A taste of Italy, by way of Alaska. Combining multiple Caputo’s house favorites, this dish is all about simplicity, elevated. Enjoy fresh, Alaskan octopus from our friends at Wildfish Cannery, marinated in Bullwhip Hot Sauce from their neighbors at Barnacle, sitting atop perfectly seasoned beans. Take these flavors to the moon with a heathy drizzle of our favorite condiment grade olive oil from Italy: Viola Colleruita. This one was going to be kept a secret for our Culture Club subscribers, but it’s too damn tasty not to share. You’re welcome.

INGREDIENTS

• EVOO (for cooking)
• 4 cloves garlic (divided)
• 1/3lb cannelini beans, dried
• 2 medium lemons
• 1/2 cup parsley, finely chopped
• Viola Colleruita (NOT for cooking – for dressing)
• 1 tin Wildfish Octopus in Barnacle Bullwhip Hot Sauce (2 tins if you love each other)
• Salt & Pepper, to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Soak your beans one of two ways:
   1. Soak beans for 12-24 hours before cooking in cold water
   2. Add beans to a medium pot and completely cover with cold water. Bring to a boil. Cover with lid and turn off heat. Let beans sit in the hot water for 1-2 hours.
2. Once beans are soaked and ready to cook, heat 2-3 tablespoons of cooking olive oil in a separate, medium pot.
3. Peel and smash two of the garlic cloves and add to oil in the medium pot, stirring occasionally until browned and fragrant.
4. Add beans and their liquid to the pot with garlic. Cover beans with more water if needed (you’ll want 2-3 more tablespoons than what covers the beans). Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a gentle simmer. This will ensure the beans don’t break in a rolling boil.
5. Skim off any bean scum, then add more cooking olive oil to create a layer above the simmering water. Now’s a great time to also add a couple pinches of salt, a few parsley sprigs, and any other ingredients you want to flavor your beans with. (We’re building some layers, here!) Suggestions: bay leaves, a charred lemon half, other herbs, peppercorns, etc.
6. Allow the beans to simmer for 30-45 minutes until tender. Be sure to test three beans before making your determinations – (never trust just one bean!). Once done, drain and discard (or save) your bean liquid. (People who save bean liquid for other soups or simmers go straight to Heaven!)
7. While the beans are still steaming, grate two garlic cloves directly into the bowl of beans and stir. Adding to hot beans will heat them just enough to remove the fresh bite, but still keep them quite flavorful.
8. Grate the zest of one lemon into the beans along with the juice of the same lemon. Add chopped parsley and season with salt, pepper, and a glug of Viola. Stir, taste, and adjust your seasoning. Set aside.
9. Heat a cast iron skillet over medium high heat and crack open your tin of octopus. Add a tablespoon of cooking oil to the skillet and then the pieces of octopus. Save the juices from the tin! We’ll use those in just a moment!.
10. Allow the octopus to warm through and begin to brown. Remove after a few minutes, turn off the heat but leave the skillet in place, and cut any large pieces of octopus into bite sized chunks.
11. Take the skillet off heat and pour in the liquid from the tin, stirring frequently to allow the juices to thicken. Pick up any undesirable straggling bits of octopus.
12. Heap your delicious beans onto two plates, top with octopus, then pour the thickened juices over each bowl. Finish with another drizzle of Viola and lemon wedges.
13. Lastly, taste the vibrant flavors of this dish with friends or family – or keep it all to yourself!

