Ricotta Cavatelli with Broccoli Rabe, Tomatoes & Italian Sausage 

Ingredients                Yield: 2-4 servings

4-5 oz. blanched broccolini spears

16 each ripe tear drop tomatoes, cut in half

1 quality olive oil

4 Italian sausage, hot or mild your choice

2 finely minced shallots

4-5 garlic clove, shaved thin like in Goodfella’s

2-ounce white wine (something you enjoy drinking)

10 ounces PASTA REA Cavatelli

5 oz. Whole butter

3 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

TT sea salt

TT freshly ground black pepper

3- 4 ounces grated fresh grated Romano cheese

Follow These Simple Steps…. 

1. Clean broccolini of any excess leaves and cut in spears about 3” long.
2. Bring 2 quarts salted water to a roaring boil and blanch broccolini in boiling water until al dente. Drain and immediately submerge in cold ice bath to chill then drain well.
3. Rinse out pot and bring 3 quarts of salted water to a boil and hold
4. Remove sausage from casing. Heat oil in a nonstick skillet, lightly brown sausage, and crumble with fork as it browns
5. Add garlic and shallots to the sausage and saute until translucent. Then add tomatoes and saute to blister followed by broccolini.  Toss to warm.
6. Deglaze with wine and reduce by ½ to remove alcohol, hold on a very low simmer.
7. Drop pasta in water and cook to desired consistency. Your Cavatelli should float when it is nearly done.
8. Drain the Cavatelli well, reserving some pasta water.
9. Combine your pasta to the simmering sauce pan and toss it altogether.
10. Throw in whole butter and toss again until the butter is melted. You can add small amounts of pasta water if needed.
11. Add parsley and season to taste with salt, pepper and ½ the Romano cheese.
12. Toss on medium heat to make sure all is hot.
13. Plate and garnish with remaining cheese.

To Enjoy a Cooking Demo with Chef Rea and our Visitor Frank Guzzo with the Italian Association of Arizona Click the Photo Above, Mangia Bene!

If you love seafood and you love pasta, then this dish is for you!  Find the freshest shellfish available at the local market and you’ll prepare a delicious pasta entree, frutti di mare, (translation:”fruit of the sea”).  This is definitely an impressive dish for a special occasion!  If you are not a fan of cod, other fish may be substituted for the cod.  Allow yourself to get creative, or try the recipe several times with different fish.  There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to the seafood ingredients.  Regardless, you’ll feel as if you’ve been transported to the coast of Italy!  Mangia bene’!

Yield: 4 servings

INGREDIENTS

• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 tablespoon garlic, fine dice
• 16 Littleneck clams
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 16 black mussels
• 1 cup PASTA REA Frutti Di Mare Sauce
• Red pepper flakes, Pinch or To Taste
• 8 shrimp, shelled (tail intact) and deveined
• 12 sea scallops
• 8 ounces Cod Pieces
• 1 – 1.5 # PASTA REA linguine
• 10 ounces calamari, cut into thin rings and tenticals
• Sea Salt
• Cracked Black Pepper
• 1/4 cup Gremolata

PREPARATION

1. Boil salted water in a large pot.
2. Heat oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Cook garlic until it begins to sizzle. Add red pepper flakes to taste; cook 1 minute. Add clams then wine cover and raise heat to medium-high; cook 5 minutes or until clams begin to open do not evaporate liquid, keep moist.
3. Add Mussels and simmer for about 3 minutes
4. Add PASTA REA Frutti Di Mare Sauce, shrimp, scallops and cod, bring to simmer and cook until shrimp and fish are just done.
   

   fresh linguine pasta with shellfish

5. Add linguine to boiling water. Cook until al dente.
6. Uncover sauté pan; simmer 1 minute more, season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, making sure clams and mussels open, about 3 minutes. Toss with linguine.
7. Garnish with Gremolata and divide evenly among 4 bowls. Garnish with Gremolata

Rigatoni with Broccoli Florets and Sausage is one of chef’s favorite pasta dishes and he has graciously shared his recipe so you can prepare it at home for family and friends.  Our fresh rigatoni is available at the Uptown Farmer’s Market on Saturdays or you may call to place an order for pick-up at our kitchen.  We’d love to hear from you so let us know how you enjoyed this recipe!

Serves 4 -6  

Ingredients: 

1-gallon purified water

1 tablespoon sea salt

1 # PASTA REA Rigatoni pasta

4 cups broccoli florets, raw

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 # sweet Italian sausage, removed from casing

4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1 tablespoon minced shallots

¼ tsp of red chili pepper

½ cup white wine

24 ounces PASTA REA VODKA CREAM SAUCE

2 teaspoon chopped parsley

4 tablespoon Romano Cheese

Sea Salt

Cracked Black Pepper  

1. Bring water to a rolling boil, add salt and hold on medium simmer
2. In a large heavy bottom pan heat olive oil, add sausage and sauté until just cooked, do not brown, break up sausage as it cooks to avoid large chunks
3. Add garlic, shallots and chili pepper, finish sauté until garlic is tender
4. Add white wine and bring to a boil to reduce alcohol
5. Add PASTA REA VODKA CREAM sauce and simmer on low heat
6. Return water to a rolling boil. Drop pasta in boiling water and cook to al dente about 3-5 minutes
7. In the last 2 minutes of the pasta cook time add the broccoli florets to the pasta water and cook to al dente
8. When pasta and broccoli are cooked drain, reserving about 1 cup of pasta water
9. Add pasta, parsley, Romano cheese to the vodka sauce, toss well and adjust sauce consistency with pasta water as needed
10. Season to taste with sea salt and pepper

Sunday Gravy

Every Italian American household has a version Sunday Gravy sauce and everyone will tell you theirs is the best. We all guard the recipe with our lives so don’t expect to see one here, but what I will give you is the story of one of the most treasured family traditions and a few tips on how to get it done. And if you don’t want to cook your own, PASTA REA sells it by the quart so just give us a call.

