Recent Reading, Multimedia Edition

What the hell happens after you click submit? Radiolab makes a masterful edit of Mac McClelland's amazing Mother Jones story of being a picker in a giant fulfillment warehouse. Hat tip Betsy Bruner.

Inside the world's largest pasta maker.

A leathermaker gives a lesson on how to knock off his own product. A sly way to advertise., hat tip Tom Root.

Recent reading

Japan gets my honorary Office Space award for this, a gigantic, totally weird national competition for best office phone answerer. Hat tip to Val.

A restaurant that sells food past its expiration date? This might just have a chance. An ex president of Trader Joe's is starting a very different kind of food experiment. 

Annie's Mac and Cheese is everywhere. It sells itself as the slightly-better-for-you version of boxed mac and cheese. Is it? Who knows. What's crazy is the "sauce" is based on cheese popcorn—her ex-husband invented Smartfood.  Annie essentially turned Smartfood's topping into Mac and Cheese, convinced everyone it was healthy, sold stock to their customers, then got very, very rich. Welcome to the new "food" business.

Snowstorm Pasta

Late work night pasta with fettuccine, mackerel, capers, salt cured lime, a dollop of tomato sauce, three leftover artichokes, some beans and parsley and lemon zest. Follows all the Leftovers Pasta Rules. Looks ugly at first, then gets better.

Is fresh pasta better than dried?

 Bronze spaghetti dies at Rustichella.

Fresh or dried pasta, which is better? 

Frankly, I don’t know if this is a debate or not. If it is I’m sure it ranks low on the scale of disputes, somewhere far beneath the controversy over whether water should be served with or without ice. Still, it is a question that comes up — and almost always I find that folks assume fresh pasta is better. That if you had the time and wherewithal you should use fresh pasta over dried 100% of the time. Maybe that's because it’s more work to make (if you make the pasta at home). Maybe it’s because fresh pasta is more fragile, more perishable and therefore more precious. Maybe it’s because dried seems more industrial, more like a commodity and can sell for so little. 

Whatever the story behind the myth, it’s not true. Fresh pasta is not better than dried. It’s just different. There are many times when dried pasta is preferable. Use dried pasta when you want to enjoy noodles with a lot of texture and flavor; use fresh when you want a softer, subtler dish. 

Dried and fresh pasta are made very differently, hence the different results and different uses in the kitchen. Traditional dried pasta is made by extruding durum semolina dough through bronze dies. It’s dried at relatively low temperatures for a couple days. The bronze-die extrusion leaves the pasta with a rough hewn texture. You can feel it in your mouth and the sauce really grips to it. The slow drying ferments the flour a bit. It transforms the dough from tasting like raw flour to something more like bread. 

In contrast, fresh pasta is usually rolled and cut and there is no fermentation. The texture is much softer, smoother and the flavor is less intense, more like flour. 

It’s important to note when I talk about dried pasta I’m not talking about any old dried pasta. There are only a handful of companies that do dried pasta right. (My two favorites are Martelli and Rustichella.) Most dried pasta is industrially made with exasperating shortcuts that leave it tasting unexceptional. In particular, they employ hot, short drying times so there is no transformation of the dough’s flavor. It tastes like flour. Worse, it’s flour with a burnt edge to the flavor. The extra hot ovens singe the surface in a way Martelli and Rustichella’s do not. To see what I mean taste a piece of uncooked commercially made De Cecco pasta (one of the better industrial companies) and Martelli spaghetti next to each other. The flavor is remarkably different. 

At home I almost exclusively use dried pasta. The dishes I like to cook are robust like crisper box pasta and spaghetti with sardines, arugula and lemon. My regular favorite, which is too simple to even post as its own recipe, is Rustichella Fettucine with Il Mongetto’s plain tomato sauce with a tin of Ortiz's line caught tuna tipped in, oil and all.

Four Leftover Pasta Tips

It's not hard to make leftovers into an ultra-tasty pasta dish. If you have anything from a couple odds and ends to a large, frightening buffet lurking in your crisper—it doesn't matter. Last night I made leftovers pasta (above) with so many different things it looked like my refrigerator threw up. But it tasted fantastic. 

I've figured out four simple techniques that help make it taste great.

1. Have a Fat Strategy

If you've got a bit of hamburger or bacon that's headed for the dish, cook it first and use the fat for the rest of the cooking. Same goes for an old sausage or salami end. It doesn't matter what kind of fat you use, just think about how to get it in the dish at the beginning. Last night I had an old jar of peppers that were packed in olive oil. The peppers were long gone. I kept the jar with the oil; it's perfect for this kind of dish. Also, don't skimp on the fat. Its going to be the vessel for the flavor and the source of the mouth-filling texture.

2. Think About Salt in Things, Not On Things

I tend to cook on the saltier side but for this dish I didn't add any salt directly to it. Instead I added things that had some salt in them. This time they were capers, salt-cured limes and harissa. As for the pasta water, it should be salty like the sea. To learn how much to salt your water eat a noodle straight out of the water when it's almost done cooking. It should taste seasoned.