Pasta. It’s one of the most generic terms used to refer to an expansive, regionally specific, and centuries’ long part of regional Italian food culture. That said, even the most ambiguous of terms is enough to elicit sighs of fondness for one of our favorite starches. From early childhood to poor college life and beyond into adulthood, pasta is one food we all enjoy. In theory, it’s relatively quick and easy to make, inexpensive, and I can’t think of one single person who doesn’t enjoy it. That said, there are just a few tips to be aware of when buying and preparing that will enhance both flavor and texture and, ultimately, just make life more delicious. Yes, there is a right way to make pasta and a wrong way. The right way will make your meal memorable and satisfying, the wrong way is akin to mortal kitchen sin, at least for us. The next time you find yourself craving a plate of pasta, keep these in mind:

Bronze Cut Pasta

Teflon Cut Pasta

Fresh isn’t best – seek out pasta extruded from bronze dies

There’s a strange myth going around that fresh pasta far exceeds air dried. Not so, dear friends. The vast majority of regions in Italy prefer air dried. Unless you’re making something usually made by hand rather than extruded through a machine like cavatelli or a filled pasta, chances are, a quality air dried pasta will better suit your needs (and desires). There are two materials used most often to extrude some of our favorite shapes of pasta: bronze and Teflon. While Teflon is more efficient and easier, the resulting pasta is slippery and lifeless. While this may be ideal for kindergarten slurping, that slipperiness also leaves behind whichever amazing sauce you’re about to make.

Bronze dies are the stuff of both historical and present day artisans, and for good reason. When artisan pasta makers use a bronze die to extrude their pasta (family-run Martelli in Lari, Italy, for example), the end result is well worth the extra time. On a microscopic level, bronze dies extrude a pasta that is rougher with far more surface area for sauce to cling to. These days, when bronze dies are used, artisans are often using higher quality durum semolina that will offer a toothsome bite, a lovely wheat flavor, and an all around better, tastier end product.

Use a big pot, lots of water, and liberal salt

Of all the pasta sins that exist, I beg you to use your biggest pot rather than attempt to minimize your dish load. A large, roomy pot of boiling water gives each cut room to absorb the necessary amount of water at an even rate and will prevent noodles from sticking together. Salted water helps season the main component of your meal without over-seasoning and using too much salt in the finished product AND it aids in even cooking.

For the love of pasta – No. Oil. 

There’s no faster way to hurt our feelings than to add oil to your pasta water. Adding oil to your water will indeed help keep noodles separated, but it will also ensure your sauce won’t have any way to cling and adhere to your noodle. Added oil would make cooking uneven and coat the pasta in a film, causing every possible drop of sauce to slip away between your plate and mouth. Don’t want your noodles to stick together? Here’s how to avoid it – use that giant pot in your pantry (I know you’ve got one), fight the urge to add oil, and don’t rinse with cold water (see below).

Pay close attention & don’t rinse

While it likely goes without saying, pasta should not be ignored while cooking. In those last minutes of time in boiling water, consider yourself married to that pot of cooking pasta. That fine line between true al dente and bloated, overcooked pasta is impossible to recover from. We cook pasta to al dente so it can continue to cook and finish cooking while being tossed with sauce. Pull your pasta from the water at a place when it is almost done, but feels like it could use another few minutes to be completely cooked through. It will finish cooking in the time it takes to toss with sauce, plate, and serve.

Don’t stop these final moments of cooking with a rinse in cold water. The rinse will result in underdone pasta that is bound to be stuck in your molars for hours after your meal and seized starch that won’t hold a sauce as well as a hot noodle. Instead, remove your pasta to a colander if needed, or right into a sauce pan with sauce.

Pasta water is your best friend

I prefer to remove my pasta directly into a sauce pan with my chosen sauce. I can finish cooking, bind the flavors of both noodle and sauce, and I have the absolute powerhouse secret ingredient at my disposal – pasta water. As the pasta finishes cooking in the sauce, it will likely suck up all the delicious liquid matter in your sauce. Rather than panic, simply add a half cup or so of pasta water to the pan. Your pasta water is full of starch leeched out while cooking your noodles and will help create a glossy, silky sauce that perfectly compliments and commingles with your pasta. It’s magic, I tell you.

Prepare a sauce intended for your shape of choice, and don’t overdo it.

