A Pantry Beyond Metaphysical Dissection
I woke up in the middle of the night last night and saw plastic bottles of milk lining ever-shifting aisles of supermarkets. The vision melted like soft cheese and its oozing mounds were filled by the udders of a thousand cows, where strapped to them were machines, as endless as the aisles, extracting the product that was to sit there in all those plastic bottles.
“My god, we’ve mass enslaved animals!” I thought. Then I went back to sleep.
I have these twilight moments sometimes where I feel things a little differently to usual. I most particularly remember one such time waking up on a plane and being absorbed by the absurdity of sex. For those who’d like a reminder on what it is; one person puts one part of themselves inside another person and rubs it around somewhat, resulting in such strong feelings that it could be argued most acts of man and woman are at heart concerned with getting a bit of it.
Yet in my moment of semi-conscious candour upon the plane, these rubbed parts in question lost any association with their physical sensations, and I felt the whole thing might as well be as if we were all so obsessed with twirling a finger round in somebody’s ear.
Though I know it is of course not absurd. There’s a logic to it all. We’re machines programmed by genes who have never forgotten that reproduction lies core to their success. To attach to these critical rubbing bits anything less than longing, pleasure and a singular focus would be rookie error number one, and any neglectful genes that failed to do so were lost to history a long time back.
On the plane I rub my eyes and with each moment of awakening, I feel things more as my physiology has instructed me. The thoughts of sex slowly shift from the surreal to the appeal, just as today the milk bottles on the shelf become things that taste good and so that I should buy and drink. I hoodwink my make-up for a moment, like a robot whose software has still not fully booted, though it’s always only a moment (and to be honest, thank god!).
But… what’s this got to do with pasta? you ask. Good question, I know you followers of Sam’s Good Stuff to be excellent critics of food writing literature, so I’d really expect no less than such a fine question.
I have a pasta I like to cook that is a joy from the start, but which benefits greatly from the added pleasure in knowing it to have a second round. On first play you look at your chopping board and it’s surrounded by the Italian pantry’s usual suspects; capers, tinned fish, dried chillies, breadcrumbs, parsley… and the company you’ve suddenly acquired makes it clear that you are onto a good thing.
You act with frugality, keeping aside the olive oil the sardines were kept in and the last of the crumbs. These will make a treat for the chef later, a pasta for one, when they mix simply with a little garlic. You sleep happy, knowing the matter of next day’s lunch is settled and already feeling the unique appreciation for a meal that cannot be fetched from a shelf and instead only acquired in the aftermath of another.
We could make the same case for absurdity in this obsessing over spaghetti too. We could ask if it is all not just the chewing of solids between teeth, the ingestion of one form of matter before the egestion of another. We could then detail the role of our genes in the doling out of the pleasures and shocks of taste, which let us know what to seek more of and what to avoid.
Yet I’ve never had to. If I’ve ever woken in the night thinking to my pantry, I’ve strangely never felt anything but hunger.
Pasta With A Tin Of Sardines
This is a quick fix born from the pantry, but one so deeply good that it makes you question why you go to the lengths of keeping your fridge filled with fresh things each week at all.
An important note concerning the breadcrumbs: these should be added in two phases, once while the sauce is mixed with the pasta creating that puffed texture only obtained when something once crisp is wetted, and then again on top at the end to create crunch and contrast.
Ingredients for 2 people
Some slightly stale bread (white preferably)
1 tin of sardines
1 medium onion, sliced
250g pasta
1 1/2 tablespoons of capers
Extra virgin Olive oil
Parsley
Dried chilli (optional)
Lemon (optional)
On lowest heat, pour olive oil onto a 10 inch pan until the surface is nicely covered. Slice your onions thinly lengthways and mix them into the oil with a good pinch of salt and a sprinkle of dried chilli if using. Put a lid on and leave for anywhere between 15 minutes and an hour (I often do this at some point in the morning and just walk away and forget about it amid meetings).
In the meantime prepare the breadcrumbs by pulsing the bread in a blender and then frying in a few tablespoons of olive oil on medium heat until they become golden and crispy, and removing them promptly from the pan at this point lest they go too far and burn.
When the onions are truly soft and collapsed (and I mean truly soft, do not be tempted to cheat here), take the lid off and add the capers to the pan. Have some boiling water ready for the pasta and drop it in with a generous amount of salt. When the pasta is almost cooked, extract the sardines from the tin (but reserve the tin with the remaining oil for the next dish) and add to the bed of onions and capers, letting them nestle there undisturbed until the pasta is ready
Add the pasta to the pan (I perform this transfer directly by using tongs, rather than draining the pasta through a sieve; this way you keep the pasta water) with a few tablespoons of pasta water and a handful of chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon. Run a fistful of breadcrumbs through and mix it all thoroughly, but gently, trying not to break the sardines up so much that they entirely disintegrate. Add a little more pasta water if it does not quite look wet enough, but do not add so much that you drown it all.
Serve immediately with some more breadcrumbs sprinkled on top of each plate.
Pasta With Sardine Oil
Having made sure to reserve the oil from the sardines and whatever breadcrumbs are left over (these will keep in a jar in the fridge for weeks), you may move onto your private treat.
Ingredients for 1
Sardine oil
A nob of butter?
A little more olive oil?
1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced or mashed or chopped finely
100g spaghetti
breadcrumbs
parsley, dried chilli, lemon, anchovies/fish sauce (all optional)
Pour the olive oil from the sardines with whatever little scraps of fish remain into a pan on low heat. If it looks a little lacking in your eyes, top up with a nob of butter or more oil. Add in the garlic and some dried chilli if so inclined and maybe even an anchovy or two if the mood suits and let it stew on low, low heat.
In meantime boil your spaghetti. While cooking the pasta if the garlic looks like it will start burning, add a half ladle of pasta water into the pan.
There’s now two methods, the simple way is just to cook the pasta til al dente and then drain it and add it to the pan with a couple of spoons of pasta water and cook all together a minute.
The slightly more technical route then achieves more emulsion. When the pasta is extremely al dente (i.e. still needs another two/three minutes of cooking left), using tongs transfer the pasta into the pan with the flavoursome oil. This way the pan with the pasta water remains still on the hob bubbling away.
Add a ladle of pasta water to the pan with the pasta and oil and turn the heat up to medium-high. Let the pasta release starch into the remaining liquid until the oil and water form an emulsion. This last bit is almost like cooking a risotto, where you add more pasta water bit by bit, waiting until the liquid has concentrated into a glossy coating and the pasta is cooked.
Whichever path you take, finish the dish with the extras that you have on hand and fit your fancy; a handful of parsley, a squeeze of lemon, a squirt of fish sauce (if you didn’t bother to add anchovies earlier, or devil be damned - even if you did). Breadcrumbs should then be applied as before.
Serve immediately and in manner most clandestine, this treat belongs to you alone and if others get whiff, you will undoubtedly be bound to share.
Rarely in the annals of food writing have we seen the species doing the writing (and eating) subject to the same wondrous attention as the species being consumed. An overdue and important correction.