Spaghetti a la Vigliacca

[Ras72]

I've been making my sauces and pastas for years now. From a very similar recipe but I use a shit ton (measured) amounts of butter and no wine. I'll need to try this.

Also, if you guys are not making pasta, you're missing out on half the enjoyment. I get this done while the sauce simmers. Triple 0 flour (this is important), eggs and salt to taste. Amounts dictated by how much you want to make. Start mixing on the block until you have a dough. I don't over think the egg whites to yolks thing. Just go for it. Only way you can mess this up is dropping it on the floor.

[jclay]

Yes. We’re not militant vegetarians, just dietary. Eat fish, dairy, etc. So wasn’t an issue at restaurants. And then there are the village market days where everything is right off the vine and the villa we rent has an amazing kitchen. Hard to go wrong with a pile of fresh tomatoes. I think anyone who has problems eating in Italy probably has problems wherever they are. It ain’t Italy’s fault.

"Sorta" vegetarian makes restaurant navigation quite a bit easier!

It's restaurant offerings I was after; has the bona fide vegetarian restaurant or menu item presence grown to the point that one can find enough if you're not cooking at the casa? I'm guessing probably not, though with the influx of folks from Africa it occurred to me that the variety of restaurants might have grown to include more vegetarian fare since my last visit ~ 10 years ago.

[jclay]

"Sorta" vegetarian makes restaurant navigation quite a bit easier!

It's restaurant offerings I was after; has the bona fide vegetarian restaurant or menu item presence grown to the point that one can find enough if you're not cooking at the casa? I'm guessing probably not, though with the influx of folks from Africa it occurred to me that the variety of restaurants might have grown to include more vegetarian fare since my last visit ~ 10 years ago.

For context: A few days into a bike ride out of the CDG doors, following an internet published back way out of the aerodrome onto neighborhood roads and thence a canal path to Place de Concorde, brother Bill and I found a small, discrete couscous place in Rennes, FR, that had some vegetarian offerings, two of which were tried and very tasty; no big surprise, the guy was from Algeria. Some few years later I found a used copy of "The Vegetarian Table North Africa" (Kitty Morse) at The Green Apple in SF; I just love that place and I really need to get cracking with the book; I mean meaningfully devoted to working on a decent smattering of the recipes as the two I've tried were very nice and I certainly couldn't have had them figured out particularly well.

[j44ke]

Sounds like you probably wouldn’t be able to find any thing to eat in Italy.

[bigbill]

When I lived in Sardinia, we had favorite restaurants, including an Agriturismo. One of my friends was a vegetarian and had no problems finding non-meat dishes. One of the best was orange zest goat cheese ravioli with a cream sauce. If I were to make my pasta, that would be the first one. There was a restaurant in Palau we called "cheap pasta." It had a name I can't recall, but for 4 euros, you got a bowl of pasta with a sauce of your choice. It was a great place to start the evening before heading to Guido's for local Ichnusa beer.

Overall, I think it's easier to be an omnivore in Italy because there are so many delicious dishes with meat.

[jclay]

.... One of my friends was a vegetarian and had no problems finding non-meat dishes.
Overall, I think it's easier to be an omnivore in Italy because there are so many delicious dishes with meat.

I wasn't the "sorta" vegetarian I am now, last time in Italy, so this issue wasn't on my radar but it occurs to me that lots of Italian dishes are (long have been) meat/fish/fowl-less so finding at least some vegetarian items in traditional restaurants shouldn't be much of an issue. After all, meat was expensive back in the day and much Italian (and other) fare was, by necessity, animal-less; food of the poor.

The migration of vegetarian dishes from Africa as well as a slowly growing vegetarian/vegan demographic in Italy is something I find interesting. There are lots of cultures that have been working on making inexpensive food tasty for a lot longer than our culture has been throwing steaks'n taters on the fire!

Being an omnivore is definitely easier! Interesting thing I'm noticing is the loss of desire for, and kinda greasy, heavy dull feeling after, eating meat. I still bounce out of the wagon occasionally (generally fish or the odd pepperoni pizza), when needs must, or when something really interesting pops up.

[bigbill]

My wife is a pescatarian, so we eat a lot of fish. When she makes a pasta dish, she cooks up sausage or pancetta in a skillet and puts it in a bowl so I can add it to my serving. She makes a big pan of puttanesca on occasion as well.

When I lived in Sardinia, the main meat dishes were cinghiali sausage or some fish. You'd walk past the fish trolley entering a restaurant, and prices would be next to each fish/lobster/weird ocean thing. The price was per 100 grams, so if you wanted a sole, the entire fish was weighed and then prepared at the table and might end up costing 70-80 euros. Sausage or lamb dishes were much cheaper. The Agriturismo meals were usually a set price, around 40 euros. They'd start with a rocket salad (arugula, ricotta, honey), prosciutto and melon, grilled vegetables, antipasti including lardo, grilled meats, and a desert, usually tiramisu or seadas. Seadas is a Sardinian sopapilla with cheese and honey. Since everyone in the restaurant was on the same course, you would get a coffee or mirto during dessert, and smoking was okay. Mirto is like limoncello but with crepe myrtle berries.

[jclay]

I made Spaghetti a la Vigliacca last night; glad I did as every activity blends into personal experience and offers perspective. But I found out that I am not a fan of "heat" in a tomato based spaghetti sauce.

