Podcast Episode Three Companion: 10 Easy Pasta Dishes, Part Two
Hi everybody! Here's the companion notes to episode three of the podcast, which is the other 8 of our 10 pasta dishes. (The first episode was heavy on the theory, light on the recipes. This one is the inverse.)
Here are the time-stamps:
1:10- The Pink Lipped Mussel Story
3:30- Jesse's Pasta al Funghi
9:25- Nate's Pasta Pomodoro
14:00- Jesse's Cacio e Pepe
22:12- Nate's Pasta a l'Amatriciana
26:06- Jesse's Fra Diavolo
44:36- Nate's Pesto Genovese
55:23- Jesse's Pork and Ginger Bolognese
57:36- Nate's Onion Impasta
1:05:30- Jesse's Bruschetta Tirade
1:08:07- Bonus Recipe: Fennel Contorno
No links for this one, so let's get right into the recipes. Note that all use a pound of pasta, and generally serve about 4 people for a main course. (Not so much on the Onion Impasta, that one's kind of its own thing.)
Jesse's Pasta al Funghi
Ingredients:
1# dry pasta (I found a great egg pappardelle from Flora)
1# (at least) mushrooms, as many types as you like, wild if you can get 'em
A block of parmigiano, about 4 oz., at room temp, for making shavings
EVO as needed, salt as needed, black pepper as needed
Method: Heat a film of oil in the pan. Sautee the mushrooms hard, a little color is good. When the mushrooms are cooked, add the 3/4-cooked pappardelle, and finish cooking it out with a little pasta water. Season it to taste, divide in into servings, and shave parmigiano liberally over the top.
Nate's Pasta Pomodoro
(Note, this sauce is based on the elemental tomato sauce recipe from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. This is one of those 'if you don't have it, it's not my problem' books, kinda like The French Laundry and Bouchon.' Click the link to go on Amazon and correct your bookshelf.
Ingredients:
1 can (~26 oz) whole peeled plum tomatoes, buzzed up with a stick blender
1 stick butter (4 oz)
Half an onion
Salt and tomato paste, as needed
Method: Place the tomato puree into a saucepot with the onion and the butter. Simmer 30-45 minutes, until the onion is getting tender and the flavor is intensified. Remove the onion (it's good to eat), and season it to taste with a little salt and tomato paste (you don't need much).
Isn't it cool how, compared to the first three recipes, this collection of ingredients qualifies as complicated? It's amazing how much you can do with noodles and just a handful of ingredients, especially when you select the ingredients correctly.
To make the pasta, it's just like most of the previous recipes. Either cook it like risotto, or add the nearly cooked pasta to the sauce with a splash of pasta water, and finish it like that.
Add-ins: The sky's the limit, but some good ones are some fresh herbs (basil, oregano, no, not dried oregano, you go back to Olive Garden with that crap), peeled cherry tomatoes that have been gently warmed, or some grating cheese to pass at the table.
Jesse (and Saveur)'s Cacio e Pepe
This, like so many of my favorites, is adapted from Saveur. Here is a link to where I started. The only notes I have to make are that you can use different grating cheeses, if you want (I used Vache Rossa Parmigiano Reggiano, but their combination of Cacio and Romano is also awesome), and I finished mine with a knob of butter, which is not traditional, but makes it more awesomer. Oh, and I used a fantastic bucatini from Mancini Pastificio Agricolo. It's hard to find but it's NO JOKE.
Nate's Pasta a l'Amatriciana
Ingredients:
1# pasta (bucatini or perciatelli are traditional)
1 Tablespoon EVO
6 oz. guanciale (if you can get it, if not, pancetta), diced
1/2 teaspoon black pepper, cracked
3 cups pomodoro sauce (see above), or another tomato sauce
1/2 cup pecorino, grated
Method: Gently cook the pork in the EVO until it's crisp and the fat has rendered. Remove about half the guanciale and set it aside. Resist the temptation to snack. Add the black pepper to the pan. At this point, either cook the pasta like risotto or boil it traditionally, like in most of the other recipes in this article. To finish, add the pomodoro, and finish cooking the pasta out in it. Add the pecorino, adjust the seasoning as needed, plate, and top with the pork crispies.
Variants: Interestingly, the Rome/Lazio region has a few classic pastas, and they are all variants of each other. Cacio e pepe (seen above), is pecorino and black pepper. Add guanciale and it becomes alla Gricia. To that, add tomato and it becomes a l'Amatriciana, or add egg and it becomes carbonara. Collect the whole set! Your pasta repertoire will thank you.
Jesse's Fra Diavolo
Ingredients:
1# pasta (I used a De Cecco linguine... or at least I thought I did, but the photo looks like fettucine, so maybe I was out of linguine? Anyway, linguine is traditional, but this works with anything.)
~30 shrimp, if they are 21-25's or 26-30's. Any bigger, and you can get away with fewer.
