Spaghetti, meatball, red bell pepper

These tiny tins of tomato paste are cheap as can be but one guy alone even this is too  much paste. Hate to waste. The paste that comes in a tube is 20X the cost of this, say, four dollars for a lot less amount. Freezing as paste wafers is a good solution. It makes them available for anything. 

Meatball, spaghetti, Denver whole wheat sourdough

Spaghetti carbonara, breakfast

 

After the pasta is cooked and removed, vinegar is added to the pasta water that forces the egg albumen to pull together. Albumen does not spread in acidulated water. No need to swirl the water. The water needn't boil to cook the egg. Egg white begins cooking at 144℉ and egg yolks finish at 158℉, well below boiling. the eggs continue cooking until both white and yolk are denatured completely and then beyond, the tightening molecules squeezing out moisture, the extent of their doneness is a function of time. 

That means, left in hot water even well below boiling the eggs will continue to cook, the yolk harden, and there goes your lovely liquid egg yolk sauce. So get the poached eggs out of the hot water. If you must hold the eggs for any length of time they can be lifted into chilled water to stop the cooking, and reserved for as long as you like, then reheat the poached eggs by placing them back into hot water for only long enough to warm them, and that's it, or else they will resume cooking. In this manner you can manage a breakfast for quite a large group and serve everybody at once.

The egg yolk is lifted out of the water with a regular serving spoon, a bit larger than a soup spoon but either size will do, no need for it to be slotted. The scraggly white portion hanging off the spoon is cut using the edge of the spoon as a blade against the inside of the pot. Being so tender the white cuts easily and drops right off into the water. It is an effective way to trim excess white. That is how poached eggs are shaped so beautifully. Try it. It's fun.

Bitocks à la russe

Psych! 

Meatballs made the usual way with soaked bread and egg yolk. These have Worcestershire sauce and chopped parsley. Slightly flattened, fried in butter 4 minutes on each side. Sauce is wine with cognac, and boy, is it good. 

This is what Edouard de Pomiane calls them in his book French Cooking in Ten Minutes. You can buy the book used for a few dollars on Amazon or on Abebooks. It is only 142 pages and the book is so small it can fit in your pocket, if your pockets are large like cargo pants pockets. And it has sketches of things on every three pages or so, but no pictures of actual food.

Spaghetti, meatball, flavored oil w/ tomato, pecan

Egg with spaghetti and ham

Oh it was fry, fry, fry, 'til her daddy took her butter a-wa~ay.

choir: fry,fry,fr-y-y-y-y, daddy took her butter a-way.

falsetto: a-way ya-way ya-way ya-w-a-a-a-ay  

Why not poach it?

That is a great way, an easy way, a better way than frying, and it trims the white when lifting out of the water and shapes into a nice little yolk-bladder, but sometimes you do want that egg white, or don't mind it, and besides, the pan was right there and hot from heating the ham. But so is the water for cooking the noodles. The egg can follow the spaghetti, it only takes a minute. So there is really no excuse except for impatience over a minute or two.

The floppy portion of egg white is on the other side of the hill of spaghetti, it doesn't photograph well so it was turned around and concealed, but I do want to eat it. Protein and all that. I think. Vitamins probably. Minerals maybe. I don't know.  

See what I did there? I stabbed it so it pours out. That's the fun part. 

I feel sorry for pigs because once my older brother and I saw one being slaughtered. My older brother is incorrigibly curious and bold and although he knew full well we were restricted he looked right through the open door crack anyway, very un-Cub Scout that, and made me come over and look too. 

Maybe it was the other way around. I remember knowing I shouldn't look. The rules said so. I vaguely recall having a mini argument about it. Imagining punishment.

"Hey, come over here and look what they're doing to a pig."

"No."

"Come here and look, I said."

"No."

"Come here and look."

"Okay."

I know if I fed this ham to those pigs they would eat it without philosophical compunction. They'd be all, "Snort, scarf, snort, hey this is great." And then the pig continues speaking, once they get started they cannot be turned off "Yes, you know the equivalent of your justification  there is for me to feed you human steak and see you  enjoy it and agree it is fine." 

"Yeah, but you're not, and I'm not." 

There is a word for this: carbonara. What has it to do with carbon? Probably the workers. Coal workers. Imagine a roach-coach type set up where coal workers lunch regularly. Or food heaters that used coal. 

Spaghetti monster meatball

Ambiguity. It is monster meatball, not spaghetti monster. 

Half beef and half pork sausage. Their brands are always mild. 

The double egg yolk faked me out. The egg was actually smaller and lighter than the other two. I guessed the large one would be double so I guessed wrong twice. 

Pine nuts.

No catsup, no salsa, no tomato, although any of those will work.  This is red chile sauce prepared earlier here.

Masa harina to adjust stiffness. Could have used more.

Spaghetti, hard-boiled eggs, cream sauce, fresh tomato, cheese, mint

The problem with these rare Indigo bird eggs is too much white stuff.

Dried oregano and fresh mint.  

Mustard, garlic, nutmeg,

Grated hard cheese, the best the world offers, no compromise here, and why should you? don't blow it with a cheap craptastic cheese, just go to the store and say give me your best and mention your intention involve them in your project and they'll think to themselves my what a discerning customer and consider the best way of guiding you properly.

Or else buy the stuff in a pile featured on the table for sale. 

Spaghetti with bratwurst meatballs

Spaghetti with shrimp and roasted garlic

Spaghetti

A slice of the 3 LB meatloaf is cut off and broken into bits. The meatloaf contains the same elements that go into meatballs. 

A tin of diced tomatoes is combined with a tin of tomato sauce, which was a purchasing error, in a pot with onion and garlic already started in olive oil. That boiled down fairly quickly to a thick sauce and used repeated for different things. This is a few tablespoons of that thick tomato sauce added to the meatloaf bits.

A splash of sake, strange choice, but nearly any alcohol will do, and about 1/4 cup of the starchy pasta water combine and unify all the elements in the pan of meatloaf bits, pasta, and sauce, and it sweetens it all slightly to a plate of pasta truly delicious and satisfying. Rarely do I want more, but tonight I did.

But I would have to start over from the beginning. No problem, it's easy enough, it's just weird to make a dinner and eat it then bang! make the same dinner again and eat it again.

Can't I just wait a couple hours? 

When I mentioned in the previous post I realized I flat do not like alcohol in any form, I forgot how amazing it is in things like this. Cooked alcohol is a magic ingredient. It does not all evaporate leaving flavor behind as we're told it does, rather, some 70% or so of it stays.