Then I had Rigatoni with butter and Parmesan.

 
The best comfort food for me is always the pasta “in white” as we call it in Italy: bad day, horrible meeting at work, you can’t stand your boss or colleagues? With this pasta you will get back to the time when you were little and everything was so simple and easy… and this pasta was your favorite dish ever.

This was my day yesterday: cold, busy and actually miserable. The cherry on the cake was that I just wanted a celeriac pasta soup: come on it's even the season for celeriac!!!
No, instead it was just impossible to find any celeriac in town, and on top of that… my fridge was empty.  
How did I made up my day? With the most gorgeous and simplest taste!... Pasta with butter and Parmesan (you have always these basic ingredients in the fridge).Try and you will feel in peace with the world again.

I used Rigatoni Pastificio dei Campi,a chunky and ribbed shape. I let them cook al dente and after serving them in a plate I added some good spoons of butter and lots of freshly grated Parmesan. A bit of fresh grated black pepper and the night is yours.

I lighted up a candle I opened my new book and I enjoyed my pasta!

 
I wish you a nice evening too!

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The Italian traditional dishes for the festivities

This is the second Christmas on this blog and if last year I told you about the tradition of the Christmas eve, this year I will tell you a bit more about the traditional Christmas day menu.

As you probably know this day in Italy it’s really important, especially for the religious meaning of the celebration. So we respect the old tradition to don’t eat meat on the 24^th in the night and to have just dishes made with fish or vegetarian recipes. Last year I cooked Spaghetti with Smoked salmon and cream of courgettes but another classic, especially in the south are the vermicelli o linguine with clams.

On the 25^th instead everyone is free to cook anything you want, but the classic Italian tradition normally sees as a starter in the north some fresh pasta like the classic tortellini filled with meat, while in the south is really famous the timballo di maccheroni.

This recipe is so famous that has also been included in a really funny movie: BIG NIGHT, and here is the trailer where you can even have a little glimpse of it.

This is the recipe from the movie if you want to live a truly Italian Christmas Lunch.

Ingredients for around 8 people:

500g Millerighe di Gragnano, Pastificio dei Campi (for something a little smaller you can use the Mezzani Rigati), 50g butter 400g mozzarella 100g grated Parmesan 500g pork loin, 1  onion ,100g of pancetta in slices or bacon if you can’t find it, 1 glass of white wine, oil,salt, pepper, thyme, rosemary, 3 bottle of tomatoes puree, bread crumbs, 1egg.

For the shortbread: 500g flour 250g sugar 6 egg yolks 250g butter.

Ok the recipe is a bit complex but it’s something you can actually do for a special occasion like the Christmas and you can even prepare it in two times. The first day you prepare the sauce, wrap the meat in the bacon, then brown it in a little olive oil with the chopped onion and herbs, pour the white wine, then add the tomatoes puree. When the sauce is thick, turn off the fire and pull out the meat, which you will use to prepare small meatballs (adding parmesan cheese, and egg and bread crumbs, soaked in milk and than squeezed). Then fry them in a little olive oil. 

The second day, prepare the dough, working all the ingredients and letting it rest for at least an hour. Meanwhile cook the pasta and add to the sauce, butter and Parmesan cheese. Grease a ring cake tin and cover with a disc of dough. Fill the dough alternating pasta, meatballs, mozzarella and more Parmesan cheese diced, and end with a layer of pasta (like in the picture from selfishcooking ). Close with a disc of puff pastry and seal well, brushing with a little 'egg yolk. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees for 30 ', let it cool and serve.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

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This time in company of some great wines

While in Italy and in London everyone is thinking about the Christmas, the magic menu we will prepare, the presents still missing to buy and some great time with family and friends, in France the atmosphere is much more relaxed: they have still plenty of time to dedicate to the good food and wine.

This weekend in fact Pastificio dei Campi had the honor to be part of the Salon des Vignerons for the event Le Vin en Tête, the show dedicated to natural wine. On Saturday the 3^rd and Sunday the 4^th  Pastificio dei Campi offered to all the French visitors a classic familiar Neapolitan Sunday dish, Ziti alla Genovese, inviting all to party in the italian way.

Two cooking workshops had taken place to explain the history and original recipe for this delicious and unique dish made ​​of onions, meat and pasta from Gragnano.

Are you curious to know what really happened? Just look at these nice instagram pictures taken during the event by the same... Mr Pacchero :)

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There is no fight... just brotherhood

"It's better fresh or dried pasta?" This is a weird question for me. Eventually you can ask "Do you prefer fresh or dried pasta?" but you will just receive a personal answer. Lots of time in this country I listened someone asking this question and trying to compare the two: lots of people just things that fresh pasta is the "original and real pasta" while the dried one it's just an industrial version of it... or even that dried pasta is fresh pasta gone old (!?!?!?)

Anyway in Italy there is never been a reason for the two to be against each other, but just different occasions to use both.

As Mr Carluccio recently said in an interview: "There are 600 shapes of pasta, but only certain types should be used for certain sauces, and fresh is not always best. Fresh egg pasta is good for ravioli or mushroom, tomato and truffle sauce, but dried pasta such as spaghetti or linguine should be used for seafood as it has a little more bite." But I would add also Bolognese and reach meaty or cheesy sauces.
The "war" raged about whether fresh pasta is better than dried pasta, it's just no sense: both of them have different characteristics and use, so maybe it's just the case to try different sauces with them and find out what do you like the most.
"Fresh egg pasta is the most common fresh pasta and can be homemade or store-bought.  It is more typical of northern Italy, where the land is fertile and eggs have generally been more plentiful and affordable.  Southern Italians tend to rely more on dried pasta, that's keeps well in the hot and dry climate."  
For fresh pasta I suggest some simple melted butter sauce enriched by some sage, but also cream sauces are popular and vegetable and light tomato sauces.  The basic dough for homemade fresh pasta consists of eggs and all-purpose flour.  No salt, olive oil, or water is added.  The only other ingredient that may be used is spinach or Swiss chard for green pasta dough.

