Pasta Puttanesca and a Book About Pasta

“Is it possible to sit down to a plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce and reflect on the meaning of roots, identities, and origins? That is what I have tried to do in these pages” (A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce, p. 9)

Reading Massimo Montanari’s book A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce (first published in Italian in 2019, translation in 2021) I was delighted with his brief histories of all the key ingredients and how they came to Italy: pasta, tomatoes, cheese, olive oil, capsicum peppers, garlic, onions, basil leaves. Although I have read about these ingredients before, I enjoyed Montanari’s perspective on how the dish, which is seen as so quintessentially Italian, took a long time to become the iconic symbol of Italian food. He reminds the reader who thinks she knows it all: “in the history of cooking there is very little that is obvious, or maybe nothing.” (p. 35)

I enjoyed Montanri’s descriptions of the components of this dish to look for insights into culture and history, not only of food, but of the relationships among peoples and cultures over centuries and even millennia. Starting with a discussion of the long history of pasta, Montanari writes: 

“The Italian pasta tradition has been influenced by other histories, other ‘roots,’ which evoke other cultures and other regions of the world. The search for ‘origins,’ in this case, takes us to the Fertile Crescent, the Middle Eastern regions to the east of the Mediterranean, where, ten to twelve thousand years ago, the agricultural revolution began, and with it, the culture of wheat and its derivatives—first among them, bread, which became the symbol of that revolution.” (p. 19)

Tomatoes, too have a long history: 

“Original to the western coasts of South America, where it still grows wild, the tomato enjoyed an extraordinary success among the Maya and the Aztecs. It was in Mexico that it met up with the Spaniards of Hernán Cortés, when they occupied the country between 1519 and 1521. It was immediately taken to Spain and that’s how the tomato came to be grafted onto the gastronomic culture of Italy. Naturalists and botanists are the first to mention it, starting with Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1544) who cites it in his commentary on the pharmacological text of Pedacio Dioscoride. … In 1548, Cosimo de’ Medici received a basket of tomatoes from the Florentine gardens of Torre del Gallo, and this is the first evidence from the ‘field’ of an Italian interest for the new plant.”  (pp. 55 & 57)

The Aztecs invented tomato sauce, among other things. A traveler to the New World was one Francisco Hernández, physician at the court of Philip II of Spain. During his travels from 1570-77, he wrote sixteen volumes concerning American plants and their uses. He wrote about a Mexican dish: “a delicious sauce or intinctus (dip) that ‘is prepared from sliced tomatoes and chili pepper, which enriches the flavor or almost all dishes and almost all foods, and reawakens the appetite.’” (p. 60)

However, tomato sauce took a long time to become the classic accompaniment to the highly traditional pastas of Italy. Author Ippolito Cavalcanti finally mentioned pasta with tomato sauce in the 1839 edition of his influential cookbook: a first! “The sauce is made from crushed ripe and deseeded tomatoes, placed to cook in a casserole together with their juice (acquiccia) and stirred continuously until, once cooked, they will be milled and cooked down ncoppa a lo fuoco (over the fire). At the end, salt and pepper are added and the sauce is ready, very simple and truly ‘popular.’” (p. 64)

Pellegrino Artusi, author of the most important 19th century Italian cookbook, provided a recipe for tomato sauce “seasoned with onion, garlic, celery, basil, parsley, olive oil, salt, and pepper.” He wrote that it would “lend itself ‘to innumerable uses’… It will be good with boiled meat,… but above all it will be ‘excellent when served with cheese and butter on pasta.’” Artusi’s recipe is also the first instance of using onion and garlic in the tomato sauce! (pp. 66 and 76)

Going onward to other ingredients, Montanari describes how peppers quickly became a staple ingredient of European food after their import from the New World. He explains that olive oil has been made since early antiquity, but its use in pasta is startlingly recent: “Dressing pasta or tomato sauce with olive oil became ‘normal’ only in the second half of the XX century.” (p. 75)

Similarly basil was long considered to be inedible; it became accepted as a culinary herb in the 16th or 17th century. Along with other herbs, it was included in the 19th century recipes cited above. “Over time, basil has become an inevitable ingredient of our dish, an identifying element, to the point of acquiring in the iconography of the media an immediately understandable symbolic value.” (p. 79)

