I have come to depend on Tuscany at Your Table's Spaghetti Torte. It makes a wonderful lunch and is family friendly for a quick weekday meal. I wonder if Chef Luigi would share the recipe so home cooks could be in on the secret. Most of the other treats I enjoy there are more complex, as Luigi is a talented chef, but I think this is one we can recreate. — Laurel Marvin Jacobs, Stone Mountain
Meredith and Luigi D’Arienzo were happy to provide the recipe for their Spaghetti Torte, a dish typical of southern Italy. When they sent the recipe, they wrote, “In the Neapolitan dialect, it’s called ‘a pizz e maccarun,’ or ‘macaroni pizza,’ sometimes also ‘frittata e maccarun’ (macaroni frittata). The idea behind the dish is that it’s a way to use leftover pasta and serve it in a new way the next day. There are a million variations, some with pancetta, others with mushrooms, sometimes without the red sauce, etc. Also it’s very popular for the Monday after Easter, when traditionally, young people (after having spent all day on Easter Sunday with their families) go off for a picnic with their friends, and this is an easy dish to pack and take with them. It is also a popular street food in Italy, especially in the south. Buon appetito!”
You’ll find it’s an easy way to use several leftovers including a bit of the marinara sauce you would have served with the pasta its first time around. Smoked scamorza is a semi-soft white cheese similar to mozzarella but drier. Tuscany at Your Table usually has it available for sale in its deli case, but if you have trouble finding it, the D’Arienzo’s suggest you can substitute smoked mozzarella or smoked provolone. For the ricotta, they use whole milk, but part skim would work as well.
Tuscany at Your Table
1050 N. Highland Avenue, Atlanta.
404-205-5092; http://tuscanyatyourtable.com
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