le blog de tranny

Sometimes I feel lame making pasta for dinner because it reminds me of sophomore year of college, when the only dish in my dinner repertoire was spaghetti with Aidells sausage, pasta sauce from a jar and pre-grated parmesan. Maybe with some onions, garlic and dried oregano in the sauce if I was feeling fancy. Pasta for dinner (especially when not using homemade pasta, which I don’t really have the patience or equipment to make) just seems like the easy way out, you know? Well, that’s a stupid way to think about things. Pasta, with interesting ingredients and a thoughtful recipe, can make a mean entree and decadent leftovers.

Every once in a while I’ll treat myself to an issue of Bon Appetit while waiting to check out at the supermarket. While flipping through an acquisition from one such instance, I came across the most delicious sounding pasta recipe from the restaurant Marea in NYC — Rigatoni with Shrimp, Calamari, and Basil. What a perfect dish to pair with the sauv blanc we bought in Napa! The recipe calls for setting aside half the shrimp and calamari rings for topping the pasta with and chopping up the other half for the sauce, but if I was really trying to make the seafood stretch (like if I was cooking for say 10 people), I’d buy less shrimp and calamari and mince all of it to put into the sauce.

Rigatoni with Shrimp & Calamari
[Recipe by Michael White of Marea in NYC, with slight adaptations.]

You need (for 4):
- 1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined
- 14 oz calamari, cleaned (most fishmongers offer “cleaned” calamari i.e. calamari with the head, ink sack and the like removed)
- 12 oz rigatoni
- extra virgin olive oil
- 3 cups leeks, thinly sliced
- 3 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- crushed red pepper
- 1 8 oz bottle of clam juice
- 1/3 cup frozen peas, thawed
- 1/2 to a whole stick of unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup or more of grated parm
- 3/4 cup fresh basil, chiffonade (or I think fresh parsley would be great in this too)

How to:
- Coarsely chop half the shrimp and half the calamari. Transfer to a food processor and pulse on and off until the mixture is finely chopped.
- Working with the remaining calamari bodies (i.e. not the tentacles, unless you feel like throwing those in too), slice them crosswise into rings and set aside.
- Get the pasta started in salted, boiling water. (I recently read in MB’s book that adding oil to the pasta cooking water won’t do shit besides keep your sauce from sticking to the pasta. Adding enough salt should keep the pasta from sticking together.) Take the pasta off the heat once it’s al dente.
- Heat up a 1/4 cup of olive oil + a few tablespoons of butter over medium high. Add the sliced leeks, garlic and red pepper flakes. Saute until the leeks are soft but not brown, about 5 minutes. Add the chopped shrimp mixture and stir until just opaque. Add the clam juice and peas and simmer for 3-5 minutes. Take off the heat and stir in 3 tablespoons of butter. Season with s&p to taste and cover to keep warm.
- Right before serving, saute the other half of the shrimp in some olive oil and butter. After two minutes, add the calamari rings and saute for another two minutes. Season with s&p and remove from the heat as soon as the calamari turns opaque.
- Toss the cooked rigatoni with the sauce and parmesan cheese in a pot or serving bowl. Top with whole shrimp, calamari rings, and basil or parsley before serving. I also tend to add more parm and more red pepper flakes to mine after sitting down .

These photos aren’t so good, but maybe you’re wondering about the salad in the photo. It’s actually a combination I decided on while I was shopping for the pasta ingredients, and a simple and delicious one at that!

Artichoke and Heirloom Tomato Salad with Crispy Shallots and Sherry Vinaigrette
I just tossed some sliced heirloom tomatoes with salad greens and artichoke hearts from a jar. Then I heated up a few tablespoons of oil on medium high until the oil was pretty hot, and quickly sauteed some sliced shallots over the high heat until they were brown and crispy (but careful — the difference between brown and burnt is a matter of seconds). While I let the shallots cool I made a simple vinaigrette of sherry vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, and s&p (I don’t recall using dijon in this one but maybe add a teaspoon if you’re worried about getting that emulsified texture). I tossed in the shallots and the dressing and it was like, the best salad I’d ever come up with myself. I’d make it more often if artichoke hearts weren’t kinda spensies.

~

It’s easy to see why pasta is a power food, the go-to meal of runners the night before a track meet. It’s carb-y, filling and forgiving to the “throw it all in” school of cooking. This next recipe packs several types of veg and proteins into one pasta dish, though not at the expense of sophistication or seasonality. (This is a winter pasta –the previous two recipes were ones I made during the fall/Indian summer.)

This is one of those recipes where I can actually say that I was trolling the veg aisle at Berkeley Bowl (for probably one of the last times in a while :/ ) to see what looked good, and then came up with a recipe based on that. Well, it’s winter, so not much was available, but they did have these gorgeous Brussels sprouts on the stalk! They also had leeks, which are great to have around. I really wanted to step outside of the standard Brussels sprouts + cured pork box, but no other combinations were obvious to me at the time and we were getting some bacon anyway so… yeah. I ended up throwing in pine nuts, butter beans, lemon thyme — but it doesn’t have to be that complicated really. So the recipe I’ll recount here will be split into essential and optional ingredients, because maybe I got a little carried away.

[brussels sprouts in the foreground, bloody mary and cocchi greyhound in the background]

[butter beanz aka white limas]

Perciatelli with Brussels Sprouts, Leeks & Pine Nuts
You need (for 4):
- 20-25 Brussels sprouts, thinly sliced
- two small leeks or one large one, thinly sliced
- two generous handfuls of pine nuts
- perciatelli (these lovely long noodles that are round and kind of fat) or some other long pasta
- garlic, minced
- unsalted butter

[i set out thinking i'd use my new handheld mandoline to slice the brussels sprouts but ultimately decided it'd be just as easy to do by hand, and with less clean up]

It might also be nice to have:
- large butter beans, cooked (if dried, then soaked and skins removed — but in retrospect I’d go for canned because that was kind of a bitch, even with Caro helping me)
- bacon or pancetta (I highly recommend unless you’re vegetarian), chopped into small cubes
- a few splashes of white wine
- lemon thyme

[the toasted pine nuts really are super delicious with the brussels sprouts and leeks -- you almost don't need bacon!]

How to:
- Cook the pasta til it’s al dente (since you’ll be finishing it off in the saucepan).
- Fry the bacon until its fat renders and it’s nice and crispy. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and set aside. Pour off most of the bacon fat and reserve for later use.
- Use 1/4 cup of white wine (or maybe a stock or bean cooking liquid of some sort?) to deglaze the pan of all its brown bacon-y bits. Melt some butter and oil in the pan and then add the leeks. Saute until the leeks are softened, then push them to one side of the pan. Add a little more butter and oil to the other side of the pan, heat until foam subsides and then add the pine nuts. (You can also just remove the leeks and then add them back in but I’m lazy.) Toast the pine nuts in the butter and oil for a few minutes, stirring, until they become golden brown, then combine them with the leeks.
- Add the brussels sprouts and garlic and saute until cooked through. Season with s&p.
- Add the pasta to the saucepan and toss to combine over medium-low. Add pasta cooking liquid or bean juice to make it more moist. Also add the beans and bacon and adjust the seasoning. Add a little bit of lemon thyme. (It is quite strong.) Toss well and serve with parm.

[this would probably also be pretty good without the pasta]

Just a quiet dinner at home with these two.