Pasta Is For Lovers

Sam and Naomi, our charming young house guests, are just barely off their honeymoon. They were married in England just about a month ago so they bring along with them that happy glow that comes with the first wonder at being man and wife. It's lovely to witness.

It's also lovely to taste the enthusiasm they put into their cooking. They seem thrilled to have a well-stocked and furnished kitchen in which to let their culinary imaginations hold sway. I brought home garlic sausages from the Marin Sun Farms' store in Market Hall and Sam made them into a very special dinner.

His sauce was composed of browned sausage meat in a creamy, tomato-y sauce lovingly combined with penne pasta cooked just al dente. Sam tastes as he cooks, adding a little of this and a dab of that until his tongue tells him the dish is ready. The entire meal took only about half an hour to compose, too, a bonus if you happen to be working. Richly flavorful and artfully presented in pasta bowls, it disappeared in record time. Marvelously satisfying.

He had trouble remembering the steps of creation but we sat down together and stepped through what he did, coming up with a pretty good approximation. You don't really need the exact ingredients as I'm sure he would make it differently next time; that gives you the freedom to mess about with your own joyous, off-the-cuff version to serve to your own lover.

Sam's Sauce

1 small onion, chopped

4 garlic sausages

1-2 cloves garlic, minced

2/3 cup dry sherry

14 ounce can whole tomatoes, coarsely chopped, with the juice from the can

2 bay leaves

1-1/2 Tablespoons chopped parsley

1 cup heavy cream

Cracked black pepper

Basil leaf for garnish

Penne pasta

Into a mixture of olive oil and butter over medium-high heat in a wide pan, sauté the chopped onion, then squeeze out the contents of the garlic sausages in little bits and brown them in the same pan. Pour off the extra fat. Add the garlic and lightly cook. Add the sherry and cook until reduced to almost nothing. Add the tomatoes and juice, breaking up the tomatoes with a spoon, then the bay leaves, and cook for about 10 minutes.

While the sauce bubbles away, cook the pasta in salted water according to package directions. Drain.

When the sauce is nicely cooked, reduce the heat, add the cream, then the parsley, and simmer for perhaps 5-10 more minutes until it thickens. Add cracked pepper and the pasta, stirring until all the pasta is coated with sauce. Serve immediately, garnished with a sprig of something green.

Giving Credit

When you glean ideas from the interwebs,* sometimes it's hard to give credit where it's due. For example, I got this recipe from the divine Luisa, who not only recognizes a promising recipe when she sees it, she also writes about it and about her life in a lively and amusing style that I'd give my eye teeth to emulate.

She got this one from Pamela Sherrid who, no doubt, was inspired by yet another cook - and so on!

Whoever deserves the kudos, there is huge credit to be given here. Pamela Sherrid's Summer Pasta is one of the best meals I have made in my cooking life, one of those that goes directly into the recipe file and comes out time and again to become spattered and dog-eared from frequent use.

I don't normally think of pasta dishes as "light." Richly sustaining, yes. Flavorful and filling, yes. But, light? Maybe not. This one is light, believe me, despite the gutsy measurement of olive oil and the pillowy, unctuous fresh mozzarella. I made it when Cousin Jan came for a swim and a lunch - we both agreed it was delightfully summery.

For one thing, it isn't served piping hot. The time spent "resting" the pasta gives it time to cool off a teensy bit, so it doesn't heat you unduly on a hot summer evening.

I used two colors of heirloom tomato to pretty it up, and it needed salt and pepper at the table but, other than that, I followed the recipe exactly. I won't try to describe it because Luisa does a much better job than I could - go there and read what she says. I'm not being modest, folks, I'm just giving credit where it is richly due.

The only thing I would add is confirmation that Luisa is absolutely right about tipping up the bowl to get every last drop of the goozle this dish creates in the bottom - it is pure goozle heaven.

*Another example: I got the word "interwebs" from the ever-creative Cookiecrumb.

