The Dish

It's a Wrap

Tasty meals come in pretty packages on Valentine's Day
By Kasey Wilson

It's February, and we know what that means — being bullied into high-end dinner reservations and purchasing expensive gifts on February 14. This year, with Valentine's Day falling on a Sunday, slip into something comfortable and proclaim your love by sharing a cozy dinner at home.

Italian is the language for lovers, and when warming souls is on my menu, so is spaghetti. In Italy, it's popular to serve pasta al Cartoccio, or "in a bag." When this pasta package is presented to diners and opened tableside, it creates fanfare as aromas waft from table to table.

Cooking en papillote is a classic French cooking method of enclosing food, usually fish or vegetables, in an envelope of parchment paper. The paper puffs up as it fills with steam and becomes golden in the oven.  

Strangely, pasta, one of the most time-sensitive dishes, can be made with parchment. The pasta is not cooked in the paper but finished in it, blending all of the flavours in the sealed package just before serving. If you don't have parchment paper (available in supermarkets), aluminum foil works just as well, though it's less elegant.

In the recipe for spaghetti al Cartoccio from the Mangia with Quattro cookbook (Whitecap Books, $30) by Antonio Corsi, you undercook the pasta, then toss it with a tomato-anchovy sauce and wrap it up. As it continues to cook in the hot oven, the pasta is infused with juices from the tomatoes and the lilting scent of fresh basil. The recipe serves four, but it's easy to divide in half and wrap packages individually. Be careful when you open up the packages as they're filled with hot steam. Serve with a bottle of sangiovese, a radicchio salad and lots of crusty Italian bread to sop up the juices.

Great pasta begins with great tomato sauce. Here is Quattro's recipe:

Basic Tomato Sauce
Adapted from Mangia with Quattro.

3 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 cup diced onion
4 cans (28oz/795ml) whole Italian tomatoes
3 Tbsp, tomato paste
1 Tbsp. dried oregano
2 tsp. dried basil
1 tsp.
1/4 cup salted butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour

Heat the olive oil in a large soup over low heat. Sweat the onion (the slower the better) to bring out its natural sugars, about 5 minutes. It should be meltingly tender before you add the tomatoes and tomato paste. Simmer over low heat for 1 hour, stirring occasionally and breaking up any large pieces of tomato with the back of a spoon. Add oregano, basil and salt.

In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Whisk in the flour (this is called a roux); let it bubble gently for 1 to 2 minutes without browning. Gradually whisk in the milk. Cook, stirring constantly until sauce comes to a boil and thickens; reduce heat to low and let simmer for about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season to taste with salt, pepper and a pinch or two of nutmeg. Whisk the cooked roux into the hot tomato sauce and simmer for 10 minutes.

Makes about 12 cups
 

Find Quattro's Spaghetti in Parchment (Spaghetti al Cartoccio) in the February/March 2010 issue of Wine Access magazine.