got to tell
you about my favorite lasagna and thenwe'll go back to the Roman pastor.
But I had it last year onthe Sorrento Peninsula and it was made with
it was like a tiny bit ofmeat, I think it was pork.
Then it was made with smoked buffalomozzarella cheese. It was incredibly, incredibly
(37:29):
good, and then very finely gratedlemon on top. Honestly, it blew
my mind. I wasn't even hungry. I just kept eating it. It
was like it was so good.I was like, where does this magic
come from? And I will begoing back there. And Giovanni from Joe
Banana, he's one of our sponsorson occasion, he was the one that
took me there and I just wasdelicious. Oh yes. Talking about food
(37:57):
is extensive work, especially with Nazem, who knows a lot about Roman dishes
and of course food in general.This ended up being a very long recording,
so we've made it into two episodes. Part two is focused on how
to make these exciting dishes and whereyou can try them in Rome, the
very best ones. Of course,you'll have to tune in next week to
hear all about that. In themeantime, don't forget to check out Nazem's
(38:22):
tours at Fullbelly tours dot com.They are so fun and you really get
to feel part of the local neighborhoodwhen you're out and about with Nazem.
We put a link to his siteand social media accounts in the show notes
on our website at untold Italy dotcom. Forward Slash one eight one four,
episode number one hundred and eighty one. Grads Ya, thank you for
(38:43):
your ongoing support of Untold Italy.We truly appreciate all of you from joining
us all around the world, andwe'd love it if you help spread the
words so we can reach more Italyloving travelers just like you, and the
best way that you can do thatis by leaving us a five star rating
or review in your favorite podcast appor forwarding this episode onto a friend who
also loves delicious pasta dishes. That'sall for today. I'm looking forward to
(39:07):
next week's deep dive into where tofind the best carbonara in Rome and also
Nazim's exceptional tips on how to makeit chow. For now, The Untold
Italy podcast is an independent production podcastediting, audio production and website development by
Mark Hatter, production assistance and contentwriting by the other kt Clark. Yes
(39:30):
there are two of us. Formore information about Untold Italy, please visit
Untold Italy dot com.
This is the Untold Ithai Travel Podcastand you're listening to episode number one hundred
and eighty one. Zaatuti and benVenuti to One Told Italy, the travel
podcast to where you go to thetownsend, villages, mountains, the lakes,
(00:21):
hills and coast lines of Bella,Italia. Each week, your host
Katie Clark takes you on a journeyin a search of magical landscapes, history,
culture, wine, gelato, andof course, a whole lot of
pasta. If you're dreaming of Italyand planning future adventures there, you've come
to the right place. Chow benVenuti. Friends, are you ready to
(00:53):
head back to Rome today to learnall about its delicious pasta dishes? Direct
from Rome? My friend ze Bakautifrom Fullbelly Tours is back to give you
the lowdown on the eternal cities iconicpasta dishes, their history, real,
somewhat embellished and untold stories of theirorigins and how they relate to one another.
(01:14):
As we say a lot on thispodcast. To understand Italy and the
Italians, you need to understand theirfood as it is such an indelible part
of their culture and more importantly,it's a critical part of their regional identity
and the source of much rivalry andconjecture. So let's dive in and learn
about some monthe coutura, one ofmy favorite Italian words, and the many
(01:36):
wonders of Roman Pastor Benato Nazim.Chiao and welcome back to the Untold Italy
podcast. Thank you, Katie.It's good to be back. Oh.
I had so many wonderful messages aboutour last episode that we did together that
I couldn't wait to help you backon the show. How are things going
for you these days? Things aregoing incredibly Ever since the last episode came
(02:00):
out, I have been happily,very very busy with work. Yeah.
Actually, I can't believe how littlethings are going good for you. I'm
so happy to hear it. Andof course we do catch up in Rome
in It was April, wasn't it, And it was super super fun and
so listen. Okay, for thepeople that missed that last episode that you
(02:21):
are, which is one hundred andsixty nine, in case anyone missed it,
would you be able to just letthem in on the secrets of Nazim
and what you do? Absolutely so. My name is Nasi Maccauty. I
am Roman, but not Italian.My father's from Tunisia. My mom is
French raised in the US. Iwas born in Washington, DC and raised
(02:44):
here in Rome. I have alwaysworked in hospitality. Cooking is my true
passion, and I spent most ofmy life bouncing around the world working in
kitchens. Moved back to Rome sevenyears ago and fell into food tours and
loved it so much that I endedup starting my own food to our company
called Fulbelly Tours. And that's whatI do all day every day. Now.
