How to Eat (28 page)

Serves 2.

I see in my notes I’ve called this Sunday Night Chicken Noodle, and it’s true I do often cook this, or a version of it, on Sunday nights. But if I do, I almost certainly have to have a rerun of it on Monday evening. You can use chicken bouillon cubes, the best you can buy, to make the stock for this.

SUNDAY NIGHT CHICKEN NOODLE

4 tablespoons sake

3 tablespoons mirin

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 fat garlic clove crushed with flat
of knife

1 dried red chili pepper

1 chicken cutlet (about 6 ounces), cut diagonally into ¼-inch strips

4 ounces fresh noodles

handful choi sum or other Asian green

2 cups chicken stock

1 tablespoon vegetable oil plus few drops sesame oil

1 tablespoon chopped coriander

Mix the sake, mirin, soy sauce, garlic, and chili in a bowl. Add the chicken and coat with this marinade. Leave for an hour.

Cook the noodles in boiling salted water and throw in the choi sum during the last 2 minutes of cooking. Drain. Heat up the stock.

Into a hot wok or frying pan pour the oils and, when they in turn are hot, throw
in the pieces of chicken and toss about till cooked, about 3 minutes. Pour over the marinade and, when it’s bubbled nearly away and the chicken is glossy and dark, put the noodles in a bowl, pour the stock over them, and top with the pieces of wok-bronzed chicken. Sprinkle over the coriander and eat.

Serves 1.

SPAGHETTI AGLIO OLIO

Pasta is inevitably, these days, what one eats just in the normal run of things in the evening. You don’t need a recipe for this any more than you do for bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches, but this is not meant to be a manual to cook from so much as a prompt or companion guide to eating. These, then, are suggestions based on a presumption of interest rather than barked instructions to be carried out to the patronizing letter. At home, alone, especially if I’ve been working late, I make a vast bowl of spaghetti aglio olio (sometimes, peperoncino): just spaghetti, or spaghettini, turned in some olive oil, in which some fat cloves of garlic have been turned till golden and then discarded, with maybe a sprinkling of dried red chili pepper. A glass of cold beer is wonderful with it. If you are so exhausted you want an even easier version, then I suggest you buy a bottle of garlic-infused olive oil and use it to make the dish.

LINGUINE WITH BACON

This is a particularly good, particularly low-effort supper. Get in from work. Run your bath. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Put some bacon slices cut into ¼-inch strips on a baking tray with a few cloves of garlic, peeled and minced, thrown over. Drizzle with about 1 tablespoon olive oil. Put the water for the pasta on to boil and put the tray of garlic-strewn bacon in the oven. When the water’s boiling, add salt and throw in the pasta—linguine or spaghetti—and run up to your bath, taking with you the timer, set for 10 minutes (the pasta should take about 12 minutes). When the timer goes off, rush down in your towel, taste the pasta and, when it’s ready, drain it, reserving a cup of the water. Take the cooked bacon out of the oven and toss with the pasta, adding a drop or two of the cooking water if you think it needs lubrication. Decant into a bowl and, if you like, take it back up to the bath with you.

SPAGHETTI CARBONARA

This is my favorite—along with all my other favorites. I love the buttery, eggy creaminess of the sauce, saltily spiked with hot cubed pancetta—it’s comforting, but not in a sofa-bound kind of way. It feels like proper dinner, only it takes hardly any time to cook. This is my most regular dinner for two; I keep, at all times, the wherewithal to make it in the house. You can add heavy cream to the egg-and-cheese mixture if you want—a couple of tablespoons, but then use 2 yolks only, rather than one yolk and one whole egg—but this takes it away from being something one can get together with ingredients at hand. On this ease-of-assembly principle, do by all means substitute 3 or 4 slices of bacon, cut into strips, for the pancetta. But it’s not so hard to buy several 4-ounce chunks of pancetta at one time and just bag them up and freeze them separately; this, really, is what I’d advise.

