ricotta Archives

If you don’t follow Gennaro Contaldo on Instagram, you’re missing out. He posts great food all the time. When he posted a picture of a lunch time special, I had to make it. He didn’t really describe a recipe so here’s my recipe for a green pesto penne inspired by Gennaro Contaldo.

JI Canary Wharf Docklands Another special of the day, our own freshly homemade mezzemaniche pasta with zucchini, mint, spring onion and pecorino pesto, topped up with buffalo baked ricotta and grated pecorino #zuchinni #pesto #buffalo #ricotta #courgette #jamiesitalian

A post shared by Gennaro Contaldo (@gennarocontaldo) on May 11, 2017 at 4:07am PDT

Since employing Jamie Oliver in the Neal Street restaurant in the 1990s, the two have always had a close relationship. Gennaro looks on him like a son, and Jamie gives him credit for properly teaching him Italian cuisine. Hence, Gennaro has a mentor / ambassadorial role at Jamie’s Italian, roaming their branches spreading his love and knowledge of Italian food. What joy he must bring to their kitchens, with his infectious attitude and heavily accented English. I love him when he’s on TV, and he was just as genial when I met him in 2016.

Pesto is a great catch-all recipe and this spring pesto penne recipe is a good store cupboard standby. This recipe brings together great produce and turns it into a veg-packed sauce that glows with goodness. You could easily substitute the mint for another leafy one, or swap whatever greens you have on hand. Just blanch as needed to tenderise or quieten harsh flavours. Don’t skip the ricotta, the nutty creaminesss is a perfect foil to the herby flavours.

Apart from baking the ricotta, the whole thing can be done in under 15 minutes so is a great weekday dinner.

green pesto penne

Course Main Dish

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 10

Cook Time 15

Total Time 25

Servings 4 people

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

250 g ricotta
dried oregano
1 lemon
3 spring onions
1 courgette topped and tailed
1 small leek
250g penne
1 mint large bunch
25 g pine nuts
20 g parmesan freshly grated

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 200C. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Put the ricotta on this, drizzle with olive oil, grate over the zest of half a lemon, sprinkle with salt and a pinch of oregano. Bake for 30 mins or until tinged brown at the edges.
Get a large pan of salted water on to boil. When boiling furiously, add the spring onions, courgette and leek and blanch for two minutes to take the harsh notes out of the onion and start tendering the veg. Don't discard the water, now use it to cook your pasta.
While the pasta cooks, add the veg, mint, pine nuts, a swig of extra virgin olive oil and a large pinch of salt to a food processor and blitz to pieces. When everything is broken down, trickle in some more oil to make a paste. Stop the motor and grate in plenty of parmesan, lemon juice and a big splash of the pasta cooking water. Taste and add more salt, lemon or oil as required until you have a loose sauce.
When the pasta is cooked, drain and return to the pan. Toss the sauce with the pasta until well-coated. Serve in bowls, garnishing with rough chunks of baked ricotta, pine nuts and parmesan.

“Sweet sausage, in little pieces? And a layer of basil leaves right underneath the cheese? That’s Carmela’s lasagne.”
-Corrado “Uncle Junior” Soprano

I came to The Sopranos far too late. Early 2008 More4 ran every episode back-to-back and I devoured them all. I was utterly gripped by the boyish yet chilling Tony, the larger-than-life Paulie, sly yet affable Uncle June, the big mouth braggadocio Christopher, and the uneasy balance of family life with ‘mafia’ life. It’s easily one of the finest series every created, a masterpiece of character study and beautiful dialogue. If you haven’t tried it, I heartily recommend it.

And the food of the Sopranos is a thing unto itself. Whether’s it’s baked ziti, sfooyadell, cold cuts, Sunday gravy, moozadell, there’s barely a scene goes by without food being mentioned. I took the Sopranos bus tour while in New York, and ate onion rings at Holsten’s too 🙂

I also got given the Sopranos cookbooks for a birthday. It’s a little cheesy, part-written in character, but the heart and soul of Italian-American cookery is there, with it’s hearty and rib-sticking fare. As an existing fan of lasagne, I was keen to try the lasagne-with-layer-of-basil as mentioned in the show (it can be found in this volume).

In truth all the recipes are written by prolific author and cookbook writer Michele Scicolone. I can only imagine how much fun she must have had coming up with ‘authentic’ food as eaten by Tony Soprano. She has written over 20 books, won all sorts of awards for recipes and also lives in New York area so was an obvious choice to co-author this book. Even if the Sopranos stuff isn’t for you, they are solid recipes.

Like many Italian-American dishes, it requires a ‘gravy’ which is not the meat juice we might expect. I’ve simplified it down, veal is a pain to get hold of here and Italian sausage… sort of isn’t a thing here. Not in the way Americans mean. But sausages seasoned with fennel, and pork and beef mince hint in the right direction. Here it’s a meaty, tomatoey sauce that forms the base of lasagne. This gravy is the base for a lot of dishes, such as this lasagne and baked ziti.

“What, no f*!#ing ziti now?”
-Anthony “AJ” Soprano Jr

This takes a good couple of hours so it’s not a dish you can just bash out on a whim, because after that you’ve got lots of layers and another 45 minutes in the oven to finish it off. But it does have lots of hands-off time while it cooks so it’s a good one for a weekend.

The gravy is superb though, rich and flavoursome. I’ve kept some back for something else another day. And every time I use a ricotta instead of a white sauce I forget how good it is in a lasagne. And without the faff of a bechamel! The basil was nice though, a pleasing herbal aroma that carries through and it’s tender from cooking. Uncle June was right.

carmela soprano's lasagne

A version of the famous drama series recipe.

Course Main Course

Cuisine Italian American

Keyword pasta

Prep Time 2

Cook Time 1

Servings 4

Calories 690kcal

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

For the gravy:

3 sausages if you can get them, Waitrose have incredible 'Italian' style sausages
400 g mince beef and pork
1 onion diced
3 garlic cloves minced
1 tablespoon tomato puree
700 ml litre passata

For the lasagne:

Lasagne sheets
A large bunch of basil
250 g ricotta
250 g mozzarella sliced
25 g parmesan grated

Instructions

To make the gravy, fry the onion and garlic until soft in a large pan with a little oil.
Skin the sausages and squish each into 3-4 hazelnut size pieces. Add these to the pan and brown a little on all sides over.
Add the mince and continue to cook until browned.
Add the puree and passata and bring to a simmer. Cook partially covered for 1½ - 2 hours until rich and thickened. At this point check for seasoning - plenty of pepper is welcome here.
Beat the ricotta with the parmesan, adding salt and pepper to taste (you may want to add a couple of tablespoons of milk to loosen it, as you're going to spread it in a minute). Preheat the oven to 180°C.
In a 6cm deep oven dish put a thin layer of meat sauce on the bottom. Cover with lasagne sheets, then another layer of meat sauce.
Top this with ricotta and some parmesan, then a layer of basil leaves. Top this with mozzrella, then lasagne. Start the layering all over again until you reach the top of the dish.
Make the top layer meat sauce, ricotta and mozzarella. Bung in the oven until you can push a knife through with little resistance, about 45 minutes - 1 hour. Cover with foil if it's starting to darken too quickly.
Leave the lasagna out for five minutes to allow it all to meld together - this makes it easier to cut up.

Video

Notes

The order you layer everything up in doesn't really matter. Just do what feels right.