Category Archives: Pasta

May 10, 2013 · 6:02 pm

Bucatini carbonara

As Michael Ruhlman says, “Saying there’s one authentic way to make carbonara is like saying there’s only one Italian dialect.” As simple a dish as pasta carbonara is, I’ve never had two that were the same. Everyone does it a little differently.

Hands down, the best carbonara I ever ate was during my 26th birthday dinner at the now-shuttered Cibo Matto in Chicago when Todd Stein was the chef. In his version–simply dubbed Bucatini–a glistening, orange duck egg yolk teetered atop a winding pile of super al dente bucatini flecked with cracked pepper, cheese and crisp, fatty guanciale. Sadly, I only got to eat it once, since the restaurant was open for just over a year and pretty much booked up every weekend.

In my little culinary universe, there are a few cornerstones that signify true carbonara: pancetta (or guanciale), eggs and Pecorino Romano (or Parmesan). Absolutely no cream. And no greenery. That means no peas, no sprinkling of parsley or chives–nothin! Save the greens for the salad course. And for that matter, keep your onion and garlic, too. To me, carbonara should be all about the starch, salt and fat–bound together using pasta water and egg. My ideal carbonara is also interactive, meaning everyone’s responsible for stirring in their own egg yolk.

It’s the unabashed–almost stubborn–simplicity of this dish that has made me so hesitant to post this recipe until now. But carbonara has become a staple in my house, and I stand by it. My carbonara is mostly adapted from Mario Batali’s wonderful Molto Gusto cookbook. In my version, I use half Parmesan and half Pecorino Romano and in an homage to Todd Stein’s fleeting Bucatini, I only make carbonara with bucatini pasta.

Bucatini carbonara
serves 4

Heat a large Dutch oven or other heavy-bottom pot over medium; add the olive oil and pancetta, and cook until the meat has rendered some of its fat and caramelized slightly, 5-7 minutes. Remove from the heat, and add about 20 grinds of coarse black pepper.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in heavily salted water just until al dente. Drain it, reserving about 3/4 cup of the starchy cooking liquid.

Put the egg whites in a large measuring cup. Whisk in a few tablespoons of the starchy cooking liquid to temper them. Turn the heat on low under the pot with the pancetta and pepper until they just start to sizzle. Whisking furiously, pour the tempered egg whites and about 1/2 cup of the starchy pasta liquid into the pot. Dump in the pasta, tossing well to coat. Turn off the heat, and add most of the cheese and additional pasta water if the pasta seems dry. Work quickly, as you don’t want the pasta to cool.

To serve, divide the pasta evenly among 4 serving bowls. Carefully nest an egg yolk on top of each pasta pile. (I put each yolk into a small prep bowl before lowering it on top of the pasta.) Grind a little fresh pepper on top of each and sprinkle with a bit more cheese. Serve immediately, and instruct each diner to quickly break their egg yolk and stir it into the pasta.

8 Comments

Filed under Dinner ideas, Meat, Pasta

Tagged as Bucatini pasta, chef Todd Stein bucatini, Eggs, Extra virgin olive oil, Pancetta, Parmesan cheese, Pasta carbonara recipe, Pecorino romano cheese

March 19, 2013 · 7:11 pm

Sunday is for making pasta

Sunday is also for this.

And this.

But if you have access to a pasta machine and the weather’s particularly nasty, spend a Sunday afternoon making pasta with someone you love. It is really easy to do and requires just a couple of ingredients: all-purpose flour, eggs and a little water, if necessary.

The dough is such forgiving stuff. You incorporate the eggs and flour until they come together enough to be handled. Then you knead it for several minutes, adding flour or a little water as needed until it forms a somewhat smooth dough.

“Is that how it’s supposed to look?” I asked Mom, frowning at the raggedy ball of dough in my hands. “I think the machine will do most of the work,” she said. And boy, was she right. We divided each 1-pound ball into four pieces and formed them into rough rectangle shapes. We passed the pieces through the widest roller setting on the pasta machine, then folded them; then we narrowed the setting, passed and folded; narrowed, passed and folded; narrowed, passed and folded–until we reached setting #2 and the dough was thin enough that we could send it through the fettuccine cutters.

After we cut the sheets into the familiar fettuccine strands, we tossed them with flour and covered them with plastic wrap. I later read that the pasta should be placed on linen towels or parchment-lined baking sheets until cooking, but I quite liked our hillbilly method. We divvied up our paper plates and I went back to the city to cook dinner for my travel-wearied husband.

