León Manuel Bartlett, owner of Cyber Robotics Solutions.
The federal government has sanctioned Cyber Robotics Solutions, a company owned by the son of the director of the Federal Electricity Commission, for selling defective and over-priced coronavirus ventilators.
The Ministry of Public Administration (SFP) announced sanctions against the firm owned by León Manuel Bartlett Álvarez, the son of Manuel Bartlett.
The company has been prohibited from winning government contracts for 27 months and has been fined 2 million pesos, nearly US $90,000.
“During the old regime, not even the most wasteful cases of embezzlement were punished. Today, in strict adherence to legality and guaranteeing due process, the government acts and sanctions all infractions,” SFP head Irma Eréndira Sandoval said yesterday on Twitter.
On April 17, Cyber Robotics Solutions was awarded a 31-million-peso (US $1.3-million) contract to provide 20 ventilators to the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) in Hidalgo. Each device cost the health service 1.55 million pesos, or US $65,000.
Nepotism was suspected from the outset due to the position held by Bartlett’s father, and in May an investigation by Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) found that Cyber Robotics’ ventilators came in at 85% more expensive than the cheapest models previously purchased by the government. The SFP said that Bartlett’s price was “outside the range of the market.”
Bartlett Jr. justified the ventilators’ elevated cost at the time by citing the health emergency generated by the coronavirus crisis and the specialized nature of the machines his company was producing.
In its report, the SFP discarded that excuse and also charged that Bartlett did not abide by the terms of the contract.
“Not a single one of the 20 pieces of equipment delivered complied with the contracted technical specifications. The ventilators delivered were old, used and in poor condition. Eleven were broken and totally unusable, as the IMSS itself now recognizes,” the SFP stated, adding that Bartlett knowingly provided false information about the ventilators’ immediate availability.
On orders of the SFP after an inspection of the ventilators, IMSS ended up returning the equipment to Cyber Robotics in mid-May and none of the ventilators was ever used.
Four IMSS officials in Hidalgo were suspended later that month in connection with their role in the purchase.
“Throughout the pandemic, more than 2,000 contracting processes in the health sector have been reviewed and this scrupulous review will continue to ensure that the emergency is not used as a pretext to cover up embezzlement,” the SFP said.
Mexico’s environmental protection agency, Profepa, in coordination with the Yucatán Ministry for Sustainable Development and members of sea turtle conservation organizations have stepped up measures to protect endangered turtle species.
Nesting season is well underway and with the end of coronavirus lockdown beach activities are on the rise. It is estimated that some 15,000 people visited beaches in Yucatán last weekend alone and the increase in traffic puts the sea turtle’s survival at risk.
At the end of June, surveillance tours were carried out along the coastline near the Progreso-Telchac Puerto highway. Four signs were posted to make visitors to the area’s beaches aware that turtles and their eggs could be present and the need to respect their habitat and avoid damaging or disturbing their nests.
The move comes after conservation agencies reported that some nests in Dzilam de Bravo, Telchac Puerto and Sisal had been looted of their eggs. The hawksbill, white, loggerhead and leatherback species of sea turtle dig nests on the beaches during their breeding season, which lasts from March through October.
Since 2017, Profepa has installed more than 30 wooden barriers to prevent people from driving cars and ATVs along the sand and crushing nests in an effort to preserve the species’ habitat.
Sea turtles take decades to reach sexual maturity and lay 50 to 350 eggs in nests that are 40 to 50 centimeters deep that the mothers camouflage to protect them from predators. Baby turtles incubate for 40 to 50 days before emerging and making their mad dash back to the sea.
Predators are many, including humans who poach their meat and eggs which are thought to have aphrodisiacal properties. Scientists estimate that only a tiny percentage of baby sea turtles survive to adulthood.
Accumulated coronavirus cases in Mexico as of Monday. milenio
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell reiterated Monday night that Covid-19 case numbers are on the wane in Mexico City, the country’s coronavirus epicenter.
Speaking at the Health Ministry’s coronavirus press briefing, López-Gatell said that case numbers have been declining in the capital since the week starting May 31.
He also said that the number of coronavirus patients admitted to hospital and deaths from Covid-19 have begun to decline.