Sunday Gravy is more Italian American than Italian and features generous portions of beef or veal, pork, and sausage. Most Italian families who immigrated from the old country rarely prepared recipes with beef. Once they settled in the states and prospered financially, beef became more of a staple ingredient and you will often find beef braciola included in many recipes. Our family’s gravy relies on the flavors of the family meatball recipe which includes quality pork shoulder and handmade sausage.

Sunday Gravy is so much more than just another day’s meal. Typically the sauce was placed on a slow simmer for hours early in the day. The Sunday meal was usually served around 2:00 in the afternoon. While the gravy simmered on the stove various family members would arrive to the house in anticipation of the meal allowing us time to catch up on the past week’s activities. The house would fill with the aroma of garlic, garden fresh tomatoes and basil. Of course the gravy had to be tested for quality insurance. This process would include a small plate with a ladle of gravy mopped up with a generous portion of crusty Italian bread passed around to whoever was in the vicinity. On occasion a meatball might make it to the tasting plate but very rarely. If you were caught “tasting” on your own while Mom stepped away from the stove you would receive a swat from the same wooden spoon used to stir. God forbid we ran out and there was not enough to go around. But that was the funny thing about Sunday Gravy, there was always enough to go around for those invited and for those who just dropped in and usually there were leftovers.

Two or three times a month we would enjoy our meal and then head out to visit our aunts, uncles, and cousins. My mother’s father lived with us and her brother and sister would usually join us at our home.  My father was the youngest of 7 and being the youngest, he would show his respect by packing us into his car and making the 30-minute trip spending about 45 minutes at each home. No matter how full you were from your mom’s gravy you were still expected to eat more. Each of my father’s sisters married a man from a different part of Italy so each home had a different preparation. One was spicy, one had raisins and pine nuts in their meatballs, one preferred boxed pasta and one handmade and so on as traditions dictated. Our tradition on those visits was to always visit Auntie Ann’s home last because she was the baker in the family. To this day I have never seen a larger display of Italian cookies and pastries than the ones that were displayed at many cousins’ weddings.

Here are a few tips when preparing Sunday Gravy which is a very simple recipe to create. Be sure to use only fresh ingredients. Brown the meat, (but never the meatballs) in a quality olive oil, allow simmering for hours until the pork is fork tender and then add the meatballs and sausage until just done. That is a very important step because the flavors imparted from those meats during the simmer make the sauce. The final product should be thicker than marinara so a little paste is ok if you like but the slow reduction will help with consistency. Be sure to have lots of quality bread, grandpa’s wine and of course PASTA REA pasta. I don’t know why they call it gravy instead of sauce but that is a great topic to debate while it simmers.

Mangia Bene!!

Chef Tony

Pasta Puttanesca  is an Italian pasta dish invented in Naples in the mid-20th century. Its ingredients typically include tomatoes, olive oil, anchovies, olives, capers and garlic making it a very cost-effective dish.  Chef Tony has created a “twist” on the Italian favorite with this delicious version which includes smoked shrimp, capers, and Kalamata olives.  This Pasta Puttanesca version with shrimp is also cost-effective and prepared with our fresh Pasta Rea pasta, it is sure to please.  As pictured here, the dish was prepared with Pasta Rea fiore but any of our fresh pasta will work, including long noodles such as spaghetti.   Our fresh pasta cooks in 3-4 minutes so be sure to not overcook, preparing it to al dente.

Pasta Puttanesca With Shrimp

Serve Pasta Puttanesca with a simple green salad or Caesar salad and focaccia or crusty Italian bread.

Recipe:

1 tbsp.   sea salt

1 gallon purified water

3 tbsp.   olive oil

1 tbsp.   shallots, minced

6 med.   garlic cloves, minced

½ tsp.   red-pepper flakes, crushed

1 can      Italian plum tomatoes, drained and reserved juice, seeded then rough chop

12 oz.    smoked shrimp, chopped

3 tbs.     capers, drained

½ cup   Kalamata olives, pitted and coarsely chopped

2 tbs.     fresh flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped

1 lb.        Pasta Rea fresh pasta

Bring 1 gallon of water to a rolling boil, add 1 tablespoon sea salt.

Heat oil on medium heat in a large skillet. Add shallots, garlic, red-pepper flakes. Cook, stirring 1 to 2 minutes. Do not brown or char pepper. Add tomatoes, reserved juice, capers, and olives. Bring to a boil. Lower heat to a simmer and cook for about 5- 8 minutes or until sauce slightly thickens. Add shrimp and simmer until shrimp is firm.

Add salt and pasta to boiling water and cook until fresh pasta is al dente, about 4 minutes. Drain well.

Stir pasta into sauce. Cook, stirring, until sauce clings to pasta, about 2 minutes. Stir in parsley and serve.

Serving size: 4