Italian Recipe 1

In an email, a friend asked if I’d come across any new recipes for dishes that had made an impression. This is my current favorite. I don’t know what it’s called, but I had it in a restaurant and loved it and have been playing around with versions ever since. It's very heavy and rich but the saltiness of the pork and the bite of the spinach are perfect together.

Start a pot of water to boil pasta. Meanwhile, sauté about 200 grams (um a little less than 1/2 pound?) of diced pancetta in a little olive oil (enough to keep it from sticking at first but not too much since fat will be released and you don’t want it to get overly greasy). Once the pancetta is nearly browned, add fresh spinach and quickly cook. Optional: season with nutmeg, garlic and pepper to taste. You can also add peas, mushrooms or any other vegetable that suits you. The pancetta and spinach are the classic combination. The goal is to get this mixture hot and freshly cooked just as your pasta is done.

Stop the pasta just short of done as you will finish cooking it with the meat and vegetable combination. Traditionally, long pasta is used. Drain the pasta (but leave a little moist), then combine it with the other ingredients and mix thoroughly over a low heat. Here, they add about a 1/2 to 3/4 cup of panna da cucina to make it creamy. Over low heat, heat everything through to finish cooking the pasta. Serve with fresh parmesan.

Panna da cucina is Italian sour cream except that it isn't sour but has the same consistency. You could probably use sour cream or maybe just a bit of heavy cream and reduce it. Good luck. Enjoy!

On a completely separate note, I was watching ‘The Shooter’ starring Mark Wahlberg with Raimundo the other night. He had never seen it and I had seen the American version so I knew what was happening even though it was dubbed. It’s a fairly decent if formulaic action/thriller movie that contains few surprises in the plot and comes to a satisfying and loud conclusion. As we were watching it though, I couldn’t help but be amused by Raimundo’s reaction to it. He was in constant fear for the hero’s life even though everyone knows the hero never dies. He also wasn’t sure if the main love interest and wise-cracking sidekick would make it even though they always do too. What I thoguht were obvious plot twists and story developments came as a surprise to him. I say obvious only because they followed the formula for most movies of this kind. And there were other moments in the movie that for an American who has watched hundreds of movies similar to this are pretty obvious but to him were completely surprising. I couldn’t decide if it was an issue specific to Raimundo or maybe since not as many American movies come to Italy if the formula still works more effectively here? At any rate, it made watching the movie much more interesting.

I wonder what Eric is doing right now?