"Cucina Rustica" & "Patsy's [NYC Restaurant] Cookbook" - Pasta with Sausage and Fennel Sauce and Pasta Bolognese - Christmas Eve 2017

Date I made these recipes:  December 24, 2017 - Christmas Eve

Cucina Rustica by Viana La Place & Evan Kleiman

Published by William Morrow & Company, Inc.

ISBN: 0-688-16063-8; copyright 1990

Recipe: “Little Ears” Pasta with Sausage and Fennel (Orecchiette con Salsicce e Finnocchio) – p. 188-189

Patsy’s Cookbook – Classic Recipes From a New York City Landmark Restaurant by Sal J. Scognamillo; Foreword by Nancy Sinatra

Published by Clarkson Potter Publishers

ISBN: 0-609-60954-8; copyright 2002

Recipe:  Penne Bolognese – p. 109

As is usual and customary, I made once again a pasta dish for our Christmas Eve repast.  Normally, I make spaghetti and meatballs but from time to time, I’ve made a pasta sauce just to mix things up a little.  Either way, pasta and sauce of some kind is a family custom, so I set to work to find some recipes.

Reader, I found two.  When I presented these two options to my husband, and asked him to choose one, he said “Why don’t we make both?  We can always freeze the leftovers.”

For the record, we do not “freeze” in this house unless by “freeze” you mean how we are feeling right now after coming in from outside where the current temperature is -5.  This is “up” from our starting temperature of -15 below.  My feet feel like blocks of ice.  (It’s also New Year’s Eve and this is just a great way to ring in the new year, is it not?)

Anyway, as usual, and especially when I’m looking at Italian cookbooks, I got sidetracked as so many dishes sounded fantastic.  Here’s a look at Cucina Rustica’s Table of Contents: 

• Menus
• The Italian Kitchen
• Antipasti
• Insalate (Salads)
• Zuppe e Minestre (Soups)
• Pasta
• Risotto
• Polenta
• Contorni (Vegetables)
• Pesce e Frutti di Mare (Fish and Shellfish)
• Pollame e Carne (Poultry and Meat)
• Dolci (Desserts)

 For many Italian-American families, Christmas Eve is the “Feast of the Seven Fishes.”  My family never observed this, and I don’t either, so I didn’t spend much time with that chapter.  The same cannot be said though, for the soup section as I do enjoy soup, especially when the weather is cold.  I toyed briefly, with making my own recipe for Italian Wedding Soup but that recipe wasn’t in this cookbook.

Many of the poultry, meat, vegetable and dessert selections would have been fabulous on any other day but this one and so I soldiered on to the pasta section. Let me be clear that the “pasta on Christmas Eve” edict wasn’t really a family rule per se, it’s just that we started having spaghetti on Christmas Eve when I was very young and I saw no reason to deviate.

Although the pasta section covered all the bases from “Fast Spaghetti” [Sauce] on p. 152, to “Sardinian Clam Sauce” on p. 171, I settled on the sausage and fennel sauce because I like sausage, I like fennel, and I like them together!

Some of you though, may not like fennel because it tastes – slightly - of anise which is to say, licorice. Do not be fooled into thinking you’re going to be eating black candy licorice though, because fennel licorice is no where near the tangy, yet sweet candy confection.  It’s a subtle taste and it marries well with sausage.  This recipe gives you the option to add cream to the broth-based sauce and what the heck, it’s a holiday, right?  We indulged.

By the way, this book’s authors, Viana La Place and Evan Kleiman wrote also Cucina Fresca and Pasta Fresca just in case you’re in a mood to get your pasta on!

Then there’s Pasty’s Cookbook which is a “commemorative” cookbook from the famous NYC restaurant, a place so small that it is always booked, and those bookings are for the beautiful people, i.e. celebrities. In fact, the back cover is filled with quotes from some of Patsy’s most famous patrons:  Nancy Sinatra (who ate there with her dad, Frank), Tony Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, and Michael Feinstein.  (I have an awful feeling that many of you reading this are saying “Who?” but Google them and educate yourselves because these people were big deals “back in the day.”)

Given that all of us little people have a snowball’s chance in hell of eating at Patsy’s, it was nice of them to publish this cookbook, so we can all sample what might have been.

Patsy’s Table of Contents is similar to but smaller than Cucina Rustica:

• Appetizers
• Salads and Vegetables
• Soups
• Pasta, Risotto, and Sauces
• Chicken
• Meats
• Fish and Shellfish
• Desserts

 There’s also a small section for Frank Sinatra’s Favorites which I thought was hilarious, but the guy ate there a lot, so why not, right?  The book contains several stories about family and friends and also many photos.  I love cookbooks like this as I feel like I’m looking at a family album.

