Devolving A Classy Roman Pasta Concept

Sorry for the absence. Life's been happening. Also, just haven't been hit with the inspiration for anything especially useful, tasty or novel...until now.

I was reading the New York Times Magazine (3/22/15 issue) and came across an intriguing piece on Roman pasta + sauce preparation. The basic premise was that the author assumed that the indigenous paste/sauce custom was for quickly made, very thin sauces. But he got schooled by a local chef.

It turns out that while he got the ingredients right, he got their USE wrong.

The actual tech in question called for taking VERY al dente paste, mixing it with a slightly watery sauce, or taking solid ingredients (grated cheese, pepperocini, proscuitto, etc) and actually adding water and then stirring them vigorously over medium heat for several minutes. What happens is that the pasta cooks further, absorbing water out of the sauce while dissolving a bit and emulsifying the sauce. So you wind up with nicely cooked pasta, dressed in a thick and silky sauce that adheres to and coats the pasta thoroughly.

All this is cool enough and I recommend that you look up the full recipes at the NY Times. BUT what struck me is how easily this adapted to the use of leftover pasta and either leftover sauce or thus ennobled store bought sauce.

THE MUSIC - I'd go with "Louis Prima: Collectors Series" coz - it's kinda wierd how he can pull off doing "Buena Sera" as unctuously as Dean Martin and "Basin Street Blues" with the same gruff charm as Louis Armstrong. While you're at it, you might wanna check out Gary Krist's book "Empire Of Sin" which studies the history of the vice business in New Orleans (Prima's hometown) but also homes in how the lives of Italian immigrants and their descendants and African Americans intertwined during the period that gave rise to Jazz (which is why you find musicians of both ethnic groups laying claim to its "invention") So here's a couple strategies:
* say you have restaurant leftovers including pasta already in sauce; and let's say for argument's sake that it comes with meat balls.
you separate the meat from the pasta, putting the former aside - perhaps throwing it right into a toaster oven to heat, or to wait for nuking
heat up either a non-stick pan or a heavy iron pan coated with a hint of olive oil, then throw in the pasta with a quarter cup of water
stir vigorously with a big wooden or metal spoon for about 5 minutes
dump on plate, and add warmed up meat, or nuke meat for two minutes and add.
In this case while you're just reheating this dish, you're also adding depth to the dish, taking it up a notch quality wise

* or you might have some plain pasta without sauce you're looking to use
IF you have no red sauce, you could buy a jar of the most economical sort (they're all kinda sweet and vile anyway); finely chop one onion - saute till carmelized and add to sauce along with a table spoon each of dried oregano and basil; mix well and let that sit over night - or at least for a couple hours to infuse that store bought muck with some more pronounced, non-sugary notes; I'd tend to add some hot pepper flakes as well to give it some zing
again, you heat up an appropriate pot or pan, add the sauce, then pasta and stir vigorously for 5 minutes or so
I'd add two ladles of sauce for every adult helping of pasta
Here you're taking a very pedestrian dish and making it something kinda special with this simple bit of tech in the process of heating it up

* finally - if you're working with leftover pasta, and nothing but kitchen staples
I'd heat up your pot or pan, add a hint of olive oil, then dump in your pasta
for each adult helping of pasta add
2 TBS of grated cheese (Italian preferred, but honestly you could shred up ANYTHING you have in the fridge)
2 TBS of carmelized onions
1 TBS of crumbled basil OR 1 tps of red pepper flakes (I wouldn't mix these coz in this dish you want one or the other taste to pop)
1/4 cup of pitted olive (chopped or whole as you prefer) OR de-stemmed pepperocini (chopped or whole - tho I think you'd want 'em chopped so they can get distributed nicely through the dish) or finely chopped tomoatoes (these can be fresh or canned
1/4 cup water
stir vigorously for 5 minutes or more

Yard Dog

Yeah it's gotten cold in North America right quick! 7 feet of snow in Buffalo. YIPES. Even in the balmier parts of the country, temperatures are below freezing and veggies, etc. that are still outside are...toast (figuratively). Green tomatoes not brought in have frozen and if thawed will go pulpy and never ripen. Parsely is solid, brittle and set to wilt into mush. Great compost of course. Or prime candidates for your bag of future veggie broth makings yes. BUT DON'T BE SO HASTY TO WRITE THIS STUFF OFF for more primary use. These are perfect prime ingredients for a batch of Salsa Verde! And this is the easiest of peasiest recipes to put together!