I'm not "precious" with simple, everyday-cooking recipe ingredient quantities but this exercise and some work with recent black beans have moved me in an even more, uh, liberal direction on flavor adjuncts; progressive-ism in the kitchen!

The use of a large skillet instead of a saucepan....it makes all kinds of sense and I'm very glad for that tip! Boatloads of garlic? I never thought of myself as stingy with garlic but I'll ratchet things like that up.

This experience will bear constructively on messing around with basic Spaghettie a la Puttanesca sauces and similar. Fear not...my "sorta" vegetarian self is ok with the anchovies!

As an aside: I retired my mother's 4 quart Universal Pressure Cooker and replaced it with a Hawkins unit of the same general pressure vessel design (read that "proper" pressure vessel design). Hers dated from the immediate post WWII era and had some condition issues that required retirement. So I grabbed a Hawkins 6L SS unit (with induction plate on bottom); same OD as my mother's but much more headspace which is both handy and a good safety feature. So now I don't avoid pressure vessel use or fret about a vessel failure; I've never, ever, even after several hours of simmering, had black beans really fully cook at 212F & atm pressure; always a little al dente. Now, 40 min and the beans are well and truly done and then I can do whatever is necessary to make something tasty.

It was a worthwhile exercise.

[ides1056]

I soak the beans beforehand and they cook up very well in forty minutes. Cold bean salad is a favorite.

[jclay]

Mellowing overnight isn't a surprise with tomato based sauces but it made an outsized difference with my go at this one; ground (and a tad old) red chili was on hand so that's what I used, about 1/3t. Nothing crazy but that was fairly hot and sharp. Just now with the leftovers I found both the acidic tomato flavor and the sharpness of the chili mellowed enough that I'll make it again and mess around with variations.

I soak the beans beforehand and they cook up very well in forty minutes. Cold bean salad is a favorite.

I generally soak them overnight. Sometimes the timing makes it more, occasionally less. They're cooked but not where I want them to be. Without the pressure cooker I have never gotten the creamy consistency that I'm after and the individual beans are always just a little "to the tooth". They're certainly edible and cooked, and the flavor adjuncts do their jobs but the result isn't quite what I'm after. I can boil'em for a couple of hours and still end up short on that score. The ~250F and 15psig of the pressure cooker take care of that superbly. Safe money says that canned beans are cooked via industrial pressure cookers, if nothing else bc it makes economic sense.

[Tom]

Try a little baking soda early in the cooking and add any acidic stuff like tomatoes when they're done cooking.

[jclay]

Starting with the Spaghetti a la Vigliacca recipe morning and making these changes; it's an hour into simmering at this point.

Deleted:
Chili pepper as it seemed too acerbic

Added:
Capers, 1/2 C
Red and yellow bell peppers, 3/4 C, chopped med
Oregano, ~3/4 t
Anchovies, small tin, minced
Black olives, 14oz tin, chopped med
Sauteed all that with the other ingredients and then added the tomatoes.

Considered, rejected but may reconsider:
Dill
Sage

Too early to know just how good it will ultimately be, but at this point it tastes pretty good to my palette. Simmer a while longer and let it cool naturally.

[jclay]

Starting with the Spaghetti a la Vigliacca recipe morning and making these changes; it's an hour into simmering at this point.

Deleted:
Chili pepper as it seemed too acerbic

Added:
Capers, 1/2 C
Red and yellow bell peppers, 3/4 C, chopped med
Oregano, ~3/4 t
Anchovies, small tin, minced
Black olives, 14oz tin, chopped med
Sauteed all that with the other ingredients and then added the tomatoes.

Considered, rejected but may reconsider:
Dill
Sage

Too early to know just how good it will ultimately be, but at this point it tastes pretty good to my palette. Simmer a while longer and let it cool naturally.

It turned out very well! Spouse says it's my best tomato based spaghetti sauce effort ever and I think that's as much down to the OP's description of how to approach the cooking as it is the ingredients, which are pretty standard fare; I sorta loosened up the guard rails and it ended up being the Putanesca recipe I use (Top 100 Pasta Sauces by Diane Seed) + the red and yellow bell pepper (a little sweetness) + oregano + parsley (sauteed with everything else, not sprinkled on top when served) + the wine, and no chili pepper.

I may try it with a little habanero pepper that's aged long enough to have lost most of it's heat while still retaining it's earthy flavor.

I have, but have never used, the Ada Boni Talisman book my mother brought back from her '73 FSU TDY in Florence; this latest exercise has inspired me to scour that book for vegetarian (or sorta) recipes and ideas; and I need to crank up the African vegetarian book more than I have; I just love finding unusual books like that for pennies on the dollar....what with DeSantis running things in Florida there oughta be a bumper crop of'em! Alas, no Green Apple in Tallytown; bonfires are the likely terminus for anything much removed from Wonderbread.

[Nierman]

Hey everyone! Been a while - but wanted to come here to say this recipe just keeps on living in my household and we even mixed up my wife's side Thanksgiving dinner with a little Italian flair. My daughter is celiac and makes her own abbreviated version of this all the time. I get home from work and the house smells amazing, but she never seems to enough for my wife and I. I still love her. Cheers!