Sailors' Rations

Besides the Duck Tape printed with hot rod flames, there was another part of My Beloved's Father's Day surprise, a sail on the bay aboard USA76, a former America's Cup challenger.

There are lots of reasons why that is a great gift for My Beloved. First, he comes from a sailing family - he's the black sheep car lover in a flock of sailors. He grew up sailing on Long Island Sound and, when you've sailed as a kid, the fascination never really leaves, even years later when you're a California car guy.

His parents were both excellent sailors, his mother, sister and sister-in-law all Adams Cup challengers, and his father sailed with some of the biggest names in racing back in the day, completing the Bermuda race among others. After his parents retired, they sailed their boat back and forth to the Caribbean 18 winters in a row and lived aboard for months on end. My Beloved's brother has always sailed and skippered boats, and recently purchased another boat, this one large enough to enjoy cruising down to the Bahamas once he retires. His sister worked in a sail loft for several years and has been instrumental in teaching sailing to generations of youngsters. His parents were members of the New York Yacht Club where for many glorious years the America's Cup resided in its own little purpose-built round room so the hideously ugly cup could be admired from all sides.

If that wasn't enough, San Francisco is hosting the next America's Cup challenge, the replica of the original yacht "America" is here in the bay and they are offering rides on USA76. It was a must.

We had a simply splendid day on the bay. It was warm and windy, cloudless and gorgeous. USA76 is a dream of a sailboat - 85 feet of sleek black hull, fast, smooth and beautiful. She cuts through the wave chop like the proverbial hot knife through butter, rides the swells like the thoroughbred she is and when the wind catches her high-tech sails she simply flies over the water. No wonder the rich cats got hooked on this kind of boating! I found myself wishing for the kind of moolah that would allow me to have such a craft.

My Beloved and I each got a chance to stand at the helm with all that sail power under our hands and he took an active part in crewing the boat, using the "coffee grinder" to trim the sails and talking shop with the nice young skipper while I took a boatload of pictures. The crew was businesslike and friendly at the same time, offering us their expertise (one of them was on the all-woman America's Cup challenge team a few years ago) and enjoying the day with us. There were only six passengers (they will soon start sailing with 20 passengers, so if you want to go, go now to avoid the crowds) and an equal number of crew members. We rode out to USA76 on a zodiac and climbed aboard in heaving swells that zinged both the ride and the boarding with excitement. We had a lovely zig-zagging run past the city, out next to Alcatraz, down past the ball park and under the Bay bridge.

When we got home, a little sunburned and very tired, dinner had to be quick and easy but filling as we were hungry as wolves. I made this pasta dish in a flash, simply sizzling minced garlic in olive oil, adding slices of pre-cooked (very) spicy Italian sausage and a sprinkle of Herbes de Provence, then broccoli florets and coarsely chopped fennel, finishing off with green onion at the end. I added a small ladle of the pasta water, stirring it around in the pan to create a sauce, then added the drained penne to the pan to toss, and grated ParmReg at the table.

We inhaled it and went back for seconds before falling into bed to dream of skimming like sea birds over the rolling green waters of the bay. It was quick and delicious, like a ride on an America's Cup contender.

Le Quick Lunch

Back when I was sixteen, I was planted in a girls' boarding school in Cannes, France while the rest of my family swanned around the Mediterranean, following my father's ship. They got to visit several ports in Italy, Monaco, Greece and France while I got to know the stern headmistress of my school, Madame Blay, very well indeed, and usually not in a good way.

Madame Blay (pronounced like Captain Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty; we students always felt that was apt) knew that girls of sixteen are a force to be reckoned with and that American girls of that age are even worse. She was correct. There were about ten of us Americans in the school and we were determined to get into trouble, hopefully trouble involving French boys. We smoked cigarettes after lights-out, climbed down the tall French shutters to escape the school at night, corrupted the French girls with our antics and generally added headaches to Madame Blay's days, and sometimes her nights.

