Fresh Pasta from The Splendid Table

Last week, perhaps you watched it, Stephen Colbert did a pithy piece on Food Insurance. The Company's idea is this, if you find yourself to have survived the apocalypse, or some man-made or natural disaster, in which all sources of food and most of humanity and the animal kingdom are wiped out, you could have enough freeze dried food (depending on how wealthy you are) neatly packed into an emergency rucksack to last you and your family three weeks or up to a year! And after this freeze dried period is up, I guess the apocalypse will be over and nature reborn, so congratulations, you can resume your life as normal! Or you will just starve a long slow death wondering why you weren't just wiped out with everyone else. Anyone seen or read The Road?

And just in case you have any doubts, Glenn Beck endorsed it!

Forgive me for sounding morose but I think this is hilarious. After watching the segment in which Colbert quoted the Food Insurance website as saying, "While your neighbors are starving, you'll be dining on boef a la borgoignon," Chris and I were left reeling, and wondering what we might do in such a situation.

It's clear that Food Insurance is all about capitalism and nothing about survival. What if your rucksack of food blows up in this apocalyptic disaster but you don't? Can you get insurance on your food insurance? Will there be a claims center open during the apocalypse? Shouldn't we be more concerned with clean drinking water anyway?  And if your freeze dried food survives, won't the rest of your food? Looking at my shelves, I think Chris and I have enough to keep us alive for three weeks.

There is a shocking but somewhat true claim on the Food Insurance website which states "Also, some people believe that storing buckets of wheat and beans makes them prepared to live through an emergency. However, most people today don't know how to grind wheat let alone do anything with raw flour. Food insurance comes ready to eat. All you have to do is add water."


In some ways this is true. There are food banks that won't accept bags of flour because they claim noone knows what to do with it, and I think something must be done about that. We have fire and flood Insurance, car insurance and health insurance because it would be unreasonable to expect people to be able to perform the services provided by these companies, themselves. I'm sure there are very few people who can perform surgery on themselves, rebuild a water damaged house or repair a totaled car. But I don't think it's unreasonable to learn how to boil some beans or bake a loaf of bread.


Which is exactly what I'll be doing if a cataclysmic event strikes. If you are truly worried about how you will eat during such an event, educate yourself. You can check books out of the library on how to cook just about everything, and wilderness survival books that can teach what and what not to eat in nature. Lets give more jobs to librarians and less to CEO's. And if you've got some rice or a few carrots, come on over and we'll have a pot-luck. Just leave the freeze dried food at home. 


Because during the apocalypse, I'll be eating pasta till the eggs run out.

Egg Pasta from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper

4 jumbo eggs

3 1/2 cups (14 ounces) all-purpose unbleached flour (organic stone-ground preferred)

Directions adapted from The Splendid Table

Making pasta is quite easy but if you're really interested in making it, I suggest picking up a good Italian cookbook and reading up on it. For now, I'll give some abbreviated directions below.

Since I don't have a lot of room, I halved the recipe and I mixed my eggs and flour with my fingers, in a bowl rather than on a large flat surface. To get started, pour your flour into a bowl or onto a clean countertop, make a well in the middle and crack your eggs into it. slowly start to mix the eggs with two fingers, gradually incorporating the rest of the flour until you have a mass of shaggy dough. Begin to form the dough into a cohesive ball and knead for 3 minutes. If the dough is too sticky add a little more flour. Then continue to knead for another 10 minutes until the dough becomes elastic and satiny smooth as Lynne describes. Then let the dough relax for 30 minutes to 3 hours wrapped in plastic wrap or, I just covered it with a bowl. You can skip this step if you're in a hurry. Then quarter the dough with a knife, keep three quarters covered and begin to roll out one quarter at a time.

If you have a pasta machine, follow the instructions on the machine for rolling it out and cutting it. If you don't, you can use a rolling pin to slowly roll and stretch out your dough and then cut it by hand. This is where an expert comes in, and any books by Lynne Rossetto Kasper or Marcela Hazan are great.

When your pasta is cut and shaped you can dry it out and it will last up to a week or you can toss it into boiling water while it's still fresh and in a few minutes you'll have delicious pasta. To prevent the pasta from sticking together after you've cut it, you can drape it over a chair back that's been covered with a clean dish cloth or lay it flat on a dish cloth.

Pasta with Baked Tomato Sauce from the Wednesday Chef

I have been absolutely useless lately. Last week a heat wave blew through New York with the speed of a slowly rotting cantaloupe and left in its wake a city of zombies and stinky garbage. 

There were days I'd imagine flinging myself in front of a steam roller, finally succumbing to the pavement, my flesh and bones melting into the gleaming black tarmac that had turned to honey in the 100 degree weather. But instead I'd just stagger into another air conditioned establishment to cool my head long enough to see straight, and then return to the undulating heat outside. 

As you can imagine, food was the last thing on my mind,  and as our air conditioner blew a dainty stream of cool air into our room, turning on a hot appliance seemed like torture. Also, the fridge was empty except for a few ingredients that required heat, including a package of frozen grass fed chuck that I'd bought on an impulse the weekend before thinking maybe I'd try out a beef stew recipe (what was I thinking?!) so, we ordered in. We got pizza and Indian food and I can't even remember what else. But I did not cook. I couldn't. The cookbooks that I usually draw inspiration from were about as interesting to me as the telephone book, and I figured I'd spare them the heat as well.

