Eat your vegetables bait and switch

At the grocery this week and a new kind of pasta caught my eye -- instead of just tinting your tricolor pasta in different colors, they promise a full serving of vegetables.

But wait -- you have to eat 4 ounces of pasta to get that serving of vegetables.  That's a lot of pasta, as I know well because I weigh my pasta before cooking (I use between 4.5 and 5 ounces for two adults, when that's the only entree).  In fact, the "official" serving is just 2 ounces, as you can tell on the side of the box.

And here's another brand, same concept, same misleading display on the front of the box.

So why the bait and switch?  Why not just say "a half serving of vegetables in each serving of pasta"? That's good right there.

If your intention is to make it easy and appealing for people to eat more vegetables, then making them think they're getting more than they really are seems counterproductive.

We're home -- need vegetables!

We've been away for three weeks (more later on our culinary adventures) and for the last couple of days of the trip all we could think of was coming home to our own kitchen and eating a lot of vegetables.  Not that vegetables were absent from our menus, but we were seduced by too many desserts, too much bacon, too many bar-food snacks.

When we inspected our crops we found that the arugula was tall and flowery, signs that it had bolted and become bitter with the onset of hot weather.  But it was lush with gorgeous dark green leaves that cried out to be eaten.  Perhaps too bitter for a salad, but OK to be cooked.

So here's our coming-home, vegetarian dinner: the arugula was tempered by the sweetness of pine nuts and the blandness of pasta, and tasted great.  I wish I had picked twice as much; I always forget how much greens shrivel when cooked.

And a big salad, of course, which comes with 95% of the dinners served at home.  It's good to be back.

Step one

I'm just too frugal for my own good sometimes.  (My children might say "cheap.")  When I think of all the hot water I've run down the sink in my lifetime after cooking pasta, it hurts.  But I've done two things to minimize the pain.  First, I've taken to cooking my pasta in the same pot as the sauce whenever possible.  But that doesn't work when you're making enough sauce for three or four meals, such as whenever I make a red sauce.

Second, for those times when you have to cook the pasta separately, I bought a pot system which has an inner pot with holes in it.  Boil up the water, add the pasta, cook, and then pull the top pot out to drain the pasta.

That leaves you with a nice pot of boiling water, already enriched with some starch from the pasta.  So in the minute or two while the pasta drains, grab a pound or two of dried beans, put them into the water and return it to the stove to simmer for an hour or two.  If you remember to turn off the heat then, you have time to let the pot cool enough to go into the fridge overnight, and a good start on bean soup for the next day.

Seafood pasta

I invented "seafood pasta" many years ago when my husband and I were both working and we required our middle-school boys to each cook dinner once a week.  I prepared a cookbook for their guidance, including info such as which pan to use and how soon before dinner to start working.  Seafood pasta had the advantage of being prepared solely from cans and boxes (plus an onion) and not taking very long.

My standard seafood pasta recipe called for a can of tuna, a can of clams (or a second can of tuna), an onion, a can or two of diced tomatoes, depending on how many people were eating, and some pasta.  You can probably figure out how to put those ingredients together, and it doesn't really matter what order you do them in.

As we have become a bit more culinarily adventurous in our old age, the seafood pasta recipe has evolved.  The other night I found myself about as close to ground zero as a cook can be -- practically nothing in the fridge.  We didn't really want to go to the store so I searched around in the cupboard and came up with seafood pasta.  But this was a more exotic version than in the Mom Cookbook.

I did have an onion, so I cut it up and sauteed it in a big pan.  Meanwhile I got to opening cans: a can of artichoke hearts, a can of tuna, a tiny can of anchovies.  I had garlic in the fridge, so I cut that up too.  And best of all, I had a few leftover tomatoes that I had roasted in the oven for a couple of hours several days ago.

To the slow-cooked onions I added the artichoke hearts, allowing them to brown a bit in olive oil over fairly high heat.  Then the anchovies in their oil, stirring and poking with a wooden spoon until they dissolved into a dark, salty ooze.  The chopped garlic went in toward the end of that process, just before I added a third-bottle of wine left over from our reception at the art gallery the night before, and the pasta.

