Nonna's Kitchen 16 - Ravioli and Chicken Cacciatore

In an earlier Nonna’s Kitchen about Spaghetti and Meatballs, I recounted a story about having spaghetti for the first time at a friend’s house, and being horribly disappointed because it bore no resemblance to what I thought of as spaghetti. I remembered a similar story from my childhood when I was thinking about ravioli – one about my brother. When I was much younger, before supermarkets became the norm in Missoula, the Broadway Market served less as a source for specialty foods and more like a neighborhood market. In addition to the Italian staples that became the Market’s forte in later years, the shelves were filled with things like cleaning supplies, Wonder Bread, Chips Ahoy Cookies and a wide assortment of canned foods. Three of these cans were particular favorites of my brother, Greg – foods he’d eaten and loved at friends’ houses. They were Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli, and Franco American SpaghettiOs and RavioliOs. EEEWWWWW! I hated them! Sickly sweet sauce, squishy pasta – I can’t even believe my grandparents had them on the shelves… My brother wanted them for lunch at every opportunity, and he was indulged sometimes. In fact, Nonno was known to have given Greg a can or two in his stocking at Christmas time when he was very young.

I just told this story to Christine, and she states that Franco American and Chef Boyardee are ENTIRELY different things; she admitted to eating Chef Boyardee ravioli cold out of the can in high school. Who are these people?

My mother only has one ravioli story, and it sort of illustrates the same point that I made about spaghetti – that there are as many recipes for spaghetti as there are people in Italy. Every family does something a little different, so that the word has come to mean filled pasta in sauce, whether stuffed with meat, or lobster, or pumpkin, or whatever. When my great grandmother – Bisnonna D’Orazi – made chicken cacciatore and ravioli, the sauce was so hot and filled with peppers that my mother could barely choke it down, and she cried the whole time. My family stopped cooking with hot peppers when my grandfather developed ulcers, so those recipes are lost now, much to my dismay. I add them to most things when I’m cooking for myself.

The recipes this week are for my grandmother’s traditional Chicken Cacciatore and her spinach ravioli – the only kind she ever made, to my knowledge. Ravioli are labor intensive, so they were most often reserved for some sort of celebration, and were always accompanied by Cacciatore; my mother insists that it’s the only sauce to be used with ravioli. However, I experiment with fillings and sauces, and I encourage you to do so once you have the basic techniques down. These are done entirely by hand – no dodgy little rolling pin or press to crimp the pasta shapes – and my mother still rolls the dough out by hand, too. You’re allowed to use a Kitchenaid pasta roller – I do – but don’t bother with the specialized tools – it’s faster by this method. When you decide to experiment with fillings and sauces, you can also play with shapes and sizes – some people’s ravioli are round, and some are nearly as large as potstickers – I like the smaller ones because the ratio of pasta to filling is more to my liking.


The Recipe:
Ravioli
Serves 6-8 as a first course

Pecorino Romano is a sheep’s milk cheese that is quite salty and sharp, where Parmesan is a more nutty flavor. Take the time to look for it but don’t drive yourself crazy – Asiago or Parmesan will certainly work in a pinch.

Total prep and cooking time: about 2 hours

Ingredients:
2 batches of homemade egg pasta (see Nonna’s Kitchen 1)
1/2 C. ground beef
1/2 C. Pecorino Romano cheese, finely grated
1 10 oz. box frozen chopped spinach, thawed and thoroughly drained
1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
1 large egg, beaten

Brown the ground beef in a large skillet, using a wooden spoon or other utensil to break the meat up into tiny bits. Cook for approximately 10 minutes, until thoroughly done. Allow to cool slightly, then add the cheese, spinach and nutmeg. Mix very well – use your hands – and then season to taste with salt and pepper. (Go easy on the salt, as the cheese is quite salty.) Mix in the egg and then refrigerate until cold. You can make the filling up to three days in advance, keeping it refrigerated until you’re ready to use it.