3. Re-use the Pasta Water

It took me forever to figure out that this was the key to making great pasta dishes (that weren't topped with tomato sauce). Don't throw out the water, please! Use it in the sauce. It makes a huge difference.

4. Don't Finish Cooking Pasta in the Water

Finish it in the sauce. If the pasta is not yet al dente it's still hungry for liquid. Switch it from the pot of water to your sauce and it'll soak up sauce, not water—and you'll have a more flavorful dish.

For leftover pasta, the order I work goes like this:

1. Set the water to boil.
2. Put a big skillet on the burner and start adding things: meats/fat first, then aromatics like garlic, onion, pastes like harissa. Maybe a little bit of leftover sauce—whatever sauce I have. More leftovers next, especially ones that need longer cooking. Spices, too, like a stem of some old herb or a chile pepper. Cook on low, don't worry about stirring too much.
3. When the water boils add a small handful of salt and the pasta. When the pasta is not quite done, strain it and pour a half inch of the water in the skillet simmering the sauce. Add the pasta to the skillet. Save the remaining water. Cook on high heat till the pasta is done. Add more pasta water if it starts getting dry. You want the pasta to be wet, the water will make the sauce.
4. At the very end I may add things that barely need cooking. Last night it was some frozen peas, corn and a mound of mangy arugula, all added just at the end, stirred and poured out into a bowl.
5. I usually finish with freshly ground black pepper, Marash pepper and a squeeze of lemon.

Practice this a half dozen times and I guarantee your homemade leftovers pasta will taste better than almost any pasta dish you can eat in a restaurant. It certainly helps to use a great noodles like Rustichella or Martelli. If you're going to spend some money, do it there.

More pasta cooking details.

Two Recipes for Fava Beans

Fava beans are coming in season. Fresh, they're delicious, but they're also a pain in the ass. You've got to shell them — twice. First, from their large pods (pictured above). Secondly, from their individual wrappers after boiling for about five minutes in salted water.

Favas with Olive Oil

Start with four pounds of favas in their pods and you're left with a half pound of edible beans if you're lucky. Is it worth it? Whether the labor is what you want to spend your evening doing is a personal choice. But for me, spring favas, just boiled, glowing green, warm as lips, swimming in a glossy olive oil with a cover of coarse sea salt are totally worth it. It's not a dish I make often. But  the first time each year is a bright sign of spring. I know the mud is receding and the earth will soon be littered with grass.

Fresh favas also go well in pasta. Here's a dish I recently made with favas, spring peas and Martelli maccheroni. It's worth mentioning since it incorporates a lot of good things you find at their best in spring. 

Tender Young Thing Pasta

Chop some fresh mild sausage into small bites (I like one my butcher makes with fennel seeds). Brown it in a deep skillet, then put the cooked pasta and some of its pasta water in the pan. Add the favas and fresh spring peas (already parboiled very al dente), then a few spoons of ricotta. Stir. Add fresh young arugula and pea shoot leaves, some freshly grated lemon zest. A couple turns of the spoon and count to one hundred and it's done. Top it off with more ricotta dollops, freshly grated black pepper and Parmigiano-Reggiano and a small handful of shredded mint leaves. If you are able to nab some spring morels they'd also be welcome. I guess pretty much any tender young thing is fine to add.

Spring cooking like this can be fussy, a lot of work. There's lots of shelling and an annoying tangle of trimming since arugula and shoots are very stemmy at this time of year. But do the work and, with it, know you've broken winter's back for good.

Crisper Box Pasta

This is an easy dish I make to use up leftovers. Scour your fridge for vegetables. It doesn't matter what condition they're in. If they're edible they can make it into this dish.

The version I made today had

Leftover blanched asparagus, cut into two inch pieces

Leftover blanched broccolini, cut into two inch pieces

Half a nasty old carrot, chopped into dime size pieces

Half a limp stick of celery, chopped into thick fingernail wedges

Corn, cut straight off the cob

Fresh peas

A pickled artichoke, cut into small pieces, stem and all

You get the idea — anything works. 

The basic technique

Boil pasta in heavily salted water (see my pasta cooking tips here) till it's almost done — you'll finish it later in the skillet. What shape of pasta? As a general rule, if you have chunky pasta sauce like this, short shaped pasta is best, but don't worry. Here I've cooked it with Rustichella Spaghetti that I broke in three parts.

Meanwhile, sweat some finely chopped onion and garlic in extra virgin olive oil in a big skillet.

Add all the chopped vegetables to the skillet and warm them. Season with salt, black pepper, and some red pepper like Marash Turkish red pepper flakes.

When the pasta is done save a glass of pasta water then strain the noodles.

Dump the strained pasta into the pan with vegetables.

Add the pasta water, about a cup or so for two people, stir. Don't worry if you add to much, it will evaporate. 

Add some grated cheese like Comté or Parmigiano-Reggiano or a few dollops of fresh cheese like Zingerman's cream cheese.

Serve topped with some fresh parsley or cilantro leaves if you have them, a grinding of black pepper, and a squeeze of lemon for sure.