Once again, I focused my search on pasta dishes and the one that caught my eye was yet another meat sauce, this time Bolognese.  Bolognese is a hearty meat sauce which is why I was hesitant to make both it and the sausage and fennel sauce, but protein is a good thing, so we went for it.  Whereas the sausage and fennel sauce had cream (optional, but we added it anyway), this one called for 2 tablespoons of butter and of course I obliged.  It would be rude not to, plus, butter is often a key ingredient in the Bolognese sauce and I was not about to leave out a key ingredient. (Patsy’s noted that cream is traditional also, but they opted for butter.)

Each of these sauces takes little time to make which was great and you can save yourself a whole lot of time with the pasta by choosing one kind (I used ziti) and running with it instead of making both orecchiette and penne.  In fact, the two pastas remind me of a hilarious moment in Venice while on my honeymoon 26 years ago.  We stayed in a small pensione run by two older sisters who were almost dead-ringers for my twin great-aunts, Angelina and Catherine who hailed from Sicily. At any rate, these sisters also ran a small restaurant and when we went downstairs for dinner one night, I ordered spaghetti and Andy ordered rigatoni.

The sister who took our order then shuffled back to the kitchen and moments later, we heard them both yelling (in Italian).  Our order-taking sister came back out, looked at us and said “Due (pronounced “do-ay” spaghetti or due rigatoni,” which translated means “Two [orders of] spaghetti or two of rigatoni,” and not one of each!

We cracked up laughing because reader, we were the only people in the restaurant at that moment!  Those sisters were not going to mess around by cooking two different pastas, and I didn’t either:  I split the difference by making ziti and that was the end of that!

This concludes our Italian-centric Christmas Eve dinner discussion.  You can make these recipes at any time, but I think they are best appreciated on a holiday in the cold, bleak midwinter.

Little Ears [Pasta] with Sausage and Fennel (Orecchiette con Salsicce e Finocchio) – serves 4 to 6

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

½ medium onion, peeled and minced

2 fennel bulbs, trimmed and thinly sliced

2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

10 ounces sweet Italian sausage, casings removed, crumbled

10 fresh basil leaves, cut into julienne

5 sprigs fresh oregano, leaves only

½ cup chicken broth

½ cup young red wine

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

½ cup cream (optional)

1 pound imported orecchiette

Grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano cheese for the table

Heat the olive oil in a medium-sized skillet.  Add the onion and gently sauté over low heat until it wilts.  Add the fennel and continue cooking until both fennel and onion are soft.  Turn up the heat and add the garlic to the skillet.

Sauté garlic briefly just until it turns opaque and releases its characteristic aroma.  Add the sausage and brown over high heat.  When no trace of pink remains in the sausage, add the basil, oregano, chicken broth, red wine, and salt and pepper to taste.  Turn down the heat to medium and cook sauce until the liquids reduce and the flavors are well blended.  Add the cream, if desired, and cook just until it reduces slightly, about 5 minutes.

Cook the orecchiette in abundant boiling salted water until al dente.  Drain the pasta thoroughly and transfer to the skillet with the sauce.  Cook briefly over moderate heat, stirring well.  Serve immediately in a large shallow serving bowl topped with plenty of grated cheese of your choice.

Pasta Bolognese – Serves 4 to 6

6 medium white mushrooms, cleaned and sliced

¼ cup olive oil

1 small yellow onion, finely chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

½ pound finely ground lean beef

1 16-ounce can plum tomatoes, with juice

2 bay leaves

¼ cup Cabernet Sauvignon

¼ cup beef broth

Pinch of oregano

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

4 tablespoons freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

1 pound penne (or spiral pasta), cooked al dente

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add the mushrooms, and blanch for 2 minutes.  Drain, chop fine, and reserve.

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high flame and sauté the onions for 3 to 4 minutes, or until lightly browned.  Add the blanched mushrooms, garlic, and ground beef, and continue to cook and stir for 7 to 8 minutes, until the meat is browned.  Coarsely chop the tomatoes and add with their juice, the bay leaves, wine, broth, and oregano.  Bring to a boil, reduce the hat to low, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes.

Remove the bay leaves.  Add the butter and parsley and season with salt and pepper.  Sprinkle and stir in the Parmigiano-Reggiano and serve over the cooked pasta.