It’s that time again, a new month, and a look back at the last month, Mais… err… May. Once again, a select dish from each of our Casa SaltShaker dinners. This time, only three, as we were away for a week in Santiago, Chile.

Somewhere along the line in my pasta posts I’ll get into the difference between corzetti and, well, corzetti. There are the ones we see in posh pasta restaurants that are lovely, delicate coins of pasta stamped with some sort of intricate design. And then there are the hearty lozenges that are vaguely intended to mimic a figure eight. Preliminary research suggests the pasta of the nobility versus that of the commoners, but I haven’t done a deep dive yet.

However, this dish, simple as it appears, garnered so much praise from guests that it surprised me. Sometimes, the classics are all you need! These are, obviously, the common folk ones – I don’t have a corzetti stamp, and am not about to shell out the quantity of pesos that they cost for a pasta I might make a few times over the years. The dough is different from most pasta dough that I’ve worked with, being a mix of high-gluten flour, salt, olive oil, and water – amounting to around a 60% hydration. It’s serve up in a simple brown butter with garlic, chili, black pepper, and sage, and sardo cheese, which is an Argentine cow’s milk version of pecorino sardegno, a sheep’s milk grating cheese.

This is one I’ve been playing with for a bit to get to where I wanted it. It’s a squash and gorgonzola risotto, at heart. I toast the carnaroli rice dry until it just starts to color. Separately, I sauté onions and diced butternut squash in olive oil until they, too, are starting to take on color. Add in the toasted rice, and rather than starting this with wine, I start it with grappa, which gives it a little bite in the background, and then continue cooking it with vegetable stock until the rice is just al dente and creamy. It’s finished with a local gorgonzola cheese (not gorgonzola dulce, you want a little sharpness) pictured at the top of this post, finely chopped rosemary, and a little butter. Decorating the top, a sprig of rosemary and some tajín spice (ground chili and citrus zest). Yum!

We had some leftover, and I mixed it with some egg and let it chill overnight, then made it into a tortilla de arroz, a big rice tortilla, then topped it with plain yogurt and tajín spice for lunch.

I covered our pasta from this week in my last post, the oxtail ragú, and while I loved that dish, it’s pretty much a classic, no invention going on there. This dish is one I’ve played with in the past, where I paired palometa with a walnut and smoked ham broth with a variety of beans in it. It was an idea taken from a dish I’d read about. I liked it, but wasn’t excited by it. This one has gone through numerous refinements, resulting in eliminating the beans entirely, and a related, but different, flavor profile.

The fish is mero, a type of local stone bass, and it’s simply dusted with salt and pepper and sautéed in olive oil and butter, and then topped with some chopped lemon verbena.

The broth starts with a roux derivative made with olive oil, walnut flour, and just a little wheat flour to help it thicken. It’s then used to thicken a simple fish stock made with the fish bones and trimmings, leeks, and a couple of dried anchovies. Separately, I sautéed a mix of finely diced sopressata, fennel, walnuts, palm hearts, limo chilies, and both yellow and black mustard seeds. I put the sautéed mixture in the plates, spooned over a bit of the sauce, and topped it with the fish.

And that’s how we ended the month of May. Mais oui!