Fusilli primavera

Frank11 May 2018Campania, pasta, primi piatti51 Comments

I had always thought of “Pasta Primavera” as a modern American invention, probably a product of the rage for “northern Italian” food in the 1970s and 1980s. I remember reading about it years ago in some gourmet magazine and asked Angelina to make me it for me. “What’s that?” she replied with a bemused chuckle. And in all my years there I’ve never actually come cross it in Italy, either.

So imagine my surprise, as I was leafing through my trusty copy of the classic La cucina napoletana, when I found a entry for fusilli primavera, described as the “personal recipe” of a well known chef named Gerardo Modugno. So even if there is no shortage of faux Italian dishes called Pasta Primavera, a truly Italian version of it really does exist, I realized. Or at least it did in the kitchen of a certain upper class Naples household in the mid 20th century.

For the most part, Italian cookery is about dishes that use a limited number of best-quality ingredients, simply but expertly prepared. I’ve written about how you should be wary of the authenticity of supposedly Italian recipes with a long list of ingredients and multiple steps. Well, my friends, this recipe is an exception that proves the rule. It calls for many ingredients and entails lots of different steps—and mind you, this is my streamlined version of the original… !

But we shouldn’t be too surprised. This version of Pasta Primavera comes out of the tradition of French-inspired chefs that labored in the kitchens of the 18th and 19th century Neapolitan nobility, a class of chefs called the monzù. Modugno is apparently still alive and claims to be the last of the monzù. (More on them in the Notes below.) So no, this is not a quick and easy weeknight dinner dish, but it is truly, authentically Italian, steeped in culinary history.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

500g (1 lb) fusilli

For spring vegetable condimento:

1 kilo (2 lbs) asparagus, about 2 or 3 bunches
350g (12 oz) frozen artichokes
250g (9 oz) frozen peas
2 or 3 fresh spring onions, finely minced
50g (1-1/2 oz) pancetta
White wine
Olive oil
Butter
Salt and pepper

For the aspargus purée:

2 Tbs butter
A handful of fresh basil leaves
A sprig or two of fresh parsley
Salt and pepper

For the egg and cheese enrichment:

1 egg
1 Tb Parmesan cheese (or more, to taste)

Direction

Set a pot of well salted water to boil. Trim the bottoms off the asparagus and, if they are thick, peel off their skins from just below their tips downwards.

When the water comes to a boil, add the asparagus and cook until fully tender. Remove the asparagus from the water with a skimmer or tongs. (Don’t drain the water out of the pot.) Let the asparagus cool then cut the tips of the asparagus into short lengths.

Put the rest of the stalks into a blender, along with a good knob of butter, a basil leaf or two, a spring of parsley, a pinch of salt and a ladleful of the water in which the asparagus have boiled. Blend well, adding more water if needed to obtain a smooth, pourable purée. Taste and adjust for seasoning.

Meanwhile, defrost the frozen artichoke hearts under warm water, then drain and cut them into thin wedges. Combine with the peas and asparagus tips in a bowl and have this medley at the ready.

Now add the fusilli to the pot where you’ve cooked your asparagus and cook until al dente.

While the pasta is cooking, warm a good pour of olive oil and a knob of butter in a large skillet. Add the pancetta and let it render, then add the spring onion and sauté just until it wilts. Add the artichokes, peas and asparagus tips. Sauté everything together over lively heat for a few minutes, seasoning with salt and pepper and moistening with a drizzle of white wine as you go.

When the vegetables are tender and have had a chance to absorb the flavors of the onion and pancetta, remove about half the vegetable mixture and set aside.

Add the asparagus purée to the skillet with the remaining vegetables, mix well and set over very low heat.

Mix the egg and grated cheese together in a bowl and reserve.

When the pasta is almost, but not quite al dente, drain and add to the skillet. Toss the pasta with the sautéed vegetables over low heat, loosening the pasta with a ladleful of the pasta water if need be. Keep tossing for a minute or two, until the pasta is well coated, then add the egg and cheese mixture, and mix it in well, allowing the sauce to thicken slightly, as if making a carbonara.

Serve the fusilli immediately, topped with the rest of the sautéed vegetables, along with additional grated Parmesan on the side for those who want it.

Notes on fusilli primavera

I’ve called for frozen peas and artichokes here. That’s not so much about convenience, but simply quality. Here on the Eastern Seaboard of the US and I would guess elsewhere, too, the quality of fresh peas and artichokes—when you can find them—is pretty poor. The peas are often mealy, artichokes usually wilted and mottled. And both can be very expensive. Frozen peas and artichokes, on the other hand, are actually quite acceptable. But if you live in California or somewhere you can find good quality fresh produce, by all means enjoy!

A personal note: Of all the pasta shapes I’ve tried, fusilli aka “corkscrews” are actually my least favorite. For this dish I’ve used a particular kind of fusilli, called fusilli avellinesi, named after the town of Avellino in Campania, which I find much more appealing. Anyway, this dish would work with most short pasta shapes—penne, pennette, farfalle—quite well. Avoid spaghetti or other long pastas, no matter what you might read on the interwebs.

Modugno’s Original Recipe

Besides using frozen peas and artichokes, I’ve simplified Modugno’s original recipe a bit for the time-constrained modern cook. Modugno calls for cooking each of the vegetables separately. The peas are sautéed in butter with onion and pancetta. The artichokes, cut into wedges, are cooked separately in oil and butter, with a splash of white wine. The peas and asparagus purée are then added to the artichokes, along with a ladleful of the asparagus water, basil and parsley. Everything cooks together for a few minutes before adding the cooked pasta and then the egg and cheese enrichment. In my view, the separate cooking of the vegetables would change the dish very little indeed, not enough to justify the extra time and effort for what is—at least by the usual Italian standards—an already elaborate dish.

The other things I’ve done is to actually reduce the amount of vegetables. Believe it or not. This recipe already “overloads” the pasta by modern standards, as you can readily tell from the photographs here. But the original recipe for fusilli primavera called for double the amounts of asparagus and artichokes. Try it if you’re feeling particularly hungry.

A Short History of the Monzù

The term Monzù, a Neapolitan corruption of the French “monsieur”, was used as an honorific title bestowed on chefs working the noble households in Southern Italy and Sicily. Some say that the first monzù was indeed a certain Monsieur Robert, the chef of Joachim Murat, King of Naples during the Napoleonic period in the early 19th century, although other sources maintain that the monzù tradition started at least a century before that.

The monzù practiced a kind of haute cuisine applying French techniques to ingredients typical of the Italian south. Besides this recipe for fusilli primavera, Francesconi devotes a whole section of her La cucina napoletana to similarly elaborate recipes for maccheroni in the monzù style. (In another surprise, one of them is for perciatelli with chicken—a combination that most Italians today consider an abomination.) The extravagant pasta timballi of the kind featured in the 1996 film Big Night are also typical of the style.

Apart from Monsieur Robert, the monzù were generally Italians. Although the term is associated with Neapolitan aristocratic cookery—Naples being the capital of southern Italy, then the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies—Francesconi says that the monzù almost always haled from Sicily and Abruzzo. They were often sent by their noble employers to France to study. The French influence was pervasive during this period. It’s not coincidental that some of the most famous Neapolitan dishes, such as ragù and gattò, carry corrupted French names. According to Francesconi, the monzù eventually turned from cooking in homes to social clubs and then to opening their own restaurants, many of which became renowned. (She names a few of these, but sadly they all seemed to have disappeared.)

If you read Italian and want to know more about the the monzù, check out Maestri Monzù, website of the Academy of Neapolitan Aristocratic Cuisine, founded by none other than Gerardo Modugno.

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