Music: Los Texas Tornados, eponymous debut, Spanish language version - back when Austin was still Austin with a funky downtown fulla cheesey bars (still got those) cheap eateries the great clubs like the sadly long defunct Liberty Lunch, it birthed this roots supergroup of Freddy Fender, Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers and Flaco Jiminez

Ingredients 7 cups of green tomatoes roughly cubed 5 - 10 jalepeno peppers - stems cut off 2 cups onion finely chopped 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 1/2 cup vinegar 1/2 cup parsley leaves; cilantro would be nice but cilantro is South American parsley; if ya got 'em smoke 'em but if you don't have cilantro around and you wanna clean up the parsley, use the latter 2 tsp cumin 1 tsp oregano 1 tsp salt 1 tsp black pepper Preparation * throw tomatoes into blender or food processor 1 cup at a time and run at high speed until they break down but not utterly liquify - 20 seconds perhaps; pour processed tomatoes into a big bowl * add parsley to the last cup of tomatoes and blend 'em together * throw all jalapenos into blender and run at high speed till it's chopped up pretty good - 20 seconds is likely good; dump into bowl with tomatoes and parsley * add all other ingredients to bowl of tomatoes, jalapenos and parsely and mix well with big spoon etc. * YOU'RE GOOD TO GO!

Whore Sauce

I'm told that "Putanesca" means "whore sauce." Reputedly in Italy if one was engaging a sex worker for a session, a meal afterwards was part of the deal and that meal would be something you could throw into a pot, go off and

"do your business" and 20 minutes later the chow would be ready to serve, be eaten and clear the deck for the next engagement.

A gay opera singer in Washington DC made this for me by chopping up an onion, throwing it into a very hot pot with mebbe 2-3 TBS olive oil until it started to carmelize, then throw in a full large can of tomato juice and let it reduce for 20 minutes. We had a lovely, lively conversation in that space of time. Ahem!

Over the years I've noted restaurants having a variety of much more elaborate versions of this. Typically called "Spaghetti Putanesca" but Osteria LaVechia in Newtown PA calls it "feminina" -- this eatery having many paintings and photos of Padre Pio adorning its walls. So I can dig where they're coming from with this more genteel name for the selfsame dish.

The version I'ma run down recognizes the fact that a lot of folks in the midAtlantic states have had to bring in the last of the tomato crops in their home gardens - many more than they can eat before they go funky. And YES, you could can 'em, make sauce out of 'em and put that up. When I retire I may do that in myself. But for folks who still work full time, here's a quick and easy way of utilizing tomatoes and making a delicious and somewhat offbeat dish - that you may not want to explain if you've got youngsters in yr household. Or dowdy relatives/friends.

MUSIC: Afterhours "I milanesi ammazzano il sabato" (the Milanese kill Saturday - meaning, party it on down!) Ingredients *1 cup of halved cherry tomatoes, or diced regular tomatoes *1/2 cup sliced or diced onions *1/4 cup diced olives (dealing with the pits if they gots pits) *1 TBS capers *1/2 head garlic *3 TBS olive oil *spaghetti *1 TBS oregano *1 tsp basil

Preparation *start heating water for spaghetti *add olive oil to cast iron pan, pot, whatever you got and head over medium high heat *chop and add tomatoes (the time it takes to prep tomatoes is enough for oil to heat up nicely) *chop and add onions (again, the timing works out nice coz you want tomatoes to cook the longest); give the whole mess a good stirring *put half head of garlic in microwave for 1 minute, then you can normally squeeze each clove right into pan with other ingredients; stir thoroughly into the other ingredients *chop and add olives; stir thoroughly into other ingredients *add capers stir thoroughly into other ingredients *if you're cooking spaghetti up fresh, add spaghetti to (by now) boiling water; if you're using leftover spaghetti just heap it on top of the sauteing vegetables, turn heat down to medium; spaghetti with heat via steaming *let cook for another 5 minutes *use tongs to serve spaghetti, then spoon sauteed vegetables over it. FIN!

