Drunken Pasta with Homemade Tomato Sauce (Post #1,250)

I wanted to make some spaghetti sauce this week, using Lidia Bastianich's very-easy 20 minute pasta sauce. I decided to get creative, and not bother with the usual pasta, but instead go for something a bit different.

Not too long ago, I heard about a somewhat exotic-sounding method of boiling pasta in which you just replace the pasta water with red wine. The end result is a pasta that is fully infused with the flavor and color of red wine. Not only did this method of pasta prep intrigue me, but it also seemed like a good way to use up some of those half-drunk bottles of red wine I had sitting around long enough to not really be drinkable anymore, but not long enough to simply dump out.

This time I just eyeballed it instead of following a specific recipe. I used approximately 1/3 bottle each of Carro Tinto 2006 and Ergi Bikavér (Bulls Blood) 2005, two reds that I had laying around and liked but never got around to finishing (yes, I am a beer person). Also added about 1 cup of water to it to add some volume. I found that it didn't hurt the flavor.

It looks ominous if you don't know it's wine.

I also used half a package of pasta - in this case capellini from Trader Joe's. I boiled the red wine as I would have water for the pasta. I may have boiled it a little longer than I wanted to, as it was a little more than al dente. However, the pasta did not clump as it can occasionally do when boiled in just plain old water if you're not watching (yes, it has happened to me once in a while, when I'm distracted).

Yes, it's red wine pasta.

The flavor was unbelievably tangy and slightly sweet. It paired well with the pasta sauce, which incorporates 1 1/2 cups of the red wine pasta water. However this is a pasta that you can probably just eat without any sauce, in order to get that red wine flavor.

The finished pasta, with the sauce

Because It's Passover

Tonight is the first night of Passover, and from what I understand it's not easy to find things that actually taste good during this hallowed Jewish holiday. But the Pesach culinary landscape is changing, as Menachem Kaiser points out in this article for The Atlantic. For example, Phyllis Glazer makes brownies that are, in fact, kosher for Passover! As she says, they're "Israelicious". Seriously, she said that.



Note: the website where the recipe should be found no longer works. Just follow along with the video or maybe find it at JerusalemOnline.com.

Crazy Bunny Cakes

While doing some grocery shopping tonight at my local Giant, I got inspired to snap a few photos of some Easter cakes. The motif: Easter bunnies. Apparently stunned Easter bunnies who weren't expecting to be incorporated into a cake. The results are, well, interesting.

Owwweee...


Sweet Jesus, get me out of here!

Splat, right into the flower garden!

Photo Issues

I have a few posts entering the pipeline, but Blogger issues prevent me from adding any photos! So I'm waiting for now until i can add them. If it takes too long I;ll just post without the photos, and add them later.

End of March Musings

March seems to be ending like a half lion-half lamb mutant monster thing. So cold, and yet so pretty. But at least we didn't get snow like they said we might. Please Mother Nature, no more...

A few eating experiences I have had over the past week...

• I went with Alan & Eric to Iggie's, where we went the night of the Presidential Election a few years ago. I haven't gotten back since, but they have. Still as crowded as ever! I wasn't sure if we were each getting our own pizza or not, so I was eying the Quattro Formaggi (four cheese) for $9 for a small. But we ordered two large pizzas instead. One was the wonderful Alice ($15), a savory mixture of pesto, mozzarella, fresh tomato, garlic, spinach, goat cheese and Parmesan. We also ordered the pizza of the month, La Pecora Nera (didn't catch the price - around $13 I think). This pizza is a mixture of things we don't often see on a pizza in the US: lamb sausage, mozzarella, and roasted potatoes and red peppers. It was an unusual pizza for my tastes but so very delicious, savory and filling. Along with that, the guys each ordered a salad. I regretted not having done this as well, but I did get a taste of the Iggie's salad ($7), featuring pancetta and spinach.

• The next night, after a busy and tiring day, I decided to head down to the Hippo and the Central again (I find myself going to both places more often these days), but only after grabbing a cheap bite to eat. I decided to try the Stable again, still mindful of being ignored the last time I came in. This time there were just as few customers, but this time I had a great experience. I was quickly seated and handed a menu, and the waiter was very helpful. Although the quesadilla sounded good, I eventually went for the Reuben ($8), which had some of the most tender corned beef I have had on a Reuben in a long time. The chips were a welcome change from the customary French fries that one often gets with a sandwich platter. This was a nice, cheap dinner for my taste, and I didn't even need a doggie bag.

• In just a bit, I am heading down to Rehoboth! It's just an overnight trip but it should still be a blast! Along the way - in fact, directly along the way there is a Sonic Drive-In. I just can't wait for the ones opening up in Ellicott City and Lansdowne later this year, so I must stop along the way. Fried pickles and tater tots, here I come!

Because It's Maryland Day!

It was 376 years ago today - March 25, 1634 - that English colonists on the Ark and the Dove sailed up the Potomac River and landed on St. Clement's Island. There they and the Yaocomaco Indians met for the first time, and the English colonies' first and only Catholic colony was set up, with its capital at what would become St. Mary's City. I would embed a video about the founding of the Maryland colony and the archaeology of Saint Mary's City, made by St. Mary's College of Maryland, but the bastards disabled embedding.

To celebrate, you could go out for Murlin crabs, hons. But since they're not really in season, you'll just have to fantasize about it. Here's a helpful primer from the Crab Claw Restaurant, across the bay in St. Michael's, for anyone outside the confines of the Chesapeake Bay (yes, that includes Virginia - they know how to break a crab too), to help those poor souls in eating that most quintessential segment of Maryland and Chesapeake cuisine: the steamed crab.