“The number of daily deaths … in Mexico City is decreasing: they’ve been progressively and continuously decreasing in the past 15 days,” López-Gatell said.
The capital has recorded 56,876 confirmed coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic, of which 3,867 are considered active. It has also recorded 7,053 confirmed Covid-19 deaths.
The daily tally of coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico. Deaths are numbers reported and not necessarily those that occurred each day. milenio
The sprawling, densely populated eastern borough of Iztapalapa has recorded the highest incidence of confirmed cases in Mexico City followed by Gustavo A. Madero and Tlalpan. Cuajimalpa and Benito Juárez have seen the fewest cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
López-Gatell also reported that Mexico’s case tally had increased to 261,750 with 4,902 new cases registered by the Health Ministry on Monday. The national Covid-19 death tally rose to 31,119 with 480 additional fatalities.
Just under 10% of the total confirmed cases – 25,805 – are considered active while there are 73,035 suspected cases across the country.
Federal data shows that the positivity rate for the almost 580,000 Covid-19 tests whose results are known is 45.2%.
The positivity rate is much higher than most other countries because Mexico is focusing its testing efforts on people who have coronavirus-like symptoms.
After Mexico City, México state has recorded the highest number of accumulated cases, with 38,201. Only three other states have recorded more than 10,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic. They are Tabasco, Puebla and Veracruz.
The only state to have recorded fewer than 1,000 cases is Colima, where 715 people have tested positive.
México state also has the second largest active outbreak in the country, with 2,157 cases as of Monday.
Seven states currently have more than 1,000 active cases. They are Guanajuato, Nuevo León, Tabasco, Veracruz, Coahuila, Yucatán and Jalisco.
Five states currently have fewer than 250 active cases, according to official data. They are Chihuahua, Colima, Morelos, Aguascalientes and Campeche.
At the municipal level, Puebla city has the largest active outbreak, with 838 cases, followed by León, Guanajuato; Mérida, Yucatán; Centro (Villahermosa), Tabasco; and Monterrey, Nuevo León.
After Mexico City, México state has the highest official Covid-19 death toll in the country, with 4,754 confirmed fatalities.
Baja California is the only other state to have recorded more than 2,000 fatalities, while more than 1,000 people have died from Covid-19 in each of Veracruz, Puebla, Sinaloa and Tabasco.
Among municipalities, Iztapalapa has the highest death toll in the country with 1,205 Covid-19 fatalities, followed by Gustavo A. Madero; Mexicali, Baja California; Tijuana, Baja California; and Puebla city.
Mexico’s fatality rate is 11.9 per 100 confirmed cases, well above the global rate of 4.6.
National data shows that 45% of general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients are currently occupied while 38% of those with ventilators are in use.
About three in 10 people who have tested positive for Covid-19 have required hospital treatment while just over 70% had less serious symptoms and were not admitted to the hospital.
The Health Ministry estimates that almost 160,000 people in Mexico have fully recovered from Covid-19, which has claimed the lives of almost 540,000 people around the world as of Tuesday morning.
Almost 70,000 tourists have visited Cancún since the Caribbean coast resort city reopened for tourism almost a month ago but hotel occupancy levels remain low.
Municipal tourism official Francisco López said that approximately 13,000 visitors are currently staying at the 120 hotels that have reopened at 30% capacity since June 8, the date from which tourism activities were allowed to resume despite the coronavirus pandemic.
He said that tourist numbers are expected to grow as air connectivity to Cancún increases and more hotels open. López said that there is confidence that occupancy levels can rise to 50% in the second half of the year.
The Hotel Association of Cancún, Puerto Morelos and Isla Mujeres (AHCPM) said the average occupancy rate over the past month in the approximately 6,500 hotel rooms currently open has been less than 20%.
In addition to the more than 14,000 rooms currently closed in the hotels that have resumed operations, 74 hotels with more than 17,600 rooms have not yet welcomed back guests.
The AHCPM said in a statement that all the hotels that have reopened are following strict health and hygiene protocols to protect both guests and their employees from the risk of coronavirus infection.
While flights to Cancún from both domestic and international destinations are still below pre-pandemic levels, air traffic at the city’s airport has recently increased.
