Once you get a craving for something, it can be pretty hard to get it out of your mind. For me, this past week, that craving was for the sort of old school red checkered tablecloth not really Italian food that was a staple of various sport and afterschool activity related fundraisers when I was a kid.
I don’t mean the classic Italian American red sauce that grew out of the diverse culinary traditions of early 20th century Italian immigrants.
I mean the sort of pasta with sauce plopped on top and a giant heap of garlic powder dusted bread sticks at long tables with torn vinyl stacking chairs in a dark room with a broken jukebox and the lingering smell of 20 years of old cigarette smoke. You bought the ticket. You paid extra for the raffle. The team got new t-shirts and a replacement for the broken orange drink cooler or it paid for a three day trip to a camp that was only a few miles out of town.
That sort of “Italian.”
If I’m completely honest with myself, I just really wanted some breadsticks and nostalgia. Maybe a game of Gallaga and a spirited debate about which GI Joe was the best GI Joe.
Don’t worry, I didn’t go all out on the nostalgia. There’s no Galaga machine, I’m not wearing a painters cap with the Coleco logon on it, and it doesn’t smell like last decade’s cigarettes in here. You won’t find a recipe for a nearly ketchup colored sauce draped over over-boiled noodles and topped with a suspiciously sandy looking white powder. Instead, let’s say that that’s the moment in time that inspired this week’s menu – but the food itself took a slightly more sophisticated turn. Sort of like how your memory improves those moments from your past, leaves out the crippling anxiety and that guy who was gonna shove you into a puddle outside. This is the better version of a mediocre memory.
Garlic Wedge Rolls
Bread sticks are fussy - and unless you’re a professional baker, have a dough divider, or are just a better more coordinated person than I am, they’ll always come out sort of misshapen and uneven. There’s probably another nostalgia joke in there, but in this case I mean actually physically misshapen and uneven – like the sort of uneven that means one end gets burnt while the other ends up as a ludicrously puffed up wad of undercooked dough.
So instead of breadsticks, I tried for another non-roll-shaped version of dinner rolls. Ironically, one of the things that makes these fun is that they are misshapen, and that one end ends up with a different texture than the other.
Cutting the dough into wedges does two things for these rolls. First, the shape gives the pointy tips a crisp, garlic butter-soaked crunch that’s slightly reminiscent of the “I got a coupon for reading a book” deep dish pizza of the late 80s while leaving the thick edge tender and fluffy. Secondly, it’s really really easy. Like a lot easier than forming 12 even balls or rolling crescents or whatever. Basically it’s a lazy man’s laziness paying off in the best garlic butter soaked way possible.
500g AP flour
300g water
20g neutral oil
20g melted butter
7g instant yeast
11g salt
1 tsp garlic powder
butter to grease pan
Garlic Butter Topping
3 tbsp melted butter
1 tbsp finely minced garlic
Combine the yeast and water in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a bread hook.
Allow to rest 10 minutes for the yeast to dissolve and proof.
Add the flour, butter, oil, salt, and garlic powder and mix on low until combined.
Increase the speed to medium and knead for 5-7 minutes.
Cover, and allow the dough to rise in a warm place until doubled in size – about 90 minutes.
Combine the melted butter and minced garlic.
Punch down the dough, and shape into a disk about 2/3 the size of the pan you intend to bake in.
Cut the disk into 8-12 even wedges.
Grease a cast iron skillet with butter.
Arrange the wedges in the pan, brushing each generously with the garlic butter topping – paying special attention to the sides.
Allow the wedge rolls to proof until puffy – about 30-40 minutes.
Preheat your oven to 375°F.
Pour any remaining garlic butter mixture over the rolls and bake at 375°F until lightly browned.
Allow to cool slightly before serving.
Messy American Italianish Chopped Salad
I’ve made about 100 versions of this salad – of what I think of as pizzeria salad. I didn’t really like salad as a kid – I mean what kid really did – but the chopped, mixed, tossed salads that accompanied paper plates of soccer banquet band fundraiser pastapizzalasagna wasn’t a salad. It was an explosion of dressing delivery crunch spiked with escaped pizza toppings. It was more of a deconstructed pizza on a watery lettuce base than a salad.
And it was glorious.
It took me years to “rediscover” it … even though I know for certain it’s never gone away. But once I did, it became a household staple. There are certain meals for which it’s the perfect accompaniment. And like it’s progenitor, the one serves with red plastic tongs from disposable foil pans set on a folding table off to the side of the heat lamps, it’s almost more of a condiment than a course. The tang, the acidity, the crunch and the hint of spice – it all cuts through the richness of the dishes it accompanies and makes them all that much richer, cheesier, meatier, better.
It's glorious.
1 head iceberg lettuce
1 large tomato
1 cup garlic croutons
½ cup loosely packed thinly sliced red onion
½ cup shredded low moisture mozzarella cheese
¼ cup sliced olives
1 tbsp minced pepperoncini peppers
2 strips bacon
1 recipe Creamy Italian Dressing (below)
Clean, core, and coarsely chop the iceberg lettuce.
Immerse the chopped lettuce in cold water and allow to soak for 30 minutes.
