Spaghetti, red kale

The polenta yesterday showed me I had let the truffle oil go stale. Rancid, to be precise, and let me tell you, there is nothing, NUTHIN' worse than that when it comes to oil except maybe being burned by it.  So I threw out half the bottle, and that sure teaches me a lesson about proper storage then dun'nit.  Here's the wasted bottle.

There was like 4oz, which in truffle oil terms is a lot. That  makes me sad. So to cheer myself, I went out and got a fresh bottle.  The new one looks like this:

This simple dish relies heavily on three premium ingredients. Four, actually, counting the pasta. It is not ordinary mass produced noodles made from cheap-ass flour from soft wheat, which is much faster and less expensive than durum wheat and so suits perfectly production that values the bottom line over  flavor, texture, overall quality etc., you know, all those etherial difficult to nail down relative values.  It is pasta that is extruded through bronze dies and not the more production-friendly more durable and easier to replace Teflon coated dies. It is not just a matter of tradition, it does make a significant difference in texture that you can see and feel, and which in turn matters in the way the pasta grabs sauce and  flavored oil, as contrasted with pasta that allows sauce and oil to slide right off. So naturally it costs a little bit more, but come on, pasta is inexpensive to begin with so go on, BUY IT, I SAID! Here is what to look for, these words, not necessarily this brand:

Nothing compares to Parmigiano Reggiano for it is on a pedestal and in a class all its own, a hard unpasteurized therefore full-flavored aged cow's milk cheese, and it would be possible to live on that alone. I wouldn't mind if I had to. But there are so many other cheeses that are good too in their own way and give Parmigiano a good run. So for the sake of  variety mostly and so we don't get stuck in a beautiful rut, grated Grana Padano, possibly the most ancient of all cheeses, holds its own quite nicely. Do not buy these things pre-grated, like black peppercorns and other seeds, it would be a shame to lose flavor molecules to the atmosphere due to our own  sloth. It is important to keep these things  intact until the very last moment before they are called to service. 

  

The kale could use an acid of some sort.  Since I'm rolling with great ingredients, I used the sweetest acid available -- the aged balsamic reserved for special occasions, like this one. 

What is the special occasion tonight? I found a nickel on the parking lot right at my car door where I parked and that proves beyond doubt there is a God and that God loves me, and likes to play little find-the-nickel games, that's what. So shut up. (I'm certain that had nothing to do with somebody else's nickel-handling carelessness.)

* a few oz of hard durum, bronze extruded spaghetti cooked to not done in water salted to the approximate salinity of sea water. But do not use the Great Salt Lake or the Dead Sea as your measure, Silly, that would be too salty, more like the Atlantic, Pacific, or maybe the Mediterranean. 

* Mushrooms sautéed in olive oil. Shitaki here, but they do not have to be. 

* Fresh garlic enough to flavor the oil.

* Fresh red kale, stripped from the stems and chopped to desired size, wilted in the oil, somewhat softened by steaming with pasta water.

Transfer the not nearly cooked pasta dripping wet to the pan with the kale/mushrooms/garlic/olive oil/pasta water. Allow the pasta to cook further to near completion, to the point  that it bends but is not soft. Add pasta water if necessary to maintain the desired amount of oil/starchy water sauce. If the pasta is soft then you've failed completely  and everybody DIES!!!1!1!11

Add most of the grated cheese off the heat to complete the sauce. Plate the pasta. Drizzle with 

* a small amount truffle oil to glistening slickness and to enhance the tartufo flavor. 

* top with the remaining grated Grana Pandano.

* in this case, basil and mint. That's my new thing for right now. But honestly, any herb will do just fine. My other new thing is fresh sage, which is a little bit weird, but you could not go wrong with thyme, tarragon, savory, and or course, flat-leaf parsley. You could go wrong with cilantro however because half the world truly hates that, but in my book cilantro is always welcome. 

If you were to make this simple dish for your better half, your significant other, your main squeeze, a friend, a neighbor, some stinking filthy panhandler you picked off the street, they would know with a profound certainty that you loved them and they would be put at ease with their earthly troubles.