In his conclusion, Montanari summarizes how the iconic plate of spaghetti that seems to represent Italy and the Italian identity actually has a variety of multi-cultural roots. “The history of our plate of spaghetti, the search for its origins and its roots—economic, social, political, cultural—has forced us to travel to multiple lands and to come to terms with eating habits, ways of production, and culinary procedures distant from each other in time and space. A long series of innovations, developed in different times and places, have contributed to creating this tradition so typically Italian.” (p. 82)

Our Pasta Dinner

Obviously reading about the history of spaghetti with tomato sauce made me wish to eat some. So I followed a recipe for a particular variety of pasta with tomato sauce: that is, Pasta Puttanesca, which includes the classic ingredients along with anchovies, olives, and capers. This dish does not include the cheese that’s a traditional part of the more usual version, probably because it’s not customary to include both fish and cheese at the same time. Note that the name Pasta Puttanesca means prostitutes’ pasta. There are many explanations for this interesting nomenclature.

These are the basics for Puttanesca tomato sauce along with canned tomatoes as well as fresh.
Note that the wine is to be drunk with the meal, not used in the dish.

Pasta, garlic, tomatoes, anchovies, olive oil, pepper flakes, olives, capers, and basil for a garnish.
I mainly followed the New York Times recipe by Mark Bittman (link), adding the fresh tomatoes.

Review and photos © 2024 mae sander

Wrapping up October in my Kitchen (and Happy Halloween)

My kitchen in October has been busy with cooking, but I haven't been acquiring much new stuff. And it's time for the fun of the once-a-month blog event "In My Kitchen" (hosted at Sherry's blog here). Most of the participants feature what's new, but I have decided to start this month with a paean to my aging dishwasher. I have never until this moment had a chance to use the word paean -- meaning ancient song of thanksgiving or praise for something. But it's also Wordy Wednesday, time to use a $5 word.

Sing, O Muse, of love for my dishwasher. 

This appliance is far from new. I am thankful for its unexpected durability (which I'm worried about even mentioning, for fear it will break immediately). I am thankful for the ease with which it removes grease from cooking utensils and dinner plates, dissolves sticky stuff from dessert dishes, and removes wine lees, juice marks, or milky residue from drinking glasses. Although I usually skip the heated-dry part of the cycle, I also appreciate its potential to dry the dishes. 

Some cynics say that a dishwasher is just a place to store dirty dishes, and that's reasonably true. As far as I'm concerned, though, nothing is wrong with having a hiding place for dirty dishes. The dishwasher is a better place for them than the sink, a more sightly place than on the counter, and far less louche than dishes left on the dinner table. 

Other cynics say that by the time I scrape and rinse my dishes to go into in the dishwasher, they are just as clean as the ones they wipe with a towel and put back in their cabinets. I shudder at the thought. It may be true that they are wiping and storing dishes with a bit of grease or sticky stuff or milky residue -- let's not go there!

A wonderful invention, the dishwasher! I looked it up: a few enterprising inventors created some sort of dishwashers in the 19th century, though I can't imagine how these worked without electricity. Commercial electric-powered dishwashing machines began to be sold in the 1920s. Then, along with a lot of other household gadgets, built-in dishwashers became a standard in most American homes during the 1950s. They arrived in European homes within a couple of decades after that. Something like 65% to 75% of American homes now have a dishwasher, though many, surprisingly, don't use them much. In England and the EU around 45% of homes have them. (All these statistics come from googling, and I'm too lazy to put in links. Sue me.)

I know about how resources in this world are scarce, and many factors will soon disrupt the happy and wasteful lives we are leading. However, using a dishwasher is documented to require considerably less water and electricity than hand-washing, so it doesn't contribute to the downfall of the planet. I guess.

Now for a new gadget in my kitchen this month: a replacement for my old, broken garlic crock:

Left: new garlic crock. Right: broken garlic crock, now disposed of.

Trader Joe's Quinoa Cowboy Veggie Burgers.

We also did a lot of cooking and made a few new recipes this month. One new menu item: veggie burgers from Trader Joe's, as depicted. I fried them with onions & peppers. They were good. Also, I've written about a new-to-us Antillean chicken dish (here) and about charcoal-grilled duck with cherry sauce (here).