While the pasta cooked in the flavorful sauce, I added the leftover tomatoes and a bit of boiling water toward the end to make sure it didn't end up too dry.  I love this one-pot pasta method; much easier than making the sauce and the pasta separately, also more energy-efficient and resulting in fewer dirty dishes.

Years ago I would have used one or two anchovy fillets, and even today felt a bit reckless using the whole can.  But that turned out to be the secret ingredient: it gave a salty, sophisticated gourmet edge to the pasta.

We never use grated cheese when our pasta contains seafood, so we needed the oomph to come from the anchovies and garlic.  And they delivered plenty of that!  I'll remember this combination and do it again.

Pasta for one

My husband has flown the coop this week to escape the heat by circumnavigating Lake Superior.  I am escaping the heat by going to my lower-level studio, where it's always ten degrees cooler just by walking down the flight of stairs.  But that leaves me fending for myself in the kitchen.

Whenever you cook for one there's a temptation to cut corners, get by with a minimum of preparation (and that usually means a minimum of nutritional value, if you don't count a pint of ice cream straight out of the container).  But I'm trying to eat my vegetables and fix real food this week.  Here's my one-pot pasta meal -- no more dirty dishes than opening a can of Campbell's soup, and a lot tastier.

Start with a saucepan, just as if you were fixing Campbell's soup.  I had half a red pepper in the fridge, so I sauted it in a bit of olive oil, then added the dry pasta and liquid to cover it.

Hot water is fine; chicken broth or wine is even better.  Cook at a bit less than a boil until the pasta is almost done.

At the last minute I added some zucchetta sliced very thin, and then the coup de grace -- some leftover pesto.  Pesto always needs a fair amount of liquid to turn it from a paste into a sauce.  The classic method is to get a half cup of liquid out of the boiling pasta pot, then stir it into the pesto.  But since I wasn't boiling my pasta, I just made sure there was plenty of liquid in the saucepan and stirred the pesto in.

A bit of grated cheese to finish the dish off, and it was delicious.

Souvenirs of Sorrento

We visited Sorrento in the winter of 2003, our month in Italy overshadowed by the inexorable onset of  war.  While we did tourist stuff, millions of Europeans were marching in the streets to protest the bombing of Iraq, and the rainbow Peace flags hung from apartment balconies on every street.

But in Sorrento we had happier thoughts in mind as we strolled through a market street.  A kitchenware store had a table of sale items on the sidewalk and we spotted some nice pasta bowls for an amazing 1.25 euros apiece -- at the time, about $1.15.  We bought four and shlepped them back to the hotel, a long enough walk that we traded off carrying the bag once or twice along the way.

Before we made it home for good we carried those four bowls for about four miles, making our way between hotels and railroad stations and through airports.  With every step we had to remind ourselves that the pasta bowls were beautiful, a steal, and our only souvenirs of the trip.  We had invested not just the five bucks but a heck of a lot of sweat equity to bring them home.

But it was worth it!  They have become our default bowl for pasta, not to mention the occasional soup or other juicy entree.  I suspect they've been used at least once a week since we returned, and we never fail to think about our wonderful trip when we eat that last bit of food and reveal the red tomato.

All-brown meals

Professional chefs think about presentation just as much as they do about ingredients and processes, which is a big reason why the food at a restaurant seems so much more delicious than the food at home.  By contrast, cooks like me tend to think about presentation as the plates are being dished out, and usually along the lines of "oh rats, this looks terrible, why didn't I cut up a carrot and put it alongside."

When my kids were at home and the daily meal was a daily event/chore, I would bring those plates to the table and announce ruefully "sorry, it's another one of Mom's Famous All-Brown Meals."  Last week this came up in conversation and I asked my son, now the official chef in his own family, what he remembered about Mom's Famous All-Brown Meals.  He said he remembered that they tasted just fine.  That's why I love him so much.