½ pound spaghetti

4 ounces pancetta, cut into ¼-inch dice or in ¼-inch strips

2 teaspoons olive oil

4 tablespoons vermouth or white wine

1 egg yolk

1 whole egg

¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan

freshly milled black pepper

whole nutmeg

1 generous tablespoon unsalted butter

Put some water on and, when it’s boiling, add a decent amount of salt and then, when it’s boiling again, the pasta. Italians say the water pasta cooks in should be as salty as the Mediterranean. Put the pancetta in a frying pan with the oil on medium to high and fry for about 5 minutes, maybe more, until it is beginning to crisp. Throw in the vermouth and let it bubble away for about 3 minutes until you have about 2 teaspoons or so of syrupy wine-infested bacon fat. Remove from the heat, unless you have so brilliantly timed it that the egg mixture is prepared and the pasta cooked.

For the egg mixture, simply beat the yolk, the whole egg, and cheese. Season with the pepper, grate in some nutmeg to taste (the pancetta or bacon and the cheese should provide enough salt), and mix with a fork. When the pasta’s ready, quickly put the pancetta pan back on the heat, adding the butter as you do so. Give the pasta a good shake in the colander (but mind it isn’t too drained) and then turn it into the hot pan. Turn it with a spatula and a wooden spoon, or whatever works for you, and then when it’s all covered and any excess liquid absorbed, turn off the heat (take the pan away from the burner if your stove’s electric), pour the egg mixture over the bacony pasta, and quickly and thoroughly turn the pasta so that it’s all covered in the sauce. Be patient; whatever you do, don’t turn the heat back on or you’ll have scrambled eggs. In time, the hot pasta along with the residual heat of the pan will set the eggs to form a thickly creamy sauce that binds and clings lightly to each strand of pasta.

This makes two platefuls; it’s up to you whether you conclude this is enough for one or two of you. I incline toward two for lunch and one for dinner.

PASTA WITH BUTTER AND BOUILLON CUBE JUICES

The Italians do a wonderful pasta sauce that is really just the meat juices left in the roasting pan after their particularly flavorsome way of cooking what they call
rosbif.
They make it with the rosemary-spiked juices left from a roast chicken, too, and you can adapt this to the last-minute, pantry school of cookery by melting part of a crumbled bouillon cube in some rosemary-flecked butter. Again, I like linguine here, but spaghetti’s good, too.

While about ¼ pound of pasta is cooking—I’m taking it you’re eating this alone, but just double for two of you—melt 2 tablespoons butter in a saucepan and add 1 teaspoon olive oil and 2 peeled garlic cloves, crushed with the flat of a knife. When the butter starts fizzing, throw in the very finely chopped leaves from a finger-length sprig of rosemary. When the cloves of garlic turn brown, remove them and in their place crumble in about half a meat or chicken bouillon cube, preferably Italian. Turn in the pan, adding another dollop of butter, and then add 1 tablespoon white wine or vermouth and 1 tablespoon water and carry on cooking for a minute or so before spooning in another nut of butter.

When the pasta’s ready, drain it, reserving a small cupful of water. Toss the pasta in the stock sauce, adding some of the water if the pasta absorbs too much of the liquid too fast. Grate over some Parmesan and eat.

PASTA WITH UNPESTOED PESTO

In summer, when you might consider eating outside, make a large bowl, just for the two of you, of linguine with what I think of as pesto in its discrete parts: we’re talking culinary deconstruction here. While the pasta’s cooking, pour some preferably Ligurian olive oil into a large frying pan and throw in some peeled cloves of garlic. Cook over gentle heat until the garlic colors and its scent wafts upward. Remove the cloves from the pan and the pan from the heat. Roughly tear up or shred a mound of basil leaves, set aside, and, in a second dry frying pan, toast a handful or so of pine nuts. When the pasta’s ready, drain it, toss it in the garlic-infused olive oil, then transfer to a warm bowl. Grate over some Parmesan, then, using a vegetable peeler, shave in some pecorino (and, frankly, it doesn’t matter if you use Parmesan for both grating and shaving; who wouldn’t, really?) and sprinkle with the toasted pine nuts. Toss well, throw over all but a small handful of the basil leaves, and turn again. Grate a little more cheese over and sprinkle with the remaining shredded basil leaves. Leave the bottle of oil within reach.