One of my kitchen heroes is Marcella Hazan. If you’re not familiar with her, think of her as the Julia Child for Italian cooking in the United States. Marcella’s first cookbook, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, introduced American cooks to a lesson all Italians grew up with – your sauce is determined by your pasta shape. Italians don’t match sauce to pasta willy nilly. Each shape is created to marry with one or two particular sauces. Think bucatini and amatriciana, pappardelle and bolognese, spaghetti alla vongole; these weren’t paired together on accident. You can, of course, not follow these traditions, but a true match makes for a truly transcendent meal.

Don’t forget: the sauce exists to compliment the pasta, not the other way around. We don’t want noodles swimming in a bowl of sauce. Rather, we want a bowl of pasta kissed by a sauce that allows the pasta to shine. Remember, when a high quality pasta is used, it will be the star.

Pasta waits for no one 

When it’s ready, it’s ready. Don’t waste any time between tossing with sauce and eating, or you run the risk of over-cooked pasta at an unpleasantly tepid temperature. Start eating as quickly as you can and enjoy every moment. This is no time for manners, it’s dinnertime.

It’s Fulvi week here at Caputo’s. We’re celebrating the centuries long tradition of Pecorino Romano cheese made from Roman sheep’s milk by highlighting the only true Roman pecorino available in the US – Genuine Fulvi. While Pecorino Romano is part of the noble list of legally protected cheeses in Italy, there is a surprising amount of latitude for production spanning from Sardinia and  Lazio as well as the province of Grosseto in Tuscany. The allowance of other regional milk not only makes the name less true, but it disregards the terroir of milk. We often reserve the use of the term for wine and, more recently, chocolate; however, cheese holds the same key environmental factors that affect a food item’s flavor from farming practices and specific growth habitat from the milk of the animals and the plant matter consumed to create that milk. With that in mind, Pecorino Romano Genuine Fulvi holds true to the name, place, and intrinsic flavor we believe people should know, taste, and enjoy. This is our chance to shed light on these practices and to celebrate the artisans producing the truest form of this more than 2,000 year old cheese making heritage.

Join us in our celebration of Genuine Fulvi by trying any of the Fulvi-centric specials at our Caputo’s locations, by creating your own traditional dishes like Cacio e Pepe and Carbonara, by enjoying this Spring with fresh fava beans just like the Romans do, or try my contribution to Fulvi week – a sweet, bitter, earthy, and very Fulvi salad.

A Very Fulvi, Very Italian Salad
Serves 4

• 1/2 cup walnut halves and pieces
• One head radicchio, core removed and roughly chopped
• One cup arugula
• 2 pears, D’anjou or Bosc, quartered, core removed, and thinly sliced
• 1/3 cup Honey Som Cane Cordial  
• 1/3 lb Pecorino Romano Genuine Fulvi
• Condiment grade olive oil (Viola, obvi)
• Kosher salt and black pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and toast walnuts on a baking sheet for 12-15 minutes. While the walnuts are toasting, mix radicchio, arugula, and pear slices in a large bowl. Sprinkle with a pinch or two of salt and mix with your hands to pre-season. Drizzle half of the Honey Som over the mixture and toss. Taste before adding more to ensure it suits your taste. Using a fine rasp grater, grate the Pecorino Romano Fulvi over your greens and pears. Add walnuts and toss to combine. Portion the mixture onto plates and finish with a drizzle of condiment olive oil and a fresh grind of black pepper. Serve immediately.

You’ll never guess what we’re bringing to our NYE parties. What? Ok, fine, we ARE bringing cheese. But, it’s not just because we’re total cheese nerds (still true), it’s because small soft-ripened cheeses are a natural and utterly perfect pairing for sparkling wines. Whether you’re toasting with the real deal Champagne, it’s Italian cousin, prosecco, or a domestic sparkler, we’ve got you covered. Here are the three pairings we’re noshing on as we leave 2019 behind:

Adami Garbel and La Tur

This Piedmontese blend of cow, sheep, and goat milks ripens from the outside in, making it creamy near the rind with a fluffy, mousse-like interior. A wash of Adami’s prosecco lights up the paste with a floral finish that will give fireworks a run for their money.

