Pasta with kale and pancetta sauce

This recipe for pasta with kale and pancetta sauce comes from Castelfranco Emelia in Italy's Modena Province. It's a combination of the deeper flavours of onions cooked in white wine, pancetta and cream and the green flavours of kale and basil. Given its particular cooking method, it can be turned into a lactovegetarian dish with no effort at all.

Roman roaming

This is another of the recipes my father enticed out of unsuspecting Italian women during his travels in the 1960s. On this occasion, his journal records that it came from the small osteria beneath the pensione in which he stayed in Castelfranco Emilia. He had decided to travel the Via Amelia, the ancient Roman road connecting Bologna and Modena and saw it, more of less halfway between the two, as a good place for a stopover.

One of the reasons he decided to stop in Castelfranco Emilia is that classicists remember it as being the town near which Mark Anthony was defeated by Octavian and Hirtius during the first civil war—the Bellum Mutinense—following the assassination of Julius Caesar. The rest of Italy remembers it as the birthplace of tortellini and the prowess of its sfogline, its master pasta makers.

At first glance it may seem ironic that the recipe my father picked up in Castelfranco Emilia is not a tortellini recipe. But, in hindsight, it makes complete sense: his Celtic charms and praise for their cooking were far more likely to work on the Italian women running the kitchen of a small eatery than the sfogline whose guild had closely guarded the secrets of their signature pasta since the Middle Ages.

Kale of the road

Castelfranco Emilia is an odd fish. Although clearly at a strategic point on the Via Emilia, a key ancient Roman road cutting diagonally across Northern Italy, poor old Forum Gallorum as it was known way back then appears to have been a little lacklustre and only appears in one of the numerous Roman road itineraries, the ancient world's equivalent of travel guides or the Michelin touring guide.

It wasn't until the Middle Ages that is became an area regularly disputed between Modena and Bologna resulting in the Medieval fortifications. Perhaps it had something to do with the peeping Tom innkeeper who, according to legend, invented tortellini after spying upon a lady's perfect navel through a keyhole (yes, I think it's dodgy history that keyholes even existed in medieval inns) that inspired him to re-create his object of desire in pasta. And thus tortellini was born. Apparently.

For me, however, there is something in this recipe that does hark back to the Ancient World, with its use of kale to create a strong base. Curly leaf kale along with other members of the Brassicaceae family—that includes everything from cauliflower to turnips—were a staple of the Roman diet with places like Forum Gallorum being where those supplying vegetables to larger towns along the Via Emilia could load up on produce carried in by local farmers to what was literally a side-of-the-road market town. For me, there's something about the way kale is used here in combination with the anchovy sauce, a descendent of the (in)famous Roman garum, the fermented fish sauce widely used as a condiment and flavouring in ancient cooking, that makes it a little different from other Italian cooking from the region.

Cream me up, Scotty!

While there is a fair amount of cream in this sauce, I hesitate to call it "creamy". Unlike Carbonara or other Italian "white" ragù sauces, it doesn't have a thick, creamy texture. This is because of the high vegetable and vegetable stock content. I think it more accurate to describe it as "silky". Yes, there is definitely an underlying indulgence here, but it doesn't feel overly heavy or rich and those earthy, ferrous flavours—quite literally from the iron in the kale, kids—combined with the onions cooked in wine and the last-minute basil are more notable as lead flavours. This is one of the reasons I love it as a spring dish. It's certainly filling, but somehow it doesn't feel too heavy or overly rich.

This version is for 3 to 4 diners, depending on appetite and whether you do it with any bread or antipasti. But, you can do the math if you want to cater for a larger group. It scales in a fairly straightforward way. NB: the images are indicative because I have cooked it in slightly different quantities on the two occasions I took the photos.

3 top tips to get this recipe right:

• The curly kale is key to this dish and, in particular, cooking it (twice) for a long time. Forget the stuff of hipster salads and stir fries. Here, the kale really needs to be cooked down for a long time. And, before you bang on about wasting all the nutrients, remember that is why you don't drain away the stock in which it is initially simmered, but capture it and use it in the sauce.

• It's important you chop the curly kale really finely after initially simmering it. I use a mini-chopper. But, when my father taught me to cook it, he used one of those old-school hand-turned mincers usually used for meat, replicating the way it was done by the women who taught him to cook it. But, FYI, don't use a standard blender or "bullet". You're not making kale juice.

• The way white wine is used to soften onions is notable in many recipes from Bologna and Modena—and from Emilia-Romagna in general—and that's exactly what you're doing here. After initially sealing the onions and garlic in the oil, the trick is to soften the onions on a low-medium heat in a generous amount of wine, covered. It takes a little longer than with other pasta sauces, so take that into account.

