Welcome to the first entry of the Oklahomalocavore blog, featuring hyperlocal, lovingly-produced food created right here in Oklahoma. I will include a recipe or two of my own creation, and occasionally restaurant reviews featuring farm-to-table products. let me know what you think!
To begin with, full disclosure: I’m half Italian by ancestry. Which means I am required to love pasta in any way, shape, or form, it’s part of my culinary DNA. And I do love pasta.
The way I view pasta is that it’s not just a platform for sauces and other toppings, it should be able to be notable on its own, cooked to the classic al dente, a toothsome texture. In other words, the quality of the pasta should be remarkable.
Noting Julia Child, the only one thing I disagree with her is she thought Italian cuisine was a bit dull. “The sauces were too boring for her,” said author Bob Spitz, who travelled with Julia Child during a month-long journey through Sicily in 1992. For me, a simple sauce and artisan pasta make a heavenly meal.
Enter Della Terra Pasta, created here in Oklahoma City www.DellaTerraPasta.com.
Owner Chef Chris Becker, crafts his hand-made pastas using traditional techniques and bronze dies, a device for cutting and creating pasta shapes. There are other pasta dies that can be used in pasta making, including Teflon and gold, but Chef Becker chooses bronze, the most time-honored classic style. Using bronze dies produces pasta with a slightly rough surface to retain clinging sauces. “A slow-drying process, which helps preserve nutrients is a more time-honored tradition which creates a more distinct al dente pasta. Cracking can occur even when a pasta is slow dried, especially if the weather changes its mind mid-drying,” explained These techniques make Della Terra pasta just this side of sublime.
Della Terra offers a variety of pastas including rigatoni, whole-wheat campanelle, gnocchi rustica, fusilli, and casarecce. Yep, that last one I had to look up, a pasta in the shape of a twisted little roll, with origins in Sicily.
Della Terra Pasta is a gem to have here in the 405. “I am from New England and spent years in New York City, many working at the famed Lupa Osteria Romana, a restaurant owned by Mario Batali,” said Becker. “Lupa is where I learned about rustic Italian and developed my approach to cuisine. Del Posto (also a Batali restaurant) is where my passion for pasta was fully inspired, and where I developed pasta shapes and doughs. My approach to food and cooking came from my time there. With Italian food, it’s the method to food and the style, when you approach food in a certain way you honor the ingredients by using quality products. Respect in the integrity is what the food is all about,” he explained.
After Becker met and married his Oklahoma-born wife who has family here, they moved to Oklahoma City to raise their own family. “When I arrived here I realized that over the course of my experience in New York City, I was still very passionate about food and pasta-making in particular. Pasta making was a skill that I wanted to retain and continue to do,” Becker added.
Pasta classification is indeed a science, for example under the category of rigatoni (which means ‘little fluted ones’), there are all sorts of variation, its origins, the exact shape, and so on. “The rigatoni I make has a larger diameter and I do cut it shorter,” said Becker. “The company is four years old now, and every year we add a new pasta or two. Currently, linguine is only available to restaurants at this point, but we are looking at packaging for general sale. We’re also exploring the idea of tagliatelle pasta,” noted Becker.
Here’s my own version of a classic Italian Bandiera sauce, which always includes colors of the Italian flag. It’s customarily made with anchovy paste, which I have omitted here, a nod to vegetarian friends. I add kalamata olives, clearly not a color of the Italian flag, but they’re yummy. This is a quick, go-to recipe with a sauce that derives its sweetness from bell peppers.
Watch this blog for more Oklahomalocavore foods to come. Ideas and suggestions are welcome!
Angela
Rigatoni Bandiera
Serves 6
Prep time, about 30 minutes
- 1 12-ounce pkg of Della Terra Rigatoni
- 3 Tbsp olive oil
- 3 large, ripe tomatoes, seeded, peeled, and diced
- ¼ dry white wine (because any wine is yummy in everything Italian)
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 small green bell peppers, seeded and coarsely chopped
- 1 medium-size yellow onion, chopped
- ½ tsp dried oregano
- ¼ tsp dried marjoram
- ¼ tsp dried thyme
- salt and freshly ground pepper
- pinch of sugar
- pinch of red pepper flakes
- ¼ cup fresh basil leaves, sliced into a chiffonade
- ¼ cup sliced kalamata olives (optional)
Bring 16 cups water and 1/8 cup salt to a boil, add Della Terra Rigatoni, and boil for 11 minutes. Drain, cover, and set aside.
While the water is boiling for pasta, sauté vegetables in olive oil, add seasonings except for basil.
When vegetables are soft, add to warm pasta, add a drizzle of olive oil, top with the basil chiffonade (and chiffonade is just plain fun to pronounce), add a sprinkling of kalamata olives, and serve.