One of the guilty pleasures that I have never, up to now, revealed to a living soul is my penchant for late-night pasta snacks. But not just any pasta, but a pasta risottata: pastina of the kind usually used for soups, cooked like a risotto, in just enough liquid (usually a mixture of water and milk) so that by the time the liquid has almost evaporated, the pasta if cooked and a creamy ‘sauce’ remains. I enrich the dish with a dab of butter and a spoonful of grated cheese just before pouring the concoction into a bowl and eating it greedily with a spoon.

I have always kept my love of this little mock baby-food to myself. After all, serious foodies do not indulge in such trifles, right? And, worse still, the method violates just about every traditional rule about the proper preparation of pasta.

But then, not so long ago, while shopping for some new cookbooks in Rizzoli in New York, I stumbled across a book that a friend from Rome had heartily recommended to me, Cuochi si diventa by Milanese gastronome Allan Bay. As I leafed through the book, I found a chapter entitled “Mania dell’autore: la pasta a risotto” and, lo and behold, I found recipes for something very much like my late-night pastina…

Ingredients

For a single late night snack

• 100g (3-1/2 oz) pastina
• 1/2 medium onion, finely minced
• A nob of butter
• Broth or water, q.b.
• 25g (1 oz) freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Optional:

• A bit of vegetable, meat or fish, cut into small strips or cubes, as a condimento

Directions

You begin with a soffritto of minced onion sweated in butter, then if you like add whatever condimento you wish—this time I used swiss chard leaves finely cut into a chiffonade—and allow it to insaporire (absorb the flavor of the soffritto) for a few minutes.

Then add your pasta—I used orzo, known in Italy as risoni—and just enough broth or water to cover the pasta. (NB: Unlike a risotto, there is no need to allow the pasta to ‘toast’ nor to add wine.)

As for any risotto, after the initial liquid evaporates, you add successive ladlefuls of liquid as needed, until the pasta is al dente. By this point, most but not all of the cooking liquid should have evaporated.

Add grated cheese, mix well and serve your pasta risottata immediately.

Notes

Bay says that this technique will work with any kind of pasta. That said, I usually stick to various forms of pastina: tubetti, orzo, quadretti, broken up fidelini and so on. Orzo is perhaps the best choice, at least if you want to imitate the look and feel of a true risotto. After all, the pasta known as orzo in the US is also called risoni, or ‘big rice grains’.

Lately, the technique has become popular for use with long pastas like spaghetti and spaghettini. Popular long paste risottate include the currently trendy spaghetti all’assassina from Puglia and spaghettini all’acqua di limone e provolone from Campania. You should avoid bulky pasta shapes like rigatoni. They won’t cook evenly in the relative small amounts of liquid required for this technique. As a general rule, the pasta should be small enough that it is fully immersed in liquid to start.

Thicker pastas are sometimes parboiled beforehand for say 2-3 minutes. This reduces simmering time since the longer you simmer, the more starch will be drawn out of the pasta. Too much and your pasta risottata will turn out gummy rather than creamy.

Cooking liquid

As for the liquid, as for risotto you can use any type of broth you like. Or just water if the condimento is flavorful enough.

Condimenti

And as far as the condimento is concerned, as for risotto, the possibilities are practically endless. Bay proposes a cacio e pepe (see this post for the pasta recipe). He also enjoys condimenti with zucca (Italian pumpkin) potato and provola cheese, as well as with mussels and cherry tomatoes.

That said, this technique lends itself to relative light sauces better than more ponderous ones. A ragù for example, would become impossibly ponderous. And sauces that already starchy, like béchamel, are guaranteed to come out gummy.

More on Allan Bay

Despite his Anglo-Saxon name, Allan Bay is Milanese born and bred, having got his last name from his English father. He’s a regular food columnist for the Corriere della Sera and a professor at the University of Pavia. Bay is known in Italy as something of an iconoclast. Indeed, Cuochi si diventa is a rather quirky cookbook—definitely not for the traditionalist. Still and all, it is heartening to see my ‘secret’ technique for pasta risottata endorsed by one of Italy’s great gastronomes!

Post Scriptum

Since I wrote the above post way back in 2010, pasta risottata has really come up in the world. From a niche taste then, it’s all the rage today. And it has become more or less standard practice now to finish off boiled pastas for a minute or two, or even more, by simmering them in the sauce. A kind of pasta semi-risottata.

The technique has become so common I think its at risk of overuse. There are limits to the technique and, if overused, it can become rather monotonous. But that’s a topic of its own, the subject of another post…