Shopping list

for the pasta with kale and pancetta sauce

• Approx. 90g (dried) or 100g (fresh) linguine (or tagliatelle) per diner

• 2 large red onions (or brown); diced

• Approx. 170g curly kale; washed and roughly chopped

• Approx. 100g smoked pancetta; cubed

• A large clutch of fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped

• 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped, not grated or crushed

• 4 to 5 tbspns virgin olive oil

• Approx. 350ml dry white wine (and an additional "dash")

• ¼ fresh lemon

• 1 tspn dried oregano

• 1 tbsn Italian anchovy sauce (or Worcestershire sauce)

• 500ml vegetable stock

• 150ml single cream

• 5 or 6 sprigs of fresh basil; leaves stripped from the stems

• salt and pepper to taste

• grated Parmigiano Reggiano  (or Grana Padano if you can look Emilia-Romagna in the eye) for use at table

for the side salad

• cucumber, peeled and cut into pieces

• small ripe tomatoes; cut in half

• a generous amount of flat leaf parsley leaves; pulled from stems

• A few fresh basil leaves

• Black pepper and salt to taste

• Balsamico and extra virgin olive oil; to dress

Cooking Method

the pasta with kale and pancetta sauce

1. Cook the kale first. In a large pot with a lid, bring a little salted water to the boil adding the stock until it too boils vigorously. Add the kale, pressing down with a wooden spoon so it wilts. Squeeze in the lemon juice then add the lemon itself to the pot. If necessary, add additional hot water. Cover and boil vigorously from 3mins or so. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and simmer for 25 to 30mins

2. Drain the kale in a colander, but place a suitable bowl or pot underneath it to capture all of the liquid in which the kale cooked and put to one side. Once largely cooled, chop in a mini-chopper. You can even do this the day before and store the kale and "kale water" in the fridge overnight

3. In a large, deep frying pan with a lid, heat a little olive oil on a low-medium heat. Once hot, cook the pancetta until fairly well done. It won't need to be crispy, but browning here and there is good. Remove with a sieve spoon and place to one side

4. Add the remaining oil to the unwashed pan. Once hot, add the onions, stirring. After approx. 3mins, add a dash of the wine and stir in, using it to deglaze the pan anywhere the pancetta has "caught". Cover and reduce to a low heat, stirring occasionally

5. After another 4 or 5mins, when the onions start to soften and much of the wine has cooked off, add the garlic and stir in. Cook briefly until the aroma is released. Then, add the remainder of the wine and stir in. Re-cover and gently simmer until the onions are fully soft. NB: if the liquid cooks off before the onions are fully softened, add dashes of the "kale water" to keep it moist until the onions fully soften

6. Add the chopped kale and stir in. Add approx. 300ml of the "kale water". Increase the heat so that it comes to a vigorous simmer. Simmer vigorously for 1min, then stir, reduce the heat, cover and simmer gently form approx. 15mins stirring occasionally

7. Add the chopped parsley, dried oregano, black pepper.and the anchovy sauce and stir in. Then add the remainder of the "kale water"; re-cover and simmer again. After approx. 15mins most of the liquid should have cooked off. If not, cook for slightly longer

8. When the contents have reduced almost entirely, increase the heat slightly, add the cream and a dash of wine. Cook in, stirring almost continually being careful to prevent the cream from boiling

9. Add the pancetta back into the pan and stir in. After a minute or two, once the pancetta has fully heated, taste and season with salt if needed—I usually find it unnecessary with the anchovy sauce and pancetta

10. Add 2 or 3 tablespoons of water from your cooked pasta to the sauce and stir in before adding the drained pasta to the sauce. Ensure the pasta is fully coated in the sauce—tongs are the best way to do this. Add the basil to the pasta and fold in.Remove from the heat, cover and rest briefly

11. Plate and take to table with the salad and cheese to be grated over the top if desired.

Alternatives

This dish for carnivores with its pancetta is easily turned into a lactovegetarian dish. Something I learned a long time ago was that the relatively modest amount of pancetta is primarily there for what it does for flavour rather than as a meaty experience. Simply leave it out and substitute the anchovy sauce with mushroom ketchup. Obviously, you might need to use more olive oil in the first stages since this recipe partly relies on using the pork fat from the pancetta to cook the onions and garlic.

However, it's more challenging to make a vegan version and frankly I haven't tried. As stated before, I don't know what plant-based substitutes for cream may or may not work well as cooking ingredients and I have never tried them. But, especially given that the cream here is more of a "background" flavour, I imagine it could be pulled off.

Similarly, I have never attempted a pescatarian version. However, if I were to do so, my instinct would be to add chopped anchovies or smoked mussels into the sauce at the point at which the pancetta cubes are put back into the sauce in this recipe.

Pairings

Oddly, perhaps because I don't cook this dish that often, I can remember the wines that I think have worked well with it.

My overall top recommendation is Billaud-Simon Chablis Premier Cru 'Montee de Tonnerre'. I also found that Philipp Kuhn Kirschgarten GG Pinot Blanc and Villa Sparina Torre Gavi are great pairings.

But, this is truly one of those "colour agnostic" dishes with its deep, almost musty, vegetal flavours. Thus, on the red front, I think my top tip is Pio Cesare Barbera d'Alba.

The thing that is important to stress here is that this is a dish that offers kale in an ancient way. Those strident flavours obvious in how it is cooked by hipsters in recent decades here give way to deep undertones, but relatively subtle top notes of flavour. `Thus, any lighter red—think Côtes du Rhône, Pinot Noir or even Beaujolais—can work very well.