Sara Jenkins, whose Porsena restaurant is tucked into New York’s bustling East Village, has a reputation as a fine rustic Italian chef. Chef and media personality Mario Batali has said, “She’s one of the few chefs in America who understands Italy and how Italians eat.”
Jenkins will be among the author-chefs at the Tucson Festival of Books with her cookbook, “The Four Seasons of Pasta.” She’ll participate in two presentations: “Rustic Italian Cooking” and “Celebrate an American Staple: Pasta,” when she will share the stage with her food-writer mom, Nancy Harmon Jenkins, with whom she co-wrote the cookbook.
Sara Jenkins grew up in the Mediterranean and pulls from her Tuscan and Roman childhood experiences to “create a pasta-centric menu featuring Italy’s finest ingredients” in the trattoria, the Porsena website says.
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“A portion of the menu changes every day,” says Jenkins. “Only two items never change:” the wilted escarole salad with hot anchovy dressing and croutons, $10, and cannelloni pasta with spicy lamb sausage with mustard greens and toasted bread crumbs, $20.
My daughter and I had dinner at Porsena on a brisk New York Saturday evening in early February. Porsena’s exposed brick walls give warm ambiance to the neighborhood spot. Porsena is filled with a few four-top tables, a bar, a long banquette, conversation and laughter.
For starters that night, we shared shaved slices of Grana Padano and balsamic ($6), a cheese similar to Parmigiano-Reggiano, which Jenkins says she believes is made in a larger geographical area than the popular Parmesan cheese, and drizzled with rich, tangy balsamic. (We practically fought over the last sliver.) We also nibbled the fresh, crisp shaved Brussels sprouts, $14.
For entrées we had to go with pasta; after all, that’s her specialty.
We picked the gnocchi and the lasagna. The gnocchi, $18, were large, about 2 inches, and robust, which Jenkins says “are fairly typical of spinach and ricotta gnocchi as opposed to potato gnocchi.”
Jenkins calls her lasagna “a classically Tuscan version, which is quite a bit different from what we in America are more familiar with, a more southern Italian way of making lasagna.”
The creamy, cheesy lasagna, $22, is prepared individually in a terra-cotta dish and served right out of the oven.
“I love the flavor the vessel imparts and I also think it’s the best way to have the lasagna, cooked to order as opposed to precooked then reheated the way it’s usually done in a restaurant,” says Jenkins.
“When that dish goes out all puffed up and steaming the entire dining room turns to look,” she adds.
Our advice: Let it rest, otherwise you’ll burn your tongue. It will be difficult, as you’ll want to dig into it immediately, which is the Italian way.
Jenkins says among the mistakes Americans make with pasta, in addition to overcooking and over saucing it, is making portions too big and not eating it the minute the hot plate is served.
“In Italy it’s considered rude not to start eating the minute the food is put in front of you,” Jenkins says. “Specifically with pasta.”
Jenkins says she works hard “to respect the Italian traditions I have learned over 40 years of living and working in Italy, but at the same time try to be open to new ideas, ingredients and ways of eating.”
She will be demonstrating the anelloni, a ring-shaped pasta, with spicy lamb sausage at the book festival and sharing an interesting tip or two, like dried pasta cooked directly in red wine.
