Category Archives: Pasta

Linguine alla Carbonara

Before I met Annie, I generally preferred my pasta sauces to be red – tomato based. I avoided “alfredo” type white sauces because…actually I really don’t have a good explanation of why I don’t like white sauces. Anyway, these days Annie usually makes pasta sauces with cream, olive oil, and vermouth, keeping it light so you can actually see all the other ingredients.

This linguine alla carbonara recipe (based on a recipe out of “Lidia’s Italian American Kitchen”), contains bacon, olive oil, onions, chicken stock, linguine, egg yolks, grated Pecorino Romano cheese, and s&p. Our additions included portobello mushrooms, thyme, and some toasted onion powder from Penzey’s.

Oh, it was sooooo good. Made even better by that special onion powder.

If you can get your hands on some, I do recommend it.

Aloha, Nate

Spaghetti

Spaghetti is totally my comfort food. Back in my younger days, I used to make spaghetti by browning up some ground beef, pouring in a bottle of Ragu spaghetti sauce, and seasoning it with some Italian seasoning. That was then but now we hardly use bottle sauce as we like to control how much sugar and salt goes in our foods.

Annie made this sauce using bacon, Polska kielbasa, ground beef, zucchini, red bell pepper, portobello mushroom, tomato sauce, garlic and onion. Garnished with parsley, chili pepper flake, and grated Pecorino Romano cheese.

Enjoyed with a glass of Rosemount Cab Sav-Merlot. Ahhh. Life is good!

Aloha, Nate

Macaroni, cauliflower, and two cheeses

Daniel said he wanted some cheesy macaroni for lunch so I obliged him.

Diced up some cauliflower and added that to the pasta about halfway through the cooking process. Grated up some more gruyere and also some aged cheddar. When the pasta is done, drain, add a little bit of milk, fold in the cheese, add a couple of dashes of white pepper, and voila!

Way better than that yucky Kraft boxed mac n cheese, and doesn’t take any longer to fix.

Aloha, Nate