La Pignata - "Old School" Italian Cooking

"Good cooking is contemplative, it’s subtle. It’s timeless. It’s humbling to think of humanity, hunched over a fire, the clay pot one of our very few constants in a long and winding history."  -  Silvestro Silvestori

Cooking with a pignata in our clay oven

A pignata (pron: pin-nyah-ta) is a southern Italian clay cooking pot with a unique design that renders everything you put into it completely delicious. Nestled in embers fireside, they are used to slow cook everything from beans to stews to ragus and soups - part of la cucina antica - the ancient way of cooking. The pignata is the ancestor of today's crock pot with a design and utility that hasn't changed since the days of the Roman Empire. Pignate (pl) are fairly common in Italy but difficult to find here. My good friend Soni spotted one on ebay and let me know. Thanks again Soni!

Here are some basic recipes for cooking in a pignata. I will be adding more recipes 
regularly.

- Cannellini Beans with Pancetta

Ingredients:

2 cups dry Cannellini beans (or 2 cans of canned )
1/4 lb pancetta roughly chopped
1/2  medium yellow onion chopped
1 bay leaf torn in three pieces
1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt
Water

If using dry beans, they need to be pre-soaked before using. 
Technique: 
- Sort through the beans and eliminate shriveled beans and any debris.

- Soak for 12 hours or over night covering the beans with about 2 inches of water. 

- Drain and put into a cooking pot again covered with about 2 inches of water.

- Bring the water to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes then remove from heat and let sit for an hour.

- Now they’re ready to put in the pignata.

I decided to fry the pancetta to render some of the fat and crisp it up a little. Then saute the onion in the fat. Cut the pancetta into several pieces.

Put all the ingredients except the salt into the pignata and add water to the top of the beans. Salt should be added when the beans are done.

Place the pignata with the beans in the oven near the embers. We cooked them along with pan roasted chicken thighs in our clay oven. About an hour and a half. The beans can cook even longer. The longer they cook the better they get.

Brought in the beans and chicken in to plate up. Dress the beans with a drizzle of good extra virgin olive oil.

- Lentils with Italian sausage

Ingredients:

1 cup of dry lentils

1/2 cup sweet onion chopped

3 cloves of garlic minced

2 Hot Italian sausage links

2 sprigs fresh rosemary

Soak the lentils in water for an hour

Pan cook or grill the sausages and cut into 1/2 inch slices

Add the lentils, onion, garlic, sausage slices and rosemary to the pignata in several layers.

Fill the pignata with water and place a lid on top.

When the oven has been fired and the the fire dies down to small licks and hot embers place the pignata in to the side opposite the fire.

Leave to cook for 3 hours checking every hour to see if more water needs to be added. Make sure any water you add is very hot.

We also made roasted root vegetables to serve with the lentils. They roasted for about an hour in a cast iron skillet close to the fire.

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Pignate being used in Italy - 

- Pignata di Carne
Source: http://flytosalento.blogspot.com/2009/09/womens-cooking-in-puglia-carne-alla.html

Pieces of pork stewed in red wine, slowly cooked in a pignata with onion, celery, carrots, cherry tomatoes, new potatoes, thick slices of bacon, rosemary, oregano, bay leaves, cloves, sage, thyme, tomato sauce, salt, pepper and extra virgin olive oil.

- Lamb Stew
Source:  http://blog.giallozafferano.it/suditaliaincucina/agnello-pignata/

Carrots, potatoes, a stick of celery with a few leaves, a sprig of parsley, an onion, a clove of garlic, one or two sprigs of wild fennel, mushrooms  baby artichokes, 1 lb of lamb cut in one inch pieces, five or six sun dried tomatoes, bacon,  spicy sausage, and pecorino cheese rinds and pieces of caciocavallo cheese.

Load all the ingredients into the pignata and add enough water just to get to two fingers from the top. Cover with a tight fitting lid, placing dough around the edge to seal the gap between the lid and pot. If you don’t have a lid, make a lid from dough made from just flour and water.Roast for several hours. 

Bring the pignata to the table and open it in the presence of your guests, so they can enjoy the explosion of aromas when the crust is broken. Whoah!

More pics from Italy -