World Pasta Day: The History of Pasta (and a timeline of video recipes)
the history of pasta
Spaghetti with Cheese and Bacon (Zola-inspired, dc. 119 years ago today)
…after plating in individual bowls, place one or two slices of the paper-thin lard onto the hot pasta twirls – the slices will melt into the sauce, adding an intense flavor. Or, as EZ might have said – a load of exquisite rubbish.
literary recipe (pasta noir): F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Summer Pasta Chicken Salad (125 years this month)
Only an essential, clean sauce can complete an elegant pasta dish as a purple-hued cloud can complete a glorious summer sunset. Not a vulgar sauce like, say, one made with Italian meatballs, those shiny, dirty round mounds of grease that sit glistening on the top of Little Italy restaurant displays calling out to passing Midwestern travelers like sirens to Odysseus’ crew. This dish is closer to the essence of pasta and for that reason I recommend you use only the finest ingredients, Martelli butterfly noodles, the most virgin of Tuscan olive oils, and free–range Connecticut chicken. (Avoid those of New Jersey, as they are often unclean. I know Hemingway thinks such differences are pretentious and without significance but he puts ketchup on his hotdogs. Ketchup. Hotdogs. ‘Nough said.)
Hungarian Plum-Stuffed Gnocchi (szilvas gomboc)
it’s a great dish, well worth making this time of year – for peasants and nobility alike. A simple, inexpensive meal outside with a very big wow factor surprise once in the plate:
Basho’s Sake Rice Noodles with Scallops
Delicate noodles twirled
the sharp fork:
taste.
Wednesday Will – Garlic Pasta Sonnet 116
Garlic Pasta Sonnet 116 Garlic Pasta Sonnet 116“And scorne not Garlicke like to some, that think / It onely makes men winke, and drinke, …
The Simplest of Pasta (spaghetti with a Neruda – 117 years – tomato sauce)
‘…the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile…’
Pablo Neruda
Wednesday Will: Shakespeare’s Vermouth Shrimp alla Elsinore
‘In his recipe, however, Shakespeare does at least change the liquor Belleforest used as well as adding the “Wha’s up!” exchange, taken from the noted add campaign by Bud-of-Weiser, in the opening scene, a second sea scallop dish later in the recipe and of course the ghost of Julia Child.’
Wednesday Will – A Midsummer Night’s Spaghetti with Saffron and Lamb
Though Shakespeare often, ah, borrowed the basis for his recipes every so often he came up with something completely different. His immensely popular Midsummer Spaghetti is one of those original dishes. It’s been rumored that he got the idea after attending a wedding in Greece at which peculiar homegrown ouzo was served, but Shakespeare’s always been mute on the point.
Bloomsday Recipe – Joyce’s Moo-Cow Ragout
James Joyce’ Portrait of a Pasta with Ragout “Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.” Ulysses For more literary …