Then one day as I was browsing some of my favorite blogs, wondering if I'd ever feel like preparing another meal again, I happened upon a recipe for Pasta with Baked Tomato Sauce posted by the Wednesday Chef, that got me drooling and thinking maybe this was worth turning on the toaster oven. It's a simple recipe made with fresh ingredients that takes about 10 minutes of prep work followed by 20 minutes of unfussy baking. This I could handle. You slice open cherry tomatoes, sprinkle them with olive oil and a mixture of breadcrumbs, Parmesan and Pecorino cheese, and garlic, bake them until they're soft and fragrant, mash them up, and then toss with pasta and fresh basil. I made it Thursday night and Chris asked if we could have this every night from now on. Then my mother made it Friday night, and I made it again Saturday night. This one's a keeper. And if you'd like the recipe,  you can just  click here.

I am now on Fire Island enjoying sun, waves and a glorious kitchen. It feels like a reward for enduring the past week, and I am once again dreaming of food. Maybe we'll have beef stew when I get back.

Be Cool.

The Ferry Ride over.

Mushrooms and Egg Noodles with Watercress Salad

Last night I made a real stinker of a meal. I went shopping all over the place, spent hours getting it ready, taking photographs all along the way, and when it came time to eat, everything was done at the wrong time and tasted somewhere between eh and terrible.

My cute little $14 Amish chicken was dry after about an hour and a half in the oven, and yet still bled when pierced in the leg. The gorgeous curly garlic scapes (tops) from the farmers market were either overcooked or stringy and the green beans which didn't look great to begin with were like petrified wood by the time I got them home. The only thing that came out okay were the roasted potatoes and carrots with little caramelized garlic cloves and chicken fat.

I was disgruntled but determined. Dessert would save the day. I thought of my beloved, domestic, children's book hero, Amelia Bedilia. She was always screwing things up and I felt a certain kinship to her yesterday. When her employers asked her to dust the furniture she would take a powder puff and coat the sofa and chairs with talcum, when they asked her to draw the curtains in the afternoon she would set up an easel and do a lovely illustration and when she was asked to make a sponge cake, a stack of fresh kitchen sponges from under the sink were neatly cut and stirred into the batter. But right when the family, tearing their hair, was ready to give her the boot, she would whip out a fabulous cake or pie she happened to have thrown together earlier that day and everyone would be lulled into a sugar coma and agree, Amelia should stay.

I was hoping to do the same but my strawberry shortcakes, well, they fell short. They were dry and flavorless and I have to apologize to the strawberries and homemade whipped cream which were really quite good, I should never have spooned you on to those sad little sand dunes. 

Come dinner time tonight I was not inspired, to say the least. My mind was an empty colander, nothing sounded good and I didn't want to order out. I called Chris for a suggestion, "egg noodles and cream of mushroom soup with greens on the side." Hm.

I find most cream of mushroom soups taste like a wet dog so I didn't want to go out and shop for a can of Campbell's, but it gave me an idea. At home I had left-over heavy whipping cream, a little rose wine, some garlic and macerated strawberries. I didn't want to have to cook greens, because between the soon to be boiling pasta and a hot skillet for the mushrooms we'd blow a fuse with one more plugged in appliance, so a salad seemed like a good idea. I decided to make creamed mushrooms and egg noodles with a watercress, fennel and herb salad. For dessert, strawberries, peaches and mint with a dollop of cream. It was fresh, decadent and completely satisfying.

Yesterdays lemons, today's lemon aid. 

Mushrooms and Egg Noodles

4 fresh shitake mushrooms, sliced 1/4" wide

4 pom pom mushrooms (or porcini, chantarelle or baby bellos), sliced 1/4" wide

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 cup white wine (or rose)

2 tbs. butter

2 large garlic cloves, minced

1 tbs. chopped flat leaf parsley

salt + pepper

1/2 a 12 oz. bag of egg noodles

Boil a pot of salted water and cook the noodles until al dente. Meanwhile, heat the butter in a skillet on medium heat. Add the garlic and saute about a minute, lower the heat if garlic starts to brown. Add the mushrooms and toss around another minute. Then add the white wine, 1/4 cup of cream, a pinch of salt and few grinds of a pepper mill. Cook about 5 to 8 minutes until the mushrooms are soft adding the parsley before the last minute of cooking. Turn off the heat and add the drained pasta to the pan of mushrooms along with the last 1/4 cup of cream and stir gently, scraping up any juices from the bottom of the pan. Taste for salt and pepper, serve hot. 

*note

I didn't measure the cream or wine while I was cooking so you may want to add a few extra tablespoons of each if it seems dry.

Watercress and Fennel Salad

1 bunch watercress

1 small bulb fennel, thinly sliced

1 tbs. chopped parsley

1 tbs. chopped mint

sherry vinegar

olive oil

pepper

Wash and tear up the watercress. Lay the fennel on top and scatter with the herbs. Splash a little vinegar and olive oil over the salad and give a turn of a pepper mill.