Macaroni for Poor Folks

This week I'm exploring Red, White & Greens: The Italian Way With Vegetables by Faith Willinger. Today's recipe, like many in the book, has an entrancing story. The title of the recipe is "Livia's Genoa Macaroni for Artistocrats and Poor Folks: Maccheroni alla Genovese" and it can be found on pages 221-222.

Willinger begins talking about this recipe by describing the produce she sees on the journey to the restaurant Don Alfonso: there are olive trees, lemon groves, vegetable gardens, artichoke plants, onions, garlic, and staked tomato plants. The Don Alfonso serves fancy food, "..like lobster and foie gras and covers food with silver domes..." writes Willinger, but Livia Iaccarino (wife of restaurant owner Alfonso Iaccarino) told a story about traditional macaroni.

Livia says that, in days gone by, the artistocrats would braise meat and onions for hours; eventually the onions would turn into a cream sauce. The peasants, on the other hand, omitted the beat, and simply cooked the onions for hours with other vegetables to create a savory sauce. I gathered the ingredients.

Then I chopped up the onion, carrot, parsley, and celery and placed them in a pot with olive oil.

I sauted this mixture until the vegetables were tender, then added white wine, salt, and pepper and set it on the burner to cook long and slow.

This where the magic is supposed to happen. If you're a patient cook (which I sure can be when The Grit's Golden Bowl is involved) you are rewarded as the onions turn into a cream sauce.After two hours of simmering, I had no broth. I did, however, have nicely sauted vegetables that tasted very good.

I let the vegetables keep simmering as I put pasta water on to boil. I cooked the pasta, drained, and reserved two cups of pasta water.

I mixed the cooked pasta in with the vegetables, and added some of the pasta water. No magic onion sauce appeared. I was tempted to puree the whole thing (sans pasta) with my hand blender, but resisted. In retrospect, that probably would have been a good idea.

The resulting dish was certainly tasty, but nothing I'd make again. And though Ivan was interesting in nibbling, only I ate Macaroni for Poor Folks.

If I was to try this again, which probably won't happen, I would definitely cook the vegetables longer. I also think I needed more liquid, and the hand blender would have been a good thing to use. Regardless, I enjoyed falling under the spell of the "upstairs/downstairs" dish.