Honestly, I just yanked off the smaller legs, but I admit that it sure looks easier to cut them off. Watch the guy demonstrate how not to break open a crab. I got a chuckle. Must be from New York or Kentucky or some other place where those unfortunate souls just don't have that much exposure to Chesapeake Bay blue crabs. I mean, how else will you know?

How I learned to stop worrying and love the chili

This from the Associated Press: the Indian military plans to use the bhut jolokia ("ghost chili") - the world's hottest chili pepper - as a weapon. For comparison's sake:

• the jalapeño chili wimps out at a mere 8,000 Scoville units.
  
• Tabasco sauce tops out at an anemic 50,000 Scovilles.
• The mighty habanero, long feared by me and almost anyone else who values his or her mouth, registers at a mere 350,000 at the max (typically only 100,000).
  
• And the bhut jolokia? About 1,000,000 Scovilles. That's anywhere from 3 to 10 times as intense as any habanero you might pick up at your local supermarket.
• Very very few things are hotter than the bhut jolokia, but nothing that you'd deliberately put in your mouth: pepper spray is about 5,000,000 Scovilles - about 5 times as hot as the bhut jolokia. But you're not going to eat that.
  

I just love the photo that's circulating with the AP story, taken in 2007 by Manish Swarup:

Gotta have chilis!

Perhaps this gentleman, identified as farmer Digonta Saikia from Assam state, India, can take the heat. As for me? Um, I'll get back to you on that.

Food Ethnography on a Budget: Allergen-Free III: Crumb Cake

My success at allergen-free baking is continuing, as I made what has to be my favorite dish so far from Cybele Pascal's Allergen-Free Baker's Handbook. This dessert, in the book's muffin and coffee cake section, is an amazing crumb cake that achieves the feat of tasting extremely buttery, without a drop of butter.

The dish: Allergen-Free Crumb Cake


As with all of these recipes, there is a wide variety of ingredients I had to incorporate. The good news is that I already had most of them on hand, thanks to the previous recipes for this project. I only had to make a few extra purchases for this project:

• The one unique ingredient I needed was apple cider vinegar (99 cents). This was used to moisten the cake. My guess is that this mixed with the coconut milk yogurt that is in this recipe to create the buttery taste.
• I needed a cup of coconut milk yogurt. I just assumed I had enough, until I scooped out the last 1/2 cup from my tub of So Delicious plain coconut milk yogurt. Yes, I needed to race out to get some more, another $3. By the way, I found out later that it's cheaper at Towson's Health Concern by half a dollar.
• I also needed to load up again on vanilla, $4 for the McCormick brand.

Before committing yourself to this recipe, you must chill a quarter cup of shortening in the fridge. This takes the place of the butter in the crumb topping. You need to cut it with flour and brown sugar. This part is easy enough, though a pastry blender would've been quite useful.

Good and crumbly

The cake part of this crumb cake wasn't terribly different from baking a normal cake except for the allergen-free ingredients, so I won't go into too much detail about how to bake this cake. It was complicated only due to the many things I had to do: mix the egg replacer and rice milk. Mix the coconut milk yogurt and apple cider vinegar. Mix the shortening, flour and liquid ingredients. The only technical problem I had was to bake it for about 15 minutes beyond the 55 listed in the recipe. This was only due to the use of an 8" square pan instead of a 9" one, leading to a thicker cake.

The end result was just what Pascal suggested it would be: an astoundingly moist and buttery crumb cake whose strange brown rice flour flavor was once again overpowered by the butteriness of the yogurt and cider, and the sweetness and crumbliness of the brown sugar. This is a recipe, even more than those delicious brownies that are still moist and delicious after a week (birthday cake and buttermilk π kept me from finishing them yet and I can only eat so much in sweets in one day). This crumb cake is a definite addition to my baking repertoire.

The end result, half-finished because I couldn't wait the extra minute to take the photo

There are still recipes I want to try from Pascal's book. This is a cookbook I may have to add to my collection, since the Baltimore County Public Library is only letting me borrow it. Again, I have no real allergies beyond a mild one to walnuts. But with several persons with autism in my own family, and many family members with Crohn's and colitis-related maladies, recipes that are light on the gluten and other allergens could be helpful. The bread doughs and pizza crust alone are worth the extra time spent with this book, which has given me a very useful insight into what an allergen-free lifestyle can be like.

These are probably the worst pies in London!

Because it's Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday today! It's not a national gay holiday, but it should be.

Here, Len Cariou's Sweeney Todd suffers the worst pies in London, care of Angela Lansbury's Mrs. Lovett.

A Bacon-y Colcannon

When reading Tyler Florence's interpretation of his aforeposted video on how to make colcannon, I decided to try and make it myself, using steamed potatoes, cabbage, scallions, "bacon," milk and butter. Lots of butter. That was the plan last week, but again, stuff happens. I tried to follow the video (and the recipe more or less follows it), but I had one or two changes:

• I halved the recipe at least.
  
• The recipe calls for a one pound piece of ham or bacon. All I had was Gwaltney bacon. I fried up five pieces in butter (isn't your left arm hurting now?), and threw in a chopped up shallot. About 4 1/2 pieces wound up in the colcannon. This is not what the recipe calls for, but I like this bacon-infused colcannon nonetheless.
• I tried to steam the potatoes, but with no steamer pot I was left with either a bamboo steamer - into which my potatoes would not fit - or a colander over boiling water - which did not work to well. I still had to nuke the potatoes in their jackets for a few minutes to get them to a mashable consistency.
• I put in a little cream in place of the milk.

In the end, I ended up with something that my ancestors probably would have been too poor to make, but is fairly typical Irish cuisine today. Only with bacon as Americans know it.