(03:07):
I just get to talk incessantly aboutfood and drink, which is kind
of what I do in my owntime. So very happy and you do
it so well, you do itreally well. Now, last time we
were in Rome, I learned alot and there was one particular thing.
I don't know if you remember that. You explained to me about a particular
pasta dish and I was just mymind was blown and I was like,
(03:30):
of course, of course, that'sthe magic trick. And I like to
think I'm a pretty good cook andknow some tricks, especially when it comes
to pastors. But listeners, letme tell you, Naseem has quite a
few. More So what I've doneis I've asked him back today to share
some of these secrets with you sowe can learn about pasta and specifically the
pasta dishes of Rome. So doyou want to take it off, Naseem
(03:53):
and I think you had some insightsinto the origins of pasta. Absolutely,
so we will be focusing today onthe foremost famous Roman pastas, which are
catchup papy, Gricha, carbonara,and Amadrishana. There is a fun link
between these four pastas where if youstart with the ingredients that go into the
(04:15):
first one, Casia Baby, whichare pigorino romano, cheese, pasta,
the cooking water from the pasta,and black pepper, and you add one
ingredient, you get grisha. Dependingon what you add tagrisha, you get
either carbonara or a madrishana. AndI will be elaborating on this shortly,
but I figured to be able totalk about these dishes, we have to
(04:39):
talk about the ingredients pasta first andforemost. There's a big misconception, or
rather a lot of people credit theinvention of Italian pasta with Marco Paulo,
the famous explorer coming back from China, in the late twelve hundreds, and
he brought back the knowledge of howto make noodles, and that's how pasta
(05:00):
became. But the first written recordof pasta actually dates back to over three
thousand years ago, when Greek andEtruscan cooks made a large flat sheets of
unleavened dough called laganon that were thenboiled, dressed, and stacked. About
twelve hundred years later, in ancientRoman times, they referred to a similar
(05:23):
dish called lagana, which reads isa very lavish version of this layered pasta
dish containing stews made from both meatand fish. Lagana is one letter away
from lasagna, so is thought tobe the ancestor of the modern lasagna la
Bolognese, which was layered and thenbaked again in Anamon. The first actual
(05:45):
record of noodle light pasta dates backto eleven fifty four or so before Marco
Polo came back, in the writingsof the our geographer Idrisi, who mentions
the tria, which was a threadshaped dough that was prepared in Sicily and
in fact nowadays Palata was famous fora type of pasta called vitmicha l d
tria. Pasta as we know todayI prepared with semolina and water, is
(06:11):
thought to have been invented by theArabs, in particular by nomadic tribes of
the desert who made the first bucatiniby drying the dough around very thin strands
of straw. And so it's thoughtthat it was the Arabs who introduced pasta
to Sicily during their occupation of theisland, and it then spread to the
rest of the country. And I'msure that when Macobollo came back he did
(06:32):
introduce different versions of the long noodlesthat were popular in China. It was
actually in Naples in the sixteen hundredsthat is credited with popularizing pasta on a
massive scale. Following a famine thathappened due to boom and population and an
increasing Spanish taxation who controlled the areaat the time, the consumption of meat
(06:55):
and bread decreased dramatically, being replacedby pasta, and the invention of the
now modern machinery that extrudes the pastathrough bronze dyes made this product easier to
mass produce and therefore even cheaper thanit already was, making it exponentially more
popular. And this is also whythe best dried pasta in this country now
(07:17):
comes from the region around Naples,Grandiano being the town that's most famous for
it. And coincidentally, this isthe same time period that tomato sauce was
born, because tomatoes were only broughtinto Italy in the mid fifteen hundreds because
prior to the discovery of the Americas, potatoes, chilies, corn, and
(07:40):
tomatoes were not found anywhere outside ofthe Americas, which is funny because tomatoes
are probably the ingredient that is mostassociated to our diet, not to our
immin Italian. That's a bit aboutthe history of pastas we know it.