Divide the pasta into batches and roll into sheets as described in Nonna’s Kitchen 1. You want the pasta to be rolled to the thinnest setting on the machine, 1/16” if you’re rolling by hand. Using a sharp knife, cut the pasta into 1 1/2” squares – first cut long 1 1/2” strips, then cut rows of strips crosswise until you’ve got squares. You’re basically looking for something resembling a checkerboard, if that helps. When you’ve got the sheet of pasta cut, put a dollop of filling into the center of each square – about a teaspoon, slightly flattened. When you’ve got all of the squares covered, start folding – pull a square towards you, dip your finger in a bowl of water and wet three sides of the square, then fold in half - making a rectangle, not a triangle. Crimp the three edges with a fork, push to the side and move on to the next square. When you’ve finished the sheet, transfer all of the ravioli onto a floured cookie sheet and move on to the next batch of dough. I know, this sounds incredibly tedious, but it actually goes pretty fast, especially if you open a bottle of wine and draft a friend or two to help, working in assembly line fashion.

Cook the ravioli in salted boiling water, removing with a spider as they float to the top – about two minutes. Toss with Cacciatore sauce and serve, passing additional grated Romano cheese to be added at the table.

The Recipe:
Chicken Cacciatore
Serves 6-8 as a first course

Cacciatore is literally “Hunter’s Chicken” – recipes are often seen incorporating mushrooms, red and green peppers and red wine. This is my mother’s recipe, which is basically my great grandmother’s minus a few ingredients. The sauce can be used with any short pasta if you don’t want to make the ravioli – rigatoni work quite well. Faithful readers will recognize the method of cooking the tomatoes and chicken separately as the same one used for the crab spaghetti featured in Nonna’s Kitchen 13.

Total prep and cooking time – about 2 hours

Ingredients:
1/2 C. olive oil, divided
1 medium onion, finely diced
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 28 oz. can whole plum tomatoes
1 tsp. granulated sugar
1 frying chicken, cut into pieces, or 2 lb. breasts and thighs
salt and pepper to taste

In a large saucepan, heat 3 Tbsp. olive oil over medium heat. Add the tomatoes and their juice, breaking them up into coarse pieces with your hands or a wooden spoon, add the sugar and stir to incorporate. Cover and continue to cook, stirring occasionally.

After you’ve got the tomatoes going, start the chicken. Heat the remaining olive oil over medium low heat in a large Dutch oven, add the onion and garlic and sweat for about 5 minutes, or until softened but not browned. Add the chicken pieces, season liberally with salt and pepper, stir to distribute the onions and raise the heat to medium. Brown the chicken pieces on all sides, then add the tomatoes, stir to incorporate and continue to cook over low heat for at least one hour, or until the chicken is falling off the bone. Remove the chicken to a serving bowl, correct the seasoning of the sauce and serve with ravioli or pasta of your choice!

Variations: Bisnonna D’Orazi, as mentioned before, used a lot of peppers in her cooking. If you like things spicy, add about 1 tsp. of red pepper flakes to the tomatoes and otherwise cook as described.

Variation #2: Nonna’s traditional recipe – this differs from my mother’s in that it’s got, well, chicken guts. My mother picked them out as a child and gave them to her sister, and I picked them out as a child and hid them in my napkin or under my knife, so my mother leaves them out of her recipe. However, if you’re a chicken giblet and gizzard person, you may want to give this a try, as it changes the flavor significantly and is definitely more traditional. Follow the basic recipe, browning the chicken liver, heart, neck, gizzard and giblets with the chicken. Before adding the tomatoes, remove these pieces, set the liver aside and finely dice the others, adding back to the pot with the tomatoes. About ten minutes before serving, dice the liver and add it to the pot – it breaks down too much otherwise. Don’t be too upset if your kids hide the stray bits…

Mangia, mangia, fatte grande!