About 150 flights landed and took off on both Saturday and Sunday, airport authorities said. Among the international destinations with connections to Cancún are the U.S. cities of Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Denver, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Baltimore, Charlotte, New York, Miami, Atlanta, Houston and Dallas, and Montreal, Canada.
Unlike many other countries, Mexico hasn’t restricted the arrival of airline passengers during the pandemic nor has it stipulated that they go into mandatory quarantine.
Tourists who have recently flown into Cancún to stay at hotels have been able to access the city’s famous beaches but local residents are currently being denied entry though the coastline is public, according to the Mexican constitution.
AHCPM president Roberto Cintrón Gómez defended the move to open beaches only to tourists on the grounds that it is only a temporary measure and one that is needed to decrease the risk of coronavirus infection.
“We’ve fought so that visitors can have access to the beaches, with certain restrictions. … The few tourists [in Cancún] are taking a risk by going on vacation but they come for the beach and we must keep that in mind,” he said.
Less happy about the tourist-only access to beaches is President López Obrador, who said that he would ask Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco to seek clarification about why the general public was being denied entry.
Quintana Roo, the state where Cancún is located, has recorded 4,245 confirmed coronavirus cases, of which 806 are considered active, according to federal government data.
More than half of the state’s cases – 2,404 – were detected in the municipality of Benito Juárez (Cancún), while neighboring Solidaridad, home to Playa del Carmen, has recorded 617.
Tulum, another popular tourist destination in Quintana Roo, has recorded just 70 confirmed cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
Guanajuato, Michoacán, and Oaxaca are the latest recipients of a new international tourism industry rating that reflects shifting priorities for travelers in what’s often dubbed Covid-19’s “new normal” — namely those of health safety.
The three states have been awarded the World Travel and Tourism Council’s (WTTC) Safe Travels seal, joining a list of tourism destinations in which hospitality companies are conforming to new hygiene and sanitization standards based on recommendations by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization.
The seal is intened to show that destinations are complying with strict hygiene and sanitization standards, which the organization says are meant to give travelers’ faith in the safety of hotels, restaurants, cruises, and other hospitality offerings.
“Ultimately, we envision a future of travel which is safe, secure, seamless, and provides an authentic and meaningful experience to the traveler across the journey,” the WTTC says on its website. “The specially designed stamp will allow travelers and other travel and tourism stakeholders to recognize destination authorities and companies around the world that have implemented health and hygiene protocols that are aligned with WTTC’s Safe Travels protocols.”
Guanajuato Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez told the Mexican travel publication Expreso that his state was very pleased to be part of the worldwide movement.
“We are committed to taking the necessary steps to restore tourists’ confidence.”
Michoacán governor Silvano Aureoles Conejo added that with tourism being an “essential pillar to the state’s economic growth,” industry and government leaders should be united in designing responsible programs for recuperation of the travel and tourism sector.
The WTTC, which represents the private travel and tourism sector internationally, counts among its board members leaders and executives from companies such as Hilton, Carnival Corporation, Alibaba Group, American Express, and Expedia. It was founded in the 1980s to raise the profile of the travel and tourism industry.
According to the organization’s website, to join the Safe Travels program and be allowed to use the seal on their website and promotional materials applicants must develop hygiene and sanitization protocols in accordance with WTTC guidelines and submit them to the organization for validation. Only after their protocols are approved can they begin to use the seal.
Already part of the program in Mexico are Baja California Sur, Cancún, the Mexican Caribbean, Cozumel, Jalisco, the Riviera Nayarit and Yucatán.
A cohete, or bottle rocket: the saints seem fond of them.
San Gregorio Atlapulco isn’t a pretty Mexican pueblo. Not by any stretch. Dust swirls through the town in the dry season and the streets are covered with mud in the rainy season.
There’s too much trash piled up and too many dogs soiling everywhere. The sidewalks — when there are any — are so badly cracked that you’re better off walking in the street where all you have to do is dodge the cars, motorcycles, trucks and bicycles that zoom past, from ahead and behind, just a little too close for comfort.
The chinampería, an ancient agricultural area where people still grow vast quantities of food, is crisscrossed with canals, providing a home for swarms of flies and mosquitoes. Home, that is, except when they’ve set up residence in my apartment where, at night, if I forget to smear myself with repellent, mosquitoes suck me dry of blood faster than a horde of Draculas and during the day, flies dive-bomb me, apparently just for fun.
