Pastasciutta Nostalgica

(Per leggere la versione italiana, vedi il seguente post.)

I don’t want to seem overly dramatic and paint myself as a vagabond, wandering and alone. However, it is accurate to say that there isn’t one particular place, either in America or in Italy, that I feel is my “homeland.”

The best candidate is East Boston, in particular the neighborhood called Orient Heights.

Orient Heights is home to a religious center — the U.S. headquarters of the Don Orione order, the Figli della Divina Provvidenza (F.D.P.), or Sons of Divine Providence. The complex includes an underground shrine to the Madonna, a nursing home, and a famous for a 35-foot-high Madonna statue, a copy of a statue at the Don Orione center in Monte Mario, Rome.

Twenty-five years ago, at the age of 16, I ate dinner with the F.D.P. priests and consumed, for the very first time, an Italian (not Italian-American) meal. First course, second course, side dish, salad, cheeses, fruit, espresso – this culinary system was absolutely unknown to me.

One evening, the priests’ cook placed before me a dish of spaghetti unlike anything else in my experience.  In my extraordinarily limited Italian I asked, “Come si chiama questo?”  The cook replied, “Pastasciutta” (literally, “dry pasta”).

What was this pastasciutta?  I’d never seen any other dish like it.  Was it a Northern Italian dish or a Southern Italian one?  Though the Don Orione priests were all Northerners, the cooks certainly were not.  This requires a bit of explanation.  During the Ellis Island years (1892-1924), millions of Southern Italians came to Boston.  Sicilians, Calabresi, Neapolitans, Avellinese, Abruzzese, etc. I never met a single person, not even one, from Venice or Florence.  And yet I met innumerable people whose parents were from the same little towns from the deep South.  I’ll never forget the day that I told my father that his parents’ town, Montefalcione (in Avellino), had only 3,500 inhabitants.  He absolutely didn’t believe me.  He said, “I know 3,500 people from Montefalcione in East Boston!”

Years passed.  The memory of that pastasciutta remained in my mind.  But I never saw it at any restaurant. It never appeared on the table of any home where I ate. 

More years passed.  One day I decided to look up pastasciutta on the Internet.  I made the discouraging discovery that the term is completely generic.  It refers to any pasta that’s not in a soup.  There isn’t only one recipe for pastasciutta; there are a billion.  At that moment I lost hope of rediscovering this dish. 

Still more years passed.  Then one day, on a foodblog that was unfamiliar to me, I saw a recipe: rigatoni with ground almonds and datterini (a type of cherry tomatoes).  The blog is called “I Pi@ttini di Drilli.”

http://ipiattinididrilli.blogspot.com/2012/06/rigatoni-elogio-alle-mandorle.html

It caused me to wonder if that pastasciutta from 25 years previous was, indeed, some type of red pesto.

Then, on another unfamiliar foodblog, I saw a recipe for pipe (a short pasta in the shape of little pipes) with a pesto of almonds and sun-dried tomatoes.  This blog is called “Un Soffio di Polvere di Cannella.”

http://unsoffiodipolveredicannella.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/pipe-al-pesto-di-pomodori-secchi-e-mandorle/

Emboldened by these two magnificent foodbloggers, I decided to try to recreate this culinary memory, even at a distance of a quarter century.

1 lb. spaghetti

sun-dried tomatoes

almonds

c. 6 fresh basil leaves

fresh parsley

pecorino romano

parmigiano reggiano

extra-virgin olive oil

(no onion, no garlic, no pepper, and absolutely no salt)

While the spaghetti were cooking, I put the other ingredients in the food processor.  (The consistency should be a little coarse.) With a rubber spatula, I transferred the pesto to a bowl.  I washed the container of the food processor with a few drops of the cooking liquid, which I then poured into the bowl. 

The resemblance of this recipe with the taste in my memory – it was an emotional experience for me.

I accompanied the spaghetti with a varietal from Salento (in Apulia, at the tip of the heel) called Negroamaro.

Addendum: Twenty-five years ago, the condiment was mixed more evenly with the spaghetti. And I believe — knowing what I know today — that the spaghetti was cooked in the frying pan for a minute or two. But in my opinion, it's better not to cook the tomatoes. Beforehand, one can toast the almonds — or even the spaghetti itself (that is, you toast the spaghetti in a dry pan — no oil, no salt, absolutely a dry pan – until it is golden but not brown, before boiling it).

Pastasciutta Nostalgica, Revisited

29 January 2014

This was the first recipe I ever posted on this blog.  Thus, I feel a double-nostalgia: nostalgia for this post, and nostalgia for the dish that it described, from twenty-five years previous.  

Naturally there are many variants to such a dish. With whole-wheat pasta it is even more delicious. You can add a half of a garlic clove. You can also add a little crushed red pepper.  (I made this today and added those two ingredients.)  In particular, you can experiment with different types of nuts. Surprisingly, even peanuts (which I rarely add to savory dishes) work very well.  The best nut to use, however, is pistachios. This is no way to describe how delicious they are.  Naturally, I am forced to use Californian pistachios, which are very good.  But the pistachios from Bronte, Sicily ...

Experiment also with the coarseness of the grind.  Obviously you can grind it until smooth.  But besides the taste and consistency, a coarser grind is healthier for the body.  The less finely ground the food, the more energy the body uses to break it down, thus the slower the rise of the body's sugar level.  (The same applies to pasta cooked al dente, which is healthier than mushy pasta.)

Pastasciutta nostalgia, third visit 

18 June 2026

Yesterday, for some reason, I found myself thinking once again about this recipe from the past. The notion of these Piemontese priests, eating this seemingly Southern dish, was still a headscratcher to me! Certainly a pesto, without added water or cream, would have the same dryness that I remember. However Pesto alla trapanese has fresh tomatoes. Even if they are drained of their water, the result is still “wetter.” Is there another type of pesto, perhaps using sundried tomatoes when fresh ones are out of season? 

I asked someone I knew would know, my dear friend from Salemi, Rosanna Sanfilippo. This morning she responded with a word I had never heard before: capuliatu. Mystery solved! I immediately found numerous recipes on the Internet. The following recipe from Nadia at Mangia Bedda (https://www.mangiabedda.com/) explains the concept perfectly and notes the other ingredients that can be added, such as almonds (which I'm pretty sure were in that pesto in East Boston) and cheese (which maybe was not).

1. Place sun dried tomatoes in a bowl and pour boiling water over them. Let sit for 10 minutes.

2. Drain the tomatoes and place on a clean dish towel. Dry them well.

3. Place all ingredients in the bowl of your food processor or blender.

4. Pulse until you have a chunky pesto or process further for a creamier consistency. At this point taste your pesto and adjust the flavor, if you wish, by adding more oil, garlic, basil or chili pepper according to taste.

5. Transfer to a sterilized jar, pour a thin layer of olive oil over the top and keep refrigerated for up to 1 week.

Nadia says that possible additions include dry oregano, capers, anchovies, nuts (almonds, pine nuts, or walnuts), grated cheese. 

Rosanna adds that, in adding to using with pasta, capuliatu can be spread on pani cunzatu, Sicily's famous sandwich. American readers might try it on bruschetta (which I beg them not to pronounce broo-shetta).