Che Cosa C'è Per Il Conpanatico?

For the non Italian readers on this blog, the title means “What are we having with the bread?” A lovely expression which shows just how much the Italians value their bread. Maybe it’s a tourist or restaurant thing, or maybe I’m just an old romantic but I envisage a basket full of bread on the dining table in every Italian home around meal time; maybe I’m correct in my thinking? I mean Giorgio Locatelli in his wonderful book detailing mostly Northern Italian food Made in Italy: Food & Stories states that bread is such a big part of the meal for Italians.

Giorgio goes on to say that very little bread is baked in home kitchens over in Italy as the tradition of a local baker lives on; something I’ve witnessed (and my waistline suffered for) on my travels to that beautiful land. I wish it were the same here in England, maybe it’s easy to find artisan breads in big cities but alas it isn’t here in my rural location; hence if I want good bread I have to bake it.

So why am I telling you this? Is this a bread related post? Strictly speaking it isn’t, it’s actually the post about March’s Daring Bakers Challenge which is based around pasta! However, since it’s an Italian meal, how could I not bake some fresh bread to serve alongside it? I went for ciabatta, simply because it’s one of my favourite breads, it would more than likely make Giorgio (and many other Italians) laugh to read that as there are so many other delightful Italian breads out there and ciabatta was originally the bread of the poor; once the ‘best loaves’ had been made the remaining dough was shaped into a slipper and then baked — giving ciabatta its trademark shape.

I used my old tried and tested favourite recipe, but there are lots out there and I normally love to experiment, this time however for ease I wanted a recipe I knew would work out well.  I made some plain and some studded with black olives which worked really well and allowed for everyone to get bread of their preferred ‘flavour’.

Baking is a beautiful thing to do, soft, warm and gorgeous dough, a truly amazing smell as the bread rises and then the smell becomes something truly outstanding as the dough cooks; your family will love you for the joy you bring with your beautiful bread; and above all the process of combining yeast, flour, water, salt (and maybe a few other goodies depending on the bread) is totally magical – if you haven’t baked bread, get in the kitchen and do it! Now, that is an order!

So back to the Daring Bakers Challenge!

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

As per my usual routine I didn’t stick purely to the recipes written by the Daring Bakers Hosts, instead after gaining their permission I did something rather unusual – I made patterned pasta!

There are hundreds of different shapes and varieties of pasta in Italy, with each type being particular to a region or town, some so local that you will find them only in one or maybe two villages; yet some are so famous they are know the whole world over — how amazing is that? Pasta is the Italian staple, even Garibaldi, when he liberated Naples in 1860 vowed that pasta would be the force that would unite Italy! The choosing of pasta is almost an art form, each pasta has a sauce it is linked to and this again differs from region to region. The whole subject fascinates me.

It’s a fair while since my trusty pasta machine has been out in use and I was beginning to feel bad about that, so handy this challenge came up I promise I did also roll the pasta as much as I could by hand but in the end I couldn’t resist the use of this lovely kitchen toy.

I used organic stone ground Tipo 00 flour, which I always keep well stocked up with, it’s such a versatile flour and one I always feel a need to have on hand, in fact if I run out it’s a cause for concern. I love it’s creamy colour when compared with other flours, although I have noticed that some of the non organic ones are much whiter.

I couldn’t get any spinach from either my local organic store or my vegetable box supplier, so I substituted with watercress; it worked perfectly. I used the recipe specified by the Hosts to make a basic pasta dough – I needed to add another egg though as I’d bought my eggs from a local farm and to get the desired weight I needed the extra egg, obviously they were rather small, I did get a bonus of a double yolker though which improved the colour of my dough no end.  As nice as the recipe was I prefer Giorgio’s it is much richer and silkier. 

I love the fontina di farina stage of pasta making it makes me feel all childlike again, simply cracking the eggs into a fountain of flour and mixing/kneading away to form a lovely smooth ball of dough; it’s a fabulous thing to do, another almost magical culinary task. It is a little messy, tricky at times and sometimes it feels like you’ll never get there but do persevere — if it really won’t come together wet your hands but don’t add water to the dough and continue working. Please don’t resort to a food mixer unless you really have to, this is too much fun to miss out on.

Once the dough is smooth, silky and rested, rolling it out isn’t so tricky, but you get to a point (or at least I did) where a pasta machine is a great asset,  you need to get to a point where the dough is nearly see through, by that I mean if you put your hand underneath the dough you can just see it.

Now you can start to make the patterned dough, simply pluck off some nice watercress leaves (or spinach of course), leaving the stem if it is very delicate and lay them on the rolled out pasta before folding the dough back over itself and passing through the pasta machine again; very pretty don’t you think?

Note the rather inquisitive Murphy poking his head up at the unit! Can I help?

Once you have a nice long piece of dough you can then cut them into lasagne sheets and hang them up to dry, not necessarily like I did I hasten to add

The ragu recipe used was up to us, I oh so surprisingly chose Giorgio Locatelli’s recipe from, you’ve guessed it, Made in Italy: Food & Stories. It’s my families favourite version so what choice did I have? It’s also pretty quick to prepare and takes very kindly to incredibly long, slow cooking – I left it in the slow oven compartment of the range for the whole day and by that I mean it was in for a good 10 hours the day (giving the house a gorgeous scent) before we wanted to eat the lasagne, the flavours deepen and intensify for being left overnight. No photo unfortunately as I forgot, just take my word for it, it looked and smelt gorgeous. I used the hosts recipe for the béchamel. 

Each region of Italy has its favourite ragu, sometimes mixing the types of meats used, sometimes using one meat only; in Toscana (Tuscany) for example they like to add chicken livers to their ragu. However, he admits that you can use whatever meats you prefer and adapt the recipe to include what you have e.g. he thinks Parmesan cheese goes better with pork than Pecorino, but if that is all you have go ahead and use it. My personal favourites for ragu are wild boar or wild hare (oh how it makes me salivate to think of those beautiful meals I have eaten in Roma and Umbria), not something I can easily get here so I stuck to coarsely minced beef.

I wanted to make both a traditional baked lasagne as the hosts requested and a free fall one (having seen a gorgeous one while reading through the pasta chapter in Giorgio’s book). As per Giorgio’s guidelines I made up the lasagne for baking the morning that I wanted to cook it, this allows the pasta and sauces to gel together, giving a firmer result — an essential in Italy, especially if he is right in saying that:

Kids will cry in Italy if you give them lasagne al forno that doesn’t stand up straight on the plate. If it falls over they say: “What’s wrong; it’s all floppy?”

Oh I so hope I did this classic dish justice! 

I had some lovely home made ricotta sat in the fridge so decided to use that instead of the béchamel in the free fall lasagne, layering up the ragu, pasta and cheese until I’d four layers of goodness. I drizzled a little extra ragu and ricotta around the plate before serving. Please excuse the photo, it tasted oh so much better than it looked I promise  

The creaminess and coolness of the fresh ricotta worked really well against the strong flavours of the ragu and I was surprised at how much the flavour of the watercress came through in the pasta too.

Both versions of the lasagne were a complete success, for ease the baked lasagne will be more frequently cooked but for entertaining I’ll return to the free fall variety too. I know you can’t see it from the photo but it really did look very cheffy and interesting.

Quite a busy day all told in the kitchen, isn’t this just the perfect way to chill out afterwards, lol?

The recipes not linked to here will be able to be found on the host’s blog sites.  I’m deliberately sending you there as they all have amazing sites that you need to see!

I also need to say a big thank you both to the hosts for the fantastic and thoroughly enjoyable challenge, and to my dad for his photographic work — taking the pics of me in action!