1 box strained tomatoes, 26.6 oz. (or use a 28oz. can, won't make a huge difference)
2 cups dry white wine
8 large cloves garlic, sliced
2 large shallots, sliced
2 oz. butter
kosher salt, and basil (if it's summer) or parsley (if not), as needed
Chile flakes as needed
EVO as needed
Lightly salt the shrimp and let them marinate while you throw everything together. In the oil, sweat the shallots and garlic, not letting them color. Add a couple of shakes of chile flake to the pan and toast for 30 seconds. Add the white wine, and let it cook out till 3/4 reduced. Add the tomato puree, and the 3/4 cooked pasta, and let it all come down together. When it looks like it's about a minute and a half out, add the shrimp and let them cook. (The challenge is to get the shrimp cooked, the pasta cooked, and the sauce to the correct consistency at the same time, but it's not as tricky as it sounds, it just takes a bit of practice. You can always remove the shrimp with tweezers while you give the sauce an extra minute, until you get proficient). Finish with the butter, more chile flake, and salt as needed. Plate, and finish with herbs.
Nate's Pesto Genovese
(Note, this is my own spin. For a more traditional pesto, you can just use 100% basil, and skip the blanch, but this makes a little more vegetal, complex, and really, really green pesto!)
Ingredients:
8 ounces of herbage (basil, parsley, arugula, roughly equal parts
Baking soda
1 cup EVO
3-4 oz. pecorino romano (and since it's going in the blender, this is a great time to use up bits and pieces)
2.5 oz pinenus (yes, that's how pine nuts is properly spelled, see Podcast Episode One: The Panisse Story)
5g garlic (or to taste)
Kosher salt to taste
Method: Make a blanching solution with 1 T. baking soda to 1 gallon water. Prepare an ice bath. Blanch the herbs momentarily to set the color, then shock in the ice. Wring them out really well and place in a blender. Blend with remaining ingredients until about 85% smooth. Finish the pasta by either the boiling method or risotto method. Plate, and garnish with more cheese. Toasted pinenus or peeled cherry tomatoes also make a nice addition. Also, you can take any excess pesto and put it into a disposable piping bag, to draw wieners on things. (Or put dots of it on hors d'oeuvres.)
Jesse's Ginger Not-Exactly Bolognese
Ingredients:
1# ground pork
4 oz. small-diced ginger (or chopped)
1 26.6 oz box of strained tomatoes, or a 28 oz can of plum tomatoes, buzzed with a stick blender
Salt and EVO as needed
Basil to finish
Method: For the ragout, sweat the ginger out in the oil until it just starts to color. Add the ground pork and cook it till no longer pink, breaking it up with a wooden spoon. Add the tomato puree, and let it simmer gently for 30-45 minutes. Cook pasta using the risotto method or the boiling method, and add the ragout to finish. Top with ripped basil leaves. (Note, you can also, as Nate discovered, use pork stew meat. You'll just need to let it simmer a little longer, and let it break up on it's own, but it gives a more refined texture.)
Nate's Onion Impasta (An homage to the great Michel Richard)
This recipe is adapted from one from Michel Richard's brilliant book Happy In The Kitchen. It's not exactly required reading, but it's super fun, and Amazon is selling copies for $17, so it's frankly a crime if you don't go buy one. (Note that if you don't want to do onion pasta, you can just use this sauce method on regular pasta and it's a pretty classic carbonara.)
Ingredients:
6 large white or yellow onions (photos on how to cut them follows)
1 Tablespoon EVO
6 oz. guanciale (or pancetta)
1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
5 tablespoons pecorino, grated on a microplane
5 egg yolks, 1 egg
Salt as needed (and you might not need any)
Method: This one's a little involved, and not as modular, so we are gonna get it straight from the horse's mouth.
Slice the stem end off of each onion, leaving the roots intact.
With a sharp knife, carefully cut each onion vertically, halfway to the core, leaving the roots intact.
Peel the skin and outer layer away, again taking care to leave the roots intact.
Now, slice each onion horizontally, into slices approx the width of 3 credit cards. Essentially creating rings that are not connected.
Remove and discard the germ if present. Gather the sliced onions and set them aside.
Fill a medium to large sized pot with water and bring it to a low simmer. Season the water with salt. Keep the water ready.
In a medium sized bowl, combine the egg yolks, egg, and grated pecorino, whisk smooth and set aside.
Now, in a saute pan, add the EVO and guanciale, and place over medium heat. Cook until crispy, but not burnt. Approx 8 -10 min.
Remove the crispy guanciale and set aside on a plate lined with a paper towel.
Add the black pepper to the pan and stir, this will help release any bits of remaining guanciale.
Remove the saucepan from the heat, and set aside.
Now, drop your onion “impasta” into the simmering water.
Simmer the onions until they resemble and have the bite of al dente pasta, approximately 3-4 minutes.
With a slotted spoon, lift the impasta out of the water and place it in the pan with the black pepper, rendered guanciale fat, and reserved crispy guanciale.
Return the pan to medium heat, and toss to incorporate.
Now add approx ¼ cup of hot Impasta cooking water to the reserved egg and cheese mix. Stir to incorporate.
Working quickly, add the contents of the pan to the bowl containing the egg and cheese mix.
Toss the contents to coat evenly, the residual heat of the impasta should be enough to cook the eggs to make a creamy sauce. Adjust the seasoning to your tastes, and the consistency with another splash of the pasta water if needed.
Serve immediately, with additional grated cheese and black pepper to your taste.
Anyway, hope you all enjoyed that. Thanks for reading this far, if you did. Come see us next week for some deliriously intense discussion of the vitrues of hot dogs, and check out the blog for some excellent stupid hot dog tricks!
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