Shortcuts, a poor choice most anytime
America has had a long, semi-fruitless love affair with efficiency. Depending on which side of the fence you sit on, it's either been a dubious and borderline abusive relationship, or a match made in heaven.
It started the 40's with a nation ramped up for war and the need to feed millions of soldiers scattered round the world efficiently and continued on through the fifties and sixties with seemingly every recipe for the perfect little mom feeding her family to be based around frozen and canned foods. The seventies found us diving further into the black hole with microwaves and <shudder> fast food. Yassss! ship those 35 tons of pre-fabbed burger substitute frozen hockey pucks to 2,700 restaurants so people can get them served hot and tasty in a few seconds. Something I for sure loved when I was 16 and need a quick grease fix late on a Saturday night, but now, not so much.
I thought with this new millennium and an emphasis on slow cooking, locally sourced food and a general bent towards high quality, healthy fare was making a dent at pushing this uniquely American quest for speed and efficiency out of our kitchens.
Than I ran up against this: a <genius> recipe for a one pot pasta that makes it's own sauce. Just dump everything in to one skillet: pasta, tomatoes, basis garlic, oil and some water and boil it together and voila! in 9 minutes you have a perfect plate of pasta with no fuss, no bother. Fast! and Easy!
Yikes. I am sorry I have lived this long.
I have been working on my pasta sauces a couple times a week for over a year and each one is at least an attempt at art, blending and crafting flavors and aromas and presentation. Slow and deliberate with constant tasting and alterations. The process is almost as important as the end result. The idea of just flopping it all in to one skillet, brining it to a boil and going to watch TV or something while it cooks itself, is just as appealing to me as eating food out of a tube.
But being a scientist at heart, I just had to try it. I decided to see if it could out-arrabbiata my slowly and lovingly cooked signature dish.
I dutifully measured out 12 oz of linguine, 12 oz of diced tomatoes (out of a can, of course), 4 cups of water, garlic sliced, red pepper flakes, pepper and salt. (the recipe i found called for onions, but I left that out as onions have no place in an angry pasta - their presence only confuses the end result).
Results: #1 it didn't take 9 minutes. It took much longer for the 4 cups of water to boil off (I reduced from 4.5 cups, but it was still t taking forever). I found that after almost 15 minutes it was still soup-ish, so I resorted to pouring the whole thing through my strainer to get rid of the excess water.
The end result was passible and not bad at al, but it lacked subtlety and the pasta was flabby, soggy and lifeless. And besides, it took longer to make anyway.
My arrabbiata is ready in the time it takes to boil the pasta and the aromas and spices come slowly together in concert filling the kitchen with anticipation, not the noise of boiling water.
Arrabbiata!! I actually very much enjoy that time, nurturing the sauce into a state that satisfies all my senses. The kitchen is like an alter during this time.
I'm glad I tried this <hack>, but never again. The seconds I supposedly saved are not ones I care to save.
My arrabbiata con linguine:
It started the 40's with a nation ramped up for war and the need to feed millions of soldiers scattered round the world efficiently and continued on through the fifties and sixties with seemingly every recipe for the perfect little mom feeding her family to be based around frozen and canned foods. The seventies found us diving further into the black hole with microwaves and <shudder> fast food. Yassss! ship those 35 tons of pre-fabbed burger substitute frozen hockey pucks to 2,700 restaurants so people can get them served hot and tasty in a few seconds. Something I for sure loved when I was 16 and need a quick grease fix late on a Saturday night, but now, not so much.
I thought with this new millennium and an emphasis on slow cooking, locally sourced food and a general bent towards high quality, healthy fare was making a dent at pushing this uniquely American quest for speed and efficiency out of our kitchens.
Than I ran up against this: a <genius> recipe for a one pot pasta that makes it's own sauce. Just dump everything in to one skillet: pasta, tomatoes, basis garlic, oil and some water and boil it together and voila! in 9 minutes you have a perfect plate of pasta with no fuss, no bother. Fast! and Easy!
Yikes. I am sorry I have lived this long.
I have been working on my pasta sauces a couple times a week for over a year and each one is at least an attempt at art, blending and crafting flavors and aromas and presentation. Slow and deliberate with constant tasting and alterations. The process is almost as important as the end result. The idea of just flopping it all in to one skillet, brining it to a boil and going to watch TV or something while it cooks itself, is just as appealing to me as eating food out of a tube.
But being a scientist at heart, I just had to try it. I decided to see if it could out-arrabbiata my slowly and lovingly cooked signature dish.
I dutifully measured out 12 oz of linguine, 12 oz of diced tomatoes (out of a can, of course), 4 cups of water, garlic sliced, red pepper flakes, pepper and salt. (the recipe i found called for onions, but I left that out as onions have no place in an angry pasta - their presence only confuses the end result).
Results: #1 it didn't take 9 minutes. It took much longer for the 4 cups of water to boil off (I reduced from 4.5 cups, but it was still t taking forever). I found that after almost 15 minutes it was still soup-ish, so I resorted to pouring the whole thing through my strainer to get rid of the excess water.
The end result was passible and not bad at al, but it lacked subtlety and the pasta was flabby, soggy and lifeless. And besides, it took longer to make anyway.
My arrabbiata is ready in the time it takes to boil the pasta and the aromas and spices come slowly together in concert filling the kitchen with anticipation, not the noise of boiling water.
Arrabbiata!! I actually very much enjoy that time, nurturing the sauce into a state that satisfies all my senses. The kitchen is like an alter during this time.
I'm glad I tried this <hack>, but never again. The seconds I supposedly saved are not ones I care to save.
My arrabbiata con linguine:
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