The main four pastas that I said, we're going to be talking about our
cuship, Gricia, carbonara, andamatri shana, but we can't talk about
(08:05):
these without first talking about the twomost important ingredients, which are piccolino romano
and one chili. So pigorio romanois a sheep's milk cheese. In fact,
piccolino tells you that it's a sheep'smilk cheese because pecora in Italian means
sheep and so there are dozens,to not say hundreds of types of piccolino
(08:26):
in this country that range from young, melting cheeses all the way to dry,
crumbly aged cheese. Is like piccolioromano. Piccorio romano has actually been
made for over two thousand years,and even in ancient Roman times was such
an important source of nutrition that Romansoldiers were given twenty seven grams a day,
(08:46):
that's about an ounce in their rations. Well, I don't know if
that's enough. I agree the sheep'smilk is saltier, more acidic than cow's
milk, so piggotio romano is consideredsalty. Italians talk about savory food in
(09:07):
terms of sweet and savory. Whenthey say sweet, it has nothing to
do with the sugar content of thefood. It just means it's the more
delicate of the two options. Soin this case, piggotio romano, which
is made from sheep's milk, whichis saltier and more acidic than cow's milk,
is considered salty, whereas batamid jodijano parmesan cheese is made from cow's
(09:28):
milk and is considered sweet. Andso, depending on what you were cooking,
you would use one or the otherto highlight either the sweet or savory
notes in the dish. Piggotino isthe one that we use for our local
pastas, and so Roman pastas tendto be very punchy, very in your
face. There's nothing subtle about ourcuisine here. The other most important ingredient
(09:50):
is called one chili, and it'sthe cured pork jowl. The jowel is
the cheek and part of the neck. This is a perfect exam pull of
a throwaway cut of the animal.The head. The people that could afford
the more noble cuts of meat didn'tparticularly care about. And then some genius
realize that if you harvest the cheekand treat it with the same love and
(10:11):
care that we do pun shita,which comes from the belly, which is
our equivalent to bacon, or pushootwhich is the ham, you get a
product that nowadays here in Rome wevalue even more than these quote unquote fancier
cuts. One shale is a lotmore intense in flavor than pun shitta.
It does contain a lot more fat. So one of the keys to making
(10:35):
these dishes correctly is to render outone shale on the lowest possible flame,
because you want the fat that itgives off to render very slowly and to
not burn because you want it toretain its flavor and it's delicious perkiness.
Yes, this is one of thekey things Zimo. Having this discussions,
(10:56):
I think people get really impatient,not looking at myself, but I'm looking
at myself and they're like, comeon, what's going on with these rendering
and they maybe chain the heat upand to try and get it going,
or they just don't bother to renderit properly, and it's like the no
no, no, no, no, no no no. This is where
things go wrong. Absolutely. Soif ever you eat one of these pastas
(11:18):
to contain the one Charlie so giddyChaka bonado or Manti shana and it tastes
a little acrid or a little burnt, it's because they rendered out the one
chillie very quickly. If you cookit off the way say you would bacon,
the fat that burns and is smokingis actually breaking down and is becoming
(11:39):
bitter. Now, if you're justcooking something like bacon that you're then going
to take out and pat right withthe paper towel, you're not necessarily going
to taste that. But since thefat that the one Charlie gives off is
just as important. An ingredient addsa little crispy bits themselves. If you
cook the one childie on two higherflame, the fat will start to break
down and burn. Every fat hasa smoke point, which is the temperature
(12:01):
at which a fat starts to burnand break down. And it's very easy
to see if you've reached that pointor not. Just look at your pan
and if the one shot or whateveryou're cooking is frying very intensely and you
see smoke coming off of the oil, then you've passed the smoke point.
And yes, and it's actually why, for example, extrarigin olive oil and
(12:24):
butter have fairly low smoke points,and it's why some people will add a
little drop of vegetable oil or peanutoil to those kinds of dishes if you're
trying to do it very high heatcooking, because vegetable oil and peanut oil
have very high smoke points and sowill help for these dishes not to burn.