On the few occasions when we were authorized to leave the school - chaperoned, of course, by one of the spinster teachers whose job it was to repel advances from all males - we found a wonderful little lunch spot with bright yellow awnings in the Vieux Port called "Le Quick Lunch." It served hamburgers and Cokes at exorbitant prices, perfect for homesick American girls enjoying sunny a day out. We'd spend the morning on the beach, then cajole Mademoiselle Dallier to let us get a bite to eat at Le Quick Lunch. She tut-tutted and disapproved of the food but we begged and, if we hadn't been too obnoxious on the beach, she would eventually agree. We would stuff ourselves with nostalgia and return to school ready for the next prank.

I still think of Le Quick Lunch every time I make myself a lunch that doesn't take long. I may be looking out a the sparkling water of the San Francisco bay instead of the deep blue of the Mediterranean but the memory is as clear and bright as the sunshine was on those long-ago days.

This time, I was in a mood for pasta. I boiled some water and, while the pasta was cooking, softened a clove or two of minced garlic in a nice knob of butter. When the pasta was nearly done (angel hair takes just a few minutes), I threw a generous handful of frozen peas into the pasta water and strained them out together, tossing them in the garlicky pan. Topped with a snowfall of ParmReg, it made a lovely quick lunch, maybe not as decadent as hamburgers and Cokes on the Riviera but satisfying nonetheless.

Fancypants Pasta

Along with cousin Jan, My Beloved and I attended the March meeting of the Homegrown Marin market. We wandered around the transformed fencing school and tried almost everything there from chocolates so rich and spiced that they sang on the tongue to kimchee (my first ever) and lamb sausage sliders. The invitation said to come hungry and we took them at their word.

I brought home a few things from that foray - the chocolates, of course, and Jan bought some cupcakes, but the most expensive item I bought was handmade Baia pasta. The nice guy with the Italian accent who sold it said that they call it "vines." Made from Durum wheat, it's a little different in color than the usual store-bought kind. It's S-shaped in cross section, all the better to capture the flavorings in those long, bendy grooves.

We bubbled it up the other night and topped it with kale sautéed with green garlic (note to self: next time, much more green garlic) as I still had a craving for that left over from the last time I made kale. We grated small, snowy hillocks of ricotta salata over it at the table and enjoyed every bite. Once again, no meat was needed - the filling pasta, satisfying kale and salty cheese were plenty.

We enjoyed our culinary explorations at Homegrown Marin. They are having another event in April. Maybe we'll see you there.

Cold Comfort

No, I haven't resorted to eating pasta cold out of the fridge. Rather, I have a cold and seem to be craving the comfort of pasta. This cold seems also to have stimulated my improvisational gene - I've been trying all kinds of weird combinations.

This one was the best so far. Italian sausage and rehydrated wild mushrooms from the big bag I brought home from Cape Cod in a rich, garlicky, tomato sauce dotted with garbanzo beans. Oh, and the Secret Ingredient.

I used all the usual Italian indicators - garlic, basil, red wine - but improvised with the Secret Ingredient - a tablespoon or two of espresso powder to darken the flavors. It was molto bene! So good, in fact, that I plan to use espresso powder in all my tomato pasta dishes from now on.

The fragrance elicited memories of passing coffee houses on Italian streets on a hot day, when I was sixteen and young men called after me as I passed on the street, declaring undying love and devotion, if only I would stop and chat. Holding their hands over their hearts or out in supplication, their shiny dark curls glistening in the sun, their sincerity was compelling, if fleeting. When, scandalized and secretly thrilled, I didn't stop, the next girl who came along got the same treatment.

But, when you are feeling very sorry for yourself, both because your head is all stuffed up and because you didn't stop and chat all those years ago, this pasta brings some small comfort.

