Food Notes: 6/16 Pici Pasta
Lemon and butter sauce, Gatorade casserole, chicken nuggets for grownups, and more
I was invited to a press event to learn how to make Pici pasta. So obviously I said yes.
Friday was hot. I rode the subway to Little Italy for a celebration of Tuscany and a lesson on making pici. I was the second person on the scene, and soon I was sipping a spritz made with rhubarb flavored amaro.
Pici pasta is a common handmade pasta dish served across Tuscany. It’s just about everywhere, and when we were touring the countryside last year with a four-year-old, he ate a lot of it, usually with butter.
Pici goes by other names, because why would Italians agree on something simple as what to call a pasta shape. According to Oretta Zanini de Vita’s Encyclopedia of Pasta, in Montepulciano its known as pinci. In Montalcino, it also goes by ciriole, strangozzi, and stringozzi. And if you head down to Lazio, it’s known as umbrici. Pici was popularized in Sienna and spread from there.
The pasta making class was being held at Evento, an event space on Canal street, on the border of Chinatown and Little Italy. The afternoon lunch and cooking class was sponsored by All About Italy and Toscana Promozione Turistica to celebrate Tuscan products and travel to Italy. I was maybe the least influential influencer at the table.
Chef Andrea Belfiore, co-owner of the event space, led the class. His recipe called for equal parts of semolina and 00 flour. He described the recipe as a high hydration pasta, and then added another part of lukewarm water so that the dough was 50% water by volume.
Then we knead.
Not to brag, but I kneaded that dough so well chef asked me to hold my bowl up as an example.
After the dough comes together and has been worked to the consistency of pasta (if you know, you know), its best to allow it rest for at least 10 minutes, though I find allowing dough to rest for 20 to 30 is better. Since we were in a classroom setting, we kept working through it.
The process of shaping the pici begins with small nodules of dough clipped from the larger ball. Then these are rolled on the hand, starting from the center and gently increasing the length. The dough moves outward. Each sting should look like a little worm.
I smartly captured the motion of Chef Belfiore’s hands.
I rolled a small box’s worth of pasta. I had shared the dough with Melcabey, an Instagram travel and food influencer who encouraged me to roll out as many pieces of pasta as could from our dough ball.
After we finished up making our pastas, we were all served a lunch.
But wait, there’s more.
I carried my box of handmade pasta home. In the heat of the afternoon, some of the pasta I had made melted back together into a large ball of dough. Oops. At home, I set about re-rolling the pasta. This is probably not the best thing to do to dough, but it was definitely better than boiling a solid ball of sticky pici.
For the sauce, I decided to recreate a lemony pasta dish we were served at for lunch at Panzanello Chianti Winery. The pasta dish was a creamy, lemon-infused pasta course. In truth, I was attempting to reconstruct a dish I had tasted only one time, a year ago.
It worked.
The pasta came together perfectly and the lemony sauce was the perfect compliment to the fresh pasta.
Lemony, Buttery Pici Pasta
INGREDIENTS
Fresh handmade pici pasta
1 lemon
2 tablespoons of butter (or maybe three)
Black pepper
Parmesan (serving suggestion)
INSTRUCTIONS
Add pasta to rolling boil and cook
In a sauce pan, melt buter
Zest lemon and add to butter
Taste the pasta, its probably done already
Drain pasta when cooked
Add to butter
Add the juice from the lemon
Stir
Season with black pepper
Garnish with parmesan to serve
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