5 posts tagged “pasta”
Ingredients, for two
Pasta, salt
1/2 cup chopped parsley
3 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced/crushed
2 tsp chili pepper flakes
1 can of anchovies, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
1/2 cup toasted breadcrumbs
Method
1. Start the pasta water.
2. Toast the crumbs in the oven. I use the broiler, but be careful, because they turn dark very suddenly. It should only take a few minutes.
3. Start with the chopping and grating.
4. When the water is at a rolling boil, add salt and pasta. Let it go for about 12 min.
5. Drain the pasta, reserving 1/4 cup of the water.
6. Add everything to the pasta except the Parmesan and breadcrumbs and stir it together.
7. Add the Parmesan, and stir again (It is important that this happens quickly, so the pasta is still hot enough to melt the Parmesan. The reason why I add the Parmesan at the end is that if I do it first, it tends to clump up with the other ingredients).
8. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs, and if desired, extra parsley. Serve.
If you absolutely hate anchovies, I think this would be just as good with prosciutto.
Well, that was my reaction prior to consuming it -- after that point, I really, really liked it. If you forced me to choose between this, and a Texas style chili, for the rest of my life, I'd pick the latter -- but as anyone who likes food, I like diversity. And this is a great take on a chili. It's also a great piece of the tapestry that makes up American multi-cultural, culinary history. It was created by Greek immigrants. Good on 'em. Damn nice job.
And doing Cincinnati chili with America's Test Kitchen's method is to proper Texas style chili what putting a pop-tart in the toaster is to Julia Child's 48 billion-step method of making toast.
Also, the spaghetti stretches the meal out like nothing else... As you can see, I opted out of the kidney beans and crackers, so this was just a three way. With the beans, you could stretch this meal out to feed a lot of people.
This recipe, I was particularly excited about -- spaghetti with anchovies and toasted breadcrumbs.
I love America's Test Kitchen (Cook's Illustrated), but as a nerd, I get a bit annoyed about how they hardly provide any background information on their dishes. So when I made this very simple and amazingly excellent pasta dish that focused on spaghetti and breadcrumbs, I was kinda frustrated: It was simply called "Spaghetti with fried eggs and breadcrumbs," and said the fried egg was considered Salerno style.
So when I made my comment about how I thought about improving this dish, my first thought was, "bacon." That was hardly an original thought though (Iron Chef America judges Jeffrey Steingarten "Everything is better with bacon" and Ted Allen "bacon may be nature's perfect food") but my second thought was anchovies.
It turns out that my idea wasn't an original one -- which is just fine by me since at least it shows my idea wasn't completely insane. Turns out there's a Sicilian (Catania) version of this dish, called pasta c'anciova e muddica -- no egg, but it does include anchovies. I suspect that there's nothing special about the anchovies though -- I figure the Test Kitchen recipe just left them out, since anchovies aren't too popular in the US.
I was a little puzzled by the use of breadcrumbs in the pasta (they are both starches, after all), but it seems the historical reason for using breadcrumbs in this dish is simply that you never waste bread. Bread is -- if not always expensive -- time consuming to produce. Thus, you never waste it. I love that. It seems completely obvious, now that I've heard of it.
As excited as I was, the recipe was a disappointement. It called for having the anchovies sautèed in olive oil and mashed into a paste, which left the dish with almost no anchovy taste at all. As I cooked the dish, I thought about adding some more, but I decided to trust the recipe -- I try to do that, the first time around.
Also, the recipe (which I found online, but since I had no luck with it, I see no point in mentioning where I found it) said you get better and more flakier breadcrumbs by grating them, rather than using a food processor. I tried both, and found little difference -- the food processor result was slightly less uniform in size, but if anything, that's a benefit. Also, it's a lot quicker to clean up a grater than a food processor but in this case, the fact that grating stale bread is a bit of a hassle, negates it.
So I think I'll just go back to the Test Kitchen recipe, and just add some chopped anchovies along with the parsley and breadcrumbs.
Still, even if I was disappointed with the recipe, I was far more disappointed with how I completely oversalted the pasta water -- AND the cauliflower. I can't believe that I can make such damned stupid mistakes, as much as I've been cooking now.
Oh well, you live and learn (hopefully).
Instead of those uninspiring rice noodles, I used some nice linguine. And instead of red cabbage, I just used a coleslaw mixture I had laying around -- along with some grated carrots. There's finely diced chicken, some shrimp, cashew nuts (recipe called for peanuts) in the mix, and a sauce made of rice wine vinegar, fish sauce, fresh lemon juice, sugar, red pepper flakes and (Yeah, I know) I put some ketchup into the mess also.
It actually tasted pretty damned good.
One gripe I do have with this book is that they don't give you any information about the history of the dishes. This dish is just "Spaghetti with breadcrumbs and fried egg." Where did they get the idea for this? Is this a traditional Italian dish? Is there a name for it?
Oh yeah -- and this was delicious. Vegetarian. I thought about adding bacon, but decided against it at the last moment -- and I didn't miss it at all (I feel like a traitor for saying such a thing). Now, anchovies -- that might make this dish truly awesome, though...
Start off by getting the pasta water boiling. While waiting for that, make the breadcrumbs from plain, white bread: pulse ten times in a food processor, toss in oil, salt and pepper. Spread on a tray and bake for 8-10 min @ 350°F until browned. Sauté garlic, chili pepper flakes and salt in olive oil in a skillet, until the garlic is straw-colored. Clean the skilled, and keep it on low heat (to fry the eggs) . Get the pasta going. Grate half a cup of Parmesan, and chop up half a cup of parsley. When the pasta gets close to al dente, start frying your eggs. Drain the pasta of all but half a cup of the pasta water, add the garlic mixture and some oil and mix well (make sure you do this before adding the cheese, or else it will clump up). Then add the Parmesan and parsley, salt and pepper to taste, and mix again. Plate, topped with breadcrumbs and egg.
