Baked Spinach Tagliatelle.
A pasta dish that is baked and contains cream, this is a recipe that is old fashioned on two counts.
Tagliatelle agli spinaci.
Slippery and buttery, and at the same time slightly crispy, it is also delicious on two counts.
A handsomely composition of eggy tagliatelle pasta sandwiched between layers of spinach cooked to sweetness with shallots, sprinkles of Parmesan and a dousing of cream, this a very simple but sumptuous way to feed a family or group, with only a few ingredients. As most oven dishes, it has the added advantage that it can be prepared in advance and baked off before serving. The results are favourably indulgent but reasonably balanced, any sinful satisfactions of pasta redeemed by its healthy allotment of greens.
Creamy pastas, cooked with double cream or bechamel sauce, were a considerably popular culinary repertoire of the past. The bechamel ballooned in the 60s and 70s, when butter and milk - wholesome symbols of post-war prosperity and the sauce’s two key ingredients - reigned supreme. Mostly used in baked dishes, the sauce neatly satiated rising appetites for both mass consumption and convenience. The use of double cream - or panna - peaked in the 80s, perfectly emblematic of the “greedy decade”, its penchant for extreme fashions and French cuisine’s unchallenged command of global tastes: this was a time when even the unpretentious Carbonara saw extravagant experiments with cream. While some entered to remain in the Italian vernacular – notably the ham and pea tagliatelle – two of the most globally famous of these dishes, Venice’s Harry’s Bar classic tagliolini gratinanti al prosciutto and the American manifestation of fettucine Alfredo have no real basis in Italian tradition at all.
The much-loved Venetian stalwart is a French-Italian concoction: comprised of bechamel sauce spooned over tagliolini, it is mixed with ham and gratinated in a casserole before serving. While making use of Italian ingredients, the finely sauce and cooking method are firmly French.
As for fettucine Alfredo - scarcely seen in Italy, because there it is a dish called fettucine al burro and made with butter and tossed with Parmesan to form a delicious and somewhat delirious emulsion that had many an American visitor and journalist to Rome in raptures in the early 20th century, bewitched by its spell-binding texture and sacred serving ceremony - the dish left Italy in a meteoric global rise to fame, fast crossing the Atlantic and on its way absorbing heavy doses of cream, sometimes parsley, often garlic and on occasion chicken, shrimp and even turkey. Today it is a pervasive presence in many Italian-style restaurants outside of Italy, a blank canvas of cream and an open invitation at the full whimsy of the customer or catch of the day, and such things as “Alfredo sauce” are commonly found condiments, proudly and perfunctory, perched on the shelves of any American convenience store worthy of its name.
The original story of the fettucine al burro however is rather and remarkably romantic. It was invented by Alfredo di Lelio in 1907 working at his mother’s restaurant in Rome, in an effort to entice his wife, Ines, to eat after giving birth to their first child. Called “fettucine al triplo burro” in its original incarnation, Alfredo, concerned for her health, carefully added extra quantities of butter (triplo!) when mixing it for her. Alfredo went on to open his own restaurant and the dish proceeded to spread rapidly through Rome and the world. Ines and the baby boy grew healthy, Alfredo was made the Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Corona d’Italia, and the happy story continues ever after to this day in Rome with Alfredo III.
MENU SUGGESTIONS.
This is a delicious dish for colder spring days or those brisk nights requiring of warming comforts and small doses of dreams of greener days to come.
Exhibiting a perfect springtime colour palette of yellows and greens, the great advantage of this hearty but harmonious dish is it can just as easily make up a lighter or heavier menu, and even makes a good standalone lunch.
Savoury -
Crunchy radishes with anchovies, deep fried fiori di zucca (which can be stuffed with ricotta and anchovies), a sharp tomato salad, shaved fennel and orange salad, pigs in blanket, baked seabass roulade with tomatoes and olives, salmon tartare dressed with capers, olives and parsley, a spring green salad with mustard leaves, hot flaked salmon with horseradish, lemon and basil monkfish, sous vide of duck, a fillet of trout with watercress, trout with juniper berries or mandarin orange juice, tuna meatballs, veal escalopes in lemon, rabbit or veal terrine or rilletes, baked sausages with dates and pancetta
Sweet -
Apple and calvados cake, panna cotta with pomegranate, baked peaches with amaretto, white peaches in wine or prosecco, chocolate and pomegranate pavlova, rhubarb crumble with custard, warm baked apple pure with vanilla ice cream, a bowl of cherries, walnut cake, tomato sorbet
RECIPE.
Serves 4
butter, 65g plus extra for greasing
Spinach, 675g
Onion, 1
Parmesan, 120g, freshly grated
Fresh tagliatelle, 275g
Double cream, 200ml
Salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees and grease an ovenproof dish with butter
Cook the spinach in just the water clinging to it from washing, for 5 minutes until wilted.
Drain and chop finely.
Heat half of the butter in a pan, add the onion and cook stirring occassionally on a low heat until translucent, for about 5-7 minutes.
Then add the spinach and cook for a few minutes more. Add salt and pepper and combine with half of the Parmesan.
Cook the tagliatelle in a large pan of salted water until al dente. Drain and return to the pan and toss with the remaining butter.
In your ovenproof dish: make layers of tagliatelle, spinach and sprinkles of Parmesan, ending with a layer of spinach. Pour the cream on top, cover with a final layer of Parmesan.
Bake for 10 minutes until golden and bubbling.
