Recipes

School Pasta

/ Jeremy Steinberger / Leave a comment

The Story

There isn’t a scene quite like recess at an elementary school. Hundreds of kids storm out of the classroom, energized and eager for action. For many children, this is the best part of the day. I too remember elementary school lunch as a great time in my life, but for reasons probably different than my peers. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed being able to run around like a wild hyena for 30 minutes, but for reasons I only now understand, what I loved more was getting to eat.

To grasp why I enjoyed eating so much at school, I need to give you a little background on my family. My mother lived in Italy for 10 years after college, a time she constantly talks about as some of her favorite moments in life. This time gave her the opportunity to learn the nuances of Italian cooking that only an Italian would understand. As a result, my siblings and I grew up in a household where Italian cuisine was served for dinner at least 3 times a week. The uniqueness of my childhood diet only began there. I was also raised a vegetarian so the other 4 dinners of the week usually went against the grain as well.

Naturally, school was the first place I realized how distinguished my childhood food experience was from my friends. Rather than having to eat the cafeteria food each day like friends, my unique diet required me to bring a packed lunch to school most days. The meal I remember the most was the pasta dish below that my twin sister and I called School Pasta. We loved it so much we would eat the leftovers as breakfast in the morning. However, when I got to school, all of my friends were irked by our “gross vegetable pasta.” During the time, I couldn’t understand why. I couldn’t understand why my friends were different than me and why they didn’t eat what I did at school. Although I loved my lunches, I resented their isolation.

As I look back and reflect on this time today, though, it is all crystal clear. I had different lunches than my friends because I grew up in an incredibly unique household compared to them. Although this made me uncomfortable at the time, in hindsight, I wouldn’t want my elementary lunches any other way. Meals like School Pasta taught me that I am unique with a distinct culture and heritage. This helped me realize that our own differences are not something to resent, but something to appreciate, because in the end, we wouldn’t be ourselves without them.

The Recipe

Ingredients

1 box of Fusilli Pasta

1 Tablespoon of Small Capers

1 Small finely chopped Onion

½ Stick of Butter (+ more if needed)

½ cup of pitted olives

Grated Parmesan Cheese

Steps

  1. Fill a large pot with water and two tablespoons of course salt.
  2. Bring water to boil.
  3. Chop the onion finely and cut the olives in half.
  4. Retrieve a large frying pan.
  5. Melt butter.
  6. Add capers, chopped onions, capers, and olives
  7. Sauté until the onions are golden.
  8. Turn off frying pan.
  9. Cook Pasta per box directions.
  10. Drain Pasta.
  11. Turn frying pan back on.
  12. Add drained pasta to frying pan.
  13. Mix thoroughly, add more butter if needed
  14. Serve with grated parmesan cheese.

Lentils, for Molly

/ Thea / Leave a comment

This started out as what I thought would be a relatively simple task, to articulate in writing a dish that I now cook from memory. What it turned into, perhaps not surprisingly, was a spiral through cookbooks, grocery stores, and the depths of the internet in search of the elusive origin of truth. Clearly lentils are much more complicated than I had imagined. So the recipe below is not, in fact, using the beluga lentils we had at Laundrette, but something different.

If you are interested in cooking something like we ate that afternoon this summer, I will direct your attention to this recipe.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this other one, that I find most comforting on days when I need sustenance. Ana has endorsed it as a “diez” on the scale of lentils, and as a Spaniard she is expertly qualified to evaluate such dishes.

Cooking time

About 2 hours start to finish, with about half of that requiring your active attention

Serving Size

4 for dinner, 1 person lunch for the week, or 22 undergraduate rhetoric students as a taste test.

Special Equipment

A heavy-bottomed pot. This is important because for a slow-cooking dish like this you want the heat to be evenly distributed along the whole surface of your pot, without hot spots where the beans will burn or dry out.

How to make it

In your chosen pot, start to heat up on medium low

2 T           pork fat, OR       3-4 oz.   bacon[1]

Add to the pot and cook until translucent, stirring regularly, the following vegetables. All of these should be minced very fine, cut into pieces that are smaller than the size of uncooked lentils. This has the effect of blending all of the flavors together into a harmonious balance where individual aspects of the ingredients are subsumed in the mixture of the three.

  •   1 ¼ c      onion
  •   ½ c         carrots
  •   ½ c         celery

Add in and cook for 2 min.

  •   2              cloves of garlic, peeled and minced very fine
  •                   bay leaf
  •  ½ t          Dried thyme
  •  ½ t          dried oregano

Add in and stir. [2]

  • ¼ c          sherry
  • 1 t             pimentón

Add in, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to very low

  • 1 c            Lentilles du Puy [3]
  • 1 T            parsley leaves, minced fine
  • 3 c            chicken broth or water, as available

Cook with the lid on for about 90 minutes, tasting periodically to see when the beans have become tender and monitoring the amount of liquid (add more if it sinks below the level of the lentils). When things taste good, turn off the heat and remove the bay leaf.

Stir in the vinegar and salt to taste, adding more pimentón if you desire (I like to add another teaspoon at least). Sprinkle with extra fresh parsley and olive oil just before serving.

  •   1 t            sherry vinegar or cider vinegar
  •                   salt
  •  1 T           good quality olive oil

 

Variations

If you’re feeling extra fancy, put a dollop of whole-milk yogurt or crème fraiche on top when you serve it as well.

Makes a full meal if you add in a grain or starch. Some options

  •  1 c           potatoes (add after 30 min of cooking the lentils)
  • ¾ c         rice + 1 ½ c water (add at the same time as the lentils)
  • ½ c         pearled barley + 1 ½ c water (add at the same time as the lentils)

[1] Cooking animal products on low heat to extract the fat is a technique called rendering. It’s common for the beginning of stews and soups, as well as braised dishes.

[2] Adding a liquid, particularly one with acid or alcohol, to a pot that has had things browned in it is called deglazing. This isn’t always necessary, if you are paying careful attention to your pot and don’t let it get too dry, but sometimes your attention wanes and you end up with some fond, or browned bits that are the result of the Maillard reaction: when starches and proteins convert into tastiness under heat. Sometimes I end up with fond when cooking lentils, sometimes not! In either case, the sherry tastes nice.

[3] Lentilles de Puy are a domain-controlled food product, meaning that according to international law, ingredients labeled as such must originate in the French region of Puy. They are firmer and smaller than other kinds of French, German, and Spanish lentils, and really nothing at all like the flaky red or slightly slimy white Indian lentils. Most Austin grocery stores carry them; Whole Foods and Central Market have them in the bulk section.

Download the PDF here: Lentils, for Molly