LINGUINE WITH BACCALA AND POTATOES

Posted by Sarah Kiino at 11/1/2006 8:00 AM
Categories: uncategorized






Italy, Day One:

 

The Tuscan hill town Panzano in Chianti is a charming place, certainly, but all I feel upon seeing it is overwhelming relief—that I haven’t lost my breakfast somewhere along the steep and tortuous road from San Gimignano. As my stepdad, Maris, loops around in search of a parking space, I wonder if it’s dangerous to mix Dramamine and wine.

 
Finally, the car stops and I crawl out, my breakfast still, happily, in my stomach. My sister, Lauren, wants to visit a butcher shop. Fair enough, we’re all game. But when we’re still a good ten feet away—across the street, in fact—it’s clear Antica Macelleria Cecchini ain’t no hum-drum meat purveyor. The giveaway? That would be the bass thudding in our ears. This is more like butcher shop meets bar—and, at 11:00 on a Monday morning, it’s happy hour.

 

Lively music pumps through the tiny space, where about fifteen customers press together,  sipping wine from juice glasses and nibbling crostini. Cured meats and strings of dried chiles hang from the ceiling; a glass case displays a carnivore’s cornucopia of steaks, salumi, roasted meats, and lardo.  I take a picture—a no-no, apparently, because a man shouts good-naturedly over the din, “No photo! No photo!” Behind the counter, a butcher saws a rather gory-looking hunk of meat into the thickest T-bone steaks I’ve ever seen (a specialty of the region, I later learn). He catches me gaping, and grins. Sadly, my lingering nausea precludes me from sampling the wine and lardo, but I do purchase a package of the shop’s special seasoned salt.  

The butcher's card and vacuum-packed salt
 

After a detour to a leather shop that costs me nearly $300 (but hey, they make the stuff right in the store), we head off to lunch. Whereas I tend to take a more serendipitous approach to travel, Lauren is a planner—and she has a spot already picked out. We trek up . . . and up . . . and up (I’m finally getting that “hill towns” are actually on hills), stopping at a little restaurant set off in a cobblestoned alley. It’s called Il Vescovino and, once we’re led out to the beautiful back patio, I’m reminded that there’s at least one benefit to dining on a hilltop: that, of course, is the view.




Looking out over the countryside, we drink the restaurant’s own wine and dip bland Tuscan bread (made without salt) into their own lush and fruity olive oil. While the rest of my family digs into one of those massive T-Bone steaks, I decide to go my own way with delicious spaghetti with baccala (salt cod) and potatoes. As I was to learn over the next several days, fish is somewhat rare in this inland region of Tuscany; most menus offer seafood lovers only salt cod, typically cooked in tomato sauce.

 

Last weekend, Brian and I made up our own version of pasta with salt cod and potatoes, using linguine, pine nuts, a little tomato, and rosemary—which seemed to pop up everywhere in Tuscany, in the ground and on the plate.


 




 

LINGUINE WITH BACCALA AND POTATOES

 

1/3 cup olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 pound salt cod, soaked in water for at least 24 hours (change the water every few hours), skinned, boned, and cut into small pieces

½ cup white wine

1/2 - 1 cup water

2 small potatoes, cut into 1/2” cubes

3 roma tomatoes, chopped

1 ½ teaspoons rosemary, chopped

2 tablespoons parsley, chopped

1 pound linguine

 

Put water on to boil for linguine. Saute garlic in olive oil. Add pine nuts, pepper flakes, cod, wine, water, tomatoes, potatoes, and rosemary. Simmer until potatoes are cooked and liquid is reduced, about 15-20 minutes. Meanwhile, cook pasta. Toss pasta with sauce and parsley. Drizzle each serving with extra-virgin olive oil.

 

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