The houses are constructed of cinderblock and mostly unpainted, the town square isn’t quaint and the church is in serious need of repair. But what it lacks in beauty it makes up for in its people, who have been friendly, generous and welcoming. It’s the place I now call home.
I learned about San Gregorio from an article about pueblos originarios in La Jornada del Campo, a Mexico City online newspaper.
Aztec dancers a popular feature of major holidays.
Pueblos designated as “originarios” have held onto their indigenous customs and ceremonies. I’d been in many such pueblos but they were all in remote areas, and San Gregorio is part of Mexico City. I couldn’t understand how an indigenous culture could survive in such a huge city and decided to visit.
I contacted a friend and colleague and asked her if she could get me into one of the pueblos originarios in Mexico City. She put me in touch with several people, each of whom had several suggestions about where I should go. Without really knowing why, I picked San Gregorio. I could have just as well tossed a dart at a map to decide.
My first trip to the pueblo was for Holy Week in 2018 and it was a moving experience — processions almost every day lasting well into the night. But more important than the processions and other events was feeling comfortable and welcome. After I photographed people decorating the church altars, Roberto called out to me, “This pueblo is your pueblo. Everything here is yours.” I’d only just met him.
Although I’d been to Mexico a dozen times for a variety of projects, usually staying a month or more, I never seriously considered moving here. But a divorce and other factors made me reconsider. It was time to make a change. I returned to the pueblo for three weeks in August of 2018 wanting to answer the question, can I live here?
I stayed in an apartment that’s less than a five-minute walk to the chinampería. Most people know about the colorful boats that ply the canals in Xochimilco, but few know that outside of the tourist areas, people still farm. Some areas of San Gregorio’s chinampería were built 2,000 years ago and many chinamperos, as the farmers are known, are growing food on land that has been in their family for generations.
That August, Javier Marquéz Juárez took me to the monoliths — two huge boulders with carvings of a priest of Xipe Totec, the Aztec god of sacrifice and agriculture, and a fertility goddess that are probably 800 to 1,000 years old. Franciscans toppled the fertility goddess soon after they arrived in the late 16th century, but that monolith of the priest resisted their efforts and still stands tall, watching over the pueblo.
The monolith that watches over the pueblo.
After moving here, Javier and I began exploring the unexcavated ruins of a large city that fill the hills surrounding the pueblo. We’ve documented dwellings, astronomical observatories, boulders carved with maps and what may be sacrificial altars. We’re documenting as much as possible before time and, unfortunately, people destroy what’s left.
I’ve been told that there are 365 fiestas a year in San Gregorio but that can’t be right. There are certainly more. There are 22 neighborhoods in the pueblo and every one has a patron saint for which there is a feast day. December 12th is the Virgin of Guadalupe’s day but there are other days that celebrate the Virgin of Carmen, the Virgin of the Assumption and several others.
San Gregorio, the pueblo’s patron saint, is feted twice a year. His birth is celebrated with a three-day fiesta in September and his death, in March, with a week-long one.
Mayordomos are lay religious leaders who generally serve in that capacity for a year. Every time a mayordomo’s year is up, there’s a procession, a mass and a large meal at the home of the new mayordomo. No one can tell me for sure how many mayordomos there are but the best guess is over 300.
There are the major holidays like Holy Week, Christmas and Day of the Dead, all of which last for at least a week, and the pilgrimages to Chalma, Amatlán and the Villa Guadalupe. Most of these events feature Aztec dancers and concheros, traditional musicians whose roots go back hundreds of years, and cohetes: large bottle rockets. (Until I moved here, I didn’t know that saints and the Virgin Mary were so fond of bottle rockets).
After photographing several fiestas, I asked someone, “When do people work?” Without missing a beat she replied, “There are more important things in life than work.” And in San Gregorio, those “more important things” are family, community and faith and every event is organized to strengthen those.
I now live in the apartment I first rented that August and often visit chinamperos, many of whom have become friends. Javier and I continue to explore and document the ruins and I’ve made an effort to photograph every major, and many small, fiestas. I’ve also gone on pilgrimages, including one to Amatlán, that pushed me to the the edge of my endurance and sanity.
