Great Pastas I Have Known...
Pasta and Pizza are two really great things in the culinary world. I love them both, with pizza edging out most other things to be my all time favorite food. Once upon a time, when I was young and therefore didn't care about my health, I used to eat lots of pizza and pasta. The Atkins mentality has considerably dampened that whole part of my culinary experience, but I refuse to give it up entirely. Instead, I am treating these foods the same way I do red meat. My rule for red meat is that I won't eat it unless it is top quality. In practice, that means either I made it (yeah, a bit of hubris there, I know), or I have purchased it from a first class red meat establishment such as Morton's or Ruth's Chris. In this way I avoid Burger King and McDonald's, and generally lessen my overall consumption. I've done the same for pizza and pasta, and even though it's been hard, I still can enjoy the very best quality dishes without too much guilt. Check out these great pasta recipes.
Linguini with Tomatoes, Smoked Bacon, and Arugula
This was a very interesting dish for me. My original notion of homemade pasta hailed from the classic American spaghetti recipe: put a bunch of stuff in a pot and cook it all day. The fresher/stronger/more of the stuff, the better the sauce. Generations of college kids have grown up to adulthood thinking this was real cooking. Imagine my surprise when I got a look at a radically different formula for success. The way this sauce is prepared, where things are put together late instead of earlier, and where there are fewer spices instead of more, was a revelation to me. Adding chicken stock was almost like cheating, but heck, it works, its easy, and it tastes great! It's also a very convenient recipe, since the basic sauce can be prepared up to 3 days in advance, and it reheats well in the microwave for lunches later in the week.
Linguini with Tomatoes, Smoked Bacon, and Arugula
Ingredients (4 servings)
Sauce
3 14 1/2 ounce cans diced tomatoes in juice
7 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup canned crushed tomatoes with added puree
1 large onion, chopped
6 slices thick-cut smoked bacon, cut crosswise into 1/4 inch wide strips
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
1 1/2 cups low-salt chicken broth
Pasta
1 pound linguini
1 5-ounce bag of arugula
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Additional freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Preparation
Sauce
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Place diced tomatoes in a large strainer set over a bowl. Let stand for 15 minutes to drain liquid into the bowl. Reserve juice.
Drizzle rimmed baking sheet with 2 tablespoons olive oil and spread the diced tomatoes 1 layer thick over the sheet. Season with salt and pepper. Roast until the tomatoes are slightly carmelized, stirring every 10 minutes. Should take 45 minutes to 1 hour. Watch closely near the end!
Meanwhile, bring the reserved tomato juice and puree to a boil in a medium saucepan. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until reduced to about 1 1/2 cups. It will have a thick consistency, like a finished tomato sauce.
Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Put the onion in and saute until browned--about 12-15 minutes. Stir in the roasted tomatoes and the reduced tomato sauce. Taste it: super concentrated tomato goodness! You can make this part up to 3 days in advance.
Cook the bacon in a large skillet until crisp, transferring to paper towels to drain. Pour off the drippings from the skillet. Heat the reamining 3 tablespoons of oil in the same skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and red pepper. Stir for 1 minute, and then add the tomato sauce and chicken broth. Simmer 10 minutes to develop the flavors. Stir in the bacon last.
Pasta
Cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water. You want it to be a bit firm, Al Dente as they say. Drain, and return the pasta to a pot, or to the bowl you'll be serving from. Add the sauce, arugula, and 1 cup of grated Parmesan cheese. Toss until the arugula wilts. Serve with additional Parmesan as desired.
Penne Pasta with Rosemary Sausage Sauce
This dish is so tasty our first batch disappeared in a heartbeat and the guests were still scratching around for more. It's also so easy to make that you can assemble a quick Mise en Place (stick all the ingredients into bowls) and cook outdoors. There are few ingredients, steps, or complications, but the flavors are bright and cheery. We recently cooked this dish outdoors, and with our ocean view imagined that we were looking out over the Meditteranean from our (mythical) place in Italy:
Cooking Al Fresco!
Ingredients (6 servings)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 small red onions, peeled and chopped
5 Italian Sausages (2 spicy and 3 sweet is a nice combination)
1 2/3 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 small dried hot chile peppers, crumbled
1 28-ounce can peeled plum tomatoes, drained and chopped
11 ounces penne pasta
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 heaping cup of freshly grated Parmesan
kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
Preparation
Heat the oil in a large sauce pan and sauté the onions until they are light brown.
Remove the sausage meat from the casings, crumble it, and add it to the sauce pan along with the rosemary, bay leaves, and chile. Sauté over high heat, mashing the sausage meat every so often to be sure it crumbles.
When the meat has browned, remove all but 1 tablespoon of the fat, and continue cooking for another 20 minutes until the sausage meat is brown and crumbly.
Add the tomatoes, stir, and bring to a boil.
Remove from stove.
Cook the penne in boiling salted water and drain thoroughly.
Stir the cream into the sauce, add half the Parmesan, and then toss the penne in the sauce until coated and thoroughly mixed.
Season, and serve with the remaining Parmesan.