Quarantine Food: Pasta Edition

As I said in my last post, a lot of us are doing a lot more home cooking these days, which for many of us means lotsa pasta, oodles of noodles. Pasta is universally known as comfort food and we could all use a little comfort now, that’s for sure. I don’t have many food memories from my childhood, my parents were (forgive me for saying this, mom and dad!) not exactly gourmet cooks. Dinners were a lot of overcooked, dry, tough meat, chicken or fish served along side vegetables from a can, boiled until grey and mushy. Salt was taboo, as it was the 80’s and sodium was the enemy.

I would always look forward to Saturday night, though. That was the only night my younger brother and I were allowed to eat in front of the tv and supper that night was KD mac and cheese. Now, my mom, bless her heart, tried her darndest, but she’d still overcook the noodles in un-salted water, run cold water on them as they drained, never season anything and make the cheese sauce so thin and runny (margarine and too much milk, who knew?) that it was more like water, but it was still the best meal of the week. Something about those bowls of gummy pasta and watery cheese sauce – they were the only home-cooked food I cared about.

Fast-forward a few years, I was in high school. Being a privileged, sheltered lil’ white boy, I had done very little for myself during my youth, especially cooking. As a lark, I was taking a home economics class because I liked the idea of being in a class full of girls, as I was a little misogynist at the time and I thought it would surely lead to a few dates. But I found I really enjoyed learning to cook.

The dish that stays with me after all these years was a pasta salad, of all things, made with penne, Roma tomatoes, fresh basil and parsley, olive oil and parmesan cheese. I was encouraged to use salt and pepper to season the dish and it tasted like… something! Like something I actually wanted to eat! And I fucking MADE IT. It didn’t come from McDonald’s, it wasn’t fries and gravy from the Bella Vista Restaurant I’d visit at lunchtime before the arcade, it was mine. And if I could make one thing taste like that, I wanted everything to taste like that. I was hooked, and that’s what set me on my path to cooking professionally.

I worked in a lot of mid-end joints at the start of my career, you know the places. They weren’t Italian but they had a pasta section on their menu. This was the 90’s, so you slapped the word Tuscan in front of anything and it gave you the excuse to cut it “rustically” with a dull shovel and toss sundried tomatoes and roasted red peppers in it. But I enjoyed working sauté in those places, making pan after pan of fettucine Alfredo (with chicken), penne alla vodka (with chicken), and rigatoni alla primavera (usually with chicken added in). Then, at a now long-forgotten restaurant that touted itself as real Italian (but in actuality was about as Italian as Chef Boyardee) I learnt of a few sauces, a few classic pasta dishes that I became obsessed with, and still love to this day. Carbonara, Puttanesca and all’Amatriciana. These dishes kicked off an exploration into classic Italian cuisine that introduced me to Marcella Hazan, author of one of my most treasured cookbooks, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. If you haven’t read it, stop reading this garbage and find a way to read that book right the fuck now.

As the quality of restaurants that I worked in steadily increased as I gained more experience, I noticed an odd trend. Dried pasta was more or less eschewed, being fit only for lunch, if at all and fresh pasta was king. Now, I love fresh pasta, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t match properly with every sauce. And the texture of a well-produced dried pasta cooked al dente is something in and of itself. Now, of course, you can’t make ravioli or any stuffed pasta with dried, and a lasagne made from sheets of fresh pasta is an absolute treat, but why the hate-on for quality boxed dried pasta? A lot of restaurants get fanatical about making everything themselves, and while I admire the grit of making your own vinegars, mustards, flours and such they better taste superior to the brought-in stuff or you’re just masturbating in the mirror and hurting your staff while doing so. I love dried pasta and I love any high-end restaurant that knows and accepts it’s place in the noodle hierarchy.

So, like I said, since we’re home, let’s cook some pasta for ourselves and our loved ones because we could all use a little comfort right now, and nothing is more of a warm hug in a bowl than a steaming mess of noodles.

Here’s my recipe for pasta alla puttanesca. It’s a great quarantine dish because it uses all pantry staples that are very shelf-stable. It loves dried pasta, but if you wanna use fresh, do you.

Lots of good quality extra virgin olive oil

1            small white onion, brunoised

5            cloves garlic, peeled and slivered thin (like Paulie did in Goodfellas)

1 pinch dried chili flakes

1            50g tin of anchovy fillets, drained on paper towels and chopped fine

200g      pitted Kalamata olives, roughly chopped

200g      capers, drained

1            796mL can whole Roma tomatoes

To taste Kosher salt

To taste freshly ground black pepper

However much pasta you want, whatever shape you want, I’m trusting you can cook pasta

To garnish (optional): roughly chopped Italian parsley and finely grated parmesan cheese

In a medium sauté pan, over medium low heat, drizzle in about 177mL (3/4 cup) of olive oil. Add your onion, garlic and chili flakes and cook for about 5 minutes to soften. You don’t want the heat to get high and burn the delicate olive oil flavour away, nor do you want your garlic to get too dark, just to infuse into the oil. Add the chopped anchovies and cook 5 minutes more, breaking them up gently with a wooden spoon so they melt into the oil. Add the olives and capers, letting them cook for another 2-3 minutes before adding the tomatoes. Break the tomatoes up with the wooden spoon as well, and let the sauce combine and reduce for about 20 minutes. During this time you can set up your pasta pot and strainer, chop your parsley and grate your cheese (if using), set the table, whatever. When your sauce is a nice consistency, taste it and season to your liking, then go ahead and toss your pasta in. Mangia!

P.S. I love my mom, and she’s a better cook now than ever. She makes a mean lasagna and her latkes are to die for. Hi mom!