One last note: Fresh pasta doesn’t need much in the way of sauce. A simple cacio e pepe (Pecorino romano and cracked black pepper) sauce, a little gorgonzola and walnuts, or basic tomato sauce will do.

For my fresh pasta meal, I briefly sauteed sliced garlic in olive oil, then tossed in a few tablespoons of chicken broth, a half cup of tomato puree and a handful of fresh basil leaves. I boiled the pasta in salted water for about 2 minutes before adding it and a little cooking liquid to the sauce. We fried up a few Sicilian sausages to serve alongside the pasta. And that was it. Heavenly.

2 Comments

Filed under Pasta

Tagged as AP flour, Eggs, How to make fresh pasta, Making fresh pasta, Sauces for fresh pasta

February 22, 2013 · 5:52 pm

Issima

I think it’s safe to say that Nigella Lawson is the prettiest lady I’ve ever seen. This week, my mother-in-law took me to the Chicago stop of Nigella’s book tour for her ninth (ninth??) cookbook, the Italian-inspired Nigellissima.

Ina Pinkney, owner of Ina’s in Chicago, watches Nigella sample her entry dishes for ABC’s “The Taste,” on which Nigella is a judge. Ina later told me: “I didn’t make the cut–my oven didn’t work.”

Nigella tells starstruck Marge where to eat in London.

Honestly, I spent the first 20 minutes sitting there in a misty-eyed daze while she narrated bits of her life with that melodious British accent, from dinner parties gone wonderfully awry to stories about her rebellious great aunt (I wonder what rebellious means when applied to old British ladies) to favorite dishes that began as accidents, like custard streaked with baked rhubarb and cooked in a bain-marie. She offered lovely little observations like, “Some people get angry that I wear my hair down on my television show, but that’s how I cook when I’m in my home, and that’s how my mother cooked. I ate her hair all throughout my childhood and turned out just fine.”

Less than an hour later, after scribbling her signature in our cookbooks, posing for a few photos and answering some questions, she hurried out of there with her orange tote slung over her shoulder, onto the next stop in her book tour and the next group of admirers. It made me wonder what she would remember about her visit to Chicago, if anything–while the rest of us would talk about it for days and pore over her pretty book, proudly thinking we knew her just a little bit better than everybody else. We had personalized messages in our copies, after all:

For Maggie Love Nigella

But back to the book. It’s gorgeous and full of unpretentious, yet luxurious recipes–all interwoven with Nigella’s rich narratives. A former journalist, she does all her own writing, which makes her books as much about the stories as the food. I thought the title fit the contents of the book and much of what Nigella said during her brief appearance. “I never deny myself the chance to indulge,” she said. Although she’s trimmed down a lot these days, it really seems as though she embraces living to the fullissimest.

The very first recipe in the book is this heavenly, curly-cue pasta dish with a Sicilian pesto-like sauce of blitzed cherry tomatoes, capers, almonds, basil and golden raisins. I decided I had to make it immediately.

The dish comes together in the time it takes to cook the pasta, but the real showmanship comes from that sauce, which blends a unique combination of ingredients spanning the whole Mediterranean. Do I feel slightly ashamed of paying $6.99 for the fancy fusilli? Yes. But it really made the dish special.

Fusilli with Sicilian pesto
a la Nigella Lawson

Method: Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt it generously before adding the pasta. Cook the pasta until al dente.

While the pasta cooks, make the sauce by putting all the remaining ingredients, except the basil, into a food processor and blitzing until you have a sauce that looks like this:

Check the seasoning, and add salt and pepper as needed.

Drain the pasta, and reserve about 1/2 cup of the starchy cooking liquid. Add about half that to the food processor, pulsing as you go.

Spoon about half the sauce into a large bowl. Dump the pasta on top and add the remaining sauce on top. Toss until all the noodles are coated in sauce, adding a bit more cooking liquid as needed. To serve, heap into bowls or on large plates and toss several basil leaves over the top. Drizzle with olive oil.

Serves 3-4. This dish is delicious served warm, cold or at room temperature.

7 Comments

Filed under Pasta, Weeknight cooking

Tagged as Almonds, Anchovies, Basil, Capers, Cherry tomatoes, Extra virgin olive oil, Fusilli, Garlic, Nigella Lawson, Nigella Lawson Italian cookbook, Raisins, Sicilian style pesto

February 18, 2013 · 9:27 am

Marge’s first guest!

My older (and only) sister Madeline is my best friend and about half a foot shorter than I am. We love to eat, drink and complain together, and people often mistake our voices on the phone. She is also responsible for many of my and Sean’s nicknames due to a series of Gchat typos. I now answer to Merf, and Sean is affectionately known as Dean.

