If we can cook it, you can cook it!

Category: Pasta Dishes

Orecchiette with Buttermilk, Peas and Pistachios from Bon Appetit

Orecchiette with Buttermilk, Peas and Pistachios from Bon Appetit

When it comes to Buttermilk, I can come up with three recipes that require it: Waffles, Fried Chicken and Biscuits.  Buttermilk comes in quarts. The only recipe of the three that requires that much Buttermilk is perhaps the chicken marinade which is used to tenderize…

Date Night Idea:  Happy Pasta Hour at one of the city’s best restaurants…

Date Night Idea: Happy Pasta Hour at one of the city’s best restaurants…

Boulud Sud’s Happy Pasta Hour Is About Both Food and Fun Apr 16, 2018 | 12:01 pm By Monte Mathews Staff Writer 5 pastas are served nightly for half price Photo by Georgina Salter One of five pastas on offer every night, Rigatoni alla Carbonara…

Weeknight Spaghetti and Meatballs: Beef and Pork Meatballs in Tomato Fennel Sauce

Weeknight Spaghetti and Meatballs: Beef and Pork Meatballs in Tomato Fennel Sauce

Andrew’s sister Lauren and I have an ongoing contest to find people who comment on a recipe they’ve so radically altered it bears no resemblance to the original. Despite having tinkered with the ingredients, the quantities, the cooking time until the recipe is unrecognizable, you’d…

Pasta alla Puttanesca with (or without) Shrimp

Pasta alla Puttanesca with (or without) Shrimp

I am making a concerted effort to put some great vegetarian recipes together for all kinds of reasons—health, being eco-friendly and just giving us all more options for terrific meals.  And there’s another great reason to cook this right now.  It’s Lent!  Aside from its…

Sam Sifton’s Great South Bay Duck Ragù inspired by Chef Dave Pasternack

Sam Sifton’s Great South Bay Duck Ragù inspired by Chef Dave Pasternack

Sam Sifton is the Food Editor at The New York Times.  If you aren’t a subscriber, you’d be astonished at his weekly output.  Sometimes it feels as if his emails come hourly. Daily he extolls the virtue of various recipes that have appeared in the…

Orecchiette with Sausage and Green Vegetables

Orecchiette with Sausage and Green Vegetables

I sometimes think I should have called Chewing The Fat “Chewing the Pasta”.  I have such fondness for pasta that I make it on a weekly basis.  I am well aware of how many people eschew its carbohydrates. Sorry, they’re missing one of life’s great…

Fettucine with Asparagus, Peas and Alaskan Smoked Salmon

Fettucine with Asparagus, Peas and Alaskan Smoked Salmon

Florence Fabricant I started out with a recipe for this dish from Florence Fabricant of the New York Times.  Ms. Fabricant, whom I have had the pleasure of meeting, is a food and wine writer who contributes to the Times weekly with her columns “Front…

Shrimp with Spicy Tomato Sauce and Strozzapreti

Shrimp with Spicy Tomato Sauce and Strozzapreti

What cook doesn’t love Shrimp?  They are such an obliging partner in the kitchen. They not only cook in all of three minutes but they turn pink and opaque to tell you they’re done.  They’re wildly popular—in fact, they’re by far the most popular of…

Ina Garten’s Rigatoni with Sausage and Fennel

Ina Garten’s Rigatoni with Sausage and Fennel

Serve it straight from the pot on Night One… Or keep it refrigerated overnight and pop it in the oven for 20 minutes on Day 2. On more than one winter night at our house, pasta dishes have great appeal.  Hearty and comforting, they’re hard…

The World’s Fastest Pasta Sauce? Chorizo "Bolognese" with Buffalo Mozzarella adapted from Donna Hay

The World’s Fastest Pasta Sauce? Chorizo "Bolognese" with Buffalo Mozzarella adapted from Donna Hay

     A classic Bolognese sauce takes hours on the stove where the sweetness of tomatoes, onions, celery, and carrots blend with beef, and pork to come together in one of Italy’s most treasured sauces.  In Italian American houses, it is called “Sunday Sauce” because the…

Springtime in a Bowl: Orecchiette with Sausage, Peas, Mint and Burrata

Springtime in a Bowl: Orecchiette with Sausage, Peas, Mint and Burrata

Last week, I went all the way back into the archives for Chewing the Fat.  I was astonished to see that an Orecchiette recipe that I posted very early on in the life of the blog has had precisely 40 visits. That is about 1/10th…

Vegetarian Lasagna adapted from Saveur’s “New Comfort Food”

Vegetarian Lasagna adapted from Saveur’s “New Comfort Food”

A few years ago, I got a call from a guest who was about two hours away from coming to dinner.  He’d called to tell me that he and his new wife had become vegetarian.   Quite frankly, my initial impulse was to continue cooking the…