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Macaroni Fried with Oil
(Maccheroni all'olio) After the macaroni have boiled drain them and put them in a saucepan in which some good olive oil has already boiled, with a clove of garlic chopped fine. Let the paste fry, taking care that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the saucepan, and when it is well browned on one side, turn it to have the other side browned. Serve the macaroni very hot. Add no cheese. RISOTTO MILANAIŞE (Risotto alla Milanese) Melt a small piece of butter in a saucepan.
Brown in the butter a medium sized onion, cut in thin slices. When the onion is browned, take it away from the saucepan and add little by little the rice, stirring it with a wooden spoon. Every time that the rice becomes dry, add some hot broth (or hot water) until the rice is completely cooked. Add salt and pepper and a little saffron, if you like it.
When the rice is almost cooked, add to it some brown stock. Dress with parmesan cheese and some butter. Mix well and serve hot. This dish must not be allowed to be overcooked or cooled before eating. 23
Two recipes run together on this page: a fried macaroni and a Milanese risotto. Neither gives quantities, which is normal for Italian household books of the period — the cook was expected to know the proportions.
- Quantities to work fromFor the macaroni, figure roughly 1 lb of dried pasta, 1/3 to 1/2 cup of olive oil and one garlic clove, serving four. For the risotto, 1 1/2 cups of rice to about 5 cups of hot broth, again for four.
- The hinge: do not brown the garlic firstThe instruction to boil the oil and then add chopped garlic will scorch it in seconds, and burnt garlic makes the whole pan bitter. Warm the oil, let the garlic go pale gold, then add the drained macaroni immediately.
- What "let the paste fry" meansThe boiled macaroni is pressed into the pan as a single cake and browned on both sides, like a frittata of pasta — this is the same idea as a Neapolitan frittata di maccheroni. Use a wide nonstick or well-seasoned pan, medium heat, and slide the cake onto a plate to flip it rather than trying to turn it with a spatula.
- Boil the macaroni shortPasta that will be fried should come out of the water firmly underdone, a minute or two short of al dente, or the second cooking turns it soft inside the crust.
- "Add no cheese" is deliberateThis is an oil-and-garlic dish in the southern manner; grated cheese would muddy the point. Take the instruction at face value.
- Rice for the risottoThe book assumes an Italian short-grain rice. Use Carnaroli, Arborio or Vialone Nano; long-grain rice will not release the starch that makes the dish creamy.
- The onion is removedSlicing the onion, browning it and lifting it out flavours the butter without leaving pieces in the finished rice, rather than the minced soffritto that is left in the pan in most modern versions.
- "Brown stock" and saffronBrown stock here means a meat stock made from browned bones and meat, darker and stronger than the plain broth used to cook the rice; a few spoonfuls of well-reduced beef stock does the job. Saffron is treated as optional in this text, though it is the defining ingredient of most Milanese versions -- steep a good pinch of threads in a little hot broth before adding.
- TimingRisotto rice takes about 18 minutes from the first ladle of broth. Keep the broth at a simmer in a second pan so each addition does not stall the cooking, and take the warning about not letting it cool seriously — it stiffens quickly.
- Dressing at the endBeating in cold butter and parmesan off the heat is what Italians call mantecare; the risotto should be loose enough to spread slightly on the plate, not stand in a mound.
Both dishes belong to the plain end of the Italian repertoire, and their placement side by side in a book aimed at English-speaking readers is telling: macaroni fried in oil with garlic is southern, frugal and often made from the previous day's leftover pasta, while risotto alla Milanese is northern, buttery and built on meat stock and saffron. The division between an oil-and-garlic south and a butter-and-rice north was a real feature of Italian cooking before mass migration and industrial olive oil blurred it. Milanese risotto's yellow colour is often said to derive from the saffron used by dyers and painters in Lombardy, and the story of a glassworker tinting a wedding rice dish with his pigment is a well-worn Milanese legend rather than documented fact. Worth noting that this book, written in English, still calls the dish "Risotto Milanaise" in French — described in French vocabulary even when the food was resolutely Italian.