Use Your Noodles!

I live to serve my little vegetarian.

And I'm getting good at it.

You won't even miss the meat here.

I had assorted vegetables in the fridge.

I had linguini in the pantry (artisanal at that).

And I had the makings of a highly flavorful sauce.

For the noodles:

Cook linguini according to package directions.

You want al dente.

And save some of the pasta water.

For the sauce:

2 tsp sesame oil

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 1-inch cube fresh ginger, minced and juiced

(I run mine through a garlic press, scraping the pulp into the pan.)

1 shallot, minced

3 TB sriracha suace

1/4 cup Tamari sauce

1 TB rice vinegar

2 tsp sugar

2 TB mirin

1 TB cornstarch 

 1 cup vegetable stock

In a small saucepan, heat sesame oil over medium heat.

Add in garlic, ginger, and scallion

and cook, stirring for about a minute.

Add in sriracha, Tamari, vinegar, sugar, and mirin.

Dissolve cornstarch in a little of the stock

and pour into the pan.

Cook, stirring, until thickened,

then gradually stir in the rest of the stock.

Heat through and let thicken.

For the vegetables:

The vegetables here are up to you.

I happened to have broccoli, zucchini, and snow peas,

so that's what I used.

 You could go with carrots, bok choy, celery, squash,

to name a few.

Cut broccoli into florets and cube zucchini.

Trim snow peas.

In a medium skillet over medium high heat,

 heat about 2 TB sesame oil.

Add in the broccoli and cook, stirring,

about 2 minutes.

Add in zucchini and snow peas

and cook another minute, stirring.

Salt to taste.

For the assembly:

Add the linguine (with a little of the pasta water)

to the vegetables.

Pour in the sauce and heat through.

Serve with a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds.

Now, about that pasta.

 I’ve made my own pasta for years.  I don’t like boxed pasta.  It tastes like the box – like cardboard.  It’s amazing how four simple ingredients – flour, water, eggs, and salt – can somehow combine at home and then at a factory and produce two entirely different results.  That said, let me introduce you artisanal pastas.  I used the imported artisan Italian pasta from Fresh Market.  It is vastly superior to domestic, factory-processed pasta.  This pasta is not made by individual artisans by hand, but it is made in small batches in a semi-mechanized way using high-quality ingredients.  In the manufacturing process, the pasta is extruded through bronze dies, as opposed to the modern, faster, and cheaper method of using slick Teflon plates. Bronze die-cut pasta produces a pasta with a more textured, rougher finish, making the pasta superior at gripping the sauce. The pasta is also very slowly dried, again resulting in a coarser surface to which the sauce can better adhere. All this gives the pasta a more complex flavor.   One is able to cook the imported pasta to that perfect degree of toothy tenderness – al dente.  In addition, the pasta swells considerably, meaning it will go farther, pound for pound, than domestic, American-made pasta.  Plus, there’s the flavor!

When you cook pasta, if you’ve been straining it into a colander and letting the pasta water go down the drain, then you’ve been doing it wrong.  Stop immediately!  Save that liquid gold.  By liquid gold, I mean the pasta water.  Do not drain the water into the sink.  Save that starchy, salty, cloudy liquid.  When you cook your pasta, stop just short of al dente.  Add a bit of the pasta liquid to the sauce in which you’ll be finishing off your pasta and it will combine luxuriously to create a silky, smooth emulsification.  The starch in the water allows the pasta to absorb the sauce as it finishes cooking, infusing the pasta with flavor.  It’s a beautiful marriage between the noodles and sauce - a sauce that your pasta will eat up.

This was delightful.

Got a thumbs up from my little vegetarian,

so Rosie is happy.

Enjoy!