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penne rigatoni with Mrs. Nick’s San Marzano tomato sauce

rigatoni_tomato_sauce

This is one of the most satisfying meals in my modest portfolio; I owe it all to Mrs. Soccodato, whom I unfortunately never met, the non-Italian wife of my erstwhile Italian, West Village barber, Nic Soccodato.

  • Setaro Penne Rigatoni, from Buon Italia, about 12 ounces, served with three quarters of the simple tomato sauce described in this post, in which I used 3 garlic cloves from Norwich Meadows Farm, one 28 oz can of San Marzano tomatoes, and 3 large whole leaves of Gotham Greens Rooftop basil purchased last summer at Whole Foods (which I had wisely dried and frozen between small squares of waxed paper and stacked inside a soft plastic sealed container)
  • the wine was an Italian (Sicily) red, Tenuta Rapitlà Nero d’Avola Campo Reale 2013
  • the music was Q2 streaming, most notably including Uuno Klami’s ‘Northern Lights’

paccheri and Mrs. Nick’s simple San Marzano tomato sauce

paccheri_tomato_sauce

I had not realized, before I put it on the table, just how appropriate this dish would be for a day on which we had revisited the Donald Judd house.

To begin with, it’s probably the second most minimal recipe in my kitchen ‘kit’ (the first has got to be this spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino). but beyond that, while the sections of pasta I always use start out as round tubes (a shape not much encountered in Judd’s work or his SoHo house, once they have been cooked they flatten almost completely, and equally seductive rectangles emerge.  Although it may be something of a stretch, I imagine the shape as relating to Judd’s kit.

Every Italian bachelor, full-time or temporary, is alleged to know how to whip up one meal by himself, the dish of spaghetti with a simple sauce of garlic, oil and peppers I mention above. Maybe this simple tomato sauce (which incidentally goes with virtually any pasta) should be in the repertoire of every single girl (or homo), Italian or otherwise, since the recipe requires a little more lead time than the aglio olio e peperoncino, requiring advance planning most bachelors might not be up to.

The story of this dish begins with my visits to a West Village barber shop, beginning in the mid-eighties.  But it wasn’t just any barber shop, as I learned over time.

Nick’s Hair Salon, which sadly no longer exists, was located at 5 Horatio St.  It opened in 1956, fronting on the north sided of an extremely tiny (about 100 square feet) Greenstreets triangle bounded by Horatio, West 4th Street, and 8th Avenue.  Once it had been ‘adopted’ and planted, I would often point out its rich greenery to visitors from less densely-populated realms, as “one of our parks”).

Nick Soccodato was a lovely, affable, and gentle man (with a great full head of hair).

He was a barber and had been a barber, he once told me, from the time he graduated from his first job, which he described as hanging around shops and sweeping up the hair on the floor (I don’t recall where he said that was, but it may have been the same location he eventually owned). Nick was also a dealer, a very special dealer. At some point in the history of his shop he began a second career, dealing in food, Italian food, specifically the vegetables and fruits associated with his family’s Italian bel paese, the Agro Nocerino , and most specifically, with the San Marzano tomato, which has been, and always will be, associated with the area.

I don’t know, but Nick and his Italian nephew, Savino Zuottolo, might have created the American market for San Marzano tomatoes almost on their own, in the back of the business that was later called, ‘Nick’s Hair Styling‘.

I had occasionally seen people come into the shop and walk out with packages, cans, and jars of Italian food, but I hadn’t thought much of it, probably marking it up as just another eccentricity of the owner and a staff not without such things.  But one day I found myself talking to Nick about his family’s homeland.  I told him how much I loved the Campania, on every level, and also told him that I loved cooking, generally using the simplest Italian dishes, and usually southern Italian, as my models.

For sharing my interest with him, I was rewarded with a tour of the barbershop’s back room, where cans, jars and packages of dry stuffs were stocked and displayed something like a much smaller version of the wonderful emporium, Buon Italia, in the Chelsea Market.  I already knew that the various sized cans of San Marzano tomatoes were the stars, but my eyes really lit up when I spotted the packages of short sections of huge tubes of dried pasta.  I thought their contents were absolutely, beautiful, and as perfectly minimal as a bunch of long spaghetti.

I had never seen anything like that pasta before, and I had to take some home.  I had the wits to ask Nic what kind of sauce it would traditionally be served with.  In his answer he described relaxed Sunday afternoon meals of a Paccheri with a simple tomato sauce using canned San Marzano plum tomatoes, and he promised he would ask his wife to copy her recipe and he would give it to me.

I, or rather, we, have dined like Barone ever since, regularly enjoying minimal feasts of paccheri served with Rose Soccodato’s simple San Marzano tomato sauce.  I didn’t remember her name when I transcribed the instructions to my file, so the recipe has always been known as ‘Mrs Nick’s Simple Tomato Sauce’ in our kitchen.

I can’t recommend it enough, but please do not to try it with anything other than San Marzano tomatoes, although, as with so many food source questions, even with ‘Denominazione d’Origine Protetta (DOP)’ printed on the can, exactly what that means may not be perfectly clear.

 

THE RECIPE

In an enameled cast iron pot or other non-reactive pan, large enough to hold the pasta after it’s been cooked, sauté 2 or 3 cloves in 4 to 5 tablespoons of olive oil, but only until the garlic is pungent.

Add one 28-ounce can of San Marzano tomatoes (already-chopped or whole, and ideally without basil), crush the tomatoes with a wooden spoon if they are whole,  sauté uncovered at high heat for 5 minutes, stirring a few times to reduce the liquid (yes, the juices will spatter a bit; I use a black apron and check the surrounding environment after this step).