Here are two pictures of us eating with nice makeup on the day I got married. (Credit: Eric Futran and Andrew Boudreau)

Over the past couple years, Mad has become quite a fierce cook. So when she texted me that she was successful in making a simple mung bean (or bean thread) noodle salad, I replied, “Where do you even buy those?! You have to do a guest blog about it!”

So here it is, in Mad’s–also Maddy, Mat or Mac’s–own words. This also happens to be the 101st blog entry of Marge’s Next Meal! A very fitting way to commemorate 101 posts. (As you can see, I forgot to mention when I hit the 100 mark last week.)

Simple bean thread salad
by Maddy Shea

Growing up in our family, I think it is fair to say that with all the wonderful food provided to us everyday, I was never the one with the obvious talent for cooking. There are a whole host of meals I am loath to eat outside of my family’s versions because I already know that they will never measure up. My mom’s cooking still consists of my personal standard and ideal of what constitutes a homemade meal. So hearty meals like spaghetti and meatballs, German roladen, and stuffed chicken are absolutely never going to taste as good if they come from some outside source. My sister, now an accomplished chef and food expert, has created some of the most delicious foods I have ever tasted–Marge, I recall requesting that pork and ramen soup… where is it?? Even my dad has this one-of-a-kind knack for barbeque chicken so that I tend to stay on the safe side when at a picnic or barbeque restaurant and just go with a burger.

Needless to say, when it came to establishing my own cooking habits, I already had some pretty high standards. In fact, I still won’t eat many of the things I cook myself. One area in which I have begun to feel more confident, however, is lunch. I have always been better off throwing together what our mom has affectionately called “picky dinners,” or meals made up of a variety of small things–sandwiches cut into fours, bowls of nuts, slices of cheese, a fruit salad–rather than cooking full-blown meals complete with all kinds of appropriately coordinated side dishes.

One dish in this vein of “things tossed together” of which I am particularly proud is the bean thread salad. It is roughly based on the bean thread salad you can order at most Thai restaurants and of course largely based on what I find to be enjoyable to eat.

This salad also offers a very malleable palette; you can include whatever ingredients you find to be most enjoyable. I happen to think sugar snap peas, shrimp, and water chestnuts would be great additions if you’re looking for greater variety. In fact, it’s so easy to make and lends so easily to personal taste that it is now a meal that rivals its restaurant-prepared cousin.

But what I love most about this meal is that it would not have been possible without my family’s shared love of savory, simple foods and some important takeaways from my all-time favorite cooks: mom’s homemade salad dressing is proof that all you really need is lemon juice and oil; my sister’s ability to make ordinary food special just by slicing it thinly; and my dad’s love of a little spicy kick to make things interesting.

Bean thread salad with fried tofu

Method: First, put pressure on the tofu to squeeze out all the excess water. This can be done by placing a flat surface on top of it and weighting that down with a dense object like a cookbook or a can.

Once the water is removed, cut the tofu into 1/4-inch cubes and sprinkle with soy sauce until each cube has been evenly coated. This will give the tofu a much richer flavor.

Pour the oil in a large skillet over medium-high and add the tofu. Turn the cubes until they are browned and a bit crispy. This will take about 7 minutes. Place the browned tofu on a paper towel-lined plate, and set aside to cool.

Cook the mung bean noodles according to the package directions. After boiling them, I usually rinse them in cold water to speed up the cooling process.

On a large cutting board, thinly slice the green onion and jalapeno pepper. It is important to slice the pepper into very thin slivers to evenly distribute the heat. Next, shave the carrot in long strips with a vegetable peeler. Mince the cilantro.

In a large bowl, combine the lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. Then layer into the bowl a handful of noodles with a small pile of peeled carrots, some of the chopped green onions and jalapenos, a mini handful of tofu, and a pinch of cilantro. Repeat until all ingredients have been incorporated into the bowl. Layering the ingredients will aid in the mixing process. Toss the ingredients thoroughly with tongs, ensuring the noodles are coated with the lemon dressing and ingredients are evenly spread throughout.

To serve, heap onto plates or into deep bowls, and garnish with a few whole cilantro leaves. Serve cold or at room temperature. Serves 4 (or 2 hungry sisters, plus leftovers).

