Can you “add enough” of anything to make gluten-free pasta good?

I recently had to go gluten free for health reasons. My immediate reaction was regret over all the wonderful food I would miss: pizza, pasta, bread, cake and cookies. Then I realized, thanks to my sister, there is a whole wide world of gluten-free goodies to take the place of the old standbys. Of top importance: the pasta.

Anchovy sauce tops regular pasta in happier times.

Gluten-free pasta is shockingly not bad, once you figure out the cooking time (hint: it’s not the time on the box). Since pasta is primarily a sauce delivery vehicle, there isn’t much of a taste difference as far as I have determined. And with that discovery, I officially replace my mother as “that relative” who has to have her own food at family celebrations.*

One key sauce for me to test with the pasta sans gluten is my mother’s anchovy sauce, which I learned to make this past Christmas for our Christmas Eve celebration.  The sauce is easy, if messy to make. Anchovies spit, even when they’re dead. But if you get past the oil burns on your hands and tomato paste stains on your shirt, the result is well worth the pain. Even if it tops gluten-free pasta.

*Rumor has it, even Pastosa makes gluten-free pastas, including their incredible, inimitable ravioli!

The Real Ragu

Ragu doesn’t come in a jar.

Baked ziti! It was so good, Papa would have said I "made a mistake." 🙂

Real ragu comes from a pot of crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, onion, sausage, ground beef, basil and parsley that has been simmering for at least three hours.

It serves as the base sauce or topping from many a wonderful dish like ravioli, lasagna,and  baked ziti, just to name a few.

The real ragu atop springs with ricotta.

Around this time last year, I made the family ragu by myself for the first time, as part of dish for a themed pot luck based around family recipes. I married that sauce recipe from Dad’s side with the ricotta filling for lasagna from Mom’s side to come up with a fantastic baked ziti.

On subsequent occasions I’ve simply poured the sauce over spring-shaped macaroni and topped it off with a heaping scoop of ricotta. The best of all possible worlds.

That’s the real ragu. It doesn’t come from a jar.

On Cups and Sauces

Italian pot roast. Sounds simple, looks simple, but when a recipe upends your definition and understanding of what a cup is, it is anything but simple.

Lets start with what a cup is: 8 oz, a half pint. It’s Laura Ingalls Wilder in liquid form.

What a cup is not: less than or more than 8 oz.

That is unless you are my grandmother. Then it is that random tea cup that is the last one in existence and is just large/small enough to measure the right amount of tomato juice for your famous pot roast recipe.

Luckily, I knew this discrepancy going in, so my cup was a tea cup or about 6 oz. Thus the signature part of the dish–the macaroni sauce made from pan drippings and the tomato juice–was perfection.

The roast itself…lets just say it’s a good thing I made two pounds of pasta and that there was extra sauce. At least I learned my lesson for next time. Pull the roast before the thermometer says it’s done. Cooking 101 really. Meat continues to cook off the heat.

On the positive side, that roast was quite the ham. Look at the crust on that sucker.

Twas the morning before Christmas

Yum!

Twas the morning before Christmas, and all through the house, all the creatures were stirring, including an octopus. In a pot of boiling water. (Well, I guess it was more that the octopus was being stirred, and pierced with a fork to test for doneness, but I digress.)

My sister was nestled, snug in her bed, with visions of anchovy sauce dancing in her head, when arose from the kitchen such a clatter she sprang from her bed to see what was the matter. And what to her sleep-filled eyes should appear but her little sister (that’s me) and her father holding aloft an octopus inverted on a spear.

“Oh god,” she moaned. “It’s too early for this!” But she should really know by now that Christmas Eve is all about fish.

Cooking the (Family Recipe) Books

Starting today I chronicle my efforts to cook my way through the family cookbook through trial and error. Mostly error. The first few posts are accounts of past cooking adventures. Going forward I hope to incorporate new adventures in with the old. Enjoy!