Saturday BeefChecca

Only those who are Italo-American among the readers here would verily understand the above's play on words and meaning. Most who come here would also understand the inherent beauty of Italian athletes wearing Italian underwear.

Italian culture, especially that which continues to reside on the European Continent, has consistently had a love/hate relationship with the marginal elements in Society. It's evident in many ways, sometimes in the names given to notable dishes in the cuisine. This web log has already made note of Pasta Puttanesca. Suffice it to say that loose women, remunerated or not, have been revered in a way for centuries on the Italian peninsula, especially in Art, which always imitates life. One need only point to the likes of Musetta and everything the name and the characiter implies.

In a similar fashion the rich culture of the Italian peninsula even in the pejorative sense has much nomenclature applicable to those who practice the love that dare not speak its name. Only it seems that in Italy it has many names and has entered the vocabulary of cuisine much like the kindred loose women. Hey, spice is spice.

Day to day living in Rome will bring to light more than one warm weather recipe for pasta which will call for uncooked sauce one of which has made its way to this side of the Atlantic in more than one version. A tourist in Rome in the early 1980s might have heard it called something like Pasta Primavera probably because the wait staff was making an attempt to be polite. In most cases it is called Pasta alla Checca (Queer Pasta).

The word, Checca [pronounced cake-a, more or less] is what homosexual men are referred to in Rome and sometimes in the Milan area. Actually it's rather diffuse throughout the modern peninsula. It comes from a diminutive for Francesca or Francesco and usually objectifies a somewhat effeminate type although the more masculine term, Checco, does exist.

At any rate there is enough affection for the humanity that this slang and somewhat offensive term designates that there is a great pasta dish that bears its name.

There are a number of versions of the recipe that some research will identify. All of them are uncooked or raw. One has the sauce warmed up so to speak. All of them are delicious just like their namesakes. Is that backwards? Well, you know what we mean.

One reason to choose Alessandro Giuntoli's version from Osteria del Circo of New York City is that he provides a fresh pasta recipe with it. It also has other elements in common with the excellent recipes experienced in the now defunct restaurants La Nonna and Ribollita fresh bufala mozzarella which some recipes surprisingly do not include but are always included in European Italian recipes. Every recipe seems to call for a different type of pasta. Small, thin pasta for this recipe is called for very rarely. It will require at the very least spaghetti to "toss up" as it should.

Giuntoli's recipe has this homemade pasta:

One-half pound durum flour
2 whole eggs
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Juice from one-half lemon

Anyone who makes pasta at home knows to make a well with the flour and place all the liquid ingredients in the middle of it. (If you have a pasta machine this is child's play). Mix and then knead everything until it becomes a paste and then 'evolves' into something drier and capable of manipulating. Roll the pasta and cut by hand into tagliolini, long, paper-thin ribbon noodles, about 1/8 inch wide or less.

This is a good type of pasta to use because it cooks up very quicky and while hot it gets tossed up "cooking" the raw queer sauce.

All the recipes call for ripe, fresh tomatoes. It is important that the tomatoes are of a good quality. They can be sliced, blanched, seeded, but they mostly need to be tasty and ripe for the taking.

Pasta alla Checca

400 grams of pasta (Chef Alessandro's tagliolini are good)
200 grams of fresh mozzarella (imported fresh buffalo mozzarella is best)
100 grams of caciotta (a sheep cheese often with bits of wild mushroom or truffle)
4 large ripe tomatoes
Fresh basil leaves sliced into strips
Virgin olive oil
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

The caciotta, of course, is optional and while some recipes call for olives and capers (those belong in the whore pasta -- not that gay people can't be whores) and forget the mozzarella, in most recipes it's the mozzarella that makes it what it is.

One suggestion is that the ingredients aside from the cheese should marinate for a few hours.

The cheese should be cubed and, if you like, let it warm in double boiler fashion while the pasta is boiling above the pot.

The idea is this -- that the freshly cooked pasta is tossed with the raw sauce and "cooks it." If all the ingredients are fresh and care is taken to make sure they are of the best quality, this is an excellent taste treat.

This is the first course for 4 everyday people or two Italian men with great thighs in their underwear.