Cold Comfort Pasta

1 mild Italian sausage (or you can use spicy, if you prefer), about 8-10 inches long

6 cloves of garlic, diced finely

olive oil

1 can fire-roasted chopped tomatoes

1 can whole peeled tomatoes

2 cups red wine, divided

1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed

2 Tablespoons dried basil

a handful of mixed, dried wild mushrooms rehydrated in one cup of the red wine

2 Tablespoons freeze-dried espresso coffee powder

Your favorite pasta - I like capellini

Parmesan cheese, freshly grated

Green onions, sliced

Immerse the dried mushrooms in one cup of the wine and leave to rehydrate, perhaps half an hour. When the mushrooms are softened, in a wide pan heat a drizzle of olive oil over medium-high heat and squeeze the sausage out of its casing, dropping about 12 one-inch meatballs into the hot oil. When the meatballs have browned on one side, turn them over and add the garlic. Watch carefully - you don't want the garlic to burn. When the garlic is fragrant and softened, add the tomatoes (chop or squish the whole ones with your hands), the second cup of wine, the mushrooms now softened and the wine in which they rehydrated and the rest of the ingredients. Cook over low flame for about 15-20 minutes. Serve over your favorite pasta, topped with fresh green onions and grated Parmesan cheese. Serves 4-6.

Spun Up

Stocking up in our little grocery market at the bottom of the hill, I noted that they had some really lovely small zucchinis, still shiny and dark green. This little market has chancy vegetables - some days they are all wilted and sad, other days you can score fresh zucchinis that look just-picked from the garden. I was there on the right day.

So, I took three of them home with me, as well as two big bunches of flowers - recently, the market has been offering huge bouquets of fresh flowers at an amazingly affordable price. I have no sales resistance for beautiful flowers, having spent six years as a florist.

Anyway, with the school bus yellow sunflowers and pale pink mums decorating different corners of my house, I set to work to make a fresh pasta dish out of the zucchinis. I chopped and sautéed, simmered and tasted, and it was all good - just not stellar. So I kept adding things I found in the cupboard or on the counter and ended up using tomatoes four ways and alliums three ways.

First, I chopped an onion and minced three cloves of garlic, and sautéed them in olive oil. I had some leeks in the fridge, which had survived our absence, so I chopped two of those and added them to the allium mix, as well.

Next, I added a can of peeled tomatoes (I'm feeling lazy after our ten days of travel and tending small children). Then I had the idea to add a couple of fresh tomatoes for extra flavor. Still not satisfied with the taste, I added a big spoonful of sun dried tomatoes to ratchet up the richness. Finally, a big squeeze of tomato paste from the tube in the fridge, and that did the trick. Mixed in with the other three kinds, it added the serious tomato taste I was seeking.

A little wine, a drift of Herbes de Provence, a little time on a low flame, a drizzle of olive oil and a snowfall of parmesan grated fresh at the table and it was as tasty a vegetarian pasta as I've ever spun around my fork.

The Secret Ingredient

Are you one who shares their recipes, secret ingredients and all? Or are you the kind who gives your recipe but sneakily leaves out that one addition that makes it great? I recently discovered, almost by accident, a "secret" ingredient - strong coffee.

A few weeks ago, I made cold-brewed coffee and My Beloved and I have been enjoying tall glasses of iced coffee ever since. It's a hit in this household - powerful and smooth, it has jazzed up several sagging afternoons.

Fast forward to last night, when I was making a quick pasta sauce with meatballs. Squeezed Italian sausage out of its casing to brown in a wide skillet, then removed the "meatballs" and sautéed garlic chips, chopped onion and chunked mushrooms in the same pan. Added a 16 ounce can of organic tomato sauce, two fresh chopped tomatoes, a handful of dried herbs (use your imagination) and a big glug of red wine. Simmered for about half an hour, then turned it off and went about my day, returning at dinner time to simmer it again. It was good in that rich and friendly way that Italian food always is, but not spectacular until I added the secret ingredient.

A splash of that crazy-good coffee. The sauce darkened and deepened dramatically, changing from Margaret to Sophia Loren. The coffee also made the sauce just a little too bitter, so I added about two teaspoons of sugar and stirred it all in together. Tossed with some straw and hay fettucine from Eduardo's of San Francisco, it was like love - messy, delightful and lifegiving. Next time you make red sauce, don't forget the secret ingredient.