Mostly, when I’m cooking some pasta for myself I want it to take as little time as possible. But I don’t mind that the recipe that follows is, well, not laborious, but time-consuming. I just love it. It’s a version of the Venetian bigoli in salsa, the salsa in question being a pungent, long-cooked, almost emulsified sauce of onions and anchovies. Bigoli are the only pasta with an excuse for being whole wheat—that’s how they are traditionally made. I made this the first time, though, to use up some spelt pasta—pasta made with farro—I had. I’d been writing a piece for
Vogue
on farro and had been sent, as part of the requested consignment, some pasta made with this grain. I tried it once and loathed it. Then it occurred to me that with a heartier sauce, something with real depth to it, it might work. I tried this and was transported, converted. I’ve made it since many times with ordinary spaghetti—which works fine—and you can use any whole-wheat version of pasta. And any long, hollow pasta, such as perciatelli or bucatini (in effect, non-wholewheat bigoli) is wonderful here. If you’re intent on locating spaghetti di farro, turn to page 461 for a source.

PASTA WITH ANCHOVY SAUCE

My mother always soaked anchovies in milk, just as she did kidneys and chicken livers; therefore, so do I. The inclusion of Marsala is a non-Venetian innovation, but its dry, deep mellowness works well with the fierce saltiness of the anchovies.

What makes this ideal for me for eating alone is that I don’t need to worry about any other person’s tiresomeness about anchovies.

6 anchovy fillets in olive oil

4 tablespoons milk plus more,
if needed

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, sliced very finely (use a processor, if possible)

2 tablespoons Marsala

4 ounces regular or whole-wheat long or shaped dry pasta (see above)

2 heaping tablespoons chopped parsley

Wipe the anchovies with a paper towel, put them in a small dish—a ramekin, say—and cover with some of the milk; about 2 tablespoons should do it. In a heavy-bottomed frying pan, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil and then add the onion. Cook uncovered over low heat for about 5 minutes, then add the Marsala and cook for about 30 minutes, till you have a soft, golden, oniony mush. You may need to sprinkle in some water while it’s cooking to keep it from drying up or sticking to the pan. If you make a lid out of foil and press down on the top of the onions (rather than the pan), this will help. Then turn up the heat and cook uncovered for 1–2 minutes, stirring to prevent sticking. While all this is going on, put on some water for the pasta.

Remove the anchovies from the milk and chop them finely. Add them to the onion mixture, stir well, pour in the milk in which they’d been soaking, and keep stirring. When the anchovies have been incorporated into the purée, add the remaining milk, the remaining oil, and about half the parsley. Stir well and remove from the heat. Taste to see if you’d like some more milk; it will soften the taste and loosen the texture. When the pasta’s cooked, drain it, and then quickly but thoroughly turn it in the warm anchovy and onion sauce. Transfer to your bowl or plate and sprinkle over the remaining parsley.

Serves 1.

When I’m cooking for myself, as you see, I want strong tastes. This kale with chorizo is one of my regular fast hot lunches.

KALE WITH CHORIZO AND POACHED EGG

Make sure you can get proper chorizo, and I mean here the fresh (or semi-dried, rather) sausages, not the larger salami-like kinds. Sometimes fresh chorizo come in horseshoe-shaped linked sausage loops; in which case use half. If you don’t like kale or it’s not around, then a package of baby spinach salad, just wilted in the pan in which the chorizo’s been cooking, will do—indeed more than do. It’s a pleasurable variant rather than forced substitution.

6 ounces kale, stemmed and torn in small pieces

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 chorizo (about 4 ounces), sliced ¼–½-inch thick and the slices quartered

1 egg

Put some water on to boil and when it boils, add salt.

Put the kale into the water and cook till tenderish (kale is never going to be that tender and certainly shouldn’t be floppy), which will take 5–7 minutes, depending on its age.