Marcella Hazan’s Pasta ricotta e spinaci

I’m a long time fan of Marcella Hazan. I mean a long time. I’m old enough to have bought her first two books, The Classic Italian Cookbook and More Classic Italian Cooking, when they first came out about 50 years ago. I can still remember as a high school student anxiously picking up a paperback copy of Classic Italian Cooking at a bookshop Grand Central Station and virtually devouring it on the train back home. I bought every other book she wrote, too, right up to her final work Ingredienti, co-written with her husband Victor and published posthumously in 2016.

As for so many others, the book was a revelation for me. It opened my eyes to Italian cookery beyond the dishes from Campania and Puglia that I grew up with. And perhaps more than the recipes, Marcella’s thoughtful advice on how to be a good Italian cook resonated with me. No other person except Angelina has had a bigger influence on my culinary journey. And of course, I wasn’t alone. She introduced Italian food to the US and more broadly the English speaking world. Even today, in my opinion her Essentials of Italian Cooking, a compendium of Classics and More Classics published in 1992, remains the single best Italian cookbook in the Englsh language.

Marcella, the film

So you know that when Director Peter Miller and his promoter (who turns out to be a long time fan of Memorie di Angelina) recently reached out to invite me to watch Peter’s new documentary on Marcella’s life, of course I jumped at the chance. For anyone who admires Marcella, or just loves Italian food, this informative, poignant and funny documentary is a must watch. Even a long time Marcella fan like myself learned a few things I didn’t know about her, while having few chuckles and holding back a few tears along the way.

Pasta ricotta e spinaci, my favorite Marcella pasta…

Seeing the film inspired me to go back and look at my old, well thumbed copies of Marcella’s cookbooks from back in the day. And I thought I’d share a recipe that’s very special for me.

Everyone knows Marcella’s signature five ingredient tomato sauce. But the recipe dish that really caught my eye, first in More Classic Italian Cooking and later republished in Essentials, was pasta ricotta e spinaci, pasta dressed with spinach and ricotta, which Marcella says she discovered a restaurant in Palermo. Of course, spinach and ricotta is a classic pairing in Italian cookery, but you usually use it as a filling for fancy stuffed pastas like ravioli, cannelloni and crespelle or for making gnocchi. Here the delicious pairing serves as a dressing for dry pasta, turning it into something you can enjoy on the daily. A genius idea!

Anyway, this recipe has been part of my regular rotation ever since. It’s almost as simple as Marcella’s tomato sauce and, to my mind, every bit as delicious in its own way. I usually make a slightly different version these days (see Notes below) but her original recipe is still a delight. It’s especially appealing at this time of year, when lovely young, tender spinach is at the height of its season.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

• 500-750g (1 to 1-1/2 lbs) rigatoni, penne or maccheroncini
• 1 kilo (2 lbs) fresh spinach, preferably young aka baby spinach
• 125g (4 oz) butter
• 100g (3-1/2 oz or 1/2 cup) ricotta chese, or more to taste
• 100g (1/2 cup) freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
• salt

Optional:

• 50g (2 oz) boiled ham, chopped
• nutmeg

Directions

Rinse the spinach well in a large bowl filled with water.

Transfer the spinach, drained but still wet, to a large braiser or sauté pan. Cover and let simmer over medium heat just until the spinach wilts.

Place the spinach in a colander and rinse quickly with cold water to stop it cooking. Drain and gently squeeze it dry. Then chop it finely.

Melt the butter in a large sauté pan or braiser and, if using, add the ham and let it sauté over gentle heat for a moment. Add the spinach and give it a good stir, seasoning generously with the salt. Sauté over lively heat for a couple of minutes, then turn off the heat. If using, grate over a tiny bit of nutmeg.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of well salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente.

Drain the pasta, but not too well, and transfer it to pan with the spinach. Let it simmer for a minute, tossing or stirring from time to time.