Mumm Napa Brut Rose and Park City Creamery Treasure Brie

The name says it all. It’s a small little treasure of its own, the perfect kind to harness all the new age vibes for a blissful and successful new year. The buttery richness we expect is there, but it’s also backed by some lovely grass notes. Paired with the Mumm, well, it’s makes the importance of a New Year’s rather uninteresting.

Perrier Jouet Brut and Camembert

For our high rollers and those of you splurging on your last night of the year. This farmstead French cheese has aromas of garlic, raw broccoli and Brussels sprouts, with faint notes of seawater in the background. Paired with this dry bottle, it’s a more savory pairing than the others, but more complex and intense on the finish. You’ll really set the bar high for 2020.

So, the gifts are almost all wrapped, the tree is already coming apart thanks to your four-legged family members, you’ve threatened Santa’s visitation rights to your kids more than you care to admit, AND WHERE IS THE SNOW? You deserve a break, a sweet indulgence of sorts, and a drink. Let’s combine all of those into one lovely, warm cocktail to soothe your soul and melt away the stress.

If you’re not yet familiar with Waterpocket Distillery, consider this your introduction. One of Utah’s newest distilleries is raising the bar with centuries old traditional liqueurs, unique spirits, and a fresh face. We’re using their Notom Amaro here, you can find it at liquor stores around town or by visiting the distillery for their entire line. This is a great way to introduce amaro to your home bar, but also try this with a ice cube, neat, or stirred into your next cocktail. (Wanna know more? Check out the cocktail classes we’re hosting them at here!)

My take here on the classic hot toddy replaces whiskey with Waterpocket’s Notom Amaro and we’re swapping out the usual sweeter honey for deep, savory, and slightly bitter chestnut honey. I’m also omitting lemon juice as I find it a bit overpowering for the amaro, but feel free to take control of your toddy as you see fit. The combination of Amaro and chestnut is herbaceous, complex, and lovely stirred with hot water. Try your favorite honeys, amari, and citrus as you see fit.

Notom Hot Toddy
Serves 1

• 2 ounces Waterpocket Notom Amaro
• 2 teaspoons chestnut honey
• Hot water
• Orange wheel, for garnish

Stir amaro, honey, and hot water together in a mug. Float an orange wheel in your toddy. Turn off all electronics and enjoy some human interaction with friends and family.

You’re still not sure what to give, and you haven’t started shopping yet? That’s OK, we won’t tell a soul. In an effort to inspire your food gifting, here’s what some of your favorite faces from Caputo’s are giving to their friends and family this year.

Don’t see your favorite monger here? Drop by before the holiday—we’re open through the afternoon of Christmas Eve—and ask them for their personal recommendations. We’re certainly not lacking in opinions around here.

So, here you have it: each of our gift picks for 2019:

Matt Caputo
President and ultimate boss-man

Luisa Abram Trio – The flavors from Brazil meet the most exciting piece of cacao culture. Newly discovered wild cacao from the depths of the Amazon meet Brazil inclusions, like candied cupuaçu, in these thoughtfully made artisan bars.

Yelena Caputo
Vice President, and ultimatest boss who oversees said boss-man

Gift Collections – Our gift collections received some serious love before the holiday season this year. Choose from a variety of themes, price points, and flavors. The selection is vast, but the curation is impeccable.

Adri Pachelli
Senior Manager & Director of Education

Pump St Father Christmas – While quickly becoming a Caputo’s tradition, these craft chocolate St. Nicks blow the rest out of the water. There’s no ho ho ho without a craft chocolate Santa.

Alicia Konzen
Downtown Market Manager

Go FIGure –  An Alicia original. All things fig, all season, for every sweet indulgence. Fig and chocolate panettone meets fig and marcona almond cake and a vegan fig salami. Tis the season, after all.

