Week 10 of quarantine took me high with excitement that Illinois is finally going to slowly reopen and a cooking class taught by one my Italian colleagues and then brought me low again with news that Chicago is going to open even slower than the rest of Illinois and a narrowly averted disaster with my AC.
In a fit of optimism, I booked a facial for early June and had my AC serviced. My facial appointment has been cancelled for the third time as Mayor Lightfoot is holding Chicago back from reopening with the rest of Illinois. And my AC unit? Well, the coils froze when somehow the compressor was left running but the blower was not. There was ICE on the OUTSIDE of the unit in the mechanical closet. I spent 36 hours mopping up the melting ice so that it wouldn’t leak through the floor into the unit below me. It sounded like an avalanche was happening when the ice would break apart and fall.
The bright spot of my week was the cooking class with my colleague, Mario. My firm has put together several of these Zoom cooking classes to keep us occupied and entertained during the quarantine. To my surprise, many of the attorneys are worse in the kitchen than I am. One didn’t know the difference between an egg yolk and an egg white. Another needed instructions on how to chop cheese because they didn’t own a grater. It was all very entertaining to me!
As promised, below are the recipes we made. I had a hard time following instructions so mine didn’t turn out quite right, but it was still delicious!
Bucatini Cacio e Pepe (Cheese and Pepper)
– 14 oz. of Bucatini or spaghetti (Mario recommended the following brands (he’s Italian so he would know!): Molisana, Barilla or Garofalo
– 9 oz. of Pecorino Romano cheese (buy the pre-grated kind unless you like grating cheese)
– about 1 tsp (give or take) ground black pepper
Boil water for the pasta. Cook pasta for half the cooking time (it will be finished in pan). Just before draining the pasta, toast the ground pepper over medium heat in a skillet. Drain the pasta in such a way that you keep the pasta water.
Put about 1 cup of the pasta water (I used one ladle scoop) into a bowl and dump the grated cheese into it and stir until melted. Add pasta water as needed, but you don’t want it runny. Once the cheese is melted, put the pasta in the skillet with the toasted pepper and add the cheese sauce. Stir until pasta is finished cooking. You can add pasta water as needed.
Crostata
– 2 egg yolks
– 17.6 oz of all-purpose flour
– 7 oz. of powdered sugar
– 9 oz. of unsalted butter
– grated peel of half a lemon
– jar of favorite marmalade or jar of Nutella
– 2 oz. cacao butter (only if you’re going to use Nutella)
If you’re going to make crostata, make the dough before starting the pasta. It will need to chill in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.
Combine the butter and flour in a food processor. (No one on our call had a food processor so we all used blenders. Hilarious and not ideal, but it does eventually work). Transfer the combined butter and flour to a bowl and mix in the powdered sugar. Once mixed, make a canyon (as Mario calls it) and add two egg yolks (that’s the yellow part) and lemon zest. Mix with your hands until the dough is fairly firm and can be rolled into a ball (I had to add a bit more flour, but I also accidentally used an egg white). Cover in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for 30ish minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350. Once the dough is chilled, take it out of the fridge and roll it out to the size of your cake pan. (If you want to be fancy, save some of the dough to make stripes on top of the crostata). I don’t have a rolling pin so just put the dough in my cake pan and kneaded it until it was spread evenly. I think maybe the sides are supposed to be a bit higher to hold the toping, but that wasn’t super clear and I’d had half a bottle of wine by this point. If you’re using marmalade, you can dump the marmalade on top of the dough, keeping it away from the edges.
If you’re using Nutella, combine the cacao butter and Nutella together. I used 2 oz of melted butter because I couldn’t find cacao butter in the grocery store. If you’re using cacao butter, you may need to melt it as well. I don’t know what the consistency is but it needs to be able to blend with the Nutella. I used 4 big spoonfuls of Nutella. Once the butter and Nutella are combined, put it onto of the dough in the pan.
If you saved some dough to make stripes on top of the crostata, roll it out and cut into strips and place on top of the crostata. Bake for 20ish minutes.
Mario recommended pairing a light sparkling wine or a young and fruity red wine with the pasta dish. Because I can’t follow instructions, I drank a heavy, spicy red with mine – it was fine. 🙂
Cheers,
Bec