April 30th - Pasta with Sausage and Tomatoes

April 30th – Pasta with Sausage and Tomatoes

Pasta is still one of the fastest things you can make for dinner. The plan is pretty easy. Sauté some things together in a pan and toss it with cooked pasta. What could be simpler or faster? Pasta sauce doesn’t have to be an all day affair. In fact, most of the “sauces” I make for pasta can be prepared by the time the pasta cooks.

So, I had decided on pasta and the Black Olive and Orange Sausages were calling to me. Even though it’s not really a traditional Italian flavored sausage (it’s actually more Eastern Mediterranean or Greek) I still wanted to use it for pasta. I sautéed some onions in olive oil and let them brown a little and then threw in two sliced up sausages and browned those. The sausage already had a lot of garlic so I didn’t add more, but did add some tomatoes and let all that reduce. Once the pasta was done, I drained it (reserving some pasta water in case I needed to use it in the sauce) and then tossed it in the pan with the sauce. Put it on plates and grate a little cheese on. Simple.

For no special reason, I pulled a pint of my Steam beer, just because I felt like having something hoppy. Ideal match? Maybe not, but it was a great beer and the pasta was fantastic. The hop bitterness helped to cut some of the richness and it had enough malt body to stand up to the robust flavors. Although I like to match food with wine or beer, it doesn’t always have to be rocket science, and sometimes just having what you’re in the mood for will work.

January 25th - Spaghetti with Shrimp

January 25th – Spaghetti with Shrimp

More proof that my cooking goes in cycles. A few days ago I was saying that I hadn’t cooked pasta in a while and now we have two pastas dishes a few nights a part. I had gone into work early and was supposed to get out of work early, but things didn’t work that way. I shouldn’t complain because I was able to scoot out a few hours early last week, but I got home in a crabby mood but still wanted something good to eat, but didn’t want to stop at the store on the way home. I knew I had some shrimp in the freezer and started to thaw them cold water while I came up with a plan. Before you give me grief about using frozen shrimp, be aware that most shrimp that’s sold commercially has been frozen. If you buy it non-frozen at your fish monger, ask if it was previously frozen. Most of it has been. Shrimp doesn’t hold well unfrozen, so unless you live near a shrimp region, chances are you’re paying premium dollars for something that was already frozen. My advice, and also that of such people as Mark Bittman, is to buy shrimp frozen. It’s normally cheaper because you’re not paying someone else to thaw it for you. I normally thaw it in cold water. Sometimes I add some salt to brine it a little, but most times it’s just a quick thaw in plain old water.
I thawed the shrimp and realized that the fastest thing to do was probably to make some pasta. I chopped some garlic and added it to a pan with olive oil and a little bit of crushed red pepper, while I got a pot of water boiling for the pasta. I cut the garlic into large slices so it would have a chance to flavor the oil before it burned. When the garlic was golden brown I pulled the pan form the heat. I added some spaghetti to the boiling water and let it cook until just before it was al dente (since it will cook in the sauce). I grabbed a little bit of the pasta water for the sauce in case I needed some liquid.
While the pasta drained, I threw the thawed shrimp into the pan on high heat so it cooked through in about 1-2 minutes. Then I added the spaghetti and tossed it. It need a little of the pasta water to smooth it out. Then I finished it with some lemon juice and (in a most un-Italian fashion) parmesan cheese. I had more Belgian Golden ale because it has worked so well for the tuna and capers with lemon a few nights before. A quick meal and on the table in the time it took to cook the pasta.

January 22nd - Pasta with Tuna, Capers and Lemon

January 22nd – Pasta with Tuna and Capers

One thing about keeping a food diary like this is that you start to notice certain trends in what you cook. I tend to think that I cook a lot of Mediterranean influenced foods, but of late it seems that I don’t really cook much of it. I’m starting to notice that a lot of my cooking is cyclical. I tend to work certain things in for a few weeks, and then rotate them out for something else that’s catching my interest at the time. I realize I haven’t cooked any pasta in probably more than a month, and for a while it was something that I cooked at least a couple of times a week.

Most of the pastas I do are pretty quick and most don’t require a sauce that takes hours to cook. I like a lot of the Sunday Ragu type of sauces, but don’t make them much. Most of what I do tends to be things that I can sauté in a pan by the time that the pasta cooks, which means something that cooks in less than 20 minutes including prep.