Now, that's definitely not something thatyou should do with these recipes because
(12:46):
the fat the one shot leave yourselftastes spectacularly good. So the main thing
is chop it up. It's downto personal preference whether you like it's sliced
thinner or whether you like it slicedchunkier. Although in average how and to
prefer the chunkier version here in onbecause we do like kind of thick,
chewy textural pastas around here. Andthe most important thing is to render it
(13:09):
out on a very low flame.So chop it up, toss it in
the pan, started on like amedium flame, and then once it starts
to become a little translucent and yousee a little fat start to give off,
lower it to the absolute minimum andbe patient. This can take anywhere
from twenty minutes to a half hourif you're not doing a lot of one
(13:31):
chilide to up stirred a pot ofone chilide, I had like three full
ones in there for nearly two hours. But I promise your patients will be
rewarded because the fact that it givesoff will be just as flavorful and delicious
as the little crispy bits of onechild itself. So that is the first
point. It's also I cannot stressenough that the quality of each ingredient that
(13:54):
you buy it to make these disheshas to be spectacular. If you make
these ishes with some like random nonItalian supermarket brand of pasta and some like
cheap, overly salty piccoli no romanoand preground pepper and bacon, it's not
(14:15):
going to taste particularly good. Thereare so few ingredients that go into these
dishes that if you don't have thecorrect quality ingredient, dishes won't taste right.
And it's unfortunately why it's so hardto find proper Italian food outside of
this country. If you don't haveaccess to the same quality ingredient, each
dish is so simple that it justwon't taste the same. For this kind
(14:37):
of stuff, please go out andbuy it. Like the fancy Italian pasta.
Try to find a place that hasgood Italian pork products. Now,
I will say this, if youcan't find one, Charlie, use panchitta.
If you can't find panchita, it'sokay to use bacon, but try
to use the most natural version soyou don't want the like make pull glazed
(15:01):
twice smoked kind of stuff. Justgo for a simple salt and pepper cured.
It'll still taste good. Okay,The most important ingredient for all four
of these pastas is the piccoli noromano. Know that we're sneaky in this
country. We keep the good stufffor ourselves and we export the inferior goods.
(15:22):
So the piccolino, which in theice is often simply called romano cheese,
the stuff that you find abroad willrarely be of the same quality as
the stuff that you find here.Furthermore, a lot of piccoli no romano,
which is supposed to be made fromthe milk of sheep that are raised
locally, is actually made from sheepthat are raised in Sardinia. The landscape
(15:45):
in Sardinia being drier and more arid, the resulting milk is going to be
saltier and more acidic, and sothat will throw the balance of the dish
off as well. Here in Rome, we say that to judge piccoli no
romano, you judge it on howsweet it actually eats. So if you
can cut a chunk off and eatit and it's not too salty, that's
(16:07):
a really good thing, whereas thecheaper stuff tends to be a little overly
salty. And a trick that peopleuse here that you can use at home
is to mix a little bit ofpatmid channel or Grana Padano, which is
a cheaper version of pramid channel thathad a little sweetness to kind of balance
out that overly strong peggordino. Yeah, that's actually really true. I think
(16:29):
when we buy pecorino here in Australia, it's definitely super salty, and yeah,
I think it's definitely worth keeping aneye out for. I mean even
I know here that we have producersthat make their own pecorino here and it's
probably better. I mean it's notgoing to be pecorino romante, but I
mean if you can find something that'sbeen made, you know, closer to
(16:52):
home, you probably be better off. I think, you know, if
it's a really good producer. Yeah, and also try a buying the preground
stuff, because especially a cheese that'sas strong as people dromano, can age
very quickly and become too strong,and so it'll keep better in a chunk
(17:15):
that you can then grind at homeor have them grind for you in the
store right as you're buying it.The stuff that's preground gets funkier just as
it sits in the container. Andthey also tend to add anti caking agents
to preground cheeses, which will belike you know, adding kind of cornstart
(17:36):
or these kinds of thickeners to thedish, which will also throw the balance
of the dish completely off. Butthis is the grating of the cheese.
This is the bit that blew mymind this year that I had no idea.
I was literally sitting there going whatwait, what is he? What
is he is? So tell everyoneabout the findeness of the grinding, because
(17:56):
I did not know these, Sotoo achieve the correct texture of the sauce,
the cheese has to be ground ina specific way. It's the same
way that you get cheese ground inany store here in Italy. If you
ask for graded pamajano or great ambiguity, you know they have a machine that
grinds it into this very fine powder, what we would say a navy in
(18:22):
Italian, as if it were snow. And it's the kind of consistency that
you get if you grade it onthe rough part of the box grater,
the old box graters, the onesthat if you slip and you hit your
knuckles, it'll like completely shred yourknuckles. So you want to grade it
on that side, and you wantit to be a very fine powder.