Something Fishy

I have no idea why this dish seemed appealing to me - fish on pasta? First I read about it when Mark Bittman made it. I thought, "Huh, now that sounds interesting." Then, I happened across a similar recipe on epicurious.com. I do like canned sardines - they are one of my guilty pleasures - but it somehow didn't seem like something I'd usually make.

However, I was intrigued enough to try it. Bittman adds capers to his, where epicurious.com relies simply on garlic and fresh parsley to flavor their version. Since I didn't have capers in the house... yeah, epicurious.com won.

This is very simple, fishy fare. All you do is drain a little oil from the can of sardines packed in olive oil (I found a brand of local, wild caught ones) and add to that some plain olive oil in which you sauté a hefty amount of garlic. When the garlic is soft, you add a cup and a half of dry white wine and boil it down by half to make a sauce, toss in the fresh parsley off the heat, add the pasta to the sauce for a few minutes before plating, split the fillets over the mound of pasta (they called for linguine; I had vermicelli) and pour over rest of the sauce. Serve with lemon wedges. One can of sardines, a tablespoon of olive oil, four cloves of garlic, 1-1/2 cups white wine, 1 cup chopped Italian parsley, a handful of pasta - that's it.

Next time I make this, as I will surely do, I will grate just a little Parmesano Reggiano over the pasta before placing the fillets. While it was good and hearty and I loved the fresh greenness of the parsley playing off the oily fish, it lacked a little je ne sais quoi that I think it needed. Still, it was interesting, in a fishy sort of way.

Impromtu Italian

Why am I craving wintry dishes now that spring has finally arrived? Or maybe it's the really ripe tomatoes of the future that I'm wishing for? Whatever the reason, I made a quick sauce the other day that featured pasta for winter and tomatoes for summer. I'm all mixed up.

So was this dish.

I used Jamie Oliver's trick of squeezing Italian sausages out of their casings to make the meatballs, which I browned quickly in very hot olive oil before setting them aside. I like them to be brown and caramelized but still soft and luscious inside.

In the same pan (both to save flavor and dishes), I sautéed a chopped onion and four sliced garlic cloves over a slightly lowered heat, added sliced mushrooms along the way, a big pinch of herbs de Provence and an even bigger pinch of fennel seed to toast for a few minutes before dumping in a can of chopped tomatoes and all the juice. And a splash of white wine, which diluted the color but added flavor, a nice bonus.

When all those ingredients had gotten to know each other over a low flame, I added back the sausage meatballs and their accumulated juices, stirred it all around and added the cooked vermicelli directly to the pan to toss and absorb all the goodness.

The whole thing took about 30 minutes. It might have improved a bit by some longer, slower simmering but I was in a hurry for this impromptu Italian dinner. I'm all mixed up, as the seasons around here have been for months.

Spaghetti Western

I've been clearing out the fridge again, making what my first mother-in-law, a Westerner who was born and raised in Oregon and lived most of her life in California, would call "pickup meals." A dab of this and a handful of that, artfully combined to make something delicious. Nothing works better for a pickup meal than a stir fry - or pasta.

Yes, that's cauliflower you see in there, and broccoli - a handful of each, plus slivered onions, half a can of chopped tomatoes, garlic slices, mushroom slices, a few rounds of salami cut into triangles and sautéed in olive oil (truth be told, they got a little too dark) plus a half a cooked breast of chicken pulled into bite-size pieces. Splashed after sautéing with a little white wine, sprinkled with some dried Italian herbs, and enriched with a spritz of tomato paste from a tube (I love tomato paste in a tube - makes me laugh).

The pasta was fished with tongs out of the salted water and dropped directly into the pan where all this awaited, tossed around and plated. I learned that little trick from another of my heroines, Lidia Bastianich - it makes the sauce stick better to the pasta.

