Uncle Silvio’s Baked Pasta with Mozzarella and Hard-boiled eggs: Abruzzo (video)

There’s no denying the cliche: returning to the sea is a bit like coming home. The other day I popped over to the Adriatic coast, Abruzzo, to attend to a couple of things and see some familiar faces. The rock barriers there in some places come right up close to the beach. I couldn’t resist the temptation to wade through a few feet of sea to climb onto one. Once over the top and seated on the other side, the side facing out to the sea, everything seems more quiet. The cautious mini crabs scrambling around beneath, the various small fish that swim around the barrier in different colored and sized schools, the tranquil sound of the easy waves that reverberate in the rocks, the hues of blue and green under the sun, the endless horizon, take away much of anything else on your mind. It’s where we come from. So I got a little wet. But despite it being on the cost, Abruzzo isn’t really a seaside region.

It is a necessary background though, the sweet-scented Adriatic – (nowadays rather more filthy than a few decades ago and flattened on its floor, far beneath the water line, from all the heavy fishing nets.) But just walk a few hundred meters away and there begins Abruzzo proper. Strong and gentle … and stocky. Beautiful, but not the beauty of, say, the Alps – that can take your breath away, if you’re susceptible to it, without, as it were, even trying. Abruzzo’s beauty is not for everyone. Every corner is not a picture-postcard as certain more famous places in Tuscany or the lakes in the North. It’s not snobby, not chic. Let’s say that if Saint Tropez or Portofino are for you, you probably will not find your earthly heaven here.

Its beauty instead offers you the best of itself. It will let you into its forests, rivers, mountains of pure rock, even its wooden fishing huts, ‘trabocchi’, which seem almost like expressions of fatalism on this coast of west Europe’s greenest region. Strong and gentle, that’s Abruzzo. It’ll touch something solid inside, if you are willing to let it.

As will many of its people, (although things are changing there as well. The bi-forcation of resources: socialism for the wealthy, a sort of corporate fascism for the rest of us. Oh brave new world…) The men in these parts after a certain age begin to resemble the territory from which they came, even when they emigrate. Their faces take on more and more the appearance of the shapes of the rocks and mountains, their bodies often become a bit like the trunks of trees, low but broad and strong. They grow old well. Women often posses more or less an infinite supply of physical energy and are loaded with practical intelligence, kind of like Madonna. Which is to be expected. They worked hard here, nothing for free. And they still work, when they can find work. You need hearty food for all that hard labor.

Uncle Silvio, Silvio is affectionately called by 99.7 percent of the inhabitants of his town – the last .3 percent not yet only because they moved in last Wednesday and don’t know him yet – is a classic Abruzzese. Honest, hard worker. Won’t ever try to screw you. We’re not in Rome. Here they still fight over who has the honor to pay the restaurant check, not the other way around. Uncle Silvio doesn’t eat fish, and rarely goes to sea. But the pretty hill-top village where he lives has a pure and sweet view right onto the Adriatic that lightens all the other burdens of life. Silvio is always ready to give you the best of himself and his cuisine. Authentic stuff, traditional flavors, of great substance. And calories. You may think, after eating lunch or dinner at his place, that eating is the main Abruzzesan activity during weekends. It isn’t. Digesting is. But with pleasure. And with a view of the Adriatic Sea, always present, a substrate on which the Abruzzo rests.

Ingredients:

For the baked pasta:

360 grams of short, thick pasta (like mezze maniche or rigatoni, paccheri, etc.)

Salt & pepper

2L. of tomato passato or around 20 skinned and cleaned tomatoes

broth or other liquid

2-4 sausages

1 chunk of beef, 3-400 grams (under-shoulder or other 2nd category cut, something with fat – but good quality meat)

1 chunk of lamb, 200 grams 1/-

200 grams or so of ground round or mixed hamburger meat

4 boiled eggs

1-2 mozzarelle

1 onion

dry red wine, 1 glass

2 celery stocks

2 cloves garlic

EV olive oil

1 bay leaf

Parmigiano cheese

serves 4

The ragu-stew as usual, brown the ground meat first in some oil on high, lower and add the chopped falvoring (garlic, celery, onion) add the wine and up the heat again, then add the tomato, salt and pepper, then the meat chunks and herbs to taste (bay or thyme or even nothing at all. It’ll still come out delicious,) lower the burner to the minimum of the minimum and let it go low and slow for…., …, … the more the merrier, at least 2-and a half hours stirring now and then and adding liquid as needed. When the sauce has dissolved itself into something lovely red and glistening, with an almost pornographic scent, the meat trembles at a wooden spoons touch… boil the noodles in salted water and the eggs in water with a bit of vinegar. Slice the fresh mozzarella into happy-sized slices, quarter the eggs when they’re done and mix them with the cooked noodles, then spoon in the ragu sauce and mix. Grate some parmesan – real parmigiano though, no, no, no, no Kraft, not ever – and shove the casserole into a hot oven, about 180 degrees celsius, 10-15 mn. or so and if you want some crunch plop on the grill setting near the end for a few minutes – but be careful not to burn. Accompany with a decent Montepulciano d’Abbruzzo and don’t worry about cooking the next day. Not because you’ll still be full but because the solids work great with the remaining sauce as a main course of leftovers. Tonight, in the unlikely event you have any space left, take a deep breath and…

for the chicken and peppers:

2-4 chicken legs

1 bell pepper

2 potatoes

2 garlic cloves

rosemary

EV oil

Salt and pepper

white wine (about a glass)

…oil and season the legs and potato chunks, place them in a casserole and shove’em in a hot oven 170 degrees celsius or so.  10 min, then in goes the wine. 10 minutes, then in go the whole cloves lightly crushed, rosemary in peices but still on the branch and thick slices of peeled and cleaned bell pepper. 10min, check the birds and spoon over some of the sauce forming below in the casserole. 10 minutes or so more check again – they’re likely done. The kitchen by now will smell, as it does in Silvio’s, like… home. (Well, if you’re from the the central-south of Italy…)