A Cheesey, Cheese-less trick

This is a quickie -- since Summer I've been eating a lot of rice cakes for snack food (dealing with a bit of a gut). And being a cheap bastard I buy the store brand of cheddar cheese flavored rice cakes. 44 calories each! And of course you chase one of these with a big glass of water, very filling!

But I have tried the Quaker Oats version and, naturally they ARE tastier, mainly cheesier and more expensive.

So I've been making due. But one day, as an experiment, I decided to sprinkle on a tiny bit of Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning - to give it a little heat. And it did that AND somehow ratcheted up the quotient of cheese flavor! I'm not sure how; perhaps it's the salt and the garlic powder buttressing related components of the basic cheese taste medley. BUT IT DOES WORK.

Squashed for Time

This is gonna be quick coz it's a work day and I busted this recipe out spontaneously

MUSIC: You Ain't Good For Nuthin - mixtape created by David Wyckoof esq of Nashville TN

If you follow my FB page you'll have noted that we've got a wealth of huge butternut squashes growing out of a vine that sprouted out of our compost pile. And the pile keeps growing despite giving these away to various folks at a decent rate. And there's one that's been sitting and getting funky looking on the outside so I've been thinking about taking it on for a couple days now, to use it before it goes bad.

So I started by peeling it (a mistake as there're lovely enzymes in the peel and flesh that basically acts like a chemical peel on your skin - nothing painful or especially unsightly, but WEIRD), cutting it into 3/4 inch slices, laying them out on a lightly oiled pan and baking at 350* F for 45 minutes (in several batches in this case). Amy likes to just cut the squash in half and baking it with the skin on, and then scooping the flesh out which is cool, but I pointedly wanted to scorch it a bit.

Next I pureed the cooked squash (adding vegetable broth to help it mash up nice and smooth), adding two fresh jalapeno (picked off a plant we rescued from my mother-in-law's backyard), and then dumped it all into a pot of vegetable broth (in this case I prepped that -- as per a previous installment of Garbage Gourmet -- and had a fresh batch to work with.

Then I chopped and browned some onions (to carmelize a bit and bolster the carmelization on the squash) and added that.

Chopped and added a stalk of celery (just because)

added 2 Tablespoons of salt

a Tablespoon of nutmeg

a Tablespoon of allspice

AND THEN -- I had a creamless cream soup in mind and this was looking a little thin, so I grabbed some french fries left over from a weekend dinner out, pureed them (adding some soup to add in the process) and added that to the pot.

VOILA - it's very hearty, has a slight sweetness, the kinda earthy spiciness of the nutmeg and allspice

The Virtue of Parsimony

This is not my recipe at all. I'm posting it as an object lesson in the virtue of holding onto scraps and leftovers even if you can't readily imagine their use and

detailing methods of preserving them at length for possible future use. Some of this will no doubt horrify germ-o-phobes. When I was a kid I didn't get snack money for school - I got a sandwich in a paper bag. And I was walking around and saw someone had dropped potato chips or Cheez Doodles on the pavement and they looked clean, I et 'em, never having any negative reactions; probably building up my immune system to frightening levels of resistance.

The recipe comes from John Gros keyboardist of the quasi-recently disbanded New Orleans funk band Papa Grows Funk (an, uh, "enthusiatic" judger of wares offered at the annual Po' Boy Fest on Oak Street).

INGREDIENTS
3-4 lb. chuck roast
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
seasoning salt
pepper
I was recently cleaning the basement in preparation for plumbers replacing some pipes an found a box of spices from the 60's. I looked 'em over, gave each jar lookover and a sniff and if nothing seemed amiss, mixed them in with more recently purchased spices. Dunno if I'd sprinkle these on top a salad or some mashed 'taters, but used in casseroles, soups etc. they're doing me just fine.
1 onion, chopped

1 red bell pepper, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
I don't use celery THAT often and frankly one bag lasts me for perhaps 10 recipes or more and getting thru it could take 3 months or more, a length of time which SHOULD far exceed the fridge life of a bunch of celery, BUT I've found (tipped by my mother-in-law) that if you wrap the bunch in a piece of paper towel that you then wet, and periodically re-wet, this stuff CAN last 3 months looking totally fine. It's good to seal the plastic bag it likely came in with a paper clips, rubber band, etc. It seems that it's dehydration that brings on spoilage in this case.
10-12 garlic cloves, chopped
OF COURSE I save all the onion and garlic skins, pepper seed balls, celery leaves etc, freeze 'em and save for making vegetable broth.
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup flour
2 cups beef stock

