Cheap and Delicious and perfect for the October cool: Passatelli in broth.

ingredients for 4 as a first course:

100 grams of good bread crumbs,

…and the same (100 grams) of grated Parmigiano Reggiano

salt

1 untreated lemon

…and 1 untreated orange

Nutmeg

2 eggs

some more good bread crumbs, just in case

… and broth (depends on taste, meat or vegetable, or you can of course not use broth at all)

…a curve ball, a different path while walking to work, or back after the day, a turning off the TV and dancing, maybe, a writing a far away friend you haven’t seen in too long, a looking up at the sky and noting a different colored moon, or cloud, a new coffee grind blend. That sort of thing, for me anyway, it used to be. But of late it’s become second hand, so fast and easy that I could, (maybe,) assent from my hands and arms while they’re prepping the passatelli, and drift away: check email, read an article or two, go for a walk by the river.

I’m not sure why they’re not more well-known, passatelli, outside of a few regions in Italy. Well, not that the dish is unknown… I should have said: I’m not sure why they’re not made much more often. It’s such a simple and delicious dish, and fast. Then again, making broth is pretty easy to, but many have simply fallen out of the habit. Simpler to buy, even if the taste of canned or boxed or bottle is pretty much always, well, about like this:

You can use any broth depending on what you’re looking for but classically, it’s a meat broth, bird usually, though vegetable works fine, even better (maybe,) if you include a little bit of orange zest in the noodle mix. (Just in case: to make a good broth, simply open your fridge and see what’s there lying around: carrot, tomato, onion, ginger, celery, string beans, pea pods, parsley stems… almost anything. In Italy they say ‘tutto fa brodo’, everything makes broth. Lately I use the first five ingredients listed above, plus the usual cloves, and lightly crushed juniper berries…. and, most importantly, turkey. Which some people in central Italy would slap me for, but that’s because, (maybe,) they haven’t tried it.)

Start early if you want a well-textured noodle though, to leave the mix in the fridge for at least a couple hours. Take the dry stuff first, the cheese, bread, salt, nutmeg, citrus zest, into a mixing bowl and whisk into a homogeneous powder, then add the eggs and work it well until it becomes only a slightly humid, fragrant ball. It doesn’t take long, maybe 5-10 minutes, keep some bread crumbs or parmigiano around to incorporate if the dough remains too wet, or add a dribble of water if it’s Sahara dry. Then wrap it, and place it in the fridge or someplace cool to let the whole stabilize and blend.

… and that’s about it. All there is to it, really. From there, you simply squeeze the dough through one of those utensils in the picture above, or similar, using a knife to remove the resulting noodles directly into the lightly boiling broth – note: if you’ve done a good job, the squeezing will take a lot of effort. If the mixture is too wet or unstable/unmixed, the noodles will slush apart a bit during the light boiling.

Anyway, it’s a great plate for cool October days, rich and comforting while refined at the same time, and if you haven’t tried them at home before, they will seem… like discovering someone new.