Antonia Horne
Affineuse AKA maker of all tasty things from our Cheese Caves

Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking –  Our cheese empress is gifting the most authentic and authoritative word on Italian cooking. Written by one empress and given by another, we’d only be so lucky to receive this culinary wisdom.

Jamey Chelius
15th & 15th General Manager

High Mesa Chili Co. – Our New Mexican native and fearless 15th leader knows a thing or two about delicious heat. Full flavored fire roasted peppers mingle with some serious heat. World, meet our two new favorites.

Austin Shimada
Holladay General Manager

OmNom Winter Collection – Iceland comes home with you for Christmas. Three OG holiday bars from the masterminds behind OmNom are packaged into one beautiful gift that requires no wrapping whatsoever. Eat the chocolate, keep the box.

Zach Smith
Downtown Deli Manager

Espinaler Tinned Seafood (and CHIPS!) – Tinned seafood is all the rage around here, and Zach is no stranger to this food revival. He’s bringing jolly, briny, delicious cheer to his loved one, plus some seriously addictive chips to munch in between bites of fish.

Josh Broadhead
University Deli Manager

Bronze Cut Pasta and Sauce – Give the gift of tradition AND a tasty, quick meal all in one. Read more about bronze cut pasta here and learn why we’re so obsessed.

It’s a tale as old as time, a song as old as, well, Spain. Consider this a culinary love story. Fated lovers brought together by destiny hunger, forced apart by tragedy industrialization, and reunited by their unwavering dedication to one another a bonafide food revival. This is the story of tinned seafood and its one true love, fortified wine.

Tinned seafood culture was born on the Iberian peninsula, and while it’s never really died out, it’s experiencing something of a renaissance worldwide. What was once a local tradition is taking the culinary world by storm. You may have noticed it at your local watering hole or your favorite little neighborhood restaurant. Believe me when I say tinned seafood is here to stay. But if you don’t believe, take a chance on re-creating a recent Caputo party spread of tinned seafood and tapas style accouterments and pair with a variety of fortified wines. It’s a unique, luxurious, and delicious spread of food with a multitude of textures, flavors, and culinary variety. This is the stuff of my culinary dreams.

The first step to creating your spread is shopping for your treasures. Select a variety of fish, bivalves, and cephalopods and be mindful of the oils and sauces they’ve been preserved in. You’ll want a variety of oil, sauce, brine, and spice. You’ll also want a variety of brands. Seafood is being fished from the best sources and we’re lucky enough to have a handful of brands with their finger on the pulse of the ocean. Personally, I think every table needs a tin of these Jose Gourmet spiced calamari in ragout sauce and at least one really love tin of sardines to help fight the misconception that all sardines are sad sardines (my pick here). Lastly, pick something you would have never dreamed of 1)finding in the US 2) ever eating. Enter baby eels in olive oil and . Finally, finish this step with our preferred starchy vehicle, Spanish potato chips, and acidic preserved vegetables like basque piparras and caperberries along with lemon wedges and some vinegar based sauces the only sauce that matters, Espinaler.

Step two is where this starts to really get fun; it’s time to shop for booze. Vermouth and other aperitifs date as far back as tapas culture. The two have gone hand in hand since humans began fortifying their wines with additional spirits, roots, herbs, and sweeteners. Fortified wines offer a more aromatic and flavor packed juxtaposition to tinned seafood than wine alone can. Yes, of course you’ll love these tins with a glass of white wine; however, a vermouth (either sweet or savory) will create more depth, nuance, and complexity for you to enjoy long after you’ve swallowed. You nerds out there know this as retronasal olfaction, and you nerds know exactly what to expect from pairings of this caliber. Start with a sweet vermouth as this is the original mate for tinned seafood, but spread your wings and grab a dry vermouth and any other aromatized wine or aperitif that strikes your fancy. If it’s herbaceous, sweet, or both, you’ll likely enjoy it.

