Watching Stanley Tucci, Got Us in the Mood for Simple Calabrian Spaghetti
I’ve always liked simple Italian cuisine. The fewer ingredients the better. Calabrian Spaghetti has three ingredients plus a few garnishes if desired. The expression on Tucci’s face said it all.
After watching the episode where Tucci goes to his native Calabria and is entertained by Restaurateur Michele Pugliese at his Osteria Della Cipolla Rossa where his wife prepares red onion spaghetti, we were hooked. The dish is nothing more than onions, broth and pasta yet it is what the restaurant is famous for.
While shopping at Meijer the other day, we spotted some very large very flat sweet red onions. Though not from Calabria, I felt that they’d do the trick. So, when we got home, I got my three ingredients together and started to cook.
I debated whether to cook the spaghetti in water or broth and decided to go with broth if for no other reason than I had a quart of very rich flavorful broth on hand made from a rotisserie chicken carcass, fat and skin included so I had some fat on top to work with too. I cooked about 6 oz. of spaghetti in a quart of the homemade chicken broth. Meanwhile, I sweated down about a half of the large red onion cut into crescents in the fat that I had skimmed off the broth along with a bit of olive oil. As the onions cooked down, I poured a little broth off the boiling spaghetti into the pan of onions and let it reduce to a medium thick sauce. By the time the pasta was done, it had absorbed most of the broth so it was wet and sloppy but no longer liquid. I dumped it all into the pan of onions, mixed it together and plated it garnished with cracked pepper, parmesan and parsley served with toasted crusty buttered bread to sop up the delicious sauce.
We served it with a bottle of Sicilian white 2021 Purato Organic/Vegan Catarrato/Pinot Grigio, Terre Siciliane IGT ITALY (12.5% abv) $13 at Whole Foods that was absolutely as good as we remembered it (see “Brian’s Cryin’s III Sept 23,2022). This was the perfect wine with one of the tastiest dishes we’ve ever made. Once again, LESS IS MORE!
Shortly after we wolfed it down in a matter of minutes, Alice got on the computer and found “Food Hunter’s Guide to Cuisine: How to Make Spaghetti from Stanley Tucci Searching for Italy”. I was pretty close to the recipe though they cook the pasta in water, not broth and I didn’t add garlic. I thought about it but, I always throw a ton of garlic into my pot when making broth so it was definitely not needed. I also did not add salt because reducing a quart of broth into maybe a half to three quarters of a cup would be salty enough. I do not add salt when making broth but, in this case, the broth came from a store-bought rotisserie chicken which I assume received copious quantities of salt as a rub. If you are making this with store-bought broth, you might want to go with water. I’ve found that when you reduce commercial broth, even the so-called “low sodium” version, it is pretty salty tasting. Even though I now have the actual recipe, I don’t think I’d change a thing from what I made by just seeing it on TV and observing Stanley Tucci’s face when he tasted it.
Enjoy in Good Health!
A Brian Cain, the Michigan Vintner