Drain the lettuce and leave in a colander set over a bowl in the refrigerator for another 30 minutes to crisp and dry.
Trim and dice the tomato.
Fry the bacon until crisp, drain on a paper towel, then chop into fine bits.
Add the lettuce, onion, tomato, bacon, olives, minced pepper, and cheese to a large bowl and toss to combine well.
Add the dressing and toss to coat.
Add the croutons just before service and toss one more time to mix.
Creamy Italian Dressing
2 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
2 tsp red wine vinegar
1 clove garlic
1 tsp red pepper flakes
½ tsp dried oregano
½ tsp ground black pepper
½ tsp kosher salt
Peel and trim the garlic.
Add the vinegar to a non-reactive bowl.
Microplane the garlic into the vinegar.
Add the oregano, salt, black pepper, and red pepper flake to the vinegar.
Allow the mixture to sit for 10-15 minutes.
Whisk in the mayonnaise and parmesan cheese.
Pappardelle with Old School Bolognese
I’d originally intended to make a sort of upscaled, fancified, built up form basic principles version of the tin can born and ladle borne bright red tomato sauce that was the t-shirt ruining calling card of every church basement dinner since the beginning of time. But I decided that a hearty meat sauce would serve the same purpose and … well, it would be better. Sure, I could have made a lusciously velvety tomato sauce that perfectly coated handmade spaghetti. I’m sure it would have been good. But that would have been an entirely different thing – whereas somehow this isn’t?
This is a classic Bolognese – at least it’s a classic Bolognese as filtered through the eyes, tastebuds, and experience of a midwestern Scottish-Canadian kid for whom the entirety of his formative experience with Italian food started with the word Pizza and ended with the word Villa.
It’s a rich meat sauce, but there are echoes … faint ones … of that wondrous basement buffet without the fear that that one kid’s gonna trip you while you carry your tray past the cool kids table.
Old School Bolognese
¾ lb ground chuck
½ lb ground pork
1 cup white wine
1 cup chicken or beef stock
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
1 small can tomato paste
1 medium onion
1 small carrot
1 large rib celery
2 cloves garlic
¼ cup finely diced guanciale, or bacon
2 bay leaves
2 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried rosemary leaves
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp kosher salt
½ tsp ground black pepper
2 tbsp heavy cream
Peel, trim, and dice the carrot into 1/8th inch pieces.
Peel, trim, and dice the onion.
Trim, and finely mince the celery.
Peel trim, and finely mince or microplane the garlic.
Add the guanciale or bacon to a large, thick bottomed pot or Dutch oven over medium heat.
Once the guanciale is rendered and beginning to crisp, add the carrot, onion, and celery, and garlic.
Cook - stirring frequently - until the onion is translucent – about 5 minutes.
Add the ground pork and ground beef salt and pepper and stir well to break up the meats.
Add the herbs and bay leaves and cook for 1 minute.
Add the wine and stock – stirring well to further break up the meat into as small of pieces as possible– and bring to a low simmer.
Add the tomatoes and tomato paste, stirring to mix well and break up the paste.
Preheat your oven to 325°F and return the sauce to a simmer before transferring it to the oven.
Cook uncovered in the oven for 2 hours, occasionally scraping the sides of the pot into the sauce and adding small amounts of water or stock if the sauce thickens too much.
Remove the sauce from the oven and return to a low simmer over medium heat.
Add the cream, and stir well, then cook until the cream “disappears”
Serve with broad noodles and top with shaved or shredded parmesan or Romano cheese.
Hand Rolled Pappardelle
3 cups AP flour
4 large eggs
Pinch of salt
Combine eggs and flour in the container of a food processor. Pulse until what looks like a coarse meal or couscous forms.
Turn the meal out onto a board or clean counter and knead until it comes together in a smooth dough – you may need to add small amounts of cool water depending on the size of the eggs.
Shape the dough into a disk, wrap tightly, and allow to rest in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
Roll the dough out into 1/16th in thick sheets, and cut into ½ wide noodles.
Boil the noodles in heavily salted water for 2 minutes.
Serve with Bolognese or other hearty sauces.
There’s No Dessert Here
I didn’t do a dessert this week. In part that’s because the slanderous accusations of one of your fellow readers are accurate: I am, in fact, a dessert coward. But in the case of this menu, there’s only one desert that would be right – and I don’t think I can make it … and truth be told I only like 1/3 of it anyway.
But, if you want the full experience, find your way to your local non-fancy-not-at-the-nice-mall grocery. Somewhere in the back corner you’ll find a freezer with cardboard bricks of frozen dairy products.
Pick up a carton – it has to be the square one to be authentic – of Neapolitan ice cream.
Tear away the waxed cardboard, and set that gloriously cube like loaf of tri colored ice cream on a plate. Cut slices off it – for full effect do this while someone is yelling “you already had some Jimmy, go sit down” – and dive into the flavor/flavors you like most – all while assiduously avoiding the evil toxic ones you don’t.
This is all so WONDERFUL!!!
I really want the Pasta Ragu right now.
As for the ice cream block of 3 colors.
I’ll go for some gelato instead !!