God damn. So, seriously: this is not a habit. My dinnering habits are usually pretty standard. But not today.
Today, my room mate did a favor for someone and in return received a box of fresh spaghetti noodles. Like, freshly-made, by the guy who provides all of Pittsburgh's high-class Italian joints with their pasta. This here is correct pasta.
To top it I made a higher-class version of my usual red sauce. If I'd known ahead of time, I'd have gone even higher-class, but you work with what you've got. To start with, I put a few tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan. I spread, oh, probably around a third of a cup of parmesean cheese, enough to soak up a lot of the oil. The cheese needs to be wet, don't leave any of it dry. If I'd had time to prepare, I'd have shredded some of the block of good reggiano I keep in the back of the cheese drawer for special occasions. Might do that later this week, haven't used up more than a third of the pasta. Anyway, I also crushed five garlic cloves into the pools in the cheese-oil mud pie. Hey, I like garlic.
I set the heat to just over medium. The goal, here is to thoroughly toast the cheese. You don't want to burn it (or maybe you do, but I never have), but you want to brown as much of it as possible. Thing is, you really can't stir it--it just clumps up and stick to the spoon once it start melting. So you want to spread it as evenly as possible in the first place. I usually let it go for three to five minutes depending on how ballsy I'm feeling (I'm terrified of actually burning it). You've got the garlic in there to think of as well, and you definitely don't want that to burn, so once the garlic starts getting dark you need to move on to the next step regardless of how the cheese is doing.
The next step is deglazing the cheese. I use cheapass red cooking wine; it boils real nice, which works the cheese away from the pan. Use a spoon to scrape the cheese as the wine boils it free. Before it all settles, you want to add the tomatoes.
Usually, I use Red Pack tomato puree, or crushed if I want some texture. Puree soaks up the oil and cheese better, though. As far as grocery store canned tomatoes go, Red Pack has the best flavor to me--more acidic than, y'know, Hunt's or whatever. Tonight, however, I used one of the cans of San Marzanos that I keep around. San Marzanos are the king of tomatoes. They grow best on fucking volcanoes because they're fucking EXTREME. They're very densely flavored for their size, and it's a good flavor. The canned San Marzanos I use are whole in a puree sauce, which makes the tomatoes themselves simultaneously firm and mushable. I pour the tomatoes in and let the puree keep things from sticking while I use a big salad serving fork to crush the whole tomatoes.
Sometimes I add the marjoram to the oil-cheese-garlic mixture, sometimes I add it after the tomatoes. It doesn't seem to matter a whole lot, but I add a lot of it. Marjoram is like oregano on crack. Same flavor but stronger. I don't screw around with oregano anymore, I've moved on to the good shit. I get my spices at Penzey's unless I'm in a rush. You should also get your spices at Penzey's. They don't fuck around with spices. Regardless, I use a lot of marjoram--about as much as I can grab, minus a shake or two, with my thumb and first two fingers. I also add a pinch of basil, but not a lot because it's largely wasted--basil loses flavor the longer you cook it. The best way to use basil, especially dried, is to put a pinch on top of an individual serving. But I have a lot of basil (PENZEEEEEEY'S) so I use a little in the sauce while it's cooking as well.
Next I add balsamic vinegar. I have some really, really nice Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon balsamic, which has a very deep, rich flavor and pours like fucking molasses, but it doesn't actually have the whole flavor I'm looking for. Really good balsamic doesn't have a strong vinegar flavor, so I only add one or two teaspoons of the good stuff. Then I add about two tablespoons of my grocery store balsamic de modena.
Speaking of molasses, I also add molasses. A spoonful or so. I also chop up two pepperoncinis and add them into the mix. I cook the sauce at mediumish heat for a while, then reduce it to low and let it simmer for as long as I can stand to wait.
The result is a fairly tart sauce that has an almost peppery flavor from the marjoram. Sometimes I'll add even more marjoram and molasses and drop the balsamic, for a much sweeter sauce. Sometimes I'll add some red pepper flakes to the oil-cheese-garlic mix to give it some kick. The main thing is browning the cheese. You use enough cheese that you don't need to add any salt--the cheese is all the salt you need.
I've never actually used fresh pasta before, so I was a little nervous about dealing with it. Like, it's not dried, so I wasn't sure how long it would need to boil to be "right". I ended up boiling it for about five minutes, though I probably could have stopped at around three--just enough to get it hot and wet (hubba hubba).
And like I said, once I portioned out the pasta and topped it with sauce, I added a pinch of dried basil to each serving and topped it with more parmesean because CHEESE FUCK YEAH. Fresh basil is even better; it's hard to overstate that. And basil grows like fucking weeds, so you just need to slap a small pot down by a windowsill and keep the soil moistish to end up with more basil than you can possibly use. But all my fresh basil is gone, so I used dried and it was damn tasty anyway.
