Perhaps the most versatile pasta dish you can make. And it's delicious!
With Pasta ‘Mafiosi’ with your choice of meat or as a vegan dish, you can cater for both meat eaters and vegetarians or vegans at the same time. Of course, the latter will have to do without freshly grated parmesan, which is a shame.
Pasta "Mafiosi" with optional meat or vegan
I don't think Pasta Mafiosi can be called an original Italian dish. Several restaurants here in Prague have a variation of the dish, and what they all have in common is that they are more or less ‘spicy’. You can prepare it with a hint of chilli or you can let it come more directly with a kick of chilli. It's up to you and your family.In Prague restaurants, it is served with beef - typically fillet of beef. But since I make the basic sauce separately and add meat at the end, you can make it with many other variations. I prefer meat that just needs a quick sear in a pan, and if it's beef fillet, it should be a good quality that can be chewed even after a very short cooking time. I also often make it with chicken liver, which is delicate when not cooked for too long.For a vegetarian option, you can use mushrooms or roasted tofu - or both.If you have both meat eaters and vegetarians at your table, you can easily make flavours for both, precisely because you add meat/protein at the end.TIP:You can add meat or filling to only half of the sauce and freeze the rest. Then just fry the meat or veggie filling right before you want to serve it another day and have delicious, freshly prepared food in no time.
Ingredients
Sauce
- 150 g onion
- 200 g carrot
- 2-3 cloves of garlic
- 1-3 pcs small chillies or whatever chilli you can get your hands on. Or chilli flakes.
- 2 tbsp oil
- 2½ dl white wine
- 1 can of diced peeled tomatoes or passata
- 1-2 dl water or vegetable stock
- 2½ dl cooking cream
- 1 tbsp Wine vinegar, red or white
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 2 tsp salt
- freshly ground pepper
- Optional chilli flakes for adjustment
Meat or veggie filling (servings are for 4-5 people - you can halve and make two versions)
- 5 g salt
- 5-600 g Beef fillet in thin strips OR
- 5-600 g Pork tenderloin in thin strips OR
- 5-600 g Chicken breast in thin strips OR
- 5-600 g kyllingelever OR
- 800 g mushrooms AND/OR
- 400 g tofu
- 1-2 tbsp oil
Pasta
- 100-125 g pasta of your choice per person. I use homemade tagliatelle or pre-purchased linguine
- Plenty! Freshly grated parmesan
Method
Sauce
- Peel carrots and cut them into small cubes
- Peel the onion and chop it finely
- Peel the garlic and chop it very finely - or use a garlic press
- Chop the chilli very finely. Remove the seeds first if you want the dish to be extra mild. WASH HANDS AFTERWASHING (or take your chances 🙂 )
- Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat
- Sauté the onion and carrot until the onions are translucent but not coloured
- Add garlic and chilli and sauté for 1-2 minutes
- Add white wine and let it cook for 1-2 minutes so that the alcohol disappears.If you find it sad, drink a glass of chilled white wine while you continue cooking.
- Add the tomatoes. Rinse the can with 1 dl of water, which you also add
- Add salt, sugar and wine vinegar and a few grinds of freshly ground pepper
- Simmer while you prepare meat or veg fillings
- When you are ready to fry the meat/veggie filling, add the cooking cream and bring it to a very "low" boil.
Meat or Vege filling
- Put water on to boil pasta in. Ideally, you cook pasta while you cook meat/veggie fillings and flavour the sauce.The pasta water should have 10 g salt per litre
- Slice your meat into thin strips, sprinkle with the salt and toss it around
- If you use chicken livers, cut them into pieces that are not too small, otherwise they can easily become overcooked and dry
- If you are using mushrooms, cut them into coarse pieces. They will give structure and body to the dish.
- If you're using tofu, drain it well and cut it into strips
- Heat a frying pan, medium heat to hot and pour on the oil
- Fry the meat so that it browns on the outside. You don't need to finish cooking it, it gets the last few minutes in the sauce.
- If you use mushrooms, roast them over medium heat until the liquid they release has disappeared
- If you're using tofu, fry it until it turns golden
- Pour your meat/veggie filling into the sauce and heat it through for a few minutes.Season to taste. Is there the right amount of salt? Are the acidity and sweetness subtle but distinct enough to lift the flavour?Is the amount of chilli appropriate? Remember that the pasta doesn't have chilli, so the finished dish tastes significantly milder than the sauce alone. It's up to you whether you want a subtle hint of chilli in the background or if you want to be challenged a little more.
Cooking pasta
- Read on the packet how long the pasta should be cooked. For example, if it says 7-9 minutes, we want to end at 7 minutes so that the pasta is al dente.
- Cook the pasta 2 minutes shorter than you want the final result.Pour the pasta into a sieve or colander
- Take 400 g of sauce with filling per person and pour it into the pasta pot
- Pour the pasta into the sauce and cook gently for 2 minutes. The pasta tastes much better when it is allowed to soak up the sauce before serving
- Serve immediately with a generous sprinkle of freshly grated parmesan
- PS: If you don't want to serve it all, only use the amount of pasta and sauce that corresponds to the number of people. The next day, cook the pasta from scratch, heat the sauce, add the pasta and you have a fresh and al dente result - again.
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