14 posts tagged “pasta”
Pasta sauces belong in a sort of a culinary "family" that I think logically, should include other very slowly simmered things like chilies and certain curries. I worship Indian food, and have had a fantastic time exploring it. But I've had a really hard time with chilies. Pasta sauces, well, I've never even bothered trying that. But well, first time for everything.
As embarrassing as it is to admit, what set me off on this trail was an irrational desire to roast bell peppers on the stove. When you have an electric stove top, it's kinda frustrating to see cooks on TV roast bell peppers over their fancy-pants gas cookers. Well, I've got one of them now. And it finally occurred to me that well, lets have a go at that.
I mean, just roasting bell peppers. I had no idea what to do after that point. So I did a few searches and found a few things. Roasted bell peppers, basil, garlic, loads of onions (used my mandolin for that — which I normally avoid in lieu of practicing my knife skills), and who the hell knows what else. It ended up being too sweet, though. I used some apple cider and brown sugar, in addition to a whole roasted garlic clove — and some basil and parm on top, of course. But overall, I'm pleased as punch.
This was a frozen leftover from a friend's effort, so don't even think about asking for a recipe. The thing took him something like three hours to make — lots of different types of meat, red and white wine, prosciutto, fancy-pants mushrooms; all sorts of stuff. Fantastic stuff. And it's a pretty happy, lazy, gluttonous thing to be able to just thaw it out and heat it up — real, real slow. In a covered pan, to ensure you don't lose anything to evaporation.
Some things are rated on a scale of one to ten. The Michelin guide has its tree stars. Siskel and Ebert had a binary sort of thing going. Whichever method you use to rate food, I'd put this rating at the top: "Animal Noises." That's it. When people lose their good manners and just start making funny sounds. This is what this was.
To reduce the shame of this disgraceful gluttony, I supplied a mixed green salad with some shredded carrot and chopped tomatoes and celery. Should have added more of the latter, though. Celery has a great texture, as well as taste.
And to go with that, some garlic toast. I mean, you can't lose with this. Oh yeah — have you ever realized that if you use a freakin' tray, you don't end up with a bunch of crap on the bottom of your toaster oven? Like dripping cheese and other fun things that gets all burny and stinky when you try to use the oven? I have. Not that I've bothered using a tray, of course. But this time, I actually did. I amaze myself sometimes.
One more picture: I seriously cannot help myself when it comes to this, but you really have to use a proper wooden spoon to stir a sauce like this. It just seems appropriate — like a sign of respect and veneration.
I thought of adding garlic to the sauce, but that seemed a little obvious to me, so I didn't. That was a mistake. Also, I should have added far more parsley, because that stuff really has a nice flavor. It's not just for decoration.
1. Prepare a sauce of 1 cup chicken stock, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tsp ketchup (mushroom, if you've got it), 1 tbsp cornstarch and 1 tsp dry sherry or Shaohsing wine (optional). Mix well.
2. Cook pasta and toss it with a little toasted sesame seed oil.
3. For the meat sauce, sauté 3-5 cloves of garlic, 1" ginger and one or two dried, hot red chili peppers (all copped) for about 2 minutes.
4. Stir in 1 tbsp chili black bean paste.
5. Add 1 lb. ground beef and break it up with a spatula.
6. When the released liquids have evaporated, add the sauce from step 1 and simmer for 15 minutes.
7. Plate it, and garnish with chopped scallions.
I've done this with a few different types of noodles and pasta, but I always like the way fettuccine looks. And I think it's a little easier to get your fork and spoon around fettuccine, than spaghetti or other shapes. Oh and here's the first and second time I made it. This was the third. Won't be the last.
The sauce is a Béchamel sauce with onions and a little half-n-half. I let the butter darken before I added the onions, which gives it a deeper, nuttier flavor. Just kidding, I accidentally burned the butter. D'oh. But not too much. In actuality, it really did create a richer flavor, and it's definitely something I'll do again. But intentionally, and carefully...
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).
