UOZINMAIFRIG 4

Uozinmaifrig is not my own phylosophy.

WIth this invented word – which is actually the way we spell “What is in my fridge?” – can summarize the entire Italian Culinary Style.

More than an Italian Cuisine I always talk about style: use what is available at the market, use what you have in your refrigerator and in your pantry and create something unique. Unique because the same conditions – seasonality, presence of leftovers – will never represent again. Unique because workers who are back home for a hour are hungry and hurry and they have to prepare a fast and delicious dish. A dish that they will forget and will never cook again.

some examples are at these links:

A large part of the Italian Cuisines (plural, as in this Country there are several cuisines ) is made by the “Uozinmaifrig” philosophy, even when the refrigerator didn’t exist yet.

The Pici are a typical pasta dish original fron the countryside of Siena, in Tuscany. Val d’Orcia – nowadays renowed for the rolling hills with the single cypress on top and unwinding roads running around them – used to be a poor area. Some ingredients were, anyways available also by the poorest: tender wheat flour, water, olive oil, garlic, stale bread, even salty anchovies, which together with the salty cod fish represented the “fish-protein” cheap and available pretty much everywhere.

The dish created with these few ingredients is genial: the “pasty” consistency of the tender wheat pasta matches perfectly with the crispy breadcrumb reating an extraordinary effect.

I told all this in a TV program last week:

Here it is the recipe:

PICI CON LE BRICIOLE DI PANE

Chef’s Note

This simple but delicious recipe comes from Tuscany, my adopted homeland. It had been forgotten, like many ancestral recipes which I am happy to revive. It comes from the days when families were so poor that they never threw anything away – not even the bread crumbs that fell onto the table. But imagination and necessity have always worked miracles!

The trick when stretching the pasta as you form it between the palms of your hands is to keep it well floured, since the pasta is quite damp and sticks easily.

To finish, as we say here, a little anchovy flavour has always done the trick. You’ll find anchovy just about everywhere in Italy, in brine, smoked or canned. It’s even an integral part of Piedmonts’ cooking despite the fact that Piedmont is far from the sea. The tradition was brought there by Spaniards who were fleeing the Inquisition and who stopped in the region. Others flavour smoked herring. In Emilia Romagna a smoked herring was always hung over the table so that family members could rub it on a piece of bread to add flavour without much expense.

Ingredients for 4:

Pici

– 250 g (9 oz, about 2 1/2 cups) flour + 2 tablespoons

– 100 ml (1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon) sparkling water

– a pinch of salt

Sauce

50 gr (2 oz) bread crumbs

1 clove of garlic

4 salted anchovy fillets

20 gr (2/3 oz) chopped thyme and parsley

4 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

salt and pepper

Optional

Parsley

Pici

1. Arrange the flour, mixed with the salt, into a well; pour the water into the centre; combine everything thoroughly.
2. Knead the dough energetically until it is perfectly smooth.
3. Sprinkle the dough with flour and roll it out with a rolling pin to a thickness of 5 mm (1/4”).
4. Roll up the dough into a long cylinder.
5. Cut into 2 cm (3/4”)-wide sections using a floured knife.
6. Unroll each spiral of pasta onto your work surface to obtain ribbons.
7. Roll each ribbon between the palms of your hands, stretching it to form uneven “spaghetti.” It takes a bit of practice, but the results are spectacular.
8. Sprinkle them again with flour, lifting them up to keep them separated.
9. Let rest in a cool place, covered with a kitchen towel so the pasta doesn’t dry out.

Sauce and finishing

1. Sauté the flattened garlic clove in a skillet with a drizzle of oil; add 2 chopped anchovies and let them “melt”; add the herbs and combine well.
2. Quickly cook the pici in boiling salted water, stirring once or twice with a fork to prevent it from sticking together.
3. The pasta should be slightly soft but still al dente. The working time here is very important in order for the pasta to be properly cooked.
4. Drain the pasta, reserving a little of the cooking water; sauté it in the skillet with the sauce (1) .
5. Add the 2 remaining anchovies, cut into small cubes, and a little cooking water if necessary (3).
6. Season with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.
7. Sprinkle the crispy bread crumbs and serve.