Pantry Pasta

You may not have tomatoes in your empty fridge, but if you did, you’d want these za’atar roasted bad boys alongside this pasta.

You know how when you’re leaving for a long trip somewhere you have to clean out you fridge of all the stuff that will go south in a big way while you’re gone? Or if you’re like me, you forget to, and come back to unrecognizable primordial slime on the bottom of your vegetable drawer?

And now it’s dark and you’re hungry and all the stores are closed and the night vultures are circling?

I keep my pantry stocked for just such occasions. Capers and lemons last for ages in the refrigerator, and then you open your pantry for some pasta and this one…little…magical ingredient.

Tuna.

“The fuck you say?” you exclaim.

Not just any tuna. Tuna Ventresca - tuna belly packed in olive oil by Italians who give a rip about food. Yes, my friends. This is fancy-schmancy in a can. Or as my daughter says, “This is The Shit.”

All you need for a fine meal after a long day of travel.

You crack that can or jar, boil your pasta, add to a pan of warming garlic and olive oil, throw in capers, lemon zest, and that tuna. You can riff on this all day long, too. Some onion. The last shallot left from the fuck-ton you bought that one time because I made you. (Not sorry.) Or take out the capers and throw in some sun-dried tomatoes or roasted red pepper. Or something else languishing at the back of your pantry. Why not? You may have misses as well as hits, but you’re hungry, so who the fuck cares?

You’ve got food in your belly and you are safe from the night vultures. You live happily ever after, The End.

I used fresh parsley, which would be absent form your post-vacation fridge. Full disclosure: I make this recipe all the time, even when I have a full produce drawer. It’s that good.

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Shit You Need

1. 375 grams of dried linguini or non-metric equivalent

2. 2 tablespoons olive oil

3. 7 ounces tuna ventresca in olive oil

4. 3 cloves of garlic, sliced

5. 2 tablespoons salted capers, salt brushed or briefly rinsed off, or 3 tablespoons capers in brine, drained.

   Salted capers are a bit more strongly flavored, and very salty, so you need less. You will also need to shake off as much salt as possible before adding them to the dish or it will be over-seasoned. Or you can use capers in brine - just add a bit more and drain the brine first.

6. the juice and zest of one lemon

7. 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter

8. 3 tablespoons minced fresh Italian parsley, if you have it

9. kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

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Keep Calm and justeffingcook

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil.

2. While the water is heating, add olive oil, garlic and capers to a large skillet and let warm on low heat. Add a few cracks of black pepper, and if using brined capers, a bit of salt.

3. Boil the pasta 2 minutes less than the directions specify. It will finish cooking in the skillet.

4. Transfer the pasta to the skillet using tongs - don’t drain it, let plenty of pasta water come along for the ride! Turn up the heat and bring to a simmer for 2 minutes - add extra pasta water if necessary.

5. Add lemon juice and zest and stir to combine. Add cold butter and stir in to thicken sauce.

6. Taste and adjust seasonings, then add chopped parsley and serve.

Santa Fe Chicken Soup

It may not cure Covid-19, but it sure as shit tastes great.

This dish is based on a Southwestern soup known as a cocido. Cocido means “boiled”, so as you can imagine there are countless versions of “cocido” across the Spanish-speaking countries of the Old and New worlds.

In New Mexico, it means green chile stew.

My usual version of green chile stew includes no potatoes, just onion, chiles, pork and spices. There really is no reason to fuck with it. I mean, it’s so damned delicious!

But, just hypothetically, let’s say someone you know and love has a bad virus and feels like 5 pounds of shit in a 2-pound bag. And you think, “I need to make some chicken soup for him.” Let’s say you don’t have those thick egg noodles you would want to use. But you do have potatoes. And some green chiles in your freezer. And you remember that comforting bowl of green chile stew, and you think, “Why not green chile chicken soup?”

And what if, hypothetically speaking, right next to those green chiles in your freezer was a bag of bacon ends?

Hot damn and hold the phone. Now you’re on to something. Hypothetically speaking.

Chicken soup, yes. But spicy, and smoky, and creamy.

Just what the doctor (me!) ordered.

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Shit You Need

For the chicken:

1. One whole roasting chicken, spatchcocked. Why spatchcocked? Easier to cook, for one, but mostly it gives you the opportunity to say “spatchcocked” a lot. Another option is to roast a regular chicken like this or this. Yet a third option is to pick up a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store - and it’ll be our little secret, okay?

2. Bacon ends from below

3. Two shallots and three cloves garlic, roughly chopped

4. 1/2 cup white wine

5. Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

He got spatchcocked. That poor, delicious bastard.

