Don't We All Need A Little Hope in a Pasta Bowl?
Calamarata Pasta with Lemony Spinach and Crunchy Breadcrumbs, Spring hits Lake Como, Happy international women's day, and inspiration from Milano
Ciao friends!
How are you? I mean it. I’d love to hear how you’re doing. Drop me a note or comment. There seems to be more than usual that we can’t control in the world these days. When I feel this way, I turn to what I can control: feeding myself and my family good food. Luckily, Italian food culture is all about nuturing and nourishment through bontà or delicious goodness. This week’s recipe is a reflection of all that bontà - in a pasta bowl.
This week I did something I’d never done before.
I whipped up a delicious, springtime 30-minute weeknight pasta recipe for you based on a 2-minute TikTok by… Cesare Battisti, head chef of Ristorante Ratanà in Milan, who specializes in traditional Milanese cooking “la cucina della tradizione meneghina”.
Most wonderfully, Cesare is committed to cooking with in-season ingredients from small, sustainable farmers and producers. He receives the high compliment of being compared to Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food:
“Cesare Battisti è forse il modello perfetto di cuoco secondo Carlo Petrini: una persona capace di unire chi vive in campagna a chi vive in città e questo lo fa con un sorriso da teatro dell’arte.” - CIT da Identità Golose, Tokyo Cervigni
“Cesare Battisti is perhaps the perfect model of a chef according to Carlo Petrini: a person capable of uniting those who live in the countryside with those who live in the city and he does this with a smile worthy of the theatre of art.”
Cesare presents his pasta as a “no recipe recipe” but I tested and measured for you so it’s foolproof delish. It was everything simple, soothing, and yummy that I wanted and needed in a pasta bowl and so I’m sharing it with you. My son and I both loved it. Jump ahead to make this dish which sings of springtime and fresh greens with sweet-sour lemon harmony to create a mouth-watering spring pasta symphony - or watch Cesare’s 2 min video.
My variation is without trout roe he sprinkles on at the end. And if you make the easy crispy breadcrumbs without the anchovy, it’s a completely plant-based and delicious. In Cesare’s words,
“You will eat an unforgettable pasta. Ma cosa volete di più? E’ buonissima!” What more do you want? It’s so delicious!
Grazie, Cesare!
Spring is here!
After so many long winters in New York, Chicago, and Michigan, the arrival of Italian spring in March is still a happy shock for me. The Italian sun is suddenly loud and streaming in from every angle, bursting through my western window in the afternoon and warming the apartment like a serra.
This weekend clearly marked the beginning of the tourist season with packed ferries and pizziaolos looking bamboozled by the sheer numbers. Even just a few years ago, this season would reliably begin at Easter but not before. Some photos of the sunny spring scene here, but first…
I want to wish a heartfelt Happy International Women’s Day to all my women readers! Buona festa della donna! You are wonderful. In Italy we celebrate by giving the Dr. Seuss-esque fuzzy yellow mimosa flowers. I’m sending you some virtual mimosa via the photos below and also this beautiful Maya Angelou poem about your strength and phenomenal nature. 💛
PHENOMENAL WOMAN by Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Superfoods again for the win!
Italians doing it again. Simple, delicious superfood-packed pasta dream. Dressing your pasta with antioxidants, nutrients, and love. Spinach is also thought to help prevent cancers, help your eyesight, and reduce blood pressure. Win, win, win!
spinach 🌿
lemon 🍋
onion 🧅
garlic 🧄
olive oil 🫒
anchovy (totally optional) 🐟
Top tips
One sautee pan for 3 steps: We are going to use the SAME PAN for 3 consecutive steps without needing to wash it, because we are cooking geniuses. Are you ready?
sauteeing onion, garlic and spinach in EVOO
toasting crunchy breadcrumbs
warming spinach sauce and then adding pasta to it
Since each step is just building flavor, we don’t need to worry about washing the pan in between steps or using different pans. Less mess. Winning.
Hand-blender or food processor: You will need one or the other or both to 1. break up the stale bread into breadcrumbs and 2. blend the spinach sauce
Spinach or baby spinach? Fresh or frozen? As Cesare used fresh baby spinach, readily available in spring (and also a year-round greenhouse crop in many parts of the world), that’s what I leveraged too. I believe mature spinach would also work great. Just tear the leaves a bit to make them smaller for the fresh garnish with extra-virgin olive oil and lemon juice. Yes, you can use frozen spinach if you don’t have fresh! Thaw it first and then squeeze out all the water; skip the garnish.
Lemon juice: The lemon juice is CRITICAL for top flavor here. The spinach, onion, garlic and olive oil kindly ask you to add lemon’s acidity to bring out their sweetness. In this dish, the lemon doesn’t overpower, but partners. My 13 year old is not big on lemon, so he insisted on trying the pasta first without lemon (nice recipe test 😉) and said it was “just good”. Then added the big squeeze of lemon juice on top and re-tasted, his eyes popping, the rating moving to “buonissima”, really delicious.