A variant, of course, was one of Mom's Famous All-White Meals -- such as chicken breast, mashed potatoes and cauliflower with a side of italian bread ("oh rats, this looks terrible, why didn't I buy broccoli instead"). 

Now that I have taken to buying whole wheat pasta, it's way too easy to whip out an all-brown meal if I don't plan ahead.  Quick, which plate do you want?

zucchetta, leftover chicken, parsley

eggplant, red pepper, parsley

eggplant, celery, olives, leftover pork

My pasta plan -- so how about the pasta?

In writing about my pasta plan, I neglected to discuss one important element -- the pasta.  For many years I cooked pasta the way I suspect most other people do. Got a huge pot of water going, and when it was boiling, dumped in some dry pasta, stirred it frequently so the pasta wouldn't stick together, then drained it through a colander or sieve in the sink, hoping to avoid steam burns on my arms or inadvertently flipping the sieve and losing the pasta down the drain.

A few years ago I finally remedied the sink situation by buying one of those dedicated pasta pots with a perforated insert.  Just lift up the inner pot and the pasta comes out of the water to drain.  I can't figure out why the designers couldn't go the last mile, however, and build in a doodad to hold the inner pot in place.  Instead I have to perch it precariously on an angle atop the big pot, hoping the whole thing won't fall back and send a tsunami of hot water over my stove.

This method has the obvious advantages of being intuitive and effective, especially with the special pasta pot.  

But a couple of years ago I read an article that changed my cooking life.  It suggested that you could cook the pasta right in the same pot as your sauce.  Well, duh. Works for rice, why not pasta?  Why didn't I think of that?  I tried it once and was hooked.

Let me count the reasons.  First, it takes less time -- no gallons of water to boil first.  Second, it doesn't heat up the kitchen as much as those boiling gallons.  Third, fewer pots to wash.  But best of all, the flavor of the sauce infuses the pasta, so every given mouthful tastes great; you don't have your nice sauce sitting on top of a pile of bland starch. 

Here's how to do it.  Use a big Dutch oven pan so there's plenty of room for as many dishes of pasta as you need to make.  Start your sauce and put in all the flavor and liquid ingredients.  Now do some mental arithmetic, decide how long your solid ingredients need to cook and stage them up on order of cooking time.  The pasta will take ten to fifteen minutes.  If the solids can cook longer than that, put them in now; if you have any last-minute ingredients, hold them back till the pasta is almost cooked. 

Fifteen minutes before dinnertime, add liquid to your sauce, bring everything to a boil, dump in the dry pasta and stir it around so it doesn't clump together.  Add more liquid as needed to almost cover the pasta, then turn down the heat so it's simmering nicely but not boiling violently.  Put a lid on the pot.  In ten to twelve minutes start checking to see if the pasta is done. 

Yes, but what liquid?

Just about anything that is there and sounds appetizing.  Red or white wine, chicken broth, vegetable broth, tomato juice (or, in summer, the actual watery juice that drains out of fresh tomatoes when you cut them), water from cooking vegetables, even plain water.

How much liquid?  

The general pasta plan calls for at least a half cup of liquid per person in the bowl, but since the dry pasta absorbs a lot of liquid as it cooks, you'll need to start with considerably more.  Exact measuring is an unnecessary complication, so I gauge my liquid by the seat of the pants.  I start with enough liquid to pretty much cover the dry pasta in the pot, which probably is about one cup per serving.  Then I heat more water in my electric kettle in case I need to add more liquid to the pasta pot.  (You could add room temperature water, of course, but that would slow down the cooking.) The pasta doesn't have to be totally underwater to cook properly, but it needs to have access to water so it can plump up. 

Any rules for the pasta?