In our last fall barbecues, Len made a new recipe for grilled fish with broth, as well as one for pork chops with a rub and barbecue sauce. We didn't photograph them. We made Banh Mi sandwiches with leftovers from the chops, pâté, cilantro, and other vegetables. Salade Niçoise was on the menu; also onion soup. And I baked a vegetarian lasagne with one layer of traditional ricotta cheese and one layer of cooked & cubed dumpling squash -- a locally raised fall vegetable.

Lasagne about to go in the oven, topped with fresh mozzarella.

Lasagne ready to eat -- much of this large quantity is now in the freezer.

Ingredients for Banh Mi sandwiches, including leftover grilled pork chops.

Anyway -- Happy Halloween!

We're ready for the trick-or-treaters.

All photos and text copyright 2018 by Mae E. Sander. Published at maefood dot blogspot dot com. If you read this elsewhere, it has been stolen.

"Eight Flavors" in My Kitchen

Sarah Lohman's Eight Flavors in my kitchen. Left to right: soy sauce, MSG (in the form of Maggi seasoning), black pepper
(in the form of Rainbow peppercorns), garlic, chili powder (an old jar becuse I usually make it from scratch), curry powder,
vanilla, and Sriracha Hot Sauce.

 "The American kitchen is not static; it’s cumulative, and it evolves. Ten years ago, I had not heard of Sriracha, and now it is in every refrigerator I open (at least, those refrigerators stocked by millennials). And in the next decade, or the next century, our cuisine will continue to change. Which means a new flavor will earn a permanent place in Americans’ hearts and stomachs." Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine (pp. 221-222).

Author Sarah Lohman identifies herself as a historic gastronomist: that is, she explores the way that cooks worked in the past, and re-creates old recipes. The eight flavors in the title of her book provide a route into American cooking from Colonial times (when black pepper dominated both sweet and savory recipes) to the present, when we retain the earlier flavors but continue to add new ones. Specifically, Lohman describes how Sriracha, a hot sauce of southeast Asian origin and California manufacture, has spread throughout our kitchens.

In every chapter of this book, I learned new things about the flavor featured there. As illustrated in my photo, I use every one of these flavors in my own cooking -- some more than others. Especially interesting was the idea that wartime exposure to the foods of a region often results in flavors being brought back to the soldiers' home country. Is Sriracha partly due to experience in the Vietnam war? Well, maybe!

A few things I found especially interesting:

• Although careful well-executed studies have repeatedly found no ill effects from MSG, people still fear it and loath it! I think this is why Maggi seasoning doesn't explicitly name it on the label. The history of the discovery of the "fifth taste" -- umami is a fascinating one, and Lohman provides lots of insight into how adding MSG to food was at first a positive step, but became a problem because of a pervasive but mistaken view of the danger of this substance (which occurs naturally in many foods including human milk).
• Vanilla, I learned, was rare and expensive until some time in the nineteenth century. Before it became widely available, the flavor that was most used in sweets like cake or cookies was rose water! 
• Curry powder became popular long before Indian cuisine was well-known or served in restaurants. One chicken dish stands out -- "Country Captain Chicken is a common American curry dish that first showed up in Eliza Leslie’s 1857 cookbook Miss Leslie’s New Cookery Book. It was a popular dish in port cities of the South, where Americans who had sailed to India would have lived and traded." (p. 92). 
• Garlic as a culinary flavor (rather than a medical remedy for many ills) became popular only in the twentieth century, as Italian-American food became mainstream and as French cuisine became well-known. "A clove of garlic, the part of the plant we cook with most often, is actually a leaf: a storage vessel that packs away energy for the next growing season. The energy stored in the cloves is in the form of sugar— specifically fructose— which is why a clove tastes sweet when it is cooked slowly and caramelizes when roasted." (p. 150).

Lohman's discussions of food history can be very intriguing. I was familiar with some of the history, such as the evolution of Italian-American food from the variety of Italian regional cuisines belonging to immigrants; the evolution of Chinese-American foods and thus the popularity of soy sauce; and the invention of chili powder and the role of the "Chili Queens" who sold a variety of Mexican street foods and thus popularized Tex-Mex cuisine. (I read about these areas in Hasia Diner's Hungering for America; Gustavo Arellano's Taco USA; and Haiming Liu's From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express -- blogged here, here, and here.)