Reduce the heat to very low, so the sauce is barely bubbling, add salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste, and simmer for a full 30 minutes.

Add a few whole leaves of fresh basil and continue simmering for 15  minutes more, again stirring occasionally.

Note: The sauce can be prepared a little ahead of time, so there’s no competition with the boiling pasta.

When the pasta has cooked, drain it and add it to the pan, or mix sauce and pasta in a warm bowl.

Serve, but do not add cheese.

 

  • Setaro Paccheri from Buon Italia, served with the simple tomato sauce described above, using garlic from Norwich Meadows Farm, one 28 oz can of San Marzano tomatoes, and two very large whole leaves from a package of Gotham Greens Rooftop basil purchased at Whole Foods
  • the wine was an Italian (Tuscan) red, Morellino di ScansanoMocali‘ 2013, a gift of friends
  • the music was from defunensemble‘s double CD, ‘Define Function‘ https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/define-function/id1041575914

a salame antipasto; paccheri and Mrs. Nic’s tomato sauce

I was introduced to this dish probably 30 years ago. I won’t repeat the story here, but I described it at length in this November, 2015 post.

It’s an absolutely delicious tomato sauce, although so simple that you feel like you’re not actually cooking, just watching the sauce cook itself, and the pasta is pretty special too. Like all cooking, and especially the most minimal dishes, the goodness depends as much on the quality of the ingredients as on the professionalism of the cook. I try really hard when assembling this one.

 

THE RECIPE

In an enameled cast iron pot or other non-reactive pan, large enough to hold the pasta after it’s been cooked, sauté 2 or 3 cloves in 4 to 5 tablespoons of olive oil, but only until the garlic is pungent.

Add one 28-ounce can of real San Marzano tomatoes (already-chopped or whole, and ideally without basil), crush the tomatoes with a wooden spoon if they are whole,  sauté uncovered at high heat for 5 minutes, stirring a few times to reduce the liquid (yes, the juices will spatter a bit; I use a black apron and check the surrounding environment after this step).

Reduce the heat to very low, so the sauce is barely bubbling, add sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper to taste, and simmer for a full 30 minutes.

Add a few whole leaves of fresh basil and continue simmering for 15 minutes more, again stirring occasionally.

Note: The sauce can be prepared a little ahead of time, to avoid any competition with the boiling pasta.

When the pasta has cooked, drain it and add it to the pan, or mix sauce and pasta in a warm bowl.

Serve, but do not add cheese.

 

  • On Sunday I halved the recipe and used Setaro Paccheri from Buon Italia, cooked barely al dente, a point which is just about perfect for this perfect, very rich sugo. It was the very same pasta I’d first seen for the first time many  years ago in a storage room filled with imported foods inside the West Village hair salon run by Nic Soccodato, my barbiere Salernitano/sometime backroom Importatore di prodotti Salerno. I asked him what kind of sauce would accompany these large loops and he generously shared his wife’s recipe for a sauce his family enjoyed as a special treat – on Sundays! I started the sauce in a large enameled cast iron pot with 3 tablespoons of Whole Foods Market house Portuguese olive oil and 3 large cloves of Rocambole garlic from Keith’s Farm (more garlic than I usually use), one 14 oz can of Afeltra Pomodoro S. Marzano dell’Agro Sarnese-Nocerino D.O.P. (which is from Nic’s patria) from Eataly, and because it was winter I used 3 whole basil leaves taken from a package of Gotham Greens Rooftop basil from Whole Foods that I had carefully stored frozen between sheets of waxed paper last year. And that was it.

 

There was an antipasto, one of the rewards of serving such a simple main course.

  • slices of local salame Biellese sallumeria from Eataly, served with a bit of watercress, also from Eataly, both drizzled with a little Whole Foods Market in-house Portuguese olive oil
  • slices of ’12 Grain & Seed bread’ from Bread Alone in the Union Square Greenmarket

 

Mrs. Nic’s sauce again, and the San Marzano tomato story

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pedigree: San Marzano, Italian San Marzano, Italian San Marzano D.O.C.

 

Gorgeous.

I love tomatoes, in any form, and I think I know what to do with them, in any form, but what do I know about the competing claims of the many serious (read, ‘high-end’) producers of tomatoes canned for cooking? I’m beginning to think that I may really only be able to say what tastes good.

I used to think I knew what was the very best canned tomato, based on my discussions with Nic Soccodato long ago, and my experience with the cans he sold out of the back of his barber shop. It was the San Marzano, and only the San Marzano which originated in and grew in his own paese, the Valle del Sarno.  After he retired however I may have inadvertently strayed from what he would have considered the genuine San Marzano, and recently I became aware that one of the brands I had been using for some time, and had always found very good, while described as San Marzano tomatoes, did not actually include fruit from Italy. Apostasy, or victory for locavores?

The problem has been further complicated by the fact that products of the same producers are not found in all markets, and the name, ‘San Marzano’, might not be found on any label in a given market, on a given day.

The can of peeled tomatoes shown in the image above, produced by Agrigenus, is what I used last Wednesday, in my last tomato sauce outing; it had all of the credentials. On Friday however, when I was at Eataly for another reason, and remembered I should replace it, the one brand I found was Mutti.  The label asserted, ‘Only Italian tomatoes. GMO Free’, but, while I looked everywhere, the words ‘San Marzano’ were nowhere to be found. I’ve really liked this brand in the past, often picking it up when my first choice was not available. Its exclusive presence in the store seemed to carry the recommendation of Batali and the Bastianich family, so I bought one.

I now don’t know what my experience means to the claims for San Marzano tomatoes from the Agro Nocerino, but I’ll probably continue to seek out the original.