A trip that was supposed to take 10 hours stretched to 23, including 12 on horseback (we got lost in the mountains four times). When I complained to Javier, he simply said, “But it was an an adventure, no?” My photos have been collected in a book I worked on with Javier called San Gregorio:Cosmovisiones.
I have to admit that there are days when I tire of hearing cohetes that explode, sometimes for hours, during an event. The mud and the mosquitoes and music blasting can sometimes get to me. But despite all of those, I think I’ll be living here for a couple of more years because if this pueblo has taught me anything, it’s taught me this: there are more important things in life than work.
The writer is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily.
The Visit Mexico website is seen as an important achievement.
The new “Visit México” online tourism promotion platform will be regarded as an important achievement and special legacy of the current federal government, says Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco.
The website was redesigned and relaunched last year with private sector funding but won’t be officially inaugurated until August.
Torruco told a press conference at the National Palace on Sunday that the aim of both the government and the private sector is to leave Mexico with the best digital tourism promotional platform it has ever had.
“And we’re going to achieve it,” the tourism minister declared.
He likened the importance of the website and associated tourism campaign to the Pueblos Mágicos, or Magical Towns, program introduced by the government of former president Vicente Fox in 2001 and the Angeles Verdes, or Green Angels, roadside assistance scheme launched by the Tourism Ministry in 1960.
Torruco said the government is working with the private sector to develop new strategies to combat the downturn in tourism caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
For his part, Visit México director Carlos González said that his aim as chief of the online platform is to inspire people to come to Mexico, develop loyalty among those who do come and help small and medium-sized tourism businesses create an online presence that allows them to attract visitors and thus recover more quickly from the economic downturn.
He highlighted that a promotional campaign dubbed “love you soon” was launched earlier this year to remind potential tourists of Mexicos’ natural, cultural and culinary attractions when many of them were sheltering in place due to the pandemic.
The campaign targeted potential tourists in eight different countries and promotional videos were made for the United States, Canadian, Australian and Chinese markets.
González said that another international promotion campaign will be launched soon under the slogan “Think México.”
A domestic version of the campaign, “Piensa en México,” is already up and running to encourage Mexicans to explore destinations at home. Spanish language videos promoting about half of Mexico’s 32 states have already been uploaded to Visit México’s YouTube channel.
The federal government has been widely criticized since it disbanded Mexico’s tourism marketing agency, the Tourism Promotion Council, shortly after it took office. Marketing funds have since been diverted largely to the Maya Train project.
Residents of the border community of Sonoyta, Sonora, briefly raised an impromptu blockade Saturday of the road leading from the border crossing at Lukeville, Arizona, into their city in a bid to prevent visitors from increasing the number of Covid-19 cases.
Arizona is currently considered a U.S. “hotspot” where Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are increasing and hospitals are at or near capacity. According to numbers collected by the New York Times, Pima County, where Lukeville is located, has registered 9,873 cases of Covid-19 as of Sunday, or one case for every 106 residents. Pima is currently reporting 299 new cases per day, up from 235 a week ago.
Using their cars, Sonoyta residents blocked the roadway just after the border control checkpoint, on the Mexico side. The road, which goes through Sonoyta, is also the quickest way to reach Puerto Peñasco, a tourist locale on the coast of the Gulf of California. Residents said in posts on online platforms that they were particularly concerned that the weekend would bring an influx of U.S tourists to their community to celebrate the Fourth of July.
Residents of Sonoyta also demanded health checkpoints to screen arriving U.S. visitors, better medical attention facilities and more Covid-19 testing for the area. In recent weeks, residents here have also been expressing resentment at the fact that tourists have allegedly been allowed to go to Puerto Peñasco, but residents have not.
The posts showed images of cars blocking the road from the border checkpoint and videos of U.S. residents complaining about not being allowed to pass. Some protested that they were Mexican and should be allowed into their own country.
Sonoyta Mayor José Ramos Arzate appeared to support his constituents’ actions, saying in a press release that he invited U.S. tourists not to visit Mexico at present, adding that the “people of the U.S. should not be allowed to enter Mexico at the moment except for essential matters. Therefore, this checkpoint will continue to operate, located a few meters from the Sonoyta border checkpoint.”
