Weekend Recipe Essay - Logorrheic Pasta with a sausage ragout (in 5 parts)

'...By now the water is boiling, salt it and in with the noodles – which if you’ve left… fully tangible, might take more than few minutes to boil, even 6 or 7 but if they’re thinner make sure not to overcook as such a foolish mistake ruins the whole…like an invitation to kiss unreceived or inhibited, a road that closes forever. Life isn’t filled with those moments. But those fewest moments sometimes fill, by their absence or presence, the rest of life.

And don’t forget the salt....'

For the recipe, scroll to near the end.

Ingredients:

200 grams of flour

2 eggs

salt and pepper

Olive oil (EV.)

4 vine tomatoes

4 piccadilly tomaotes

6 cherry tomatoes

Bicarbonate of soda

Honey

Celery and celery leaf

Scallion leg (red)

Fresh garlic

One sausage (salamella)

Cream (fresh)

For 2-4.

Part I:

   A dish of pasta changed my life. As soon as you read the phrase, 'a dish of pasta,' you run into different directions as to what might follow - what explanations or what you might expect from the narrator (though those are words I would not use, 'explanations' or 'expect' They bring you into a wrong direction, a misleading groove. Something to close to an absolute.) That is… where the words will go, the narrative, what metaphors, what tone or voice or even plot might follow: the preparing of the ingredients, the making of the condiment maybe but as much - what story will be told.  And how.

   Other things might follow like.... what might be on the narrators mind while doing so, (my mind that is,) blinking to the past, maybe, as he prepares the dish, remembering the long ago feeling of a moment next to a girl, lost or present or hoped for – the girl would mean love, a belonging, a delineation of the obvious kind: a subject, a model, a discovery, a what-to-do or what-it-means or meant, whatever the thing, depending on the context already created or created as he-I go. If it were in a mystery novel you’d then have a reference to a passage: a previous dialog or objects in a murder scene - what did the candlestick mean? And that letter on the mantle piece, the envelope on the floor addressed to the butler and sent from… Mauritania, say, where we, the investigator and reader, already know that there in that distant exotic sounding place, lives Ms. Bundenshaw, the niece of Lord G., the ex-owner of the mansion in which the murder occurred, etc. It was. A dark. And stormy. Night. Suddenly…

Now you’ve gone there already, into the beginning of a story, opened the door a little anyway even if for but a moment, even if parody-like and in pieces. Maybe. Maybe not. Anyway I’m not going there. I’m going back to the dish, pasta with a sausage ragout, which maybe in its making is a sort of murder scene.

We have a sort of body-corpse after all, or will: a released kind of habit or a causal emergence no longer holding influence. (I realize that might be a bit of a jump, that line but loook over it again and wait a breath.... you'll get the idear most like.) And we have a weapon of sorts: something about time or discretely emergent 't' as in time though not exactly time, and its relation to information or created information, not quite meaning as in 'meaning' but almost. Which might not seem like a weapon but it is: Negative entropy. Change. Popping into expression, into existence. (Well, that later maybe.) Anyway, it is a weapon – the working through, you might call it,  or even I-unawareness, of experience.

And we have motivation and opportunity, you know, victim or body, then the weapon, then the means and desires-motivation though in this case the opportunity is tied to the weapon, Well, come to think of, it always is. Opportunity is always tied to whatever weapon was at hand. So.

Back to the pasta and why it changed my life and why I’m jotting this thing down here now instead of letting it, the words, the subject, the considerations, drift into the day then days, away, then into vague memory, incompleteness, letting it slowly disappear until then… nothing, as night after night of dreaming and not, ‘swiping’ is used now, the word, what motivated networks deem to be less important. Off the screen. Right to left - the direction is important, that right to left. It’s a very complex thing, that wiping or swiping and those motivations are developed not only through a single lifetime but across them, lifetimes and lifetimes here and then and in an odd way, still to come, as well. Anyway.

I cook now with a sort of consistency that was lacking before. That is, it’s rare that my evening meal, prepared by me, isn’t at least at the level of a popular trattoria or restaurant, depending, and includes the routine of most of the usual Italic firsts and many seconds, pastas and raviolis, pasatelli and risotti, couscous and gnocchi, piadine (though in those later I still use bought artisanal ones. I make the fillings,) and omelette-gallete-crespelle, farro, orzo, beans, polenta and soups. And the same with seconds: birds of differing kinds, roasted, fried, boiled; beef, fish, pork. Fewer kinds of desserts and sweets but even there, cookies and a rare cake, pan-cakes of differing kinds and measures and flavors, flavored and stewed fruit sauces and fruits, candied nuts, crepes, sometimes a cream. Tiramisu. But.

Though until not long so long ago the consistency and breadth of routine was more limited, invented dishes sometimes reached… higher up there, as it were: flavors that weren’t confined by any routine-context-recipe (classic or usual) and the dishes were, in that way, funner. Still, they were usually contained (not all. Stuff like the classic but personal turkey dinner is a long affair with a bizillion necessary passages or steps if I want the desired result.) And in all cases I’m not talking about terribly complicated or innovative technique (my manuality is competent, even fairly high, not bragging simply so it is but I don’t use vacuums or siphon-foams or exact temperature variances, ecc.) So there are of course limits: most dishes are fundamentally fairly simple cooking-wise, nothing Michelin-Adria-ish. Flavors and preps, quality ingredients, accommodating what you make with what you have (which, now that I’m poor, is unavoidable.)