My kitchen is pretty quiet these days, as I recently returned from a long trip and I haven't started cooking very actively to date. Reading this book gave me an opportunity to present a feature of my kitchen for the blogging event titled "In My Kitchen This Month," hosted by blogger Sherry. Quite a few very interesting posts have already been added to the April list!

Update, June 20, 2018. My culinary book club read this as our June selection. Everyone seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. Favorite sections included the one on vanilla, on black pepper, and on Sriracha.

A Classic Cookbook: Olney's "Simple French Food"

1992 Edition of Simple French Food,
which I recently purchased.

Richard Olney's Simple French Food dates from 1974, with a second edition in 1992 and a more recent commemorative edition. It's a famous classic, known to be a favorite of Alice Waters and the source of quite a few of her ideas at her famous restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California.

I bought my first copy of this (or any other) Olney book this week. I can't really explain what took me so long, but let's face it, the number of classic cookbooks out there is very large, especially French cookbooks by American authors. Other than my own favorite, Julia Child, I usually tend to stick with cookbooks by actual French authors.

Some of the recipes in Simple French Food actually do appear simple, though in some cases, I think Olney complicates dishes that in actual French homes and restaurants really are simple. Consider cruditès, the simple plate of raw or blanched vegetables that makes quite a lovely hors-d'oeuvre. Olney suggests quite a few embellishments for these that I've never seen in France. But he did live there for almost 50 years, and I have only lived or stayed there from  a week to 12 months on various occasions.

Aside from simple things made more complicated, there's plenty of real complication in Olney's book. The chapter titled "Cold Terrines, Pâtes, Mousses," for example, has recipes that are just as elaborate as any I've seen elsewhere for these scrumptious but labor-intensive delicacies. Take the first recipe, "Rabbit Terrine," which makes 20 portions. It starts with the ingredient "1 rabbit, approximately 3 1/2 pounds, skinned and cleaned;" however, the entire previous page explains the other possible choices, such as domestic ducks, or any "small game, furred or feathered." The preparation requires a marinade (5 ingredients), stock (5 ingredients and 5 herbs/spices), and forcemeat (around 12 ingredients plus a number of spices and seasonings). Not what I would call simple!

Bravely, I tried one of the simplest chicken dishes, Braised Chicken Legs with Lemon, which is said to be borrowed from French Catalan cooking. This requires around an hour of intense prep and cooking, including carefully peeling 25 garlic cloves, and more time for simmering sauce and oven-baking the dish, as well as preparing a rice pilaf to accompany the dish.

Ingredients:

20 to 25 large, firm, crisp garlic cloves, peeled without crushing, par-boiled for 5 minutes, and drained

2 1/2 cups veal or chicken stock

4 chicken legs (I used 6)

Salt, pepper

3 tablespoons butter

1 lemon, peeled (all white inner peel removed), thinly sliced, seeds removed

2 tablespoons flour

1/2 cup dry white wine

After par-boiling the garlic cloves, you simmer them in the stock for 40 minutes in a small saucepan.

Meanwhile, you slowly brown the chicken legs in the butter, and arrange them in a baking dish with the poached garlic cloves (being very careful to keep them whole and perfect) and lemon slices. Then you remove the excess fat from the pan, blend the flour and fat, add the wine and then the stock, and return the entire sauce to the small saucepan to boil down for another 15 minutes or so. After adding the sauce to the baking dish, you bake it in a 400º oven for 40 to 45 minutes. 

Out of the oven. You can see the garlic cloves and lemon slices in the sauce.

The recipe concludes: "The lemon will have almost completely disappeared into the sauce; the garlic cloves should be absolutely intact with a consistency of melting purée; the sauce must be tasted to be believed."

Yes, it was an exceptional dish. I made the recommended rice pilaf to go with it,
and added some undocumented tomatoes for color.

This dish should not be confused with the better-known chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, which is the recipe that follows in Simple French Food. Olney is sometimes credited with inventing this dish, which is mentioned in his New York Times obituary (1999). In fact, the 40-cloves recipe had appeared a couple of years earlier in a James Beard book, and I've also seen a much earlier version in cookbooks by the French author Edouard de Pomiane. Subsequently it's been published numerous times -- a web search turns up a version of chicken with 40 cloves of garlic by almost every chef and TV food personality you can think of -- from Nigella to Betty Crocker!

