I took a deep breath, poured an enormous glass of cold white wine, and basically “acted.” Yes, dear reader, as you have seen me do for close to forty years now on stages and screens big and small, I simply pretended that I had been making pizzoccheri since birth. I moved with swift assurance as I talked through the steps while the cameras rolled, and within about forty minutes, from the initial pasta-making process to the final grate of Bitto, I served up the best pizzoccheri I have ever made and probably will ever make. Even the grandfather devoured his and told me it was perfect.
He was to die that night.
Kidding.
How did I do it?
Why did it work?
When fear grips the soul, it’s amazing what one can achieve. Especially when the cameras are rolling.
Now, I am sure that the indigenous ingredients, local buckwheat flour, sweet white Alpine butter, voluptuous Valtellina cheese, and of course the Bitto had a great deal to do with the successful outcome. I would also not be afraid to suggest that the comforting ambience of a stone cottage heated by an old wood stove as a mix of rain and snow blanketed the foothills of the Italian Alps perhaps played a significant role as well. As they say, location, location, Bitto, acting.
Here is how pizzoccheri is made and what you must do in order to truly understand why the dish was created ages ago.
First, make sure it’s cold out. Then, go for a hike up a mountain or partake in some winter activity such as skiing, skating, wood chopping, Alpine cow milking, hunting, ice fishing, axe throwing, or perhaps… cheese making.
Pizzoccheri
— SERVES 4 TO 6 —
1 medium Savoy cabbage
A big, sexy slab of Valtellina cheese, or something similar, like fontina
3 large yellow potatoes
A fuck of a lot of butter
4 large garlic cloves
1 pound pizzoccheri
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 handfuls grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, or Bitto （if available and you can afford it）
Salt
Remove and discard any tough outer leaves from the cabbage and roughly chop it into long pieces. Thinly cut about 15 pieces of Valtellina cheese and also grate about 3 cups. Set aside.
Preheat the oven to 325°F.
Peel and dice the potatoes and boil until cooked but still firm, about 15 minutes or so. Halfway through boiling, add the cabbage to the potatoes. When the potatoes and cabbage are cooked, drain them and set them aside.
In a large, deep frying pan over low heat, melt the fuckload of butter. Gently crush （if that’s even possible） the garlic cloves, place them in the pan, and cook until they soften and the butter has melted but not turned brown.
Boil the pizzoccheri until al dente and drain, reserving about 2 cups of the water. Return the pizzoccheri to the pot and drizzle them with a little olive oil or some butter so they don’t stick together. Pour a little of the garlic butter into a baking dish and begin to layer the ingredients, starting with the pizzoccheri, then the cabbage, then the potatoes, then both cheeses, drizzling more garlic butter over the whole mixture after each layer, adding a bit of the reserved pasta water to ensure it doesn’t get too thick but making sure it doesn’t get too watery. You may need only a cup. Top the final layer with a drizzle of olive oil and more grated cheese.
Cover with foil and bake for about 15 minutes or so. Remove the foil and return to the oven until the top has a slight crisp. Salt to taste.
Serve it and eat it and drink a lot of wine with it and think about how much you deserve it after you burned off so many calories being so active in the frigid out-of-doors.
Carbonara
Roma
Spaghetti alla carbonara.
Fuck.
It’s incredible.
Especially at this one place in Rome.
FUCK!!!!
* * *
Allow me to better articulate.
Unlike pizzoccheri, carbonara is universally known and loved by pasta devotees, but there are so many iterations of it that I am compelled to set the record as straight as a record can be set straight in the complex and personal world of Italian cooking regarding what makes a true carbonara.
No one really knows the genesis of this rich and unctuous dish, but supposedly the basis of this typical Roman fare was invented by shepherds in the hills of Lazio who brought pasta, guanciale, and Parmigiano or Pecorino Romano with them when they went to tend their flocks. The combination of those ingredients would become known as pasta “alla Gricia,” and it is the addition of eggs that creates “alla carbonara.” It has also been posited that carbonara was actually a post–World War II invention of the Romans to satisfy the palates of the American and British soldiers who pined for their breakfasts of ham and eggs. I must admit this rings dubiously to these ears, as well as to those of Aldo, the owner of the Roman restaurant Pommidoro, which serves what is to many, including me, the best carbonara in a city of carbonaras.