I want to give pasta a few weeks of vacation, because I’m afraid it might “burn out,” but not before giving you the recipe I’ll be talking about today: Mezze Maniche with speck, arugula, and cherry tomatoes. When I first discovered it, we lived through a period of extreme romance, of not being able to live without it, daydreaming about it 24 hours a day, and then what happened was that “our love broke from so much use.” In other words, after a couple of months of making it every other minute, I got bored of it. A couple of days ago, I felt like having it again. I suppose it’s because “where there was fire, ashes remain,” and I thought I owed it to you to introduce it. It must have something special, because my partner also loves it, even though it has pomodorini. He doesn’t like them, which is something I find so hard to understand that I prefer to imagine he was traumatized as a child watching the “cold on the outside, incandescent ball at 18,000 degrees on the inside” scene from Il secondo tragico Fantozzi.
Did you know about speck ham? Although it originates from the Tyrol, it is widely used in the cuisine of other Central European regions and countries. Among them, Italy, where the one from Alto Adige is highly appreciated and enjoys its own PGI status.
In shops specializing in Italian products, they usually have it, but if you can’t find it, you can substitute it with serrano ham. It will lack the smoky touch, but it combines just as well with the rest of the ingredients. As for the cherry tomatoes, whether natural or canned, you can also choose based on your preferences. With canned ones, you’ll make more juice, they are always sweet, and they sauté in the blink of an eye, which saves some time in the recipe. Natural ones tend to be a bit more acidic, unless it’s the season for those that look like miniature pear tomatoes, which, personally, I love.
By the way, my friend and coworker María told me about today’s recipe. She knows a ton of quick, easy, and authentically Italian recipes. (The stracciatella recipe, for example, she told me about that one too). Grazie mille Mari’! 🙂
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The card
- 200 g of Mezze Maniche or similar short pasta you have on hand
- 200 g of very ripe cherry tomatoes, (if you find canned ones, they make even more juice)
- 50 g of speck ham or serrano ham.
- 1 clove of garlic
- Half a small dried chili pepper (optional)
- 1 third of a glass of dry white wine
- 50 g of parmesan
- 30 g of arugula.
- Olive oil
- salt
- Put the pot of water for the pasta on the heat right away. Watch the amount of salt in the pasta boiling water. The ham usually makes the base a bit salty. Therefore, it is better for the pasta to have little salt.
- Put a good splash of oil to heat over low heat in a pan large enough to sauté the pasta and the base you will prepare.
- Add the garlic cut in half and the chili pepper.
- When the garlic is golden, remove it and the chili pepper and add the ham cut into small cubes or short strips. Brown, but without frying them completely, as they would become as tough as a shoe sole.
- Add the tomatoes cut in half and let them sauté.
- When the base is almost ready, add the wine and let it reduce. Taste the base and, if it is bland, which I don't think it will be, adjust the salt.
- Drain the pasta, reserving half a ladle of the cooking water and add them to the pan with the ham base.
- Sauté the pasta with the contents of the pan for a couple of minutes.
- Place the arugula leaves, which you have previously washed and cut in half, on top of the pasta. The amount depends on whether you are more or less of a fan of this ingredient.
- Grate the parmesan into shavings and let a couple of spoonfuls fall over the arugula.