Shallot vs. onion? Cesare uses a yellow or white onion and so did I but if you only have shallots on hand, milder and sweeter shallots will be just as delicious.
Easily plant-based / vegan: the only non-plant-based product is the anchovy for the crispy bread-crumbs which are primarily bringing CRUNCH and texture. No biggie to leave it out if you’re plant-based or (somehow, someway) do not like anchovies!
Extra virgin olive oil: really, use the best you can find. Cold-pressed, extra-virgin. The ingredients are simple. This is your healthy fat and will bring a fruity, round flavor. You are not using much, so make it count. You deserve it!
pst! Scroll to the very bottom to download recipe pdf!
Calamarata pasta with lemony spinach sauce and crunchy breadcrumbs
Calamarata con crema di spinaci, limone, e pangrattato tostato
FOR 2 PEOPLE
The ingredients
90g / 6 Tbls extra virgin olive oil (use 4 Tbls to sautè spinach and 2 Tbls to dress garnish!)
few slices of white or yellow onion finely sliced
few slices of garlic, thinly sliced
pepperoncino aka little hot chili pepper (optional)
120g baby spinach leaves
1 lemon
200g calamarata (shaped like thick rings) or any short or long pasta that’s not mini
Salt to taste
Freshly ground pepper to taste
Crispy Breadcrumbs
200g stale bread, ripped into hunks with your hands
45 g /3 Tbls extra virgin olive oil
1 anchovy (optional)
salt
pepper
The method
1) Fill a big tall pot with water and salt and set on high heat stove burner. Taste the water to make sure it’s salty like the sea (and add more salt if needed).
2) CRUNCHY BREADCRUMB TIME! Tip: Start with the crunchy breadcrumbs so you don’t have to clean your food processor, if you’re using one. Toss ripped handfuls of stale bread into your food processor. Put on the lid and blitz on high speed until you have large and small crumbs. They don’t need to be homogenous. SET ASIDE.
SPINACH SAUCE:
3) Add 1 Tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil to a saucepan/skillet on low-medium heat. Add onion and garlic slices (and optional pepperoncino for spicy) and sautee, stirring occasionally for 3-5 minutes until floppy and fragrant.
4) Now add most of your spinach (about 3/4s), giving them a stir to coat in oil, onion, and garlic. Remove from heat immediately and transfer to container ready to blitz with hand-blender (mini-pimer) or little food processor. (If you used it for breadcrumbs, just give it a little swipe out with a towel.) Add 2 Tablespoons of EVOO to spinach. BLITZ on high speed until smooth. If not smooth, add a bit more EVOO til it’s smooth.
BACK TO CRUNCHY BREADCRUMBS:
5) Take the sautee pan you already used for your onions and garlic. No need to clean it; that’s flavor! Add 3 Tbls of EVOO and heat on low. If using optional anchovy, add it now and smash it with a wooden spoon until it’s melted into tiny pieces with the EVOO.
6) Now add your breadcrumbs and stir occasionally until they are golden and toasty crunchy. Remove from heat and pour into a bowl to stop the toasting.
6) As soon as the water boils, add the pasta to the water and cook until recommended al dente time on the package
SPINACH GARNISH:
7) Take the remaining spinach leaves and toss with 2 Tbls olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, and salt and pepper to taste. This is your garnish. That’s it! Done. Set aside.
PUT IT ALL TOGETHER:
8) Transfer your SPINACH SAUCE into the saute pan you used for the breadcrumbs. Add some pasta water and stir to combine and flavor (remember, the water is salty and starchy). Taste for salt. If it still needs salt, add some. Taste again.
9) Strain pasta and add directly to spinach sauce. Stir to coat the pasta
10) Divide your pasta into pasta bowls and top with:
SPINACH GARNISH 🌱
BIG SQUEEZE OF LEMON 🍋 (do not skip this! it brings the whole dish together like a symphony!), AND
CRUNCHY BREADCRUMBS
Buon appetito! 💚
Notes:
Salt: It’s important not to skimp. This salt is flavoring your pasta from the inside.
Pasta: This sauce will cling like a saucy koala to all pasta surfaces! You could also use almost any short or long pasta like fusilli, casarecce, orecchiete, spaghetti. I only wouldn’t advise mini-pasta like ditalini or stelline; the pasta to sauce ratio would be off.
Crunchy breadcrumbs: once cool, store extra for another day in a closed jar
x Lolly
"Luckily, Italian food culture is all about nurturing and nourishment through bontà or delicious goodness."
And this is why I return again and again to that wonderful country. They just get it, and if you've experienced it, you understand.
Okay. Here's the thing. Cacio E Pepe was made last night. I had a friend over so my amore decided he would make it. How wonderful, I thought. He said it was nice and creamy and just waiting for the pasta to be done. Then he got a hairbrained idea--to add some grated provolone. What happened when he tossed through hot pasta? The provolone melted and sucked up a lot of the sauce and then was a bit bitsy and it was dry. Anyway, "we" know better now not to mess with the classics.