It’s that last sentence that maybe, taken large, a main subject here, tied to why a pasta dish changed my life, in one way. It’s a rhetorical, well, maybe not, concept: I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am. Dubito ergo cogito ergo sum. Sum what? What are you? What are we? Where do systems end, how are they delineated, both existence and affect? 

The pasta.

Part II:

The simplest, almost, of pastas, once again: on a menu it would read ‘Tonnarelli egg spaghetti with a sausage ragout'. The recipe is a composite. It’s been a good while since I made a ‘terrona’, southern Italian feeling-flavored, pasta, fully. They’re deep flavored and use olive oil and often tomato or pepper, those southern pasta plates, often quite fat if meat and oil is used (back when they were often invented people worked the land, spending oodles of calories. Fat was wealth in a way and flavors big – scents weren’t so obfuscated with deodorant, metal, plastic and air-conditioning or heat and so much hot water.) In fact it’s been awhile since I even have, for dinner anyway, not lunch – which is different – sort of started with a dish I felt like prepping and made it all the way through as I thought it should be. In the eve I usually prepare for at least one other person, sometimes 3, and… the making of dishes is always altered from that what I want to have, a sort of postponed desire. The follow through is always a sort of compromise or has been. In that regard, being able to follow through on… what’s in my head, as it were, I’ve never been any sort of… chef, as in 'chief’, as in… captain. More, general. Anyone’s presence, felt or real (ohh, such a subject,) will alter my affect, often to… muddled results.

Not when alone. Merely socially, that pre-announced loosing. For whatever reason… yesterday I decided before I decided… a dish all the way through, simple as it was, according to my taste and more importantly, judgment – even though I was making it for someone else as well as myself. No hesitation: the result was already, in that way, assured in so far as it could have been, before the decision, before the doing. (sigh. Even though this seems already to run on long, truthfully I have to push forward at every paragraph not to diverge - each line, if you were to peer beneath at least with my eyes, almost each relevant line, has so many strata to… no, not 'to'. They are all connected and relevant. That’s why, in case a certain friend reads to here, I’ve come up with this ‘Tonno Bisaccio' personage in a way. Tonno… doesn’t need to go into those streams and can… reduce, synthesis a bit, leaving aside those, well, maybe more flavorful places for me because they don’t have answers or …air.  You swim beneath the surface feeling more of both the place and yourself. Connections instead of inhibitions on the way to limited affect. Tonno… eats nearer the surface, takes the piece at hand and dips it into those sauces before giving to whomever, while still being close enough to be labeled as me. Eventually the distinction will likely wer away and the advantages of such a thing, such a Tonno, will fade - leaving behind mostly just a...dumb name.)

Meat and cream, rather salty meat and cream. And TV. Another place where the dish came from…. I saw on one show a dish made of speck and cream in a red sauce. In the central-south of late there’s a sort of culinary ignorance from Italians themselves, rather not merely an ignorance but sort of… anglo-germanic influence tending towards the blind following of procedure. Which is a bit troubling to me, at any rate. Italy-Italian is very sensual-result-determined, place-language and culture, not subject-procedure. Ie, it’s the flavor or what a flavor evokes, the objective of the doing. In Germany it’s entirely procedure to the point where if the result isn’t right, then either something is wrong with the observer or… something is wrong with the observer (ho-ho. Germans.) Italy is gesture and alchemy.

In Rome, well, in most places: you simply do not use cream in most famous Italian dishes because it alters the result. Carbonara and amatriciana in particular. But… to do so, say a satisfying carbonara you really do need to have the right sort of cured pig cheek and real eggs as in those from well-fed, unstressed, free-ranging hens. In places like the states, that sometimes is either uneconomical or simply not even possible. So dishes are altered not according to market or not only – Italy does not have the American culture of user-friendly, fatty textures in almost all things – but to aesthetics. Result. Which requires, often, what is often called creative intuition.

Part III

As did the invention of at least those two famous dishes (carbonara with cured pig cheek and eggs, amatriciana with tomato and pig cheek) as well as, say, risotto a la Milanese. Poor immigrants from Abruzzo used ingredients often brought with them to flavor local stuff. Pig cheek. Or saffron. Culture. Mixing. Into a new expression. From necessity. And becoming in turn institution. And institution becoming then a fount for and of itself, eventually then…. fear, and resisting change. Over and over….

This recipe uses cream. (Later I’d see online that it’s already, a version of it, almost a classic dish, sausage ragout with cream.)

Habit. Over the past couple seasons it became common for me to make egg pasta. Good flour, salt, good eggs or yolks, work the dough, let it rest, roll it out by hand with hard wood. The more you work it, the ‘nervier’ it gets. For tagliatelle usually the nervier the better. And I started using the Abruzzesan ‘guitar’ to make square spaghetti, thicker noodles, square or square-ish. And learned that a