Home-style dishes are fit for a pope

Two weeks earlier, the lady cooking pasta for us had made dinner for the pope. Twice.

The lady was Lidia Bastianich, restaurateur, chef, PBS food-show host, cookbook author and among this country's most respected authorities on Italian cooking. With her restaurateur/winemaker son, Joe, she was giving a wine-and-food class at the cooking school at Central Market Dallas.

As the garlic sauteed and the pasta boiled, Bastianich told us about cooking for Pope Benedict XVI in New York during his recent American visit. The first dinner, on Friday, was a big one, she said, with many cardinals in attendance. Saturday's was more intimate, for just 24.

When the Vatican's ambassadors had approached her about the dinners, "I was really uptight and nervous," said Bastianich, who is Roman Catholic. But then she was "stunned" by how simple the pope's dietary requests were: nothing spicy; no cinnamon; no mushrooms.

She knew the pope was German, she said, and she discovered that his mother had been a chef.

"I'm going to touch him with the flavors of childhood," decided Bastianich, who was born on the Istrian peninsula in the Adriatic, once a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, later a part of Italy and now Croatia.

For the smaller dinner, she made chicken soup with filled pasta dumplings called agnolini and "goulash with a dab of sour cream, sauerkraut and potatoes almost like home fries, caramelized."

The official menu describes the dishes as "free-range organic chicken soup with agnolini" and "goulash-braised Wagyu flatiron beef with smoked potato, sauerkraut and sour cream."

"The pope doesn't take second servings," she said with a twinkle, "so I gave him a little extra."

The pope's comments after the dinner proved to her that she had accomplished her mission:

"He said, 'This food reminds me of the flavors of my mother's food.'"

The two courses she cooked in Dallas brilliantly illustrated her belief in cooking simply and using the best ingredients available.

We began with an exquisite antipasto: silky prosciutto curled atop little toasts spread with fig jam; thick slices of a dense salami called cacciatorino; two kinds of pecorino cheese, one topped with young pale-green fava beans and one with mostarda di pere (a traditional Italian condiment of candied pears spiced with mustard oil); olives with orange peel and a little hot pepper; dates fried in olive oil and peeled; pecans toasted with honey and cloves, and almonds with olive oil and chile powder. Alongside were wines from Joe Bastianich's two Italian wineries, which supplied the wines for the papal dinners.

Then came Bastianich's proof that delicious need not mean expensive, or complicated: spaghettini aglio olio -- with garlic and oil. It can be made, she said, for about $1.30 a portion, and provides "such a great base for building" with additional ingredients.

It is also, her son noted, "a great breakfast pasta; if you're nursing a little hangover, it's restorative."

And despite its simplicity, Bastianich said, "it is one of the hardest dishes to make right."

Not a problem for Bastianich, of course, as she deftly and swiftly transferred the almost-al-dente strands of spaghettini from the pot into the big saute pan with the garlic and oil, to finish cooking in the sauce.

Looking up from her pan at the audience, she said with a grin, "If it's good enough for the pope, I hope it's good enough for you."

Spaghettini with oil and garlic (spaghettini aglio olio)

Spaghettini is similar to vermicelli, and both are somewhere between cappellini and spaghetti in thickness. Bastianich said that instead of cheese, you can use bread crumbs crisped in a little olive oil -- sometimes referred to as the "poor man's Parmesan" in Italy.

Serves 6

Salt

1 pound spaghettini or vermicelli (Bastianich used the De Cecco brand)

5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

10 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced

1/2 teaspoon (or more to taste) crushed red pepper

1/2 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley

1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese or pecorino Romano (optional)

1. Bring 6 quarts of salted water to a boil in an 8-quart pot over high heat. Stir the spaghettini into the boiling water. Return to a boil, stirring frequently. Cook the pasta, semi-covered, stirring occasionally, until tender but still very firm, about 6 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat 3 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook, shaking the skillet and stirring, until pale golden, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and add 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper.

3. Ladle about 1 1/2 cups of the pasta cooking water into the sauce. Add the parsley, the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil and salt to taste.

4. If the skillet is large enough to accommodate the sauce and pasta, fish the pasta out of the boiling water with a large wire skimmer and drop it directly into the sauce in the skillet. If not, drain the pasta, return it to the pot and pour in the sauce. Bring the sauce and pasta to a simmer, tossing the pasta to coat with sauce. Cook until the pasta is coated with the sauce and al dente, about 1 minute. Remove the pot from the heat and toss in the grated cheese or bread crumbs, if using. Check the seasoning, adding salt and crushed red pepper if necessary. Serve immediately in warm bowls.

Nutritional analysis per serving: 450 calories, 16 grams fat, 59 grams carbohydrates, 16 grams protein, 10 milligrams cholesterol, 257 milligrams sodium, 2 grams dietary fiber, 33 percent of calories from fat.

-- Lidia Bastianich

Lidia's tips

Pasta and rice cooked al dente ("to the tooth") will be tender and not at all raw-tasting, but with a firm texture and a little snap at the center. Check by breaking a piece of the pasta; in long pasta shapes, look for a dot of white at the center; in round pasta shapes, such as ziti, look for a faint ring of white that runs around the center of the pasta.

Most pastas benefit from a final cooking in the sauce, in which case it should be cooked slightly short of the al dente stage.

Do not break up long pasta when you add it to the cooking water, and never add oil to the cooking water.

Extra-virgin olive oil breaks down at high temperatures, so it should not be used for high-temperature cooking such as frying. Instead, fry with a mixture of regular olive oil and canola, then drain off the oils and add extra-virgin oil to finish.

Oxygen and light are the enemies of expensive extra-virgin olive oil, so once you have used part of a bottle, store the remainder in a smaller bottle, to minimize the amount of oxygen that comes into contact with the oil, in a cool, dark spot. Refrigeration does not change the quality of olive oil; the oil will become cloudy but will clear when returned to room temperature.

Toasting dried spices in a dry skillet until fragrant "gives another dimension to the spices."

To concentrate and add complexity to the flavor of olives, toss them with a little olive oil and roast them in a low oven setting until they become wrinkled.