Entries tagged with 'pasta'
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Switzerland has been keeping a little secret from us: they grow spaghetti. On trees. During the spring of 1957, the crop was especially fertile. The pasta strands hung there like any apple or pear would, and farmers reaped the noodly harvest. Now, if only they could get their act together on a meatball bush. We linked to this back in April of 2007, but the BBC investigative report on spaghetti farming was a little difficult to navigate. Here it is, easy peasy, after the jump....
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I'm trying to cook at home a bit more these days. (The economy, you know?) And one of the easiest meals to whip up quickly is, of course, a pasta dish. French Revolution's bechamel-based Wagon Wheels with Sauce Roquefort recipe is so simple and quick that you won't think twice about using your favorite jarred sauce. Note: SE intern extraordinaire Kerry Saretsky is the force behind French Revolution. Kerry usually writes the Blogwatch entries and is much too modest to toot her own horn, so I'm doing it for her today. Or, as Erin put it, "Who Blogwatches the Blogwatcher?"...
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When I think of the success of the Mini Cooper or the Smart car across the pond, I realize how much those Europeans love everyday essentials in miniature. And now Italian pasta company Barilla takes the trend one step further with its Piccolini, five old pasta shapes that newly come in "mini-me" sizes. To go with the little cars, Barilla now makes little wheels, my absolute favorite, but hard to find, pasta shape. When craving wagon wheels, I have to walk to the gourmet market to buy De Cecco's, but the trip is a hassle when I want a quick pasta dinner, and frankly, no matter how much I try to retain their al dente integrity, they come out mushy....
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Joe Dilley, owner and operator of Joe's Guide Service in Alaska, can't get enough Moose-ghetti. It's one of his favorite meals in the crock pot, he told NPR, sounding a bit bashful. Besides the Alaskan-Italian fusion dish, he was full of moose cooking tips. How do you prep the meat? You let a little bit of white mold grow on it. The natural enzymes in the meat start breaking it down from being a tough chunk of muscle. Yum, white mold. Almost as good as yesterday's image of a Bic razor shaving a furry moose snout, before it gets boiled in salt water and eventually tastes like beef tongue. Three weeks since the Republican veep nomination, journalists are finally churning...
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Doesn't this strategically placed pasta scarf make you want to order a Marcato brand pasta machine? Leave it to a half-naked woman to sell just about anything. Call the long distance Italian number if the marketing tactic worked (or you're just craving homemade pasta). [via Erin Doland]...
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This is what happens when your kitchen pukes. From Marlene Haring's art installation Heute bleibt die Küche kalt, wir gehen in den Wienerwald ("Today the kitchen remains unused; we're going to the Wienerwald). [via the new shelton wet/dry]...
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Mario Batali is funny, passionate, generously spirited, smart as hell, and a great cook. We hope you'll enjoy Unclogged, Mario Batali as you've never seen him before. —
Ed Levine
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Italian consumers associations are asking their countrymen to boycott pasta today in a largely symbolic effort to draw attention to the rising costs of noodles. As is the case with most of these food-price stories these days, biofuel production is being blamed for the high cost of durum wheat, more of which is being diverted into ethanol-making. Says the BBC: "Pasta is a national dish in Italy, with each Italian eating on average 28 kg (62 lb) of pasta every year." And perhaps the most apt analogy was the one I just heard on BBC World Service radio: "An Italian without pasta is like an American without hamburgers." Photograph from iStockphoto.com...
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I have eaten in Mario Batali's restaurants perhaps a hundred times (and had at least very good meals 95 times), but I was extremely skeptical when I heard he was putting his name, complete with photo, on a line of General Mills frozen pasta dinners called Mario Batali's Regional Recipes, which will be sold initially at club stores like Sam's, BJ's, and Costco. So when we received some samples at Serious Eats world headquarters I volunteered to be the first guinea pig....
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Deb of Smitten Kitchen had all but given up on ever making good gnocchi at home, until recently coming across an ingenious technique: "Get this: you grate the potatoes. No food mill or ricer purchase required! (Which is great because you don’t have room for one anyway!) After grating the baked and peeled potatoes, you knead in some flour, salt and an egg, and your dough is complete! And people, these are some killer gnocchi, with a lightness that I’ve only had before at top-notch Italian restaurants."...
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