The finest dried pasta instead is made from golden semolina flour ground from durum wheat and mixed with water. In Pastificio dei Campi we use just 100% high qualitity Italian wheat, sourced in selected properties.  Once shaped, the pasta must be fully dried before it can be packaged and good quality dried pasta should have a slightly rough surface and compact body that maintains its firmness in cooking. We achieve this rought surface with the traditional bronze extraction and we are sure to maintain all the properties of the pasta with a long and slow drying process. Lots of industrial pasta is just dried for few hours a really hig temperature: this burn and destroy the pasta. We take 48 hours at around 40 degrees.

Typical sauces for dried pasta are based on olive oil rather than butter.  But as some of the recipes bear out, there are several butter-based sauces that combine well with dried pasta. In southern Italy, dried pasta is most often married with a tomato sauce, which may be plain or with meat, seafood, or vegetables.
I adore both of them but I found the dried pasta lighter and more versatile and good for a day by day use! What do you prefer?

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An online unique offer for pasta lovers

As you probably know today is Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving that since 2005 has been recognized as the most successful for sales online. In these days in fact is starting the real Christmas shopping and always more people are doing it online. Quick, easy and no-stress the online shopping  is definitely the best s solution.

And do you know that you can buy even our pasta online? Not just on foodinthecity as  lots already know, but even directly on our website where in fact you won’t just find the normal pasta packages, but some special Maxi pasta Cube available just from our online shop.

What are the Maxi Cube Pastificio dei Campi? For those who has never seen them before, just let me tell you that are the best and more original food present you can give to a real pasta lover:  it's a giant box, always in the shape of a cube, like all the boxes of Pastificio dei Campi, which contains various kinds of pasta.
There is the Maxi Cube tasting, with 5 pounds of pasta Gragnano PGI bronze drawn and slowly dried at low temperature, in 10 very different formats, which represent the most famous Pastificio dei Campi shapes: paccheri, broken candles, ziti, penne rigate, orecchiette, ribbed tubes, spaghetti, linguine. And there is the Custom Cube Maxi, for who knows what he loves and wants to choose in total freedom  the shapes to be included (for a total of 4 kg).
And it’s not finished yet. After the success of last year also the Maxi Cube Selection is on sale again: a gourmet kit, consisting of 4 kg of pasta Pastificio dei Campi, a bottle of extra virgin olive oil DOP from the Sorrentina Peninsula  L’Archangelo and the tomatoes Miracle of San Gennaro by Sabatino Abagnale.
For more information please see our online shop and good Cyber Monday to everyone!

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We are in Foodies 2012 & Sua Eccellenza Italia

While in London we were busy organizing our presence at Masterchef live, in Italy Pastificio dei Campi was achieving a space in some great publications: Foodies 2012 and Sua Eccellenza Italia.

Foodies 2012 is a guide created by the Gambero Rosso, one of the most famous Italian food and wine magazine, designed for connoisseurs of the 3rd millennium, for an audience of fans who not only look for great restaurants, but also street food of high quality, specialty food producers, and so on.

We are happy to announce that this year Pastificio dei Campi has been added to the guide as one of the artisanal producer selected by the editors.

Then, Sua Eccellenza Italia, is instead a gold book released by Gambero Rosso for its celebration of his 25 years anniversary and dedicated to all the most famous symbols of the Food & Wine in Italy: there are small producers, artisans and shopkeepers; the great chefs and the brands that in the world are synonymous of Italian flair. The great chefs and innkeepers of tradition. These and those in a book of 800 pages that tells the good and beautiful in Italy. We are glad to be part of this amazing publications too.

All this just awards are the fruits of our commitment in making a product truly special and unique, following the old italian traditions and only the best ingredients available in the country.

This is to cheers with you all for our success and we hope you will enjoy our products too.

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Old english sausages ragu'

It’s again the time of the year when it’s tradition to cook and eat sausages all around UK: from the 31^st of October to the 6^th of November it was “the sausage week”. If you have been out on the 5^th of November for the bonfire night, you probably know that the traditional dish of the day is bangers and mash, but lots are the recipe you can find with sausages… even in the italian cuisine.

So for my weekend I decide to treat me with a new pasta recipe: Penne a candela with sausages ragu’.

For the occasion I went in a specialized butcher near Marylebone: The Ginger Pig… no other name could be more right for the product I was looking top buy. The shop was full of costumers and the smell of the sausages I bought it was irresistible. I choose the Old English Sausage, just made with english pork and herbs.

Here is the recipe for 3-4 people:

- 350/400 gr of  pasta: we hardly recommend Penne a Candela Pastificio dei Campi

- 3 sausages

- A jar of peeled tomatoes

- Half onion

- olive oil

- A glass of red wine

- Salt and pepper

- Fresh rosemary

Place some oil on the bottom of a pot, and soon after the finely chopped onion. Let it cook a bit and then add the sausage. Take off the skin and mince it in the pot. Let it get brown and then add the wine slowly. Then add the tomatoes, salt and pepper. Let simmer, stirring occasionally for about half an hour.

Prepare the pasta al dente then drain it and toss it in the sauce for a few minutes before serving. Add some Parmesan if you like but I can tell you that without is divine anyway!

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