You don't want the shavings, andyou don't want to use a microplane.
(18:45):
The microplane being that more modern graterthat's used a lot in professional kitchens that
gives you these nice fluffy ribbons ofgrated cheese. Microplane is fine if you're
adding, like hard grade cheese isto cold things, because you'll get these
beautiful, nice pillowy kind of cloudson top. But if you use a
(19:07):
microplane to put it on top ofsomething that's hot, the steam from the
dish is going to actually have thatnice fluffy mound collapse on itself and it
will become this stringy mass of likeplastic e cheese that won't incorporate into the
sauce. Now, if you can'tget your hands on some like pregraded or
there isn't a place that has agrater for you, you can just use
(19:33):
your food processor or your blender.So you can use either your food processor
or a blender and pulse the cheeseuntil you get that kind of desired consistency.
But that's one of the most importantthings, because if you don't have
the cheese in the right form,then the dish won't come out properly,
so you want this very fine groundcheese, which will make it emulsify better
(20:00):
in the sauce. There is astep in proper pasta cookery called mante katura,
which is the step of dressing thepasta with the sauce. This is
normally done by the cook in thekitchen. You take the pasta out of
the cooking water a couple of minutesbefore it reaches undanti, because the pasta
will keep cooking as you do themantaka tura, and you normally toss it
(20:22):
directly into the pan with the sauce. You saute it a couple of times
so it starts to absorb the sauce. Because the first thing that a starch
wants to do when it comes outof a boiling cooking medium is to absorb
the next liquid it comes into contactwith, which is why you should go
from the pot directly into the panwith the sauce and not rinse it with
(20:44):
cold water and set it aside.One of the cardinal rules of pasta is
the sauce can wait for the pasta. The pasta cannot wait for the sauce
specifically for that reason. Okay,by rinsing it and setting aside your water,
logging your pasta so it won't orbas much sauce. And you're also
diluting the flavor of the pasta itself because you're rinsing it with bland water.
(21:07):
And since it's the flavor of thepasta that you're trying to highlight with
a little bit of condiment, byrinsing your pasta, you're killing its flavor
essentially. I've just got these visionsof these pasta that's been doust in cold
water with the sort of soggy guanchainand the clumpy cheese, and it's like,
no, yeah, no, Andthis may very well happen the first
(21:30):
time you guys try these dishes.Just try, try again, and with
the tips that I will tell you, you will achieve perfection. It may
take a couple of tries, butit's actually easier than one would think if
you use the following tricks. ForkI should pick it. Once you grind
the cheese properly. You want tomake a thick paste like a cheese paste.
(21:55):
There's a couple ways of achieving thisin the kitchen. What we would
normally do Italian kitchens have big doubleboilers where we cook the pasta that has
starchy pasta water continuously in it.So you would get some of that starchy
pasta water, you would put itinto a large bowl, and you would
add a lot of cracked black pepper, like freshly cracked black pepper. If
(22:17):
you want to go above and beyond, you can even toast that pepper before
grinding it. You'll get even moreflavor from the pepper. And you crack
it into the hot starchy pasta water, and you'll get extraction of flavor from
that hot water from the pepper itself. Then when it's cool to room temperature,
you start adding handfuls of this gradedpiccoli no amano, remember, ground
(22:40):
like snow, stirring until it formsa thick paste. Then, when the
pasta is about two thirds of theway through the cooking process, what you
would traditionally do is you would takesome of the cooking water. You would
put it in a pan. Youwould take the pasta out, put it
into the pan with the cooking water, and you'll finish the cooking in that
pan. So you'll cook it fora couple more minutes. Say you're doing
(23:03):
spaghetti, which takes boat between nineand eleven minutes, depending on the thickness.
About six minutes in you would putsome cooking water into the pan.
This is separate from the cooking waterthat you made the cheese paste out of.
You take the pasta out of thecooking water, you put it into
the pan, and you start cookingit down in the pasta water. As
the pasta water reduces, the starchesthat the pasta has gived off are going
(23:26):
to thicken it. And so whenyou get this like creamy, thicker consistency,
you then add the cheese paste,you stir, and it'll turn into
this lovely sauce. Traditionally, youwouldn't even have to use the cheese paste.
