Ingredients Do Matter

pasta with tuna and tomatoes

Here’s the recipe from Mark Bittman’s column in The New York Times:

2 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, roughly chopped

1 tsp. (or more) red chili flakes

Freshly ground black pepper

2 Tbs. capers

1 jar imported small Italian tomatoes, with sauce (or one 28-ounce can plum tomatoes, drained and chopped)

1 10-oz. can trancio di tonno (or a can of dark tuna packed in oil)

1 lb. spaghetti, linguine or other long pasta

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Put olive oil in a deep skillet, and turn heat to medium-high. Add onion and cook, until it softens, about five minutes. Stir in chili flakes, black pepper and capers, then tomatoes. Cook, stirring occasionally until tomatoes begin to break up; lower heat and cook 5 to 10 minutes more.

When water boils, cook pasta, stirring frequently to prevent sticking, until the noodles are tender but not mushy. Just before pasta is done, stir tuna into tomato sauce, breaking it into flakes.

Drain pasta, toss with sauce, serve and pass grated Pecorino cheese.

Mario Batali is the New York chef and restaurant owner whose exuberant, rakish personality, displayed daily on two popular Food Network programs, has brought him such mainstream recognition that people all across America refer to him on a first-name basis. A recent visitor to Nashville—and the subject of a column in the Scene three weeks ago—he inspires something akin to worship from critics, TV viewers and clientele alike.

So when Mario speaks, millions lean in to listen. “What I try to get across is that for Italians, the entire success of the meal is decided at the market,” reads one Mario quote, printed in half-inch-high letters in the December 2002 issue of Vogue Entertaining & Travel. Another of his noted axioms is this one, from the October 2002 issue of Gourmet: “You want really good ingredients, and every little bit adds up. The main thing to remember about Italian food is that when you put your groceries in the car, the quality of your dinner has already been decided.”

Easy for him to say, living and working in New York City, where Sicilian sea salt, Tuscan olive oil, balsamic vinegar from Emilia Romagna, and provolone from Basilicata are nearly as easy to come by as 10-pound bricks of lard in the South. Corrado Savarino, a Sicilian native who moved here from Brooklyn about a year ago to open Savarino Italian Pastry on Nolensville Road, knows this all too well. Many of the ingredients he needs not only for his cookies and pastries, but also for the Italian dishes he and his wife Maria enjoy at home, simply aren’t available in Nashville. He makes bimonthly trips back to the city to stock up on product, and in between, relatives ship him packages from the Big Apple.

Nashvillians without those connections are not without recourse, though. Thanks to Esperya Italian Food Experience, they can easily connect with the finest imported oils, cheeses, vinegars, tomatoes, olives, pastas, canned seafoods and sweets from regions all over Italy. Logging on to www.esperya.com puts a world of specialty Italian product at your fingertips, delivered in plenty of time for your Saturday-night supper club.

Started in January 2000 as the American outlet of the first Italian specialty online retailer, the branch is headquartered in the Bronx and run by a team of four women. Esperya imports and sells artisanal Italian food and delivers it within 24 hours to anywhere in the country, offering items not available in most of the U.S. In addition, the Web site offers descriptions of each product’s geographical and historical origin, tips on product usage and easy Italian recipes.

The products for sale are divided into categories—among them cheese, coffee and sweets, extra virgin olive oils, pasta and rice, seafood, and even gifts and tableware. Each category might list dozens of temptations, meaning you may have to decide between the Antichi Uliveti del Prato extra virgin olive oil from Sardegna, or the Ciro Federico extra virgin olive oil from Puglia. Likewise, you’ll find yourself choosing between balsamic vinegar from Toscana or Emilia Romagna, and between Pecorino from Sardegna or Abruzzo.

Fortunately, I was spared choice paralysis when the company’s Martina Kensworthy put together a care package of some representative Esperya products to sample. My box contained Pomodorini al Piennolo, a jar of organic, vine-ripened small tomatoes grown within the Mount Vesuvius National Park, bottled in their own juice with no preservatives. I also got a jar of oil-cured, stoned olives from Liguria; a can of Mediterranean trancio di tonno, pure tuna fillet packed in olive oil with sea salt, prepared in Erice; and a wedge of organic Pecorino cheese from Abruzzo National Park.

Presented with such bounty, I threw a small, simple dinner party, inviting friends to sample the product sent from Esperya, supplemented with locally available items. Taking a suggestion from the Web site, I cut the Pecorino cheese into small cubes and placed them in a bowl with my best extra virgin oil, freshly ground black pepper and finely chopped fresh oregano, letting the cheese marinate at room temperature for a couple hours. With the cheese, I served sliced tart pears, apples, toasted walnuts and plain breadsticks. I made an antipasti platter with the olives, adding artichoke hearts, roasted red pepper slices, oil-packed mushroom tops also imported from Italy, fig preserves and some amazing wild asparagus that a Coloradan friend of mine forages, pickles and generously sends me once a year. I used the canned tuna and bottled tomatoes in a recipe I had saved from Mark Bittman’s “The Minimalist” column, which runs Wednesdays in The New York Times (see accompanying sidebar, above right).