I measure pasta by weight -- five ounces works nicely for two of us, a little less with a lot of side items on the menu.  I think cut pasta shapes like penne and rotini work better than long noodles.  Spaghetti or fettucini are OK if you stir frequently and if your sauce is mostly liquid.  At all costs avoid delicate pasta like angel hair, especially in a dense sauce.  It will just clump together and make an unappetizing glob.  (Thank you, my dear friends who ate it anyway -- you know who you are.)

The picture at the top is whole wheat penne cooked in red wine with the last of the zucchetta added about three minutes before serving, some leftover chickcn and fresh parsley on top.  We grated parmesan cheese on right after the photo was made.  One pot, about twenty minutes start to finish.

My pasta plan

I wrote in my fiber art blog about teaching traditional quilters how to design their own pieces rather than use commercial patterns. When I teach workshops on this subject, I make an analogy between quilts and cooking.

If one day you decide to learn to cook, you often make a recipe exactly as the book says. After a while you gain confidence and realize that you can make substitutions. The recipe called for rotini with broccoli, and you don’t have any rotini, so you make penne. Or even more daring, you make penne with cauliflower!

After you get more confident with one-for-one substitutions, you realize one day that you don’t even need the original recipe because you’ve learned the general plan for making pasta. You need four things: some pasta, some liquid, some solids, and some flavor. As long as you have all four represented, you can do pretty much anything you want. If you wanted to, you could serve pasta every night and never repeat yourself exactly.

The same can be true for quilting. My favorite general plan for functional quilts is log cabin, just as my favorite general plan for food is pasta. And just as I could happily serve a different meal for many nights in a row from my general pasta plan, I could make a lifetime’s worth of quilts from my general log cabin plan.

So here's the pasta plan.

You need four things: a sauce that (1) is strongly flavored, (2) has enough solids to be filling, and (3) is liquid enough to coat your pasta, not just sit there on top. And of course, (4) some pasta.

To achieve (1) you will use ingredients such as:

• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced, raw or cooked a little bit
• sun-dried tomato paste or tapenade
• anchovies or anchovy paste
• onion, chopped, cooked in a little oil over medium heat till it starts to caramelize
• lots of oregano, rubbed between your hands as you put it into the pot
• basil or pesto
• chopped green or black olives (cut out the pits, please)
• ham, pepperoni or salami, sliced into small shreds

To achieve (2) you will use any ingredients that are handy, such as:

• canned or fresh tomatoes
• canned kidney beans or white canellini beans
• canned artichoke hearts -- nicest if sauteed in olive oil till golden brown
• sauteed green or red peppers
• leftover chicken or other meat
• celery or carrots, chopped or diced, raw or sauteed
• leftover cooked vegetables (add at the last minute so they don't get overcooked and soggy)
• fresh vegetables such as succhini, beans, broccoli, cauliflower -- raw or cooked in the sauce or with the pasta
• 3 cups leftover lobster
• cooked ground beef or Italian sausage
• canned tuna or clams

To achieve (3) each person must have at least 1/2 cup of liquid (not counting the solids).  The sauce can be almost clear or very opaque -- it doesn't really matter.  Use liquids such as:

• cooking water from the pasta, at the end after it's gotten starchy and whitish
• wine
• beef or chicken broth
• juice from a can of beans, clams or anything else you use in (2)
  
• tomato juice or V-8
• canned tomatoes plus their juice

In general, start by sauteing ingredients such as onion, peppers or celery with olive oil.  Just before you start to add liquids, push the solids to the side of the pan, turn down the heat, add the garlic and cover it with a little olive oil.  Let it saute only about 20 seconds.  The instant you see it starting to get brown, dump in a liquid so the garlic doesn't burn.

Add whatever needs to be cooked longest, then add the other ingredients in stages.  Ideally you will cook everything for at least 10 minutes so flavors meld.  For ingredients that need only minimal cooking, such as zucchini, add at the last minute.  Just before you serve, check liquid content; if it seems dry add more broth or pasta water.  As insurance, always reserve a cup of pasta water before you drain the pasta, in case you need extra liquid.  Serve with Parmesan cheese, unless you have seafood ingredients, in which case cheese is optional.