Featured Recipes

Purple Potato Mezzaluna with Meyer Lemon Olive Oil

From Chef Silvia Barban

LaRina Pastificio & Vino, Brooklyn, NY

purple potato mezzaluna

Ingredients

Yield – about 16 Mezzalunas

Mezzaluna Pasta

  • 300 g durum flour
  • 100 g stone ground all-purpose flour
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 Tbsp TRULY® 100% Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Filling

  • ½ cup 51/49® Extra Virgin Olive Oil & Canola Oil Blend
  • 1 Nardello pepper (preferably small)
  • sea salt
  • 200 g purple potatoes
  • 1 garlic clove
  • ⅛ cup TRULY® 100% Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  • ½ red onion, finely chopped
  • A few sprigs of parsley, finely chopped
  • black pepper

Candied Lemon Oil

  • 2 Meyer lemons
  • 1 Tbsp powdered sugar
  • salt
  • black pepper
  • 3 cups TRULY® 100% Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Plate

  • caviar
  • flowers and herbs of your choice (suggestions: Salicornia, dill or oregano flowers)

Directions

Mezzaluna Pasta

(Mezzaluna means half moon in Italian) Create a volcano with flour, leaving a big hole in the center. Crack eggs into volcano and beat eggs with a fork until egg white and yolk are mixed. Add TRULY® 100% Extra Virgin Olive Oil to egg mixture. Mix flour in volcano into wet mixture with tips of a fork, always mixing from the center of volcano, until dough gets thick. Hand-knead dough until dough is smooth. Put wet towel on top of dough and let rest for at least 45 minutes.

Filling (for Mezzaluna Pasta)

Heat 51-49® Extra Virgin Olive Oil & Canola Oil Blend in pan until hot, then pan fry pepper until crispy, never letting the oil temperature reach above 320 degrees. Season the pepper with sea salt, strain the oil, and keep for later. Cool pepper and then small dice.

Boil potatoes and garlic in salted water until tender. Take the skin off of the potatoes, then rice them with the garlic. Next add TRULY® 100% Extra Virgin Olive Oil, the 51-49® oil reserved from the pan, onion, parsley, sea salt, and black pepper. Mix ingredients in a blender while potatoes are warm. Let cool.

Candied Meyer Lemon Oil 

Squeeze juice out of one lemon and cut the other into 1 inch thick slices. Season lemon slices with powdered sugar, salt, and black pepper. Char both sides of lemon slices in a hot pan and add TRULY® 100% Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Let sit for 30 seconds and turn off heat. When cool, blend all ingredients in blender until creamy.

Mezzaluna-Making

Roll dough until so thin until you can see through it, using a pasta machine or a rolling pin. Create long sheets of pasta, 5 inches by 15 inches. Put 1 tbsp of filling 2 inches apart from each other on the pasta sheet. Fold over pasta sheet, and starting from the center, create Mezzaluna, making sure to push air out of each Mezzaluna and seal each one. With a pasta cutter cut around the filling to create the half moon shape of pasta. Cook Mezzaluna in salted boiling water for 3 minutes. In a pan put some pasta water, lemon oil, and add Mezzaluna to let cook together for 1 minute. Add Nardello pepper, and salt if needed.

Plate Up

Serve pasta with caviar, garnish with flowers or herbs, and drizzle with more lemon oil from pan.

Buon Appetito!

Oil coming from Italy to America – it would be so easy for the oil to change flavor. However with Corto, the flavors don’t change.

- Chef Silvia Barban