You could just put the grated cheesedirectly into the pasta and the thicker
sauce at that point. But doingthe cheese sauce first is a trick that
(23:49):
should help things go easily, becauseif you just add the cheese directly to
the pan, you risk having thecheese congeal. Like I was talking before
with the microplane stuff. Yeah,well I think that's happened to me.
Yeah yeah, And unfortunately, likeespecially like the first time I tried to
make cut a pivot. It happened, so you know if it happens to
(24:11):
you, don't worry. It's perfectlynormal. The easiest way to do it
is you make that cheese paste ina bowl that's larger than the amount of
pasta you're going to cook. Whenthe pasta is maybe one minute away from
being cooked, you take it outof the cooking water from the pasta and
you put it into that cheese pasteand you want to stir like a lunatic
(24:33):
for twenty thirty seconds, which iswhy you want a really big bowl so
the pasta doesn't fly ever. Yourand the heat from the pasta will melt
the cheese and we will keep givingoff a little more starch as you stir,
and it'll turn in lovely, creamy, luscious sauce without the addition of
any other ingredients. Get into thehabit whenever you drain your pasta. Before
(24:56):
doing so, get a coffee cupand fill with that pasta water. That
start che Pasta water can help youin a number of situations. For example,
if you do get the clumpy cheesemixture and another couple of handfuls of
cheese, a little more pasta waterand stir and it should turn back into
(25:17):
a sauce. It won't be quiteas successful as if the cheese had not
congealed, but it'll be easier thanstarting over, okay, because I can
just see myself just you know,doing the congealed cheese and just going oh
no, cutting off a chunk ofRoman Soldiers sized cheese and just sitting there
maching on that, wondering what todo. So these chips are very welcome.
(25:41):
Yeah, I have done that aswell, I must admit, in
frustration for this kind of pasta.I find that long noodles tend to work
very well because the slipperiness that theyhave and the fact that they're constantly twirling
in and out of each other willmake them month. Cat would add the
dressing more easy, and so it'seasier to get this creamy sauce for the
(26:06):
grisha, which is caschet papy.Those four ingredients plus one challette that has
previously been rendered out. It's theexact same process, only when you add
the pasta to the black pepper cheesepaste. You also add the one chalette,
and I like to add all ofthe fat that it gives off.
Some people will use it a littlemore sparingly that is completely done to personal
(26:30):
preference, and then same thing startsstirring like a lunatic. The extra fat
from the one schallette will actually makethe sauce emulsify more easily, so it
should actually be easier to achieve agrisha than it is to achieve a cashete
paper okay, And in fact,the simpler the dish, often the harder
it is to achieve correctly, becausethere's nowhere to hide. In this case,
(26:53):
there's no delicious pork fat to makeeverything okay, even if you do
get the clumpy strings of cheese.The grischa is actually the jump off point
for the next two recipes. Grichais often referred to as a tomato less
amatri shana or an egg less carbonada, and it actually predates both of those
(27:18):
recipes, so Kashapib was one ofthe first to have been invented. Most
locals will tell you that the originof this dish is normally tied to the
Transumansa, which is the traditional twiceyearly migration of sheep and cows from the
mountains in the plains. This happensin the winter and from the plains back
to the mountains in the summer.During this journey, the shepherds needed preserved
(27:41):
foods that were easily transportable, andso dried spaghetti, h pegorino, and
black pepper were all perfect candidates.One chai, the cured pork chow,
is also a perfect ingredient for this. There are actually suggestions that the copious
amount of black pepper the recipe callsfor because here in Rome we don't often
(28:03):
use black pepper. We normally dosalt and a pinch of chili flake for
seasoning when we cook, but whenwe use black pepper we use a ton
of it as an active ingredient,and so there are suggestions that the large
amounts of black pepper the recipe callsfor it was actually to keep the shepherd's
warm, as pipperine, which isthe active ingredient in black pepper, is
(28:25):
similar to capsaicin, which is theactive ingredient in chilis, and that it's
an irritant to human beings and it'swhy it triggers mild heat experience when consuming
it, but obviously less than thechili pepper. However, some say that
the first to create this kind ofdish were noblemen who to differentiate the dish
(28:47):
from the common peasant fare of boiledpasta with grated cheese, added foreign spices
which until the seventeen hundreds were harderto come by, more expensive, and
imply wealth and status. In fact, in the North there are many pasta
dishes segri pasta dishes that are finishedwith cinnamon and sugar, which were the
(29:11):
equivalent fancy ingredients that they would addto show that there was some status okay,
and they had money to throw around. Basically, the Grisha is thought
