TOCCO DE ROSTO

Here’s a recipe that makes me welcome the chill in the air. It’s a slow-cooked
sauce for fresh pasta and it comes from Genoa. The translation
– a touch of the roast – pretty much tells the whole story. You make a pot
roast, Italian style; then you eighty-six the meat, strain and reduce the sauce
into a gravy and put it over pasta. What about the meat? The Genovese say
to make meatballs with it the next day but I think they’re being generous.
It’s not really good enough to serve as the second course because the bulk of
its flavor has slowly released itself into the sauce—great for the sauce; bad
for the meat. If you have a dog, that might be a good thing to do with it.
This is fun to do on a day when there are people hanging around the
house – maybe some friends are over to watch the game or … I don’t know,
read poetry, have a seance – depends on your friends — but the sauce has a
lot of components and cooks slowly for hours, so it fills your house with a
deeply enticing aroma. You might also take this as an opportunity to make
your own pasta – you’ll have lots of time while the sauce is bubbling away.
Fresh, homemade pasta would elevate this dish to masterpiece status.
…………………………………………………..TOCCO DE ROSTO

• (Also called Il Toccú in Genovese dialect)
• Dried porcinis – 5 or 6
• A piece of meat – chuck or rump roast – even a large veal chop will
• work – 1 ½ lbs.
• Marrow bones – 3 or 4
• Olive oil
• Butter – 2 tbsps
• Garlic – 4 cloves
• Carrot – 1
• Medium onion – 1
• Celery – 1 long stalk
• Parsley – a bunch
• Rosemary – 1 stalk
• Bay leaf
• Red wine – 11/2 cups (If you use veal instead of beef, use white wine)
• Flour (optional) 1-2 tbsps – (some Italians use flour to help along the thickening process, but I prefer to simply reduce it down)
• Tomato sauce – 1/2 cup (this could be from the marinara we made in the last post – or, because you have some time while the bones are roasting, make a simple tomato sauce while you wait — take off the 1/2 cup you need for this recipe and save the rest in the fridge)
• Beef broth – 4-5 cups

1 . Soak the porcini in hot water and set aside;

2 . Heat the oven to 400 and roast the marrow bones in a heat-proof dish – about a half hour or until you can spoon out the marrow. Set 4-5 tbsps of the marrow aside and discard the bones;

Browning the pot roast

3 . Chunk up the onion, carrot, garlic and celery; chop parsley;

4 . In a separate pan, sauté the chunked vegetables in oil until they brown and soften; then roughly chop them with two tbsps of the parsley; set
aside;

5 . Heat two tbsps olive oil and the butter in a heavy-bottomed skillet with deep sides; brown the meat on all sides along with the marrow;

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6 . Add the vegetables, the red wine (scraping up any bits on the bottom of the pan) the porcini , the rosemary and the tomato sauce (you may add the tablespoon of flour at this point, but it’s not necessary); let the wine bubble away for fifteen minutes or so;

the unwanted meat

7 . Add the beef broth, bring to a simmer; throw in the bay leaf and some salt; let bubble softly for an hour to an hour and a half, turning the meat
once;

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8 . Remove the meat and set aside; strain the sauce, pushing down on the vegetables to extract all the tasty stuff; toss the veg.

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9 . Return the strained sauce to the skillet and turn the heat to medium high; let the sauce reduce by half – it should nicely coat a wooden spoon when done; check for salt and add pepper.

the strained sauce

1 0 . Add the fresh pasta to boiling, salted water and cook for two or three
minutes; fresh pasta needs only a short time in the water. When it’s still
a little underdone, drain it and add it to the bubbling sauce; slowly toss
it and let the pasta finish in the sauce, absorbing the flavors; then add the
rest of the chopped parsley – there should be a large handful – toss and
serve.

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Once again, I have forgotten to take a photo of the finished product. First
I got involved in serving it and then I got involved in eating it. I was also
most of the way through a bottle of Malbec. My apologies.