Sughi and Other Alchemies

If you are in need of a little comic relief, watch a baby eating spaghetti al pomodoro (spaghetti with tomato sauce). The happiness on their tomato-festooned face is sure to be as remarkable as the disastrous scene that surrounds them. No doubt, they'll be sporting a bright red goatee and gloves, and the confetti of pasta bits strewn about their highchair and floor will look like the end of one very wild party.

It's a routine comedy - its audience appeal undiminished by the frequency of the performance. In Italy, it's just about universally agreed that a child's freedom to do as he wishes with his spaghetti al pomodoro must be indulged - at least at the beginning of his gourmet life.

If you love Italian cooking, you probably experience some of this childlike joy and abandon in your kitchen when preparing pasta and sauces - with perhaps only a bit less of the mayhem. Cooking and preparing sauces ("sughi" is the plural form in Italian; "sugo" or "salsa" is the singular) is not an exact science, of course - but rather an evolving and often personal art. In Italy as elsewhere, pasta sauces have become lighter, simpler and more eclectic in the last decades. There is a tendency nowadays, in Italy as elsewhere, to cook sauces and their ingredients for much shorter periods. Concerns about the most nutritious ways to cook fresh produce and healthier ways of bringing pasta to our tables have had a great effect on how some recipes have been adapted. Over time, ideas about nutrition evolve, tastes change, and new technologies constantly transform the way we do things. Our great grandparents didn't have the gas or electric stoves we use today today. Sauces, soups and other creations, like polenta for example, were often cooked very slowly in big fireplaces for hours and hours, or simmered slowly over a wood-burning stove. Times have changed.

New ideas and attitudes naturally clash with tradition at times, but most cooks find their own unique balance between the two. Whether you lean toward tradition or embrace new trends in cooking, the same basic considerations will influence the choices you make in your sauce preparations: availability of fresh ingredients, the time you can dedicate to preparing a sauce, and of course, your personal tastes and dietary needs.

A great place to start any discussion of pasta sauces is with the tomato, or pomodoro - which literally means "the golden apple." It is the most basic and familiar ingredient in a great variety of pasta sauces. Sugo al pomodoro, or tomato sauce, is one of the most popular and simple sauces in Italy. In America, it is often called "marinara sauce," though in Italy "alla marinara" actually denotes the presence of some kind of seafood in the sauce. Through a rather circuitous route, Italian Americans came to use the term "marinara" to refer to simple tomato sauce: harkening back to the Neapolitan tradition of receiving sailors back from the sea with a warm dish of simple vermicelli e pummarola, that is, spaghetti with tomato sauce - without fish.In other words, in the New World "marinara" meant a plain tomato sauce - "the sailor's way."                                                                                                     

Confused? Well, whether you call it "tomato sauce," "sugo al pomodoro" or "marinara sauce," it's made simply with canned peeled tomatoes or fresh tomatoes, olive oil, garlic and/or onions, and fresh basil or parsley. In North America, oregano is used more generously than in Italy, so you will often find it included in marinara sauce there. The sauce is ready in 15 to 20 minutes, and there are numerous variations depending on the availability of ingredients and personal taste.

There are certain recipes where canned tomatoes are actually preferable to fresh ones. Certainly high-quality Italian-imported canned tomatoes are preferable to tasteless, out-of-season, or genetically altered tomatoes. A great and really healthy sugo can be made by simply sautéing diced onions, celery, carrots (all this in large quantities) and garlic in olive oil, and then adding canned peeled tomatoes with additional fresh herbs, such as basil or thyme.

Sometimes tomatoes or a tomato sauce can be used as a complement to another sauce. Restaurants often use a concassè (deriving from the French term for "chopped") of fresh or canned peeled tomatoes on their line in the kitchen, and always have a very neutral sugo al pomodoro on hand - with no herbs and only briefly cooked - to add to a whole variety of other more elaborate sauces.