to have been born in a towncalled Grishano, which is very close to
Amatrisha, which is the town thatgave birth to the Amatrishana, and that's
(29:33):
the most probable origin of that dish. They also hypothesize that it could refer
to the bread and food retailers inRome that were called Elgricho. However,
since in the town of Grishano everyeighteenth of August they actually do the Sagra
de la Grisha, which is likethe local celebration for that pasta dish,
(29:56):
it seems that that's the town thatactually gave earth to the dish. Have
you been to that sagara? Unfortunately, not. I actually only found out
about it when I was doing researchfor the podcast, but I really really
want to go. Unfortunately, thisyear I'm going to be in Sardinia,
where you can starting out the pecorino. Yes, I will bring back other
(30:21):
types of piccarina to compare, butyeah, it's definitely on my calendar of
things to do for next year forsure. Kind of kicking myself for not
leaving two days later, but Ican't complain. So the grisha is the
jump off point for the last twodishes that I was talking about, the
Carbonada and the Amatrishana. The gartBonada, which is probably the most famous
(30:44):
Roman dish, especially internationally, alsohappens to be the most butchered Roman dish
internationally, many places considering it tobe a cream sauce with bacon. If
you want to anger a Roman,tell them that you put cream and your
carbonara. You'll see, like thenervous ticks start to appear, the veins
will start to bulge in their forehead. The edition of cream is actually a
(31:10):
trick so that the eggs don't scramble. Okay, But researching the origins of
the carbonada, which is actually themost disputed out of all of these.
Up until the nineties, even manyfamous established Italian chefs, some of which
are considered to be like the forefathersof Italian cuisine as we know it nowadays,
(31:30):
would add cream to their carbonada.Yes, I was very surprised in
reading this and the first written recipesfor the carbonada. The first one was
actually in an American cookbook where theywere talking about an Italian tratoria. I
think it was in Chicago or Boston. Don't quote me on it, but
(31:52):
it's somewhere in the US where therewas a restaurant, an Italian restaurant those
making the dish kind of as weknow it out with panchita eggs, black
pepper and piggolino cheese. The firstItalian written recipe that's found was found in
like fifty four I think, andcalled for panchita, grier cheese and garlic.
(32:16):
So carbona as we know it hasa very disputed origin. The most
credited story nowadays has to do withthe American Army and the rations of bacon
and powdered egg yolks that American soldierswere given, apparently once they took over
(32:38):
the town of Brimi, which isfurther north than Rome, where the meeting
of the British and the American armies. They hired a cook from Bologna to
make a meal for them, acelebratory meal. And so he got the
very good quality bacon from the Americansand this powdered yag yok. They had
(33:00):
good quality heavy cream, and sohe makes these dishes, adding some local
cheese and then finished it with blackpepper because he said it added like a
nice stepth of flavor to it.He was then hired to become the official
cook for the joint Allied forces.They then went to Rome. He was
(33:20):
in Rome for a couple of years, and that's when the dish was popularized
in Rome. That's why it's thoughtthat it's a Roman dish. A lot
of locals aren't very happy with thisexplanation because it means that Rome's most famous
pasta, the dish was made bya Bolognese cook with ingredients from the American
Army, which you can imagine mostItalians are not particularly happy about. I
(33:44):
was recently told by a very goodfriend of mine who's family has owned dozens
of restaurants. He grew up inrestaurants. He told me that the carbonada
actually originates as a kind of workcontract between the farmer that needed his wood
(34:06):
to be turned into coal and thecarabonado, which was the person that would
turn it into carabone an Italian meanscoal, and so this is a very
lengthy process. You have to makea big pile of wood, you have
to start the fire, then youhave to cover it with a tart normally,
and then cover it in dirt,and it has to sit for up
(34:29):
to a week and the slow smolderingturns the wood into coal. The carbonado
had to be on premises at alltimes to not start wildfires and to make
sure that the wood didn't actually burn, and so the farmer would give them
at the beginning of this process adozen eggs, one char, a big
piece of pigotio romano of some blackpepper, and a big bowl to mix
(34:52):
it in, as well as apock to cook it. So the carabonado
was like the unofficial work contract whereyou were providing the person with the food
necessary to last the week in theforest while he made the cold And he
assured me that his grandmother was doingthis way before World War two. This
(35:15):
is one of the fun things aboutthis country, where it's often hard to
pin down an actual explanation for wherea lot of food comes from. Often
they're being a more picturesque explanation andthen sometimes a possibly more factual one.
