Yup, we’re still in Quarantine. Ostensibly, with some easing – as of this past Monday we were allowed to venture out for exercise for the first time in almost three months – specifically, “running, riding a bike, walking, or roller-skating”, no more than two people together, maintain physical distancing of 2 meters from other people, no masks required while doing these activities (masks are still required at all other times in public)… but, But, BUT… only between the hours of 8pm and 6am.

We’re hoping that easing of restrictions continues – it’s up in the air – there have been some spikes in numbers here in Argentina – not huge ones, but noted ones. They have been fairly restricted to certain communities, primarily some of the villas, or shantytowns, and nursing homes – but in true socialist egalitarian approach, the president is murmuring about putting everyone back under full lockdown quarantine, nationwide, so that we all share in the restrictions, rather than singling out the areas where there’s an issue. He would have to get the governors and mayors of the bigger cities to agree, and given the mood of the populace, he may not get that acquiescence this time around. There have been almost nightly cacerolazos, as people take to their balconies and sidewalks to express their displeasure at the continued isolation measures. Far less violent than things in “some other places” not to be named, but there have been some solid street protests over by the Obelisco as well over the couple of weeks.

The weather hasn’t been all that nice in the evenings, and Henry and I hadn’t ventured out until last night – just to take a walk around a few blocks. We carried our masks with us, just in case, and we were the only people that we saw out without them, except two runners who passed us by. We got some looks, though I’m not sure if that was for the lack of masks or that we were arm-in-arm, one never knows. Only one person pointedly stepped out in the street to go around us as we walked, glaring at us as she did. But boy it was nice to walk without a mask on – yeah, we’ve gotten used to them, but it really is noticeably different for breathing.

 

So, it’s been quite awhile since I delved into the random world of “peculiar pastas” – June of 2018, in fact. I thought I’d give it another go. For those who don’t recall or weren’t with me on these earlier ventures (you can just stick “peculiar pastas” into the search bar and the previous ones will pop up), I have a copy of the Encyclopedia of Pasta, which numbers out 310 different shapes and types of pasta, from Abbotta Pezziende to Zumari. A good percentage of the book covers pastas that most of us have probably never encountered, like those two, many of which are very particular to small communities somewhere in Italy. I use my usual source for random number generation – random.org – and plug in 1 to 310 and let it pick a number. If it comes up on something “common”, I re-roll the virtual die. Then I get to work on researching, as many of these are pastas I’ve never encountered.

So, today, we find ourselves faced with Raviole Alagnesi, a pasta that comes to us from Alagna, in northern Piemonte, a Walser community, at least historically. The Walser were German speaking immigrants who came to this area originally from the upper Rhone Valley, via Switzerland. Note the different spelling from the Italian ravioli, which is particular to this community, along with raviore. This particular version, from Alagna, is very much like a stuffed cornmeal dumpling, more than what most of us think of as pasta – perhaps, in a way, something like cornmeal gnocchi. But, I had all the ingredients on hand, and thought, why not? There weren’t a whole lot of recipes online for this pasta, nor many photos, but enough to get a solid feel for what they’re like. I hope.

For our mise-en-place we have 250 gm of cornmeal, 50 gm of wheat flour, 50 gm of stale bread (a leftover roll turned out pretty much perfect at 54 gm), an egg, 15 gm of butter, and 50 gm of salami. I’m sure this isn’t the same type of salami as would be found in Alagna, but is a northern style salami from Friuli that I happened to have picked up at the market earlier this week, purely on a whim.

Turn the bread into breadcrumbs.

Mix in the other ingredients – although none of the few recipes I found specified to add water, it became immediately clear that that was a necessity. It didn’t take much to bring it together into a dough – maybe 60 ml.

And, you end up with a fairly smooth dough. There’s not a lot of reason to knead this extensively other than to make sure it’s well mixed – since it’s mostly cornmeal, there’s little gluten to develop.

Divide into roughly “walnut sized” balls – I assumed, based on photos, that we’re talking whole walnuts in the shell. That gave me a dozen. Which, was perfect, because thinly slicing that 50 gm of salami I could just come up with a dozen slices.

Flatten each ball out and press a salami slice into each. Bring up the edges around it and seal it in.

You end up with a round puck a bit bigger around than the salami slice, about 4 cm across and 1 cm thick, fully encasing it. There’s also a version of these using Toma cheese, in which you shape them more like eggs, not flattened, with a “nugget” of cheese in the middle.

While this is all going on, I’ve been bringing to a simmer a pot that’s filled half with bacon stock (really just salted water and a couple of slices of bacon and an onion at the bottom of the pot, and half with milk. Slip the raviole into the pot, bring back to a simmer, or actually a little more, a sort of slow boil, and… let it go for about an hour. I only gave this a quick stir a couple of minutes into the cook, just to make sure none of the raviole were stuck to the bottom of the pot, and then once or twice to sort of flip them over…

…because after about 10 minutes, like well behaved dumplings, they floated to the top.

When the hour was almost up, I melted some butter, seasoned it well with salt and pepper.

And then, drained the raviole, spooned the seasoned butter over them, and sat down to eat.

Just a view of what the insides look like.

So, what do I think about them? They’re fairly heavy. Not hockey puck dense, but they’re pretty dense nonetheless. If you think about it, the dough has little to no filling, so the seasoning comes from the inside in the form of the salami, and the outside from the bacon and onion. Personally, I think they could use a lot more of that – I’d go for a much more seasoned stock if I were to do these again. I can’t say they wow me. They do feel very… German… or Swiss… or just that sort of stereotyped heavy cuisine. And they feel more like something that ought to be served two or three on the side of something else, like a meat dish, rather than as a pasta dish on its own. I wonder how close these came out to the traditional ones? They look much the same as several of the pictures on the internet.