Now that I've made this pickup meal, there's room in the crisper drawer for fresh things, which will almost inevitably become next week's pickup meal.

Elegant Leftovers

Remember the garlic crab from a few weeks ago? I do. So, when I saw this pasta with Dungeness crab and garlic (plus fresh tomatoes, Swiss chard, herbs and ParmReg) on the menu at Rooney's, I jumped at it.

Clearly, crab and garlic are made for one another. I slurped up the angel hair pasta, the big chunks of heavenly crab and most of the incredibly flavorful goozle, and still had plenty for lunch the next day. Even lightly reheated in the microwave, this was a delicious combination.

We've been to Rooney's several times now and have never been disappointed. It's small and a little noisy but the food is always good and the service is excellent.

And they have garlic crab pasta.

Pasta for the Pathetic

I learned this little trick from Jamie Oliver - to make meatballs for pasta out of Italian sausage links - and it has saved my bacon several times, most recently now that I have a nasty cold, don't feel much like cooking, and who wants to eat when you can't taste anything, anyway?

My Beloved, that's who. So, I got out a can of tomato sauce, two Italian sausage links, onions, garlic, green onions, mushrooms, shallot, red wine, yadda and made a very quick sauce for cappellini.

You make the meatballs by pulling out of the sausage casings little bite-sized dollops of filling and browning them thoroughly in olive oil before adding the chopped onions, minced garlic, quartered mushrooms to the pan along with whatever herbs you like (I used oregano, rosemary and thyme). Saute those together until you can smell the herbs over the rest, then add the tomato sauce and a cup or so of red wine and simmer until the sauce is as thick as you prefer.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta, drain it and add it to the sauce, tossing it around while still a little wet, so it will absorb all the lovely flavor of the sauce. I dressed the finished dish with slivered green onions for color and a nice grating of fresh Parmesan cheese.

If I hadn't had a head cold and had my wits about me, I'd have added some fresh chopped tomato at the end, just to heat it through and give the dish a freshness but I don't do my best work when my sinuses feel as if they are stuffed with cotton. Pathetic. But, My Beloved didn't think so!

Jamie's Fans

We are Jamie Oliver fans - even My Beloved will watch his show on the food channel with evident pleasure and we have set the VCR to record "Jamie at Home" so we won't miss a single show. We like his insouciant attitude toward cooking while he produces dishes that make our mouths water and wish for smellivision.

On a recent program about peas and broad beans, he made a spaghetti sauce using the contents of Italian sausages squeezed out of their casings for the meatballs and sprinkled the top of the finished dish with fresh, raw green peas, a brilliant (Jamie's favorite word) idea to give lively flavor and crunch to the dish.

When I made it a few days later, I added some homegrown Swiss chard to the sauce, which was a nice addition, but I didn't have any fresh peas on hand. I did have a small handful of snappingly fresh tiny green beans from my garden, so I cut them up and sprinkled them on top. They added color, crunch and a wonderful fresh greenness to the dish, confirming our admiration for Mr. Oliver's ideas.

P-P-P-P-P-S-S

No, I'm not trying to get your attention to sell you naughty postcards; I'm giving you the recipe for a super dish we tried a few days ago.

Pancetta. Peas. Pasta. Parmesan. Pepper. Shallot. Salt.

That's it.

Saute the pancetta lardons until crispy in a wide pan, add the chopped shallot and toss together. Meanwhile, boil the pasta according to package directions in salted water, adding the peas at the end. Scoop out about 1/4 cup of the pasta water before draining pasta and peas in a collander, and add the water to the pancetta/shallot pan. Toss the drained pasta and peas in the pancetta/shallot mixture until well coated. Top with pepper and Parmesan freshly ground and grated respectively. Great side dish that could easily serve as dinner with a salad on the side. Start to finish, it took about 15 minutes, not counting shelling the peas. Using frozen peas, you could shave that time by about 5 minutes.

Now, on to the naughty postcards!