Yelena Caputo (friend/boss/soul sister) once likened our national affinity for the classic Coca Cola, salty fries, and hamburger combo to the much more romantic Spanish version – sweet vermouth, patatas fritas, and tinned goods. Sweet marries easily with savory and salty flavors in any fashion, this is no different. Enjoy the balance they offer each other and the layers of flavor you can create with each new tin and bottle.

When you’re ready to put your spread together, don’t be afraid of going big. We did our crawfish boil style with newspaper spread over the table, heaped with potato chips and seafood, veg, and glasses nestled into each little nook and cranny. It certainly makes a statement, but you can re-create the same idea on a wooden cutting board, coffee table, or large plate. The idea is to enjoy nibbles and sips of different combinations throughout your evening. Everyone will find something they like and you’ll be shocked at how satisfied you’ll feel from these delicate proteins, salty starches, and sweet libations.

Indulge, enjoy your company, savor your sips and bites. It’s just like a trip to Spain, without the fearmongering border agents fear of customs seizing all your tasty treasures.

I have a cold. Or a sinus infection. Or maybe it’s allergies. I have symptoms pointing to all three possibilities and I’m bamboozled by my body’s ability to feel so ambiguously yucky. The weather is warming up, the skies are mostly clear, and I’m in bed with a box of tissues and a queue or Real Housewives reruns.

While the weather works out its springtime kinks, I’ll be working out the kinks in my sinuses. After all the vitamins, supplements, tea, and vegetables, I find myself aching for something more comforting and warm (read: pasta). On this eve of our upcoming Cheese Caves Week, a bowl of hot pasta sounds like the perfect thing to soothe my soul while I spend hours on WedMD self diagnosing.

This sick gal wants carbonara but is missing ingredients and has no energy to get to a grocery store. Said sick gal has loads of cheese in the fridge (after all, who do you think I am?) and a head full of either stubborn American ingenuity or enough muck to cloud my classic culinary judgments. A lovely chunk of Grotte Tartufo sat atop my pile of cheeses, begging to be grated atop my ‘kinda sorta’ carbonara. Grotte Tartufo doesn’t melt the way alpine style cheeses do and will rather wilt atop hot pasta rather than coat it. I began imagining a pure white iteration of carbonara and didn’t look back from there. This is how Grotte Tartufo met a partial Pasta Carbonara and how the working title was born. Friends, meet Tartufonara. Partially carbonara, but mostly carbonara technique applied to loads of cheese and pasta.

Use this recipe as a blank canvas and add other cheeses, spring vegetables, or not much else for your own (insert ingredient here)-onara. I felt better after a bowl of this, and I hope you do too.

Pasta Tartufonara
Serves 6-8

• kosher salt
• 1 lb bronze dye cut pasta (This isn’t a classic recipe, so there are no rules! We loved it on calamarata, but a long noodle like spaghetti would make this feel more traditional)
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup Parmigiano Reggiano, finely grated
• 3 ounces Grotte Tartufo, roughly grated or chopped.

Bring a large part of water to a rolling boil and season with kosher salt. Add pasta and cook just past al dente. (The pasta will finish cooking as you toss with the sauce, but since this won’t happen over heat, we want the pasta to be just moments from being finished rather than minutes)

While pasta cooks, whisk eggs and Parmigiano in a large bowl until a pale yellow paste forms. When pasta in nearly ready to be pulled from the water, take a cup of pasta water from the pot and, while whisking the egg and Parm paste, slowly drizzle the pasta water into the paste. This will temper the egg so as not to become curds and help create a silky sauce. Remove pasta directly to the bowl with egg and cheese and toss to coat and finish cooking, adding more pasta water as needed. Just before serving, toss in Grotte Tartufo and any other ingredients you’d like to include (think blanched peas, chopped greens, or crispy prosciutto). Serve immediately.