Pasta Topping Principles?
Submitted by crimfan on Fri, 01/01/2010 - 11:02am
Pasta is a great food for post-holidays... it's cheap, it can be light, it's quick and amenable to advance prep. In short, pasta is very, very hackable and gives you a lot of options. However, perhaps paradoxically because of the fact that there are so many options, it's easy to get into a rut and, well, I'm in a rut. Rather than my beloved marinara sauce and olives, I decided to try something different based on ingredients I had lying around:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup precooked rotini
1 clove garlic
1 small white onion
.5 cup zucchini slices
2 crimini mushrooms
4 sun dried tomatoes, julienned
.25 cup sharp provolone, shredded
.25 cup blanched and shocked broccoli rabe
pinch of sea salt
heavy grind of black pepper
mixed Italian herbs
Saute the garlic, mushrooms, onion and zucchini in the olive oil, with the pinch of salt, herbs and some pepper. When the vegetables are nicely browned, add the broccoli rabe, pasta and sun dried tomatoes and toss well. When these have warmed, top with the provolone and another grind of black pepper.
This was good but I suspect that a bit of white wine would have made it better by freeing some of the flavors. (Alas I left the only white wine I had at the New Years' Eve party I went to last night, unopened.)
But what I'd like to hear are suggestions. What are ways to make pasta tasty, interesting and quick, but not boring? Are there any principles or reasonable constraints that make improvisation work? One thing that strikes me is that make your own pasta bars more or less do this: You get a protein, a few vegetables, a sauce, a pasta. Is this a general principle?
Comments
Pasta Improvisation Technique
Improvisation, as I noted the other day, is helped dramatically by having a framework. Unless I have something specific in mind, I usually like to strive for balance.
A balance of flavors: sweet, salty, bitter, umami, sour - tomatoes, on their own, bring us a good bit toward this mix. Still, having ingredients that provide a spike for each of these flavors isn't going to hurt.
A balance of textures: I like a nice mix of a creamy texture along with something that brings a bit of a bite to the mix. Think about the pasta you're using, and how you're cooking it. I often like bits of vegetable or something in my sauce that are slightly denser than the pasta.
Balance of flavors and textures
Yeah, that's true and generally good advice. What I'm trying to think about is whether there are good three to five ingredient combinations that nail this balance. Obviously the answer is "of course there are" because there's an entire pasta-oriented cuisine.
The idea I have is to keep the ingredients separately notable but come together into a whole as well.
Think about a base: marinara,
Think about a base: marinara, olive oil, butter, bechamel, wine, etc.
What does that base bring to the table? What does it lack?
Pick a couple of ingredients that fill in the gaps.
For example, you like marinara with olives. Marinara is a fairly balanced sauce to begin with, which explains its popularity. It balances sweet, sour, and umami well. Olives add both bitterness and saltiness. This produces a well-rounded sauce. Olives can also add a bit of texture.
Hmmm, yeah this is what I'm
Hmmm, yeah this is what I'm thinking about. Marinara has sweet, sour and umami (which I'm still kinda dubious about, damn those Japanese inventions), while olives add bitterness and saltiness.
So thinking about my other creation, you've got:
Zucchini (sweet)
Tomato (sweet and sour)
Mushroom (umami)
Cheese (umami and saltiness)
Onion and garlic (sweet and that allium bite)
Broccoli rabe (bitterness)
Herbs (bitterness)
Pepper (bite)
Salt (saltiness)
Various textures, too: sauteed vegetables are softer, cheese is creamy, broccoli rabe and sun dried tomato chewy, etc.
This was good but it's still perhaps too complex. I wonder if there's a way to reduce to a few short principles? Or maybe "balance flavor and texture" is it?