EVERYDAY FOOD
| POTLUCK |
Labor of Love TEXT BY MICHELLE SHIH
as a special treat in a top Italian restaurant—and if you ate at star chef Missy Robbins’s restaurants, Misi and Lilia, in Brooklyn, you’d be right. But she believes it’s so much more. In her new book, the Connecticut native invites you into her world, where the staple is comforting and familiar, yet also complex. Take fettuccine Alfredo, the first dinner-party dish she made, at age 15. She’s since evolved it into this refined version she now serves at Misi. Robbins also likes to nerd out over hyperregional forms of pasta, like buckwheat-based bigoli from the Veneto area. “I wasn’t a natural when I started,” she says. “It takes touch, feel, and perseverance. I’m really good at it because I love it.” One twirl and you’ll be smitten. YOU MIGHT THINK OF FRESH PASTA
You have to engage all your senses to think like a pasta cook, says Robbins.
Fettuccine Alfredo Robbins likes buffalo’s-milk butter for its tang (Delitia is sold at Whole Foods and online), but you can sub in unsalted cow’s-milk butter. 1 pound, 6 ounces Fresh Fettuccine (for recipe, see page 101) Kosher salt 7 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon unsalted buffalo’s-milk butter, cold and cubed 3½ tablespoons unsalted cow’s-milk butter, cold and cubed 50 grinds black pepper, plus more for serving 2½ cups plus 1 tablespoon finely grated 2-year-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano 1 cup plus rounded 3 tablespoons coarsely grated 5-year-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano (or more 2-year-aged, if you can’t find it)
1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil
over high heat. Generously salt the water. Place a large sauté pan over low heat and add 2 to 3 ladles (½ to ¾ cup) of boiling water to pan. Add both butters and swirl contents of pan to emulsify. Add black pepper and stir to combine. 2. Add fettuccine to boiling water;
cook 1 to 2 minutes, until tender but not soft. Using tongs or a pasta basket, remove pasta from pot and transfer to sauté pan; increase heat to medium. Toss for 1 to 2 minutes to marry pasta and sauce. Add ½ to ¾ cup pastacooking water and continue tossing. 3. Remove from heat. Gradually add
Key Ingredient “I’ve always made egg pasta with just the yolks,” Robbins says. “It’s a northern-Italian thing.” The result has a richer, silkier mouthfeel than dough that includes the whole egg: “Egg white adds a chew that I find less refined.”
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Ace Technique “Cooking pasta is not about boiling it,” Robbins insists. “It’s about the marriage of sauce and pasta in the pan over heat.” Keep it moving, folding and tossing it, so the fettuccine absorbs the butter sauce evenly—and add the cheese only at the end, or it will clump.
finely grated Parmigiano while tossing to integrate. If sauce begins to tighten, add a splash of pastacooking water to loosen and continue tossing to integrate. Serve pasta, garnished with coarsely grated Parmigiano and pepper. SERVES:
4 TO 6
PHOTOGRAPHS BY KELLY PULEIO
ADAPTED WITH PERMISSION FROM PASTA, BY MISSY ROBBINS AND TALIA BAIOCCHI, COPYRIGHT© 2021. PUBLISHED BY TEN SPEED PRESS, AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN R ANDOM HOUSE.
Part cookbook, part memoir, Pasta traces chef Missy Robbins’s journey into the heart of the Italian art form—and it’s also a romance, since her co-author, Talia Baiocchi, went from friend to fiancée over the course of the project. Robbins’s warm guidance (and fettuccine Alfredo!) will win you over, too.