9 Comments

Filed under Pasta, Salad, Vegetarian, Weeknight cooking

Tagged as Bean thread noodles, Carrots, Cilantro, Fried tofu, Frying tofu, Green onion, Lemon juice, Olive Oil, What to do with bean thread noodles, What to do with mung beans

November 27, 2012 · 7:18 am

It’s time for soup

I don’t have a great back story for this soup recipe. I wish I did because the bubbling pot of richly colored ingredients pictured above seems as though it should house a really fascinating narrative. But all that happened was I woke up last Sunday to a 35-degree Chicago morning and decided I’d spend the afternoon making soup.

A variation on this recipe came from the second cookbook I ever bought: The Soup Bible, a cookbook plucked off the clearance rack at a Barnes & Noble in Madison, WI when I was 19. I liked the idea of making pasta alla vongole (pasta with clams) into a tomatoey soup. The end result was wonderfully flavorful and meal-worthy, deepened with Italian herbs, red wine and briny clams.

The above photo is a bit self-congratulatory for me, but I just love these little pasta shapes. They’re perfectly bite size and give the soup enough heartiness to warrant a meal by itself.

Hooray for soup season.

Clam and pasta soup

Method: Heat a Dutch oven over medium high heat and coat the bottom of the pot with olive oil. Add the onion, salt and pepper and sauté for about 5 minutes, until soft and translucent.

Add the garlic and herbs and cook for 1 to 2 more minutes until fragrant. Pour in the red wine, and cook for 2 minutes until slightly reduced. Add the sugar, tomatoes and stock. Bring the mixture to a boil, then simmer, partially covered, for 10 minutes.

Add the pasta and simmer for another 10 minutes, stirring frequently to make sure the pasta doesn’t stick, until the pasta is just al dente. Turn the heat down to medium low, and add the clams and their juice. Cook for 3 to 4 more minutes to heat the clams and allow the flavors to combine. Don’t boil the clams or they’ll become tough.

Top the soup with additional chopped parsley and basil and serve. Serves 6. Note: This soup is even better on day two, but don’t keep it much more than two or three days.

4 Comments

Filed under Fish/shellfish, Pasta, Soup

Tagged as Clam and pasta soup recipe, Clams, Fresh basil, Fresh oregano, Fresh parsley, Garlic, Pasta with clams recipe, Tomato puree, Tubetti pasta, Yellow onion

November 11, 2012 · 10:57 am

Bucatini all’amatriciana

I fell in love with this dish when I had it at a little Italian restaurant in Wicker Park. Bucatini pasta tossed with cubes of pancetta in a slightly spicy tomato sauce, the menu description read. Who could resist?

I stumbled several times over pronouncing “alla-matri… alla-mitri…” before the server graciously finished “amatriciana” for me. As it turned out, the name was the only complex part about this dish. What made this pasta so memorable was the simplicity of the technique and ingredients.

Sweet, slightly spicy tomato sauce clung to al dente bucatini that almost whistled as I slurped it down because of the little holes in the middle. Chewy, salty hunks of pancetta punctuated the dish with an almost wine-like complexity, and freshly grated pecorino delivered a pungent saltiness that lingered in my mouth long after each bite.

With a dish like this, it pays to buy the more expensive San Marzano tomatoes and the good-quality pancetta. It pays to freshly grate the pecorino and use bucatini instead of spaghetti. It pays to toss the pasta in the sauce for a few minutes instead of simply spooning it over the cooked noodles. All the little details and fuss are what make this pasta so special.

If you aren’t feeling up to pronouncing “amatriciana,” you can call it bacon pasta like I often do, but I don’t think that name quite does it justice.

Bucatini all’amatriciana (aka bacon pasta)

Method: Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Add the pancetta and cook, stirring frequently, until some of the fat has rendered and the pancetta starts to turn light golden brown, 5-7 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.

In the same pot, add a bit more olive oil, the onion and a pinch of salt and pepper. Sweat the onion for about 5 minutes until soft. Add the garlic, thyme and red pepper flakes, and cook for another 2 minutes until fragrant. Add the crushed tomatoes, then fill the can about halfway with water and add that to the pot as well. Bring the sauce to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and add the pancetta.

Let the sauce simmer for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, cook the pasta in heavily salted water according to the package directions.

When the pasta is just al dente, add it to the bubbling sauce, along with a few ladlefuls of the starchy pasta water. Toss to combine, and cook for 1-2 minutes. Turn off the heat and add the parsley and cheese. Toss well, and serve immediately. Serves 4.

6 Comments

Filed under Pasta, Restaurant remakes

Tagged as Bucatini, Crushed tomatoes, Garlic, Pancetta, Parsley, Pasta with bacon and tomato, Pasta with pancetta and tomato sauce, Pecorino romano cheese, Recipe for bucatini all'amatriciana, Red onion, Thyme

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Category Archives: Pasta

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