![]() ![]() It’s lighter on the palate, lighter in taste so it won’t overpower the sauce you just slaved over, but still gives that sexy wet glisten to final dish.Īdam, Try some aromatics in the pasta water (bay works really well), a cup or so of GOOD stock (which one depends on the recipe), a small (1/2 to 1 tbl) knob of butter to the hot pasta (not the sauce, which I do as well, but thats a very “restauranty” thing) and the quality of ingredients. Considering that I use pure olive oil as a pasta topper not extra virgin. Finally I’m a fan of the sauce being the sauce and not adding a bunch of stuff to it at the end which just makes it more palatable and less boring, but not necessarily better. This can only be ascertained through milage with the recipes and the ingredients and their suppliers. thing is some ingredients start out great, cook well and are still good, and by the time we’ve cooked the living crap out of them and we’re ready to eat, they’re gone, flavor-wise. wait! Don’t hang up! I don’t just mean fresh and good from a good purveyor, but ones that are fresh and good AND have been used repeatedly in the recipe. Maybe you should take up knitting?Īdam, Try some aromatics in the pasta water (bay works really well), a cup or so of GOOD stock (which one depends on the recipe), a knob of butter to the hot pasta (not the sauce, which is do as well, but thats a very “restauranty” thing) and the quality of ingredients. If it still tastes bland, you must’ve done something really wrong. How did we do? Use any of the ingredients in steps 1 through 5 to fix whatever problems your pasta has. ![]() The cold olive oil provides an uncooked fruity olive oil finish to what should be, by now, a very delicious pasta. Yes, that last step may seem strange but it’s a VERY Italian thing to do as I’ve seen Mario do it on TV, I’ve read Marcella Hazan’s instructions to do that and then, of course, Dominic DeMarco does it to the pizza at Di Fara. Sprinkle some red pepper flakes over it.ĥ. The rest of the steps will just help with bumping up the flavor.Ĥ. That’s key for pasta rehab: taste taste taste after each step! How does it taste now with the cheese? Less bland? Need more salt? After steps 1 and 2, salinity should not be an issue. So I grate a big bowl full of cheese and then scatter the cheese over the pasta while it’s still in the pan, stir it through and taste. I say into a bowl because if you do it directly over the pasta, it’ll quickly melt and you’ll forget how much you added. Grate lots of Parmesan or Pecorino into a bowl. So a light sprinkling, a stir and taste: better? Don’t overdo it, especially if you’re going to add cheese.Ģ. ![]() So if you add too much salt here, there’s no going back. At this point, there should already be salt in the pasta (from the cooking water) and in the sauce itself because, before you added the pasta, you properly salted it. Here’s what you do to make bland pasta better:ġ. Some might’ve fallen on their knees and screamed out, “Why!! Why, God, why!?” and then broke out into “Why God Why” from Miss Saigon but not me. So I’ve had this experience before: the pasta’s in the pot boiling away (in properly salted water) and you’re making the sauce and you taste the sauce and it tastes pretty excellent and then you take the pasta out just before it’s done to finish cooking in the sauce (an essential step, I think, so the pasta and sauce are united as one) and then once you’ve turned the heat up and let the liquid all evaporate (when the pasta and sauce are united as one, you should be able to drag a wooden spoon across the bottom of the saute pan and just see the bottom of the pan) you taste and it’s pretty bland. I don’t blame him for this pasta being bland, but–strangely enough–I do blame him for the Arab-Israeli conflict. The recipe (which you can read here) came from Michael Chiarello who is that suave-looking guy on the Food Network. ![]() The corn, as I should’ve guessed this time of year, wasn’t very sweet (even though it was advertised as sweet corn). Two ingredients came from the farmer’s market: fresh corn and basil. Before I put that pasta through Amateur Gourmet Pasta Rehab, it was a bland, boring mess. The pasta you see above may call to you and cause you to eat your computer screen, but don’t be fooled. ![]()
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