“Eat your greens” is something I’ve never needed to be told, cajoled or forced to do. As a child, I happily ploughed my way through large servings of cabbage, brussels sprouts, spinach, spring greens and broccoli. If they were glistening with butter, all the better. I was even one of the few who ate the ambiguous heap of so-called greens that appeared on every school lunch plate, whose odour then lingered, like us, in corners and corridors around the school. “What a good little eater,” relatives and dinner ladies would say of me, which confused me – surely they meant what a good big eater?
Lately, we have been eating something called misticanza, a mix of leaves and greens prepared by one fruttivendolo, Gianluca. It is somewhere between delicious and hard work. Traditionally, misticanza – which means “a mixture of things” – was an assortment of leaves, field herbs and aromatic shoots collected at the first signs of spring from the fields surrounding Rome, and eaten as a salad. In her masterful Oxford companion to Italian food, Gillian Riley reminds us this habit of collecting wild plants is from the days when the poor, unable to afford a doctor, were cared for by country women, with their collections of medicinal wild plants. When I first came to Testaccio 11 years ago, there was still a woman with a many-pocketed apron who would appear at the market from time to time selling the things she had collected. I only understand now she was the last survivor of what had been an important tradition.
Nowadays, true salad misticanza is only available if you are lucky enough to have a garden or live in the country, and find such things as young borage, sorrel, wild chicory, dandelion, salad burnet and poppy greens. Those of us who live in cities have to make the best of what we can find. I make a sort of misticanza from what is available on the market: young waxy spinach, rocket, bitter chicory, radish leaves, herbs and pea shoots (with tendrils, if I can find them). I don’t think an innocent salad like this needs anything more than good extra virgin olive oil, salt and lemon.
These days in Rome, the term misticanza is also used for an assortment of wild and cultivated greens that need to be boiled in order to be edible. The quality of the misticanza depends on the source. Kind and reliable Gianluca often has a strongly flavoured mix of properly hairy, slightly prickly borage, sweet escarole (endive), chard, rocket, wild chicory and a woody green I still don’t know the name of. Having plunged the well-washed rabble of leaves into a pan of well-salted fast boiling water for a few minutes, you then drain it and saute it in plenty of garlic-scented extra virgin olive oil.
I really like the deep-green engaging substance of it all – a textured, oily tangle, scented with garlic. In fact, I often sport a tuft of green between my front teeth all afternoon to prove I’ve enjoyed it for lunch. Normally, I eat it as a vegetable side dish for chicken, grilled cheese or on toast. Yesterday, however, having bought a slice of pure white, wobbly sheep’s-milk ricotta (which could just as easily have been the tub of cow’s-milk ricotta I pretty much always have in the fridge) we ate the misticanza with pasta and ricotta.
This dish is a good illustration of three things I have learned since living in Italy. The first is insaporire; that is, “to give flavour”. By cooking the peeled and gently crushed garlic in olive oil over a low flame until fragrant and just turning gold, the olive oil is given just a scent of garlic, before you remove the clove. The second is ripassare; to recook. On this occasion, the boiled, drained misticanza is recooked in the garlic-scented oil so the soft, rag-like greens can absorb the olive oil hungrily. The third thing is using a little of the pasta cooking water, cloudy and slightly thick with starch, to thin the ricotta, parmesan and black pepper mixture, creating a cream that coats and then brings the ingredients together into a soft and unified whole. So, eat your greens ... not that you need telling.
Rigatoni with ricotta and greens
You can use whatever greens you like. I like a mix of sweet and bitter greens and the different textures they offer. Since the greens are boiled, quite substantial leafy ones work well. Keep tender, delicate greens and leaves for salad.
Serves 4
300g mixed greens (spinach, radish leaves, leafy sprouting broccoli, chard, rocket, watercress, sorrel)
250g ricotta (sheeps’s or cows)
40g parmesan, freshly grated
Salt and black pepper
450g rigatoni/penne/farfalle, or any short pasta really
2 garlic cloves, peeled, gently crushed
5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 Wash the greens, then boil them for a few minutes in a large pan of well-salted boiling water. Use tongs to remove the greens from the pan into a colander. Keep the water for the pasta.
2 In a large, warm bowl, (I run mine under the hot tap and then dry it)mash the ricotta with the parmesan, plenty of black pepper and a couple of spoonfuls of the (slightly green) cooking water, then beat it into a soft cream.
3 Bring the pan of water back to a fast boil and add the pasta. Squeeze all the water from the greens, then chop them coarsely.
4 Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a frying pan over a low flame. Saute the garlic – which you should peel and gently crush itwith the back of a knife – in the oil until it is just turning golden and fragrant, then remove the garlic. Add the chopped greens and cook for a few minutes, stirring so each leaf is coated with oil. Remove the pan from the heat.
5 Once the pasta is al dente, drain, reserving a cupful of the pasta cooking water. Tip the pasta on to the ricotta. Add the greens and then toss the ingredients together thoroughly, adding a splash more of the reserved cooking water if the mixture seems stiff. Serve, passing round the more grated parmesan.
- Rachel Roddy is a food blogger based in Rome and the author of Five Quarters: Recipes and Notes from a Kitchen in Rome (Saltyard, 2015) and winner of the 2015 André Simon food book award