To conclude, here's a quote from Olney's obituary by Julia Child:

''I think he enjoyed being difficult,'' she said. ''But on the other hand, he could be absolutely charming if you treated him like the genius he considered himself to be.''

Things that give me joy in my kitchen

A new drying mat and new kitchen scissors replaced my old ones this month. My silicone spatula and
citrus reamer are two old utensils that I find very useful also. 

My sister-in-law's mother gave me this garlic container many
years ago because she was impressed that I always used real garlic.

Coffee from our local coffee roaster and the mug with
their logo.

An old Mexican curio from even more years ago
that I recently got out of storage in the basement.

I just read another of the infinite series of articles about how you should get rid of all your possessions unless they bring you joy. All my possessions bring me joy. Go figure. I liked the cartoon about the woman who said she had tried the "bring you joy" method of scouring her household and had thrown away her vegetables, her bra, her electric bill, and her exercise bicycle. I did have an exercise bicycle once, but I left it by the curb and someone took it away. And my electric bill comes via email so there's nothing to throw out. But I get what the cartoon meant.

I've enjoyed the "In My Kitchen" posts from other bloggers as listed by Francesca
from Australia, where it's winter: "Winter Tricks in My Kitchen." It's hot here, unlike there!

Retro Pasta Night

Tonight's dinner: a rather retro recipe for pasta, salmon, and mushrooms. I think this is the kind of thing we ate in the 1980s.
I assembled all the ingredients, and according to the recipe, cooked the dill-seasoned salmon first, then the garlic.
Then I added chopped green onions, capers, sliced mushrooms, and white wine to the pan. When they were done, I tossed in the cooked pasta.

My friend Alice made salad to go with it. 

For an appetizer I served something even more retro:
sherry and celery stuffed with cheese.
Also, Trader Joe's delicious and sinful pastry hors d'oeuvres.

Pasta, ready to serve, garnished with halved cherry tomatoes in oil & dill,
chopped parsley, and lemon wedges.

Pasta on the table. My other guest made a fudge pie for dessert.

I found the recipe at Epicurious -- HERE, originally from Bon Appetit magazine.

Garlic, Goose Eggs, Greens, and More

Late fall produce at Argus Farm Stop.

More varieties of garlic exist than I ever dreamed of -- and Dick and Diana Dyer grow over 40 of them at the Dyer Family Organic Farm outside Ann Arbor. We heard a great many facts about this wonderful flavor-rich vegetable last Sunday at the Dyers' lecture to the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor. Some things we learned about:

• The genealogy of the garlic family. It's an allium like leeks and onions. I had never realized that garlic was originally native to China, and that members of the garlic family have been cultivated for 10,000 years. Most fascinating: an ancient garlic variety native to the Pacific Northwest suggests that early humans crossing the land bridge to North America brought garlic with them!
• The annual cycle of garlic products. The year starts with green garlic and garlic scapes in spring, continues with a succession of summer garlic types, and ends with the last heads and the dried braids of garlic available now in late fall.
• The propagation of garlic. The bulbs planted in farmers' fields are clones from previous crops. The scapes are the garlic plant's effort to make seeds, but few viable seeds are ever produced.
• The sensory experience of garlic cooking. Uncut garlic should have no aroma, because the chemicals that provide the smell and flavor are locked inside the cells until your knife releases an enzyme and a chemical reaction triggers aroma and flavors. Shorter or longer cooking times produce different results: flavor disperses as time increases.
• And above all, the best thing about garlic: it tastes so good!

The Dyers' fascination with everything about garlic is infectious, so I was quite interested to try some. So I went to Argus Farm Stop in downtown Ann Arbor, which sells Dyer garlic and many other local foods from local farmers, bakers, dairies, coffee roasters, and other producers. I bought leeks, cranberries, lettuce, duck eggs and -- obviously -- garlic. Some images:

Dyer Farms Garlic at Argus Farm Stop.

Garlic braids from Dyer Farms.

Goose Eggs, $3 each from a local egg producer.

A variety of green salad vegetables, still growing at several farms despite the frosts.

Winter squash from various farms.

As is normal for me, and unlike my exceptional recent post, I did not receive any free gifts or samples from any of the vendors mentioned here. I'm writing about what interests me, which is fresh, local produce!