Cold Spicy Pasta

 A use for small amounts of leftover pasta & tomato sauce, for lovers of spicy food. This is a super-simple "recipe" that doesn't involve any cooking or reheating.

Ingredients:

• Snack-sized amounts of cold leftover pasta & tomato sauce
• Hot sauce
• Grated Parmesan cheese
• (optional) A pinch of coarse salt
• (optional) Extra virgin olive oil

Procedure:

• Do not heat any ingredients. This is meant to be served cold.
• Mix together the tomato sauce and a bit more hot sauce than you would normally use.
• Mix together the pasta, EVOO, salt, and a bit more cheese than you would normally use.
• Mix the pasta and sauce together.
• Eat.

Explanations:

Use a little extra hot sauce, salt, and cheese because cold ingredients don't activate the taste buds as strongly as warm ingredients, so the dish might taste bland without.

The EVOO makes the pasta less sticky. Also, it tastes good mixed with Parmesan cheese.

Stir the ingredients separately to avoid pockets of hot sauce and clumps of cheese.

Stir the cheese with the pasta, rather than with the sauce, to give the noodles extra texture for the sauce to stick to.

Making Newman's Vodka Sauce Awesome

My wife and I just finished a simple pasta dinner where I got a little creative with a jar of Newman's Own Vodka Sauce. It was awesome. She doesn't really like Newman's sauces, but even she thought it was excellent.

Here's what I did:

Ingredients:
1 lb Dry penne pasta
1/8 of a white onion, sliced extraordinarily thin and then diced small
2 cloves of garlic paste
2 plum tomatoes, diced after removing the seeds
kosher salt
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 shots of vodka
1 jar Newman's Own Vodka Sauce

Procedure:
Put ~1 gallon of salted water on to boil. If you don't cover it, the timing will probably work out perfectly, as long as your stove is about the same temperature as mine (~15 minutes to boil). Once it boils, add the penne and cook until done. Drain, but do not rinse. While the pasta is heating/the pasta is cooking...

Heat about 1tbsp of EVOO over medium-low and add the onion and a pinch of salt while you prepare the garlic paste (about 5 minutes).

Add the garlic paste and stir it in. Allow it to continue heating while dicing the tomatoes (about 5 more minutes).

Add the diced tomatoes and another pinch of salt, and allow cook for ~3 minutes. Add a shot (1.5 oz) of vodka, turn the heat up to medium, and cook until soft, stirring regularly (~5-6 minutes).

Add the jar of sauce, and then rinse out the jar with another shot of vodka (split in half and rinse twice), shaking it around and dumping it into the sauce pot. Turn the heat up to high and stir constantly until boiling, then reduce the heat to low until the pasta is ready to serve. The idea is to get the sauce hot enough that the alcohol is boiling off while you wait for the pasta.

The only thing that might have made this better is a bit of fresh basil in with the tomato just before adding the sauce.

Estimated prep time: 30-35 minutes.

2017-02-25 Edit: Slight changes to how to do the tomatoes and heating after adding the sauce.

Not what you think (macaroni and cheese)

I've been updating my other blog, Ramblings of a Computer Guy fairly often lately with notes about making my own bitters. But, in doing so, it reminded me of this sorely neglected blog. My entries on bitters may belong here, being culinary in nature, but I decided that this blog is really intended for full recipes.

So, without further ado, the pièce de résistance, my favorite recipe, the one I tend to make when first cooking for somebody new... (Insert drumroll here)

Macaroni and cheese!

"Really?" I hear from my future readers. "Macaroni and cheese?"

Some of you may be thinking, "But I can get that out of a box! It's made by some company... What's their name? I think it starts with a K..." You probably don't belong here, but please stick around, you might learn something awesome.

The rest of you are probably thinking, "But that's so simple! Why even bother with a recipe?"

To be honest, I don't. I make it up anew every time. But recipes, with very few exceptions, are only to be made once, maximum. After that, you should be tweaking to your own personal tastes.

So, here you go. This is my own tweaked version of my mother's recipe, and the measurements are estimated, since I've never checked them. Make it and enjoy:

Ingredients:
1 lb medium pasta shells
3 tbsp butter (I use salted, but it doesn't really matter)
4 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp yellow mustard powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4-1/2 tsp cayenne pepper, to your liking
1 1/2 cups milk (I use skim)
3/4 lb cheddar cheese, shredded or cubed small
1/4 lb American cheese
1/2 bunch fresh parsley, de-stemmed and coarsely chopped (probably about 3/4 cup)
1 tbsp dry parsley
1-2 tbsp black peppercorns, to your liking, ground
3-4 tbsp Italian seasoned breadcrumbs
Kosher salt to taste, probably about 1 1/2 tsp
Optionally, 1/4 cup white wine

Procedure:
Preheat the oven to 350 (my oven needs 365).

Boil and salt water for the pasta. Par-boil the shells. Try to have them finish at the same time the cheese sauce is ready. Do not rinse unless absolutely necessary, and don't get rid of the pot.

Toss the cheese with 1 tbsp of flour to lightly coat.

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan and make a blonde to peanut butter colored roux with the flour. Add the mustard, onion, and garlic powders while it is cooking.

Add the milk and whisk out any clumps. Add the black pepper, cayenne pepper, and about a tsp of kosher salt. Once the mixture is hot, begin adding cheese, stirring almost constantly. Plan for three or four equal additions, allowing it to melt in between. After the second or third addition, add the wine if you like. Its purpose is to prevent the cheese from breaking and to add some flavor. If not using wine, be extra careful with your heat. Add the dry parsley after the last batch of cheese. Season to taste, remembering that it needs to be strong to flavor the bland pasta.

Once both the noodles and cheese sauce are ready, mix them in the pasta pot, along with the fresh parsley. Pour this all into a round oven-safe dish and top with a light coating of breadcrumbs.

Bake for 30 minutes, and let sit for 5-10 more before serving.

Serves about 6 depending on how hungry they are.

I also recommend using gruyère in addition to, or instead of, the cheddar. Something soft like American cheese is necessary to keep the sauce from getting grainy, but please experiment.