Then add the ricotta, grated cheese and the other half of the butter. Mix well over the barest of flames. The pasta should flow easily. If not,add a ladleful of the pasta water and mix again. Taste and adjust for seasoning.

Serve immediately, with more grated cheese on the side for those who want it.

Notes on pasta ricotta e spinaci

I’ve made a few minor adjustments here to Marcella’s original recipe. For one, while in Marcella’s original recipe, the pasta and sauce are simply mixed in a warmed serving bowl in the more traditional manner, I’ve introduced a step where you toss the cooked pasta with the spinach and ham over gentle heat before finishing the dish with the butter and cheeses. This brief mantecatura for cooked pasta has become quite trendy recently, to the point where it’s seemingly become the standard way to finish a pasta dish. And although I’m allergic to most food trends, this is one trend I can get behind. It allows the boiled pasta to absorb the flavors of the sauce. And for the sauce to better cling to the pasta. (Caveat: This method doesn’t for all pastas, but it does here very nicely.)

In my recipe testing, I also found that I used much more ricotta than the original recipe calls for. Even so, as you can see in the photo, the spinach really dominates the sauce. When I cook this dish for myself, I use even more than I did here, aiming for more of an equal balance between spinach and cheese. Hence the ingredients list allows for more ricotta to taste.

Marcella advises you to season the spinach well, since spinach is the main flavoring for the pasta and the ricotta doesn’t have salt. Definitely good advice. She believed the proper use of salt, neither too much or too little, was the most important skill a cook could have. And most Americans tend to underseason their food, hence her emphasis on using enough. I couldn’t agree more. I find that underseasoning might be the single most common culinary ‘sin’ among home cooks.

Choice of pasta

Marcella’s original recipe in More Classic Italian Cooking was styled Penne con Spinaci e Ricotta, but also allows for other short tubular pastas. In Essentials, she recommends penne, rigatoni or maccheroncini. Other tubular pastas like the larger paccheri would also work nicely, as would other smaller short pastas like fusilli, tortiglioni, strozzapreti and gemelli. And although you will see recipes for pasta ricotta e spinaci calling for long pastas like spaghetti, personally I think Marcella was right not to recommend it. This condimento is just too ‘sticky’ for a long pasta.

Spinach

Back in 1980 when this recipe first appeared, the only spinach available in America was very mature, with thickish stalks and rather tough, crinkled leaves. It was typically sold unwashed. You needed to trim that kind of spinach of its stalks, much like Swiss chard, then soak it very thoroughly in several changes of water to eliminate grit. It also needed fairly long cooking, in the order of some ten minutes, All of these instructions were included in the original recipe, and if you’re using mature spinach, do follow them.

These days you’re more like to find much younger, tender specimens with slender stalks, often sold as ‘baby spinach’. The stalks don’t generally need trimming, and the spinach will cook down in just 2-3 minutes. It is also often sold pre-washed, though it’s not a bad idea to give it a plunge in a large bowl of water, just in case. The spinach needs to be wet for its preliminary steaming anyway.

Marcella was famously not a fan of frozen vegetables. In More Classics, she says that while supermarket produce isn’t always of the best quality, she’d rather spend time picking out the good stuff than filling her cart with the “little waxed boxes from the unvarying and mummified display of the frozen food counter”. And yet her recipe for pasta ricotta e spinaci also allows for frozen spinach. I suppose she realized that, especially back in 1980s and 90s, fresh spinach wouldn’t always be available to her readers. In any event, if you are using frozen spinach, simply let it thaw then chop it fine and proceed from there.

Ricotta

As I’ve written about before, not all ricotta is made equally. Back in Marcella’s time, the only ricotta avaiable outside delis in Italian neighborhoods tended to be pretty bland and watery. (I think that’s whe she didn’t bother with mentioning adding more liquid to the sauce.) These days we have more choice, and if you can, do buy the best quality ricotta you can find, hand dipped if possible.

