The Winter Olympics gets underway in northern Italy early next month, with many of the snowy sports happening in the Dolomites and the Valtellina. I have been hyper-aware of this for a while, because Pasta Grannies, my favorite YouTube channel, is all over it. To promote the Olympics, the show has been spotlighting nonnas from these mountain regions making the local pasta specialties, such as pizzocheri—a substantial concoction of fresh buckwheat pasta, Savoy cabbage, potatoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. In the Olympic spirit, I wanted to make pizzocheri (say peetz-OH-care-ee) myself but finding the right flour proved challenging. So—not very Olympian—I cheated. I substituted dried farro pasta and, while I can no longer claim authenticity, I can assure you the outcome does not disappoint.
Read morePesto of Your Dreams
I’ve been working on my pesto recipe for a few decades but I’ve never been 100 percent satisfied. Sometimes I make it in a mortar, like you’re supposed to, but it seems to discolor more with that method. Sometimes I blanch the basil leaves for a few seconds to keep the color, a trick I learned from Michael Chiarello, who also adds a pinch of ascorbic acid for the same reason. But that always seems a bit like cheating. Recently, perusing a new Italian cookbook, I saw another approach that intrigued me.
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