But of course, Italian sauces are not just about tomatoes. One of the most celebrated sauces in Italy is ragù(the Italian term for the French "ragout"), which is basically a sauce made with a combination of ground beef and ground veal, added in to sautéed onions, carrots and celery. Ragù alla Bolognese is perhaps the most well-known example. The variations for this dish probably could be counted in the millions, as each household does it differently. There are variations not only in the choice of meat, spices and herbs, but also in whether milk is used, and the inclusion or not of porcini mushrooms.

Meat in all its forms is present in many pasta recipes, sometimes in the form of sausages or other cured pork meats, in combination with vegetables. A good example of this is Pennoni con funghi, porri e salsicce - that is, pasta with mushrooms, leeks and sausages. Many other kinds of short-cut pasta go well with this dish.

As an alternative to meat, nuts are loaded with protein and provide a wonderful complement to pasta. Pine nuts ("pinoli" in Italian), walnuts and almonds each provide their own unique flavor, adding a great taste and crunchiness to certain sauces. The most famous example is Pesto alla Genovese (extra-virgin olive oil, basil, pine nuts, pecorino and parmigiano). A delicious and extremely easy to prepare sauce for pasta that can be made with cream, crushed walnuts, gorgonzola cheese and parmesan. It takes only a couple of minutes to prepare.

A notable distinction between the north and the rest of Italy is in the use of butter in their pasta sauces. Butter is very appreciated in the northern regions where it's produced, and therefore, many sauces in this region are milk-based (besciamella or white sauce), cream-based or butter-based. Egg pasta and filled egg pasta are ideal with these sauces. Often just butter, parmesan and sage is all the sauce you need to serve homemade Agnolotti con ripieno di zucca or Tortelloni con ricotta - these are two different kinds of egg pasta filled with pumpkin or ricotta cheese.

In the central and southern regions of Italy, where olive oil is abundant, pasta recipes are probably healthier and less elaborate. Here, people have devised wonderful pasta preparations that bring together the abundant local produce and the available fish. Vegetables like peppers, eggplant, artichokes, broccoli, broccoli rabe, spinach and zucchini, as well as olives and capers feature prominently in pasta dishes in this region. Sometimes there is a combination of fish and just one perfectly chosen vegetable to enhance the taste, such as the Sicilian Rigatoni al tonno e peperoni (with fresh tuna fish and peppers).

A remarkable dish in central and southern Italy - served especially on certain occasions, like birthdays and religious holidays - is Pasta al forno (oven-baked pasta). This way of making pasta goes back to Renaissance festivities when timballi and pasticci were served at the courts of signori and princes. Every household had its own version of it. Pasticcio literally means "mess" and that truly is what it's all about: In pasta al forno, the cook is given license to "go wild" and toss in all sort of goodies, even leftovers. The base for Pasta al fornois often a ragù and sometimes besciamella - the famous French sauce that Italians have adopted and prepare as it has been for centuries: gradually adding warm milk to a roux of butter and flour, and cooking slowly while whisking it for twenty minutes. Either the ragù or the besciamella sauce may be used as the binder for the vast array of delicacies that can be added: all different kinds of cheeses; vegetables - such as, mushrooms, spinach, eggplant, or peppers; and various cured meats, such as dried sausage or salame, prosciutto crudo and mortadella. In Naples, it's not rare to even find a boiled egg in it... It really is a delicious mess.

But if time is in short supply in your household, a great alternative to elaborate sauces or oven-baked pastas is provided by the new range of prepared Italian-imported sauces that are now available. Years ago, prepared sauces, though convenient and time-saving, meant sacrificing the nutrition and taste of homemade preparations. Nowadays, responding to new ideas and technologies, Italian companies have developed innovative ways of using fresh, often organic, locally grown produce in their bottled sauces, without any chemical additives or preservatives. These sauces can be used straight from the bottle, or as a means of complementing your own sauces. Adding just a spoonful or two of Italian-imported bruschetta toppings will instantly add extra body and flavor to enhance your own homemade creations.

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