The Crispy Leftovers as the Main Course
'Like all Iranian kids, I grew up feeling strongly that the best part of dinner was tahdig, the crisp, golden crust that forms at the bottom of every pot of Persian rice — and sometimes other dishes too. My mother could make it of almost anything. When she couldn’t find thin flatbreads, she used large flour tortillas — conveniently already cut into circles to line the bottom of the pot for bread tahdig. My favorite was her spaghetti tahdig. After coating pasta with tomato-rich meat sauce, my mom would drizzle the bottom of a nonstick pot with oil and put it all back in to form a dark crust of tangled noodles. Once she unmolded it at the table like a cake, my brothers and I would excitedly cut into it, verbally laying claim to our preferred pieces. I loved the brownest parts where the tomato had threatened to burn, yielding sharp, sweet bites.
But then I left home and became a “real” cook. Eventually I moved to Italy and focused on learning everything I could about pasta. I made it from scratch and obsessed over the regional differences in shapes, fillings and sauces. I watched in awe as my chef pulled bucatini, spaghetti and penne from the water before the noodles were quite cooked and took them to al dente in the ever-present pan of simmering sauce. One thing I never saw, though, was cooked pasta returning to the heat to crisp up. And because Italians deeply pride themselves on cooking the exact right amount of pasta, there was never occasion to try a tahdig with leftover noodles, either. So like a teenager suddenly refusing to hug her parents in public, I grew embarrassed by what I once loved and left it behind.
Until I returned to Italy after 14 years, where I found myself recently at a trattoria in Milan facing a disc of crispy risotto showered with Parmesan, radiant with the glow of saffron. Unlike leftover pasta, leftover risotto is viewed by Italians as a gift. Cooks shape it into balls or stuff it with a pinch of stewed meat or cheese. Then they bread and deep-fry the fritters until golden brown, yielding arancini, the indulgent “little oranges” I can never resist. But this disc — riso al salto — was different. No breading, no stuffing. Just a thin layer of day-old risotto alla Milanese, fried in a nonstick pan in liberal amounts of butter. Then came the salto — a flick of the wrist to flip the rice — and more browning, until it was golden and crisp on not just one side but two. My first bite brought a classic saffron rice tahdig to mind. But with my second came, unexpectedly, the wistful memory of the pasta tahdig I shunned two decades earlier. Perhaps now that I’d finally proved myself, I could reconcile my Iranian heritage with my Italian training and make a pasta tahdig that did justice to both.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/magazine/pasta-tahdig-crispy-leftovers-main-course-noodles-persian-italian.html?
Pasta Tahdig
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019328-pasta-tahdig