Today, my room mate did a favor for someone and in return received a box of fresh spaghetti noodles. Like, freshly-made, by the guy who provides all of Pittsburgh's high-class Italian joints with their pasta. This here is correct pasta.
To top it I made a higher-class version of my usual red sauce. If I'd known ahead of time, I'd have gone even higher-class, but you work with what you've got. To start with, I put a few tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan. I spread, oh, probably around a third of a cup of parmesean cheese, enough to soak up a lot of the oil. The cheese needs to be wet, don't leave any of it dry. If I'd had time to prepare, I'd have shredded some of the block of good reggiano I keep in the back of the cheese drawer for special occasions. Might do that later this week, haven't used up more than a third of the pasta. Anyway, I also crushed five garlic cloves into the pools in the cheese-oil mud pie. Hey, I like garlic.
I set the heat to just over medium. The goal, here is to thoroughly toast the cheese. You don't want to burn it (or maybe you do, but I never have), but you want to brown as much of it as possible. Thing is, you really can't stir it--it just clumps up and stick to the spoon once it start melting. So you want to spread it as evenly as possible in the first place. I usually let it go for three to five minutes depending on how ballsy I'm feeling (I'm terrified of actually burning it). You've got the garlic in there to think of as well, and you definitely don't want that to burn, so once the garlic starts getting dark you need to move on to the next step regardless of how the cheese is doing.
The next step is deglazing the cheese. I use cheapass red cooking wine; it boils real nice, which works the cheese away from the pan. Use a spoon to scrape the cheese as the wine boils it free. Before it all settles, you want to add the tomatoes.
Usually, I use Red Pack tomato puree, or crushed if I want some texture. Puree soaks up the oil and cheese better, though. As far as grocery store canned tomatoes go, Red Pack has the best flavor to me--more acidic than, y'know, Hunt's or whatever. Tonight, however, I used one of the cans of San Marzanos that I keep around. San Marzanos are the king of tomatoes. They grow best on fucking volcanoes because they're fucking EXTREME. They're very densely flavored for their size, and it's a good flavor. The canned San Marzanos I use are whole in a puree sauce, which makes the tomatoes themselves simultaneously firm and mushable. I pour the tomatoes in and let the puree keep things from sticking while I use a big salad serving fork to crush the whole tomatoes.
Sometimes I add the marjoram to the oil-cheese-garlic mixture, sometimes I add it after the tomatoes. It doesn't seem to matter a whole lot, but I add a lot of it. Marjoram is like oregano on crack. Same flavor but stronger. I don't screw around with oregano anymore, I've moved on to the good shit. I get my spices at Penzey's unless I'm in a rush. You should also get your spices at Penzey's. They don't fuck around with spices. Regardless, I use a lot of marjoram--about as much as I can grab, minus a shake or two, with my thumb and first two fingers. I also add a pinch of basil, but not a lot because it's largely wasted--basil loses flavor the longer you cook it. The best way to use basil, especially dried, is to put a pinch on top of an individual serving. But I have a lot of basil (PENZEEEEEEY'S) so I use a little in the sauce while it's cooking as well.
Next I add balsamic vinegar. I have some really, really nice Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon balsamic, which has a very deep, rich flavor and pours like fucking molasses, but it doesn't actually have the whole flavor I'm looking for. Really good balsamic doesn't have a strong vinegar flavor, so I only add one or two teaspoons of the good stuff. Then I add about two tablespoons of my grocery store balsamic de modena.
Speaking of molasses, I also add molasses. A spoonful or so. I also chop up two pepperoncinis and add them into the mix. I cook the sauce at mediumish heat for a while, then reduce it to low and let it simmer for as long as I can stand to wait.
The result is a fairly tart sauce that has an almost peppery flavor from the marjoram. Sometimes I'll add even more marjoram and molasses and drop the balsamic, for a much sweeter sauce. Sometimes I'll add some red pepper flakes to the oil-cheese-garlic mix to give it some kick. The main thing is browning the cheese. You use enough cheese that you don't need to add any salt--the cheese is all the salt you need.
I've never actually used fresh pasta before, so I was a little nervous about dealing with it. Like, it's not dried, so I wasn't sure how long it would need to boil to be "right". I ended up boiling it for about five minutes, though I probably could have stopped at around three--just enough to get it hot and wet (hubba hubba).
And like I said, once I portioned out the pasta and topped it with sauce, I added a pinch of dried basil to each serving and topped it with more parmesean because CHEESE FUCK YEAH. Fresh basil is even better; it's hard to overstate that. And basil grows like fucking weeds, so you just need to slap a small pot down by a windowsill and keep the soil moistish to end up with more basil than you can possibly use. But all my fresh basil is gone, so I used dried and it was damn tasty anyway.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
cockzombie:
I wish all recipies were written like this. I am going to have to try this.
bigjobs:
Sounds good. Never made a sauce for pasta before, but now I'm tempted.