For the soup:

1. 4 slices thick-cut bacon, one inch cut from each end and reserved, the rest chopped

2. 1 medium onion, diced

3. 3 cloves garlic, minced

4. 1 teaspoon dried oregano ( if you have fresh, use it! You’ll need about a tablespoon of it, minced)

5. 1 teaspoon ground coriander. Extra points if you have whole coriander: toast it in a small pan, then get your mortar and pestle out and grind the shit out of it. Very therapeutic.

6. 4 cups chicken stock

7. 3 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled, quartered lengthwise, and sliced

8. 1 cup roasted green chiles, chopped

9. 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

10. 1/4 cup heavy cream, creme fraîche, sour cream, or Mexican crema. Yay for options!

11. Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

12. Optional garnishes: minced onion, more fresh cilantro, and/or a wedge of lime to squeeze on top.

Grinding toasted coriander seeds.

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Keep Calm and justeffingcook

Make the chicken:

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Dry the chicken all over. Lift the skin overlying the breasts and lay the bacon ends between the skin and meat

3. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper

4. Scatter garlic and shallots in the bottom of a baking dish just large enough to fit the chicken. Place the chicken on top.

5. Roast for 30 min, uncovered. Halfway through, pour the wine in the pan (not over the chicken) and roast another 10 to 15 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the breast registers 155 degrees.

6. Remove from oven, let rest under foil until cool enough to handle, remove the meat, shred, and set aside.

While the chicken is cooling, start the soup:

1. In a Dutch oven over medium heat, cook the bacon until most of the fat renders and the bacon begins to brown.

2. Add the onion, garlic, oregano and coriander. Add a pinch of kosher salt and a few grinds of pepper. Cook until the onion and garlic soften and become translucent, 5-10 min. People driving by your house will stop and ask what you are cooking and if they can please have some.

3. Add the stock, green chile, and potatoes and simmer 45 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender but not falling apart. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.

4. Stir in the chicken and heat through.

5. Remove from the heat, add the creamy compound of choice and combine. Stir in the cilantro.

6. Serve in a comfy bowl with optional garnishes alongside. Eat while wearing pajamas or a bathrobe. Extra points for bunny slippers.

Salsa Verde

There are plenty of great salsa verde recipes out there. One could argue you don’t even really need a recipe: roasted tomatillos, serranos, garlic, a little lime, and cilantro. Season to taste. Hard to go wrong.

But I include this for completeness so you don’t have to ask Mr. Google what he thinks about it.

You’re welcome.

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Shit You Need

1. 2 lbs tomatillos (about 15 med-large)

2. 1/2 onion , roughly chopped

3. 2 cloves garlic

4. 1-2 serrano peppers, seeded

5. juice of 1 lime

6. 2 pinches salt (more to taste)

7. freshly ground pepper

8. 1/2 bunch of cilantro, stems and all.

Tomatillos, blistered under the broiler.

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Keep Calm and justeffingcook

1. Remove the husks from the tomatillos and rinse those plump green bastards. Scatter them over a sheet pan and stick them under the broiler as an example to the other vegetables. Just in case they were thinking about going bad in the bottom of your fridge.

2. Once the tomatillos are a bit blistered, dump them in your blender along with any juices left on the sheet pan.

3. Optional: add your onion and garlic to that same pan, or char them lightly over one of your gas burners. Not into it? Toss them into the blender raw.

4. Add all the other ingredients and blend.

5. Taste and adjust seasoning. Now, wasn’t that easy????

   Note that I do not include cumin in this recipe. You know how some people taste soap when they eat cilantro? Well, when I taste cumin…that’s all I can taste. I’m a cumin super-taster - I should get a t-shirt made.

   I will add it to some things, but at 1/4 the dose usually called for. Here, I don’t really want the earthy flavor. I want my salsa verde bright, tangy, and a little smoky.

Pineapple Bacon Fried Rice with Duck Confit

It is widely known that Roy Choi is the master of all things fried rice. He has taught me all I know about the dish, which arguably isn’t much, but that’s not Roy’s fault.

Well, maybe it is, because so far he has ignored all my invitations to hang at my house to cook while drinking whiskey. (Roy - call me!!! *winks)

If you don’t have his cookbook LA Son*, get it immediately. I don’t know if you have figured this out about me, but I like a good story with my food and his stories are fucking amazing.

I adapted Roy’s pork belly fried rice recipe toward a fantastic dish I had in Minneapolis at a restaurant called Lat 14. They have a pineapple bacon fried rice that I order every single time. Every time I’m like, “No, I have to try something different, because it’s all so amazing,” but then the wait staff comes up and I’m like, “PINEAPPLE BACON FRIED RICE WITH CONFIT DUCK!…gah, fuck.”

And they’re like, “Excuse me, mam?”