Yes, well, I would liketo hear the Bolognese react to a Roman
(35:37):
version the Bologny sauce. Well,it's funny we do in their eyes,
butcher lasagna because the traditional lasagne ismade with layers of ragou which is the
meat, sauce and bechamel, andthen they are graded Permesan cheese. That's
how they make it in Bologna.Here in Rome we omit the Beschemel and
(35:58):
we just put a ton of mozzarella. Now, since I grew up here,
I admit that I had more biasedtowards the Roman kind. I'm sorry
Bologna, but yeah, we havealready destroyed all sorts of stuff in their
eyes so well, even no nowhere my mother in laws from, they
put eggs like cut up, slicedtub boiled eggs in the lasagna. And
peas. Oh, I've had peasand mushrooms in lasagna here in Rome.
(36:23):
One of the most delicious lasagna thatI've ever had was actually in Naples.
There they make lasagna with dried sheetsof pasta which are just made with flour
and water. It's like the curdyones that you find in the US,
which I thought was like an Americaninvention, but it's not. And they
actually make it with their version ofragu, which is I think what gave
(36:44):
birth to the American Sunday gravy,where you take ribs, sausages, chunks
of beef, pork, porkskin,and tiny meat balls and you raise them
for ten hours in tomato sauce,and then they take all of that meat
and they turned that into lasagna withlittle bits of horrid wild eggs and cheese
and stuff. Oh yes, Iforgot the little meat balls from my because
(37:07):
she is actually from the area.Now. But then I've got to tell
you about my favorite lasagna and thenwe'll go back to the Roman pastor.
But I had it last year onthe Sorrento Peninsula and it was made with
it was like a tiny bit ofmeat, I think it was pork.
Then it was made with smoked buffalomozzarella cheese. It was incredibly, incredibly
(37:29):
good, and then very finely gratedlemon on top. Honestly, it blew
my mind. I wasn't even hungry. I just kept eating it. It
was like it was so good.I was like, where does this magic
come from? And I will begoing back there. And Giovanni from Joe
Banana, he's one of our sponsorson occasion, he was the one that
took me there and I just wasdelicious. Oh yes. Talking about food
(37:57):
is extensive work, especially with Nazem, who knows a lot about Roman dishes
and of course food in general.This ended up being a very long recording,
so we've made it into two episodes. Part two is focused on how
to make these exciting dishes and whereyou can try them in Rome, the
very best ones. Of course,you'll have to tune in next week to
hear all about that. In themeantime, don't forget to check out Nazem's
(38:22):
tours at Fullbelly tours dot com.They are so fun and you really get
to feel part of the local neighborhoodwhen you're out and about with Nazem.
We put a link to his siteand social media accounts in the show notes
on our website at untold Italy dotcom. Forward Slash one eight one four,
episode number one hundred and eighty one. Grads Ya, thank you for
(38:43):
your ongoing support of Untold Italy.We truly appreciate all of you from joining
us all around the world, andwe'd love it if you help spread the
words so we can reach more Italyloving travelers just like you, and the
best way that you can do thatis by leaving us a five star rating
or review in your favorite podcast appor forwarding this episode onto a friend who
also loves delicious pasta dishes. That'sall for today. I'm looking forward to
(39:07):
next week's deep dive into where tofind the best carbonara in Rome and also
Nazim's exceptional tips on how to makeit chow. For now, The Untold
Italy podcast is an independent production podcastediting, audio production and website development by
Mark Hatter, production assistance and contentwriting by the other kt Clark. Yes
(39:30):
there are two of us. Formore information about Untold Italy, please visit
Untold Italy dot com.
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