This is the part I'm especially proud of. We went out for dinner when Amy came home from doing the Tough Mudder Obstacle race in Ohio and the specials included beef ribs. Now, I LOVE ribs, but I don't eat pork for quirky ethical reasons, so I jumped at the this offering. They were tasty too! And when the waitress came to clear the table Amy asked -- "are you gonna take those bones home?" which I would automatically do if it were chicken; and I thought - WHY NOT! So these ribs have been sitting in my freezer ever since, slated for inclusion in veggie broth when I start making borscht again. BUT I note that ya use beef stock here and grabbed the bones, a stalk of 2 mo. old celery and a 3 mo. old carrot (likewise preserved with the wet paper towel method). And VOILA!
2 cups red wine
I assume everyone gets well intentioned gifts of relatively undrinkable wine at holidays. This is the perfect way to use em other than giving them out to needy winos; and there's no shame in that neither.
2 TBSP worchestershire sauce
1 bay leaf

MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT: anything by Papa Grows Funk or perhaps Larry Williams' Bad Boy collection (you'll note how many of his songs were covered by The Beatles - probably more than of any other artist - excepting Arthur Alexander) preheat oven to 300 degrees
pat roast dry and season with all spices

chop all vegetables
dust meat with flour and reserve all leftover flour
heat oil in Dutch oven (i.e. heavy iron pot with lid; any pot with handles that can stand being in an oven will do; over safe Correll or Corning Ware is fine too; key points are: that it can go into a hot oven and it has a lid)
brown meat on all sides, then remove from pot
saute vegetables, excepting garlic until they're translucent

add garlic and saute another 3 minutes
add all leftover flour
add some beef stock and deglaze pot
return meat (and any juices that have run out of it) to pot
add wine and enough beef stock to cover the top of the roast
add worchestershire sauce and bay leaf
cover pot and bake in oven for 90 minutes
flip roast and bake another 60 minutes

if you're making a pot roast, add some peeled carrots and potatoes for the last 30 minutes of cooking.

if youre making po'boys, flip roast again and bake another 45 minutes
carefully remove meat from pot
blend gravy with a hand blender (or toss it in a food processor) until it's entirely smooth
break up meat and mix with gravy
serve on French bread, baguette or toasted hoagie roll.

Mashed Potato Challenge

Hi! Here's another challenge I'd received and responded to a while ago and I post challenge and response for your further edification.

Dear Garbage Gourmet
What can I do with used mashed potatoes?

Dear Challenger:
Oh geez! like a bazillion different things!
1) Make em into patties, dip em in bread crumbs and pan fry em
If you find that your potatoes don't hold together well, you can beat up an egg, mix about 2/3 of it into your potatoes and mix together thoroughly. You can then dip each patty into the egg before dipping into bread crumbs.
I'd fry these in oil (just put in about a Tablespoon and swirl it around before you put in each patty or set of patties. If you save your bacon grease you can use that as well to add flavor.

You can also chop up about have an onion very fine and add that to your potatoes before forming them into patties. 2) Make a shepherd's pie
get yourself a pie pan
take a cup or two of leftover meat and chop up
mix with a cup of either frozen or already cooked vegetables - green peas, or chopped up carrots, etc.
add a can of some sorta creamed soup (whatever ya like: cream of mushroom, cream of onion, cheddar cheese)
pour all this into your pie pan
top with your mashed potatoes, spreading them out as evenly as you can manage
sprinkle with paprika to make it pretty

3) mix with 1 cup green peas, 1 Tablespoon curry powder and 1 cup sauteed onions and wrap in flour tortilla for a vague approximation of a Masala Dosai
4) mix with broth to make cream of potato soup, using 2 cups broth to 1 of potatoes
you can used canned broth, or bullion cubes and water
as potatoes are kinda bland be careful about your choice of broth as it's going to predominate in the final product.
SO - homemade vegetable broth which is good for making gazpacho or beet borsht as it's paired with other very strong flavors, might taste kinda green and yucky in potato soup.
Oh yeah, and you wanna make sure to make this absolutely smooth, so I'd suggest you beat the soup with a wire whisk or put it through a food processor.