I grumble, “You heard me. Get me my damn fried rice.”

I have mused over why this works so well as a dish. Have you read Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat?* Well, I guess I’m all about the cookbook recommendations today! Although this one is as much an instruction manual on food as it is a cookbook.

And it’s awesome. Buy it now.

We know about salty, sweet, sour, spicy, and umami as the flavors we, as biological engines, recognize. But food is about so much more than that. The nose - ie our olfactory system - brings us all the flavors we recognize. Spices, herbs, with their piney and floral and citrusy and smoky notes.

And beyond flavor, there’s the texture of the food, and the visual appeal.

Salt, acid, fat and heat are the physical and chemical aspects of food that bring it balance, visual and textural appeal, and carry those basic flavors and subtle notes to us. They bring food to life and make it great.

If you don’t know cassoulet, the French version of pork and beans, it contains all the cured meats. Including cured pork and duck confit. They coexist happily there, and they do here as well.

Bacon brings smokey notes. Duck brings garlic and thyme and grassy flavors. We all know fat is flavor. Well, this dish has bacon fat and duck fat bringing all those fat-soluble aromatics to our gustatory/olfactory system.

(At your next dinner party, in 2022 or so, bring up the gustatory/olfactory system and people will look at you like you are a goddamned genius).

With all this richness and salt from the meats, pineapple brings not only welcome brightness, but both acid and sweetness to the equation. Every time you hit one of those delicious golden nuggets, it’s a jackpot. Triple cherries all the way.

And we must not forget about the Flavor Holy Trinity of ginger, garlic, and scallions.

The Flavor Holy Trinity.

This is the aromatic foundation of this dish, as it is with so much of the cooking of China and southeast Asia. There’s a good reason it is, and I bet you can guess what it is. That’s right! It’s fucking delicious!

And this is Fucking Delicious Friday, so let’s make some fried rice!

*note that while I provide Amazon links, you get double-extra-secret brownie points for going to a local independent bookseller.

I’ve smashed this ginger with the flat of a knife. And yet here I am, fifteen days without a dinner stoppage injury!

Shit You Need

1. 4 slices of thick cut bacon, cut crosswise into strips about the width of your finger.

2. 1-2 Tbs duck fat which you have wisely saved from making duck confit. See how smart you are?

3. 2 scallions, chopped, white and green parts separated.

   The first time my son cooked all by himself he asked, “Where does the white part stop and the green begin?” I gave him an inscrutable look and said, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” then walked away. I was fucking with him, of course. In truth, it’s at 2/5 the total length, unless it’s Tuesday.

4. 4 cloves of minced garlic

5. 4 Tbs minced ginger.

   I used to freeze, then grate my ginger. But I usually got tired of grating before I had enough ginger. So now I peel a section, cut 1/4 inch thick slices, smash them with the flat of my blade, and then mince the living crap out of them. Very efficient. You can also use a mallet or skillet to smash if you aren’t excited about possibly cutting the shit out of yourself.

6. Shredded duck confit from two duck legs, a little over 1 cup total.

7. 4 cups of cooked, ideally day-old rice. While this is usually a dish meant to put leftover rice to good use, I sometimes make rice just so I can make fried rice from it. Don’t tell.

8. 4 eggs, lightly whisked with a fork.

9. 1/2 package of frozen peas, thawed

10. 1 cup finely diced fresh pineapple

11. 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce

12. 2 tsp toasted sesame oil

13. Freshly ground black pepper

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Keep Calm and justeffingcook

Here’s the basic layout: you’re going to fry up your bacon, set it aside, and then get everything else chopped and portioned- what those crazy French folk call mise en place. Not just fun to say, but a good idea.

The more you know…🌈

All my mise is totally place’d.

1. Fry the bacon to medium doneness in a wok or skillet. Remove from pan and set aside to drain on paper towels. Leave behind 2 Tbs bacon grease for later.

2. Prepare all other ingredients and have at the ready.

3. Add duck fat to your bacon fat and heat your wok over a medium-high flame. Add ginger, garlic, and scallion whites to pan, add several grinds of black pepper, and cook until fragrant, about a minute.

4. Add bacon and duck meat and toss to combine.

5. Add rice and combine well. Let the rice get a little crispy, then move it to the sides and make a well in the center.

6. Add your eggs to the well, letting them firm up before tossing them into the dish. You’re basically making scrambled eggs in the center of the pan while everything else waits on the sidelines. Fold in the eggs.

7. Add the soy sauce and sesame oil and toss to combine.

8. Stir in the peas and pineapple. Heat through.

9. Fold in the scallion greens, and serve.

It’s 2020. Shouldn’t we have scratch n’ sniff monitors by now?