Do not be too lazy to look under the spoiler, there is a very tasty story about naval pasta, which prompted me to cook this recipe.
Naval pasta
Something spoler doesn't work.
Few people know that in the middle of the last century, World Chef Contests were held, winning at which meant inscribing your name in the history of world cuisine. Naturally, Soviet chefs did not take part in these competitions - Stalin did not like to let people go abroad. But in 1952, when such a competition was held in Rome, the Grand Prix was received by the dish of the Soviet chef, who himself did not come to Italy, and the recipe was presented by the USSR Ambassador to Italy. A similar story was later with Menshov's film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears", which won an Oscar in 1981, but the director himself was not present at the ceremony.
Why was Stalin persuaded to release abroad, if not a cook, then at least his dish? But the Generalissimo once tasted this amazing pasta and was delighted. It was Stalin who gave them the name - "Pasta in the Navy"
And the cook was, as you may have guessed, my unforgettable teacher from the Yalta culinary school Borukh Solomonovich Kantselenbogen.
In "Pasta in the Navy" there were several breakthroughs in cooking and the world cookery community could not help but see and recognize this. And the point was, of course, not in the combination of proteins (meat) and carbohydrates (pasta) - this has already been encountered in the vastness of world food. And the point was HOW Borukh did it, what technologies he used, how he worked and hovered in the kitchen.
By the way, Stalin still awarded Borukh. The leader offered the Great Chef for life any - of his choice - a city in the USSR.
“You know that, Iosif Vissarionovich,” Borukh replied, blowing his nose, “if you happen to be born in a province, it’s better to live in a remote province by the sea”. And Borukh chose Yalta, where he received an apartment on Grafsky Proezd.
This phrase about a province by the sea became known much later, when it was voiced by the future Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Brodsky. Brodsky and Kantselenbogen met in Yalta while eating Borukhov's chebureks, and the Teacher then said the words that struck Brodsky - “I knew only Joseph, so he at least gave me an apartment here, and who are you? Yes, I live in a province by the sea, because it fell to me to be born in the empire! " And Boruch wept, saying these words ...
Stalin also gave then the command to include the recipe for "Naval macaroni" in cookbooks, which was done, but after the death of the leader - only in 1955.
Since then, who has not tried to spoil Boruch's recipe! And he predicted it for me! “Time will pass, Mishka,” he said to me, without even trying to hide his tears, “and my recipe will be defiled and twisted!”
And so it happened. Boruch could predict the future.
To prevent this from happening in the future, I will pass on this recipe as I learned it on that bright May Yalta day, when all our students fled for a walk along the embankment, and I sat like a damn and memorized the words of my great Teacher.
So the ingredients.
Ground beef - 550 grams.Pasta - 450 grams. Onions - 350 grams.
Meat is the best you can find in your market - you do it for yourself, right? It doesn't matter what - sirloin, back, thigh, rump ... If only without veins.
Pasta - only corrugated "Feathers" or "Horns". With the help of "corrugation" - grooves on the body of the pasta - the meat seems to stick to them and the same magical effect is created.
The water for boiling pasta should be 6 times more in weight than the pasta itself. That is, 450 grams - at least 2.5 liters. Boruch once told me how he cooked pasta in the army, where he served as a cook. He needed to feed 1200 people. The norm for one person was 100 grams. Thus, the brewing container had to be 720 liters. Boruch found an old bathtub, washed it and cooked a whole bath of pasta on the wood!
Many argue that you need to cook pasta 2 minutes less than indicated on the pack. They say, in this way, we get slightly undercooked pasta and this is much healthier than boiled pasta. Boruch did not like this. “Well, to hell with them, these Italians with this aldente,” he said, and his face was illuminated by evil lightning from his own beautiful eyes. I knew that in the 60s he worked as a cook in a restaurant in the town of Rimini, where he seduced the owner's daughter, the fat-legged Arabella, who was also the niece of the great Federico Fellini. Arabella became pregnant and Fellini announced that if Boruch did not leave Italy, he would stop making films. But Federico loved the pizza that Boruch prepared for him! But apparently he loved his niece more. Boruch was very fond of cinema, and understood all the greatness of Fellini, therefore he decided to leave, but since then he strongly disliked Italians.
So you need to cook pasta without any "aldente" there.
We boiled it, drained the water and immediately add 50 grams of butter to them.
We only cut the onion with a feather. Fry it in vegetable oil in a separate frying pan until it is almost brown and then add 50 grams of butter to it.
Remember - 2 times 50 grams. It would seem nonsense, but no - chefs from all over the world in 1952 gave a standing ovation to Borukh for these 2 pieces of butter. They already understood what was the matter ...
Fry the minced meat in parallel in a separate frying pan. We loosen it with a wooden spatula all the time, observe how from red it turns pink, then gray ... What is important - no spices! Only at the end - salt, bay leaf and black pepper. Pepper is also a story. We take black pepper grains, fry in a dry frying pan, then grind with the wide side of a chef's knife.
And the final chord - put everything together and mix thoroughly. The meat should get inside the pasta and stick it all around.
This is how the dish turns out, which at one time amazed the best chefs in the world.
After Boruch's death, I found out that in Rimini, on the beach where Fellini's great film Eight and a Half was filmed, there is a restaurant with the amazing name BoruchBar. And there is only one dish on the menu - Macaroni Navy Style, which means "Naval macaroni". The owner of BorukhBar is already a middle-aged woman with very thick legs. She often comes to the shores of the Adriatic Sea and looks long and sadly into the distance. Do I need to say that her name is Arabella?