Bucatini alla Caruso

Frank16 June 2018Campania, pasta, primi piatti79 Comments

They say that tenor Enrico Caruso came up with this dish. Caruso, a native of Naples, had a love-hate relationship with his home town. After he was booed at a performance early in his career, he never appeared on stage again in his native city, saying he would return only to eat the pasta. When he was in the area, he stayed at either the Hotel Vittoria in Sorrento or the Hotel Vesuvio in Naples. The dish was born when he suggested this sauce to the hotel chefs, and the rest, as they say, is history.

To make bucatini alla Caruso, you dress the pasta with a light tomato sauce scented with bell pepper, oregano and hot red pepper, then fold in fresh basil and fried zucchini. It’s a dish that features many of the bold flavors we think of as typically southern Italian. But here those flavors are used with discretion and nuance, producing a dish that’s as light as it is flavorful. It’s a far cry from the heavy-handed cooking you’d find in those ‘red sauce joints’ that for many people made Italian food synonymous with heartburn. This is what southern Italian cooking really about.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

400g (14 oz) bucatini

For the tomato sauce:

300-400g (12-14 oz) tomatoes, chopped (see Notes)
2 garlic cloves, peeled and slightly crushed
A red bell pepper, trimmed and cut into strips or small dice
A pinch of oregano
A pinch of red pepper flakes
A few basil leaves
Olive oil

For the zucchini:

3 or 4 small zucchini, sliced
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

For the topping (optional):

Finely minced fresh parsley
Grated pecorino cheese

Directions

Set a large pot of water to boil and salt it well.

Sauté the garlic cloves lightly in abundant olive oil. Remove when they’ve browned, but are still not very dark. Add the bell pepper and let it sauté for just a minute or two, then add the chopped tomatoes, along with a pinch of oregano and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Simmer until the mixture thickens into a sauce, about perhaps 10-15 minutes.

While the tomatoes are simmering, add the bucatini to the boiling water.

Meanwhile, trim off the tops and bottoms of the zucchini, cut them into think rounds, then shallow-fry them in olive oil until golden brown on each side. Drain on paper towels and salt generously.

When the bucatini are done al dente, transfer them to the pan with the sauce, along with a few fresh basil leaves and most of the fried zucchini. Mix for a minute or two over low heat then serve, topped with the rest of the fried zucchini slices and, if you like, a sprinkling of finely minced parsley or grated Pecorino cheese.

Notes on Bucatini alla Caruso

Most recipes for bucatini alla Caruso call simply for San Marzano tomatoes. In this country, that basically means the canned variety. But the dish works well with either fresh or canned tomatoes, San Marzano or not, so long as they are tasty. If you want to use fresh tomatoes outside of peak tomato season—still a good month away in these parts—I’d go for a quality brand of hydroponic tomato. Cherry or grape tomatoes, cooked for only 5 minutes or so, until they have wilted but not dissolved, would make for a lovely variation on the basic recipe. The amount of tomato varies from recipe to recipe, so follow your own tastes and preferences. The amount given here is my preference; it provides only a light tomato coating to avoid overwhelming the delicate taste of the zucchini.

As for the zucchini, as always look for ones that are small and solid, rather than the dark green “baseball bats” you often find in supermarkets, which tend to have rather mushy flesh. Let the zucchini slices brown but not get too dark, as they tend to turn bitter. Your bucatini alla Caruso will be even better if the zucchini are from your own garden, of course.

A bit of minced parsley sprinkled on top is nice for color. If you want cheese—personally I think the sauce is tasty enough without it—the choice would be a sharp pecorino to hold up to the other bold flavors in the sauce.

Who was Enrico Caruso?

The question might be odd for those of us of a certain age. I can remember listening to a scratchy recording of Caruso’s singing as a kid on my grandparents’ Victrola, as they called it back in the day. He was an iconic, even mythical figure back then. These days, however, I suspect most people know him, if they do, from Lucio Dalla’s haunting eponymous song, said to have been inspired by an unplanned stay at the hotel—and in the very room—where Caruso died.

Enrico Caruso was born into a working class family in Naples in 1873, the third of seven children. He began his singing career in the local church choir. After his mother’s death took to singing in the streets to earn some extra money for his family. He then found work in cafés and dinner parties and eventually at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples and other provincial opera houses. He finally got a contract to sing at La Scala in Milan in 1900, taking part in a grand concert at La Scala in February 1901 that Toscanini organised to mark the recent death of Giuseppe Verdi.

A global media star

Caruso’s big break came in 1902, when he was engaged by the Gramophone & Typewriter Company to make his first group of acoustic recordings in a Milan hotel room for a fee of 100 pounds sterling. They became best-sellers. The following year he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in a performance of Rigoletto. Just a few months later, he began his lifelong association with the Victor Talking Machine Company. His recording career ran in tandem with his Met career, both bolstering each other, until his death in 1921. Thanks in large part to his tremendously popular phonograph records, Caruso became one of the most famous personalities of his day. He was one of the first examples of a global media celebrity.

Sadly, Caruso died young at the tender age of 48. His health had begun to deteriorate after a stage accident in 1920. As he was on his way to Rome to see his doctors, staying overnight in the Vesuvio Hotel in Naples, he took an alarming turn for the worse. He died in the hotel shortly after 9:00 a.m. local time, on 2 August 1921. His body was preserved in a glass sarcophagus at Del Pianto Cemetery in Naples for mourners to view. In 1929, his widow had his remains sealed permanently in an ornate stone tomb that you can visit today.

Nota Bene

There is another dish going around the English speaking world by name of Spaghetti Caruso. A very different dish from this one—tomato sauce with chicken livers and mushrooms—that’s more autumnal and, I would dare say, more Tuscan sounding than Neapolitan. This source claims it was Caruso’s favorite pasta dish, but I really wonder about that. I haven’t found a reference to the dish in any Italian language source.

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