Variations

The recipe changed slightly from its 1980 original when it was republished in 1992 Essentials. The later recipe added the ham and nutmeg, both of which make nice additions so I’ve included them here as optional ingredients. Marcella’s son Giuliano, who is also a chef and cookbook author, has his own version of this dish, with a sauce that includes sautéed onion and cream.

As mentioned at the top, over the years I’ve come to make pasta ricotta e spinaci a slightly different way. As mentioned, I add a lot more ricotta, so that the sauce isn’t just spinach with ricotta, but rather equal parts spinach and ricotta. I also usually omit the ham or any other meat, but start with a soffritto of shallots or garlic. I often use a mix of olive oil and butter rather than all butter, or sometime even olive oil only.

For a more elegant take on this homey dish, you can purée the sautéed spinach with a little milk, then simmer it for a minute or two and proceed with the rest of the recipe. This makes more of a proper sauce that will evenly coat the pasta.

A curiosity…

As much as I adore Marcella, her recipes for the iconic Roman pastas rather puzzle me. Her carbonara, for example, starts with sauteeing garlic in butter, adding pancetta which is then deglazed with white wine… She also adds minced parsley and replaces most of the pecorino with Parmesan. In the introduction she mentions American style bacon as a popular alternative to pancetta, but doesn’t mention guanciale at all (perhaps because she knew her readers in 1980 would never be able to find it?) Similarly, her amatricana has you begin by sautéing onions in butter and olive oil. And again she uses pancetta and more parmigiano-reggiano than pecorino.

You might chalk up some of these quirks to realism about her readership. In 1973 or even 1992 the average American home cook wouldn’t be likely to have access to guanciale, for instance. But other changes, like her use of butter and preference for parmigiano-reggiano over pecorino, strike me as a reflection of her romangola roots. Not sure how to explain her use of onion and garlic in these recipes.

Could it be that these recipes reflect the way at least some Italians made these dishes back in the day? The recipe for carbonara has certainly changed over time. Sopha Loren‘s 1971 recipe for carbonara, for example, calls for both pancetta and cream. It’d be an interesting topic to research. But I can say that these recipes don’t reflect these dishes as you will encounter them in today’s Rome.

Print Recipe

Marcella Hazan’s Pasta ricotta e spinaci

Pasta with Ricotta and Spinach Sauce

Total Time30 minutes mins

Course: Primo

Cuisine: Italian

Keyword: easy, pasta, quick

Ingredients

• 500-750 g 1 to 1-1/2 lbs rigatoni, penne or maccheroncini
• 1 kilo 2 lbs fresh spinach, preferably young aka baby spinach
• 125 g 4 oz butter
• 100 g 3-1/2 oz or 1/2 cup ricotta chese, or more to taste
• 100 g 1/2 cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
• salt

Optional:

• 50 g 2 oz boiled ham, chopped
• nutmeg

Instructions

• Rinse the spinach well in a large bowl filled with water.
• Transfer the spinach, drained but still wet, to a large braiser or sauté pan. Cover and let simmer over medium heat just until the spinach wilts.
• Place the spinach in a colander and rinse quickly with cold water to stop it cooking. Drain and gently squeeze it dry. Then chop it finely.
• Melt the butter in a large sauté pan or braiser and, if using, add the ham and let it sauté over gentle heat for a moment. Add the spinach and give it a good stir, seasoning generously with the salt. Sauté over lively heat for a couple of minutes, then turn off the heat. If using, grate over a tiny bit of nutmeg.
• Meanwhile, bring a large pot of well salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente.
• Drain the pasta, but not too well, and transfer it to pan with the spinach. Let it simmer for a minute, tossing or stirring from time to time.
• Then add the ricotta, grated cheese and the other half of the butter. Mix well over the barest of flames. The pasta should flow easily. If not,add a ladleful of the pasta water and mix again. Taste and adjust for seasoning.
• Serve immediately, with more grated cheese on the side for those who want it.

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