Recipes: eating Italy

Part of the reason why I love food so much is that it can evoke memories - some wonderful or funny or maybe even sad. Occasionally, we like to relive our trip to Italy with simple pasta dinners.

Part of what afforded us the luxury of traveling through Italy for 2 weeks was how inexpensively, yet how well, we could eat there. We took advantage of the amazing selection of bread, cheese, fruit, and preserved meats at the markets for lunch. We satisfied mid-morning or afternoon cravings with warm foccaccia, pizza, and gelato (so much gelato!). And, when we went to restaurants, we bypassed the secondi section of the menu (sadly) and ordered pasta and vegetables. And loved every bit.

I can remember each meal we ate there. One of my favorite memories is of an older Roman gentleman seated nearby us, happily raising his bowl of bucatini all'amatriciana to his nose to inhale the smells, smiling in obvious appreciation for the meal in front of him. This is how we felt at every meal. Actually, we loved pasta so much that, the night we returned from our travels to my Paris apartment, our midnight meal consisted of spaghettini tossed with warm garlic, olive oil, and pepperoncini I had bought at the Campo de Fiori in Rome. I'll never forget how deliciously spicy and satisfying that meal was, or how amazing our weeks in Italy together were. I'm so glad I made that trip with the man I would one day marry.

A few nights ago we made spaghettini with Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce with onion and butter. Hazan's recipes are classically Italian, not Italian-American, so you'll never see "Italian seasoning" or tons of garlic, but her simple recipes are often something special. They always seem more delicious than you would think they have any right to be, given the simplicity of the ingredients.

I usually make tomato sauce with olive oil, garlic, and chili flakes, but I use Hazan's recipe when I want something a little special. The butter and onion render the sauce subtly sweet and voluptuous.


Tomato sauce with onion and butter (via Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Italian Cooking)

Yields enough sauce for about 1 pound of pasta, or 4 servings

• 2 cups canned imported San Marzano tomatoes, cut up, with their juices (I use 1 28 ounce can)*
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 medium yellow onion, peeled and cut in half
• salt

1. Combine the tomatoes, their juices, the butter, the onion halves, and a pinch of salt in a medium saucepan. (Playing around: you can add minced garlic or a few shakes of chile flakes at this point, if you like.)
   
2. Turn heat to medium and bring to a simmer.
3. Simmer, uncovered, adjusting the heat to medium-low as necessary, for about 45 minutes.
4. Stir occasionally, mashing large pieces of tomato with a wooden spoon (or potato masher).
5. The sauce is ready when you begin to see orange droplets of fat float free from the tomatoes.
6. Taste and add salt as needed.
7. Discard the onion before tossing the sauce with the pasta.
   

*In this recipe she calls for imported San Marzano tomatoes. I've made the sauce with San Marzano tomatoes and good-quality canned tomatoes from Central Market. Either way, the sauce was good. Just use good tomatoes.