Ramos said the goal was to protect his community from its own spike in cases.
“It’s our duty as municipal authorities to protect the health of our city. We will continue to operate take necessary measures to avoid more deaths and infections in our community,” he said.
Both the U.S. and Mexico have agreed to limit border crossings to essential activities, but until this past week such limitations have mainly been applied to people entering the U.S. and not travelers entering Mexico.
New measures have been introduced to reduce pedestrian congestion in Mexico City.
The Mexico City government has announced a new scheme aimed at limiting foot traffic in the historic center amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Authorities are asking residents to go to the capital’s downtown area on certain days depending on the first letter of their first surname.
Under the scheme, people whose surnames begin with the letters A to L should only travel to the historic center on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. People whose surnames begin with the letters M to Z should only go to the downtown area on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Mexico City Interior Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez stressed that the initiative is voluntary but appealed to residents’ “goodwill” to help make it a success.
She also said that people should only go to the city’s downtown for reasons such as work and essential shopping, “not for pleasure.”
The announcement of the new surname-based initiative comes after hordes of shoppers descended on the historic center last week after the transition to “orange light” coronavirus restrictions allowed the reopening of more businesses, some of which failed to comply with health rules.
The authorities announced Sunday that several streets in the historic center will be pedestrian-only in order to provide more space for citizens so that they can maintain a healthy distance from each other.
The zócalo, Allende and Merced subway stations will be closed while the coronavirus risk level remains high, said Transport Minister Andrés Lajous, explaining that the aim was to reduce the number of people traveling to the downtown area.
Only 50% of nonessential businesses will be permitted to operate on any given day – those with even number addresses will be allowed to open while those with odd numbers are closed and vice versa.
Health screening stations will be set up at different points in the downtown area, where city officials will conduct temperature checks and encourage people to wear face masks. The use of face masks is supposedly mandatory in the capital but large numbers of people flout the rule, which has generally not been enforced.
Rodríguez said that starting Monday businesses that don’t comply with restrictions on their permitted opening days, the number of people that can enter at any given time and the directive for both employees and customers to use face masks will no longer be given warnings but rather forcibly closed for two weeks.
Entire streets where 30% or more businesses are flouting the health rules will be closed for an undisclosed period.
Mexico City is one of 17 states that was allocated an “orange light” Friday on the federal government’s color-coded “stoplight” map, used to indicate the risk of coronavirus infection, while the other 15 states will face “red light” restrictions at least until the end of this week.
The capital, however, still has the largest active outbreak in Mexico, with 4,058 people testing positive after developing coronavirus symptoms in the past 14 days, according to official data.
Mexico City also has the highest accumulated Covid-19 case tally and death toll in the country, with 52,210 of the former and 6,963 of the latter.
Cherry tomato pasta: slow-roast the tomatoes first to bring out their natural sugars.
While the hot summer weather makes me want to eat fruit, fruit and more fruit, I’ve also been craving pasta. But I mean pasta loaded with fresh veggies, a little exquisite cheese, some snipped green herbs, and cooked al dente so the flavors can really shine.
The pasta is just a vehicle for everything else. Served with a big salad, that’s a lovely summer meal in my book.
I tend to prefer thin spaghetti or capellini, and even with lasagna I look for the thinnest noodles I can find. That way I can have my pasta fix but not feel carb-overloaded. Scientifically speaking, cooked pasta’s composition is more than half water (62%, to be exact), but it sure feels like more than the 31% carbs they say it is.
The history of pasta is a long one, and probably doesn’t include Marco Polo bringing it over from China. (That legend most likely was a marketing campaign for a Canadian pasta company.) Historians say pasta was eaten in ancient Italy and Greece, beginning in the 13th century, although references to pasta-like foods have been found as far back as the first century AD. But it wasn’t until the 17th century that pasta was eaten with tomato sauce — prior to then, it had always been eaten dry or deep-fried as a finger-food.
The first pasta factory was licensed in Venice in 1740. And in the 14th and 15th centuries, dry pasta became a staple on long voyages because of its easy storage, thus bringing it to the New World and all of us on this side of the Atlantic.
Choose your pasta shape depending on the sauce and ingredients.
The wide variety of pasta shapes have a reason; each works best with specific types of sauce and ingredients. So while it’s fine to use whatever you want, do consider this when you’re trying out a new recipe.
Noodles with holes (penne, bucatini, ziti) are best paired with more runny sauces, so they can be filled inside as well as coated on the outside; more “complex” pasta shapes, like rotini, farfalle and fusilli, are good for more oily, sticky sauces, like pestos, that will cling to the twists and turns. (Although linguini and other long, flat noodles provide ample space for these sauces to cling to as well.)
In any recipe, remember that fresh pastas won’t expand when cooked, so if you throw two cups into the water that’s what you’ll end up with. Dry pastas, out of a package, will double in size.
Cappellini with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
Slow-roasting the tomatoes brings out their natural sugars, resulting in a richer flavor than if they were sautéed.
1 pint box cherry tomatoes
1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil (approximately)
1 Tbsp. butter, unsalted if possible
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
½ lb. capellini
Preheat oven to 275 F. Cut cherry tomatoes in half and arrange cut-side up in baking pan or shallow casserole dish. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 30-40 minutes, till tomatoes are soft but not mushy and juices have released. While they’re roasting, bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook capellini, timing it so tomatoes and pasta are done at about the same time. Drain pasta; toss quickly with butter and a drizzle of olive oil, and then add tomatoes and juices. Top with Parmesan and a grate of pepper. Serve immediately.
Summer Pasta Verde: the pasta itself is a vehicle for everything else.
Summer Pasta Verde
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 small onion, finely diced
2 lbs. zucchini, cut in small cubes
Salt and pepper
2-4 garlic cloves, minced
About 2 cups fresh basil leaves
1 lb. ziti
About 1 cup queso fresco or ricotta
Pinch of crushed red pepper
Zest of 1 lemon
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
In a large skillet over medium heat, cook onions in 3 Tbsp. olive oil until softened, 5-8 minutes. Add zucchini, season with salt and pepper, and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Turn off heat.
Use a mortar and pestle to pound garlic, basil and a little salt into a rough paste (or use a mini-food processor). Stir in 3 Tbsp. olive oil.
Cook pasta until al dente; drain and reserve 1 cup of cooking water. Add cooked pasta to zucchini in skillet and heat on medium-high. Add ½ cup cooking water, then the queso fresco, red pepper and zest, stirring gently. Cook for 1 minute. Mixture should look creamy. Add a little more pasta water if necessary. Add basil paste and half the grated cheese and quickly stir to incorporate. Spoon pasta onto plates and sprinkle with additional cheese. Serve immediately. –nytimes.com
Pasta al Limone
A simple, beautiful dish. If you like, add julienned spinach, chard or green beans at the end.
1 lemon
12 oz. spaghetti or other long pasta
Kosher salt
¾ cup heavy cream
6 Tbsp. unsalted butter
3 oz. finely grated Parmesan (about ¾ cup)
Freshly ground black pepper
Using a vegetable peeler, remove two, 2-inch long strips of lemon zest. Thinly slice each strip lengthwise into thin strands; set aside for garnish. Finely grate remaining zest into a large pot. Cut lemon in half and squeeze out 2 Tbsp. juice into a small bowl; set aside. Cook pasta al dente in another large pot. Drain. Reserve 1½ cups cooking water.
Meanwhile, add cream to pot with lemon zest and cook over medium heat, whisking often, until liquid is just beginning to simmer, about 2 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low. Whisk in butter 1 Tbsp. at a time until melted and sauce is creamy and emulsified. Remove from heat.
Add ¾ cup of cooking water to cream sauce and return to medium heat. Transfer spaghetti to pot with sauce. Cook, tossing often and adding Parmesan little by little, until cheese is melted and sauce is creamy, about 3 minutes. If sauce looks too thick, add 1–2 Tbsp. more cooking water. Stir in reserved lemon juice; season with more salt, if needed. Serve and garnish with reserved zest strips. -bonappetit.com
Janet Blaser has been a writer, editor and storyteller her entire life and feels fortunate to be able to write about great food, amazing places, fascinating people and unique events. Her first book, Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats, is available on Amazon. Contact Janet or read her blog at whyweleftamerica.com.