There are actually a fair amount of tuna sauces in traditional Italian cooking. Giuliano Bugialli mentions some in his Fine Art of Italian Cooking but most of those are actually sauces with tuna and tomatoes. One of the dishes I used to make frequently is tuna, capers, lemon juice, olive oil and sometimes olives. Contrary to traditional Italian rules, I also will sprinkle some cheese on it. I normally use canned (actually pouched) tuna for this. Now before you dismiss this as something akin to a 1960’s casserole, you need to realize that cooks throughout Italy and Spain use a fair amount of canned tuna. Much of it is high quality tuna that’s canned with very good olive oil. (Anya von Bremzen talks about this in her excellent book The New Spanish Table.) Tuna canned with oil went out of favor in the US several years ago (even though it’s still available), but most of that (all of that?) didn’t use olive oil. My wife had seen a Cook’s Illustrated tasting a few years ago where they recommended some of the pouched tuna as opposed to canned. We tried it several years ago and agreed and generally keep some of it around for quick meals.

While the water came to a boil and the pasta cooked, I sautéed a little bit of garlic in olive oil on very low heat. I was trying to infuse the oil and wanted to make sure that the garlic didn’t burn. Right before the pasta was done, I added some capers and basil to the pan, and then added the juice of two small lemons. I mixed it together to make an emulsion and then added the tuna. I drained the pasta (keeping some pasta water in case I need to add it to the sauce) and added it to the pan and tossed it together before plating it and adding a little bit of Grana Padano.

It had a little more lemon than I had anticipated, but it wasn’t too much and actually made the dish taste very bright and fresh. I went for a pint of the Belgian golden ale again, because I knew that the citrus notes of the beer would work with the dish and that the dryness of the beer would offset some of the brininess of the capers. The two almost seemed made for each other and went as well as any wine that I could have chosen.

Quick pasta for a weeknight

I had a bad day at work today. Not incredibly bad, but nothing really went right and I ended up going in early and leaving a little late. Still, I wanted a real meal when I got home but I didn’t feel like doing a lot of cooking. Also, I’ve been getting small amounts of grief from one of the maybe six people who read this blog. The complaint was that I don’t write enough entries and there was a mild implication that maybe I skip a lot of nights because I don’t cook something “real” every night, so here’s an example of what I cook when I’m busy but need to eat.

There are a whole variety of pastas that I can make by the time the water boils and the pasta is done. Tonight’s is one of my favorites: pancetta, garlic and a pinch of dried red chile tossed with spaghetti with a sprinkle of parmesan on top. I make my own pancetta, which is actually incredibly easy to do, roughly following Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s recipe form Charcuterie. I don’t bother with the drying. I cure it for about 7-10 days and then cut it into pieces and freeze it. Even with this shortcut method, it’s considerably better than any pancetta you can buy, unless you buy from a real butcher who makes it properly.

So if you have the pancetta, it’s simple. First bring a pot of water to boil for the pasta. Next, cube the pancetta (I use about 2-3 ounces for two servings) and then brown it in a pan over medium heat to cook it and render the fat. I normally pour the pork fat off and replace it with olive oil. But that’s dependant on your cholesterol and how much you want to infuriate your doctor. Throw in 3-5 cloves of minced garlic and brown it. Throw in a little crushed, dried red chile and turn the pan off. Cook the pasta, and save about 3-4 oz of the cooking water when you drain it. Toss the pasta and the pancetta and garlic mixture. Add some pasta water to make it all slick and easy to blend. Season it with salt, if it needs it, and some fresh black pepper. Add some parsley if you have it, but tonight I didn’t bother. Dish it out and sprinkle some freshly grated parmesan. Done. Takes about 15-20 minutes and most of that is waiting for the pasta.

Need a vegetable? Have a salad on the side, or do what we did tonight. Have a good piece of fruit for dessert. We had a tiny amount of the Stilton from last Friday left over so we sliced another two pears and divided the cheese. It’s a great dessert and you can’t beat how easy it is.

What to drink with it? Well frankly, whatever you have that won’t get in the way. Simple is the way to go. Tonight I chose a homebrewed dry Irish stout. Stout is very misunderstood. Most traditional stouts, like Guinness and Beamish, are actually fairly low in alcohol. The roast barley gives it a big flavor but many people confuse that with big alcohol. Dry stout is an incredibly food friendly beer. Stout and pasta may not seem ideal, but it was a hectic day, a quick dinner and frankly, it was a fine match. The dry roast quality of the stout cut through the fattiness of the pancetta and cheese and was malty enough for the garlic and chile. Simple easy and dinner was ready in less than 20 minutes. I even had time to start curing another piece of pork belly for more pancetta while it was cooking. Beat that. Cooking a real meal doesn’t have to be hard and it sure beats using a jar of insipid tomato sauce.