Everyone Loves These Pasta Fritters!

We are making some traditional pasta fritters or as we know it in Naples frittatina di maccheroni which are so delicious and you're going to love them. Think arancini which is a very classic Italian appetizer of fried rice, it's a fried rice fritter I suppose and they can be made with a bunch of different fillings. It's sort of similar to that except instead of using rice we use bucatini or you can use spaghetti and instead of using like a traditional meat sauce as a filling we do a very classic bechamel cheese, ham, peas, delicious and you're going to love them. I actually haven't made them in a long time, I haven't had them in a long time, I had them as a child and my mom used to make them but I was reignited with my love for them in Ischia this year and I remembered how good they were so I got to work and created this recipe so that we can all share it. These are bucatini which is sort of like a spaghetti like pasta but I don't know if you can see there's a little hole running through the center and this is the classic pasta shape for this recipe and this is probably one of the very few places that you'll see a recipe call for breaking up a long noodle. You want to break this up into like quarters or thirds, sort of that shape, like I said if you can't find bucatini you can use spaghetti, it's fine. It's not the same quite but close enough. You're going to break this up, I'm going to just wait for my water to come up to a boil and like I was saying, my mother used to make these when we were little and I kind of just forgot about them over the years, we were in Ischia, saw them on the menu and they brought me back to my childhood and then my mom was talking about the recipe and I was like okay. Got on the phone with her not too long ago after we came home, got to working, made this and they're perfect. So that is ready, let me check if my water is up to a boil, not quite so let's just set that aside. In the meantime we're going to work on a bechamel which is a really classic cream based sauce for most things like mac and cheese, things like that. Equal parts butter, once that melts I'm going to go ahead and add an equal part to that of flour, just get that melted and then in terms of other things that go into your filling, you're going to use provola or this dry packed matz, not the kind in water or liquid or milk, just a dry packed kind, you could also use provolone, but typically something like that would be perfect. I'm also using some ham, not honey roasted, just regular deli ham, finely chopped, lots of parm, usually we would use something called prosciutto gatto which in America we have ham as the equivalent to that, it's pretty similar, but that's what we use, and you also need some peas, a clove of garlic, some olive oil, salt and pepper, and then I'll show you a few more ingredients later on, but for now I'm waiting for that to melt, water is up to a boil, we're going to add that in, and I'm just going to cook my pasta until it's pretty much fully cooked through, we're not looking for al dente here. Add your flour, it's really important that you cook that flour in the butter for a solid like 30 seconds, you just no longer want to see white bits of raw flour anywhere. Now I was hoping that in one of our vlog clips that we have a clip of these being served, we actually don't, but if you are on memberships and you have seen some of our Italy vlogs, the Ischia one should be coming up soon if it's not up already, but good time! Okay, that looks fantastic. Go ahead, add your milk, again just the base of a very standard cream sauce, and I'm going to go ahead and give that a whisk and I'm going to cook this until this thickens, which will not take very long, but don't walk away because you'll scorch the bottom of the sauce. That looks great, I'm going to actually turn it off the heat. I'm going to season it with some salt, a good amount of salt, freshly ground black peps. Okay? And I'm just going to go ahead and set this aside, I need this to cool slightly, and then in the meantime we're going to saute our peas and I'll drain my pasta when it's ready, but for now I'm just going to switch this back off here, get my skillet and get working on our peas. Olive oil to a skillet with a clove of garlic, I want this to sort of start shimmering and come to temperature, I'm going to go ahead and saute some peas, because the classic filling is cheese, ham and peas, and it's so, so good, but you do need to just give them a little zhuzh, you know? I'm using frozen peas because I'm right above it, they're really economical and fresh peas are only available for about 14 seconds a year, and so for the remaining time of the year, frozen pea is your friend, so I'm just waiting for this to just come to temperature a little bit, and once it starts to sizzle, you can always just, no, not yet, then we'll add the peas in. You don't, when you're adding something frozen, like for example, frozen peas to a skillet with olive oil, don't have the temperature all the way up, because all you'll do is make a mess in your kitchen by having oil splatter everywhere, now that I put them in, now you can increase the heat and get those simmering and doing beautiful things. I'm just going to saute these for a couple of minutes, set them aside to just hang out until we need them. We don't need them right now, so once they're done for a couple of minutes, set them aside, I'll do my pasta and then we sort of start to put the whole thing together. Pasta is ready, I went ahead and drained it and I shocked it under cold water, just because you want to stop it from cooking any further or it'll get all gummy. Go ahead and add your bechamel, along with your peas, I went ahead and got rid of the garlic. Give that a nice stir, it's going to look kind of liquidy, but if you've ever worked with bechamel, especially bechamel and pasta together, you know it is going to absorb all that. Then we have all of our cheeses and the ham, add that right in, beautiful, you can add more pepper if you want, I added a really good amount in the bechamel, so I'm not concerned, and then to get this into the shape that we're going to eventually need it, you can really do one of two things, you can make a cylinder out of this by letting it cool a bit and firm up and then placing it in plastic wrap and kind of molding it into a cylinder, you can do that. I tried that and I was like you know what, it's time just...or you can take a 9x9 inch pan, line it with some parchment paper, I went ahead and greased the sides, and then put this baby in here, even it out, okay, as best you can. I like to then take like a flat spatula like this, and just, you want to push down on it. Also really nice if you just take some additional parchment paper, alright. Cut it to fit, like, it won't be perfect, but we're not looking for perfect, we're just trying to be helpful here, and just kind of press on it. You don't have to weigh this down, you just want it to be as even as possible, and I'm just going to go ahead and pop this into the fridge to cool and set completely, it could take six hours, I advise you do it the night before, up to 24 hours really, because then you'll have a really easy time shaping them and frying them, so I'm going to go do that. And then I'll show you the next step. Alright, I have another batch that is already ready so that you don't have to wait and most importantly I don't have to wait until tomorrow to eat them. We're going to go ahead and make the coating. The first part is making a pastel, which is sort of like a thin batter if you will, it's just flour and water, and all you do is just mix that together until you get like a really thin, sort of pancake-like consistency, and this is in replacement of traditional beaten eggs. When it comes to a coating, it works better and it's what all the rosticeria, pizzeria, that's all they use, and if you have my book at My Italian Table, my latest book, then you know I've made this method in my Cacio e Pepe Arancini, wait, no, this method was for my Vanzarotti, my uncle's Vanzarotti, man, there's a lot of recipes in that book. It works perfectly, I'm just going to keep going, it's a little bit thick, just want a little bit thinner. These look perfect, I'm just going to go ahead and use a biscuit cutter, you can use a three inch or something just a little bit smaller, and they're pretty pliable, so if you want to smooth out any edges or anything like that, it's easy to do so, just going to show you, I don't want to really have any waste, so I just do one of these, right, and you may have like a few bits and pieces, if I didn't have one with ridges, it'd be a little bit easier, but I can't find my other one. They're really easy for you to mess with, see, just squeezing it together like that. I know this might not look appetizing, but I want to share it with you, you see I have these already formed and ready to go, and they're perfect, and you're going to have bits and pieces like this, right, so here's all you do, this is really pliable, you're going to just kind of push them all together, okay? Use your biscuit cutter to form one, it might not be as perfect as the other ones, but let me tell you something, in this household, we don't strive for perfection, we strive for delicious and no wasting a thing. And then you just kind of use your hands to mold them into patties. And again, it may not look as perfect as the other ones, but once they're breaded, they're going to taste fantastic, so I'm going to go ahead and use it all up, which I think I'm going to be able to get one more good one out of here, and then we'll get cooking. While the vegetable oil starts to preheat and doing its thing, I'm going to go ahead and actually just start breading them because it's really nice to give them like a few minutes to sit so the breading can adhere. Take each one, dunk it in your little pastel mixture, and I've got some breadcrumbs here, I like plain breadcrumbs that I have just salted slightly, I know some people are real crazy about the Italian breadcrumbs, but not my favorite, I feel like the cheese always tastes just like cheese in a can and it's never my favorite. So if you want to make Italian breadcrumbs, just add some cheese to your mixture and you're good to go. I prefer plain. Now, these are perfect, see that? I'm going to go ahead and set that aside and let those sit a couple minutes. I'm just going to go ahead and continue to coat the rest of them and get them ready. These look great, my oil is up to temp, you want to use a vegetable oil, extra light olive oil, something like that, flavorless. We got twelve perfect ones and these are exactly as they should be, you can make them smaller, but traditionally they're about three inches like so. Drop these in, you don't want the oil to be too too hot, because otherwise it's going to burn the outside before the center gets a chance to cook through, we'll do about four at a time, and I'm just going to go ahead and cook them until they're a beautiful golden brown color, crank that heat up a tiny tiny bit. And in the meantime, I'm just going to grab a baking sheet and I'm going to put a wire rack over top, so as these come out, I'm going to put them on that wire rack to cool and drain any excess oil, you can also just put a paper towel on a plate and do that. My only concern when we do that is that the paper towel makes them sweat and absorbs the extra oil obviously, but it could make them soggy, so I'm going to go ahead and just do the rack, and then once they're ready, I'll show you what they look like. Look at how gorgeous these are, these look exactly as they should, you can tell these were the ones I sort of formed by hand, these four, but they're perfect and they're delicious and when I was growing up, my mom would make them smaller, because say it was like a birthday party or something like that, you make them a little bit smaller so people can have like two biters, but these are perfect. They take about three minutes per side on medium heat, and they're just sensational. Let's give them a go. Mmm. Look. Mmm. They are everything. I hope. Cheesy. These are perfect. Mmhmm. Go to LauraintheKitchen.com, get this recipe when you have some time, make them, they'll become a favorite. I hope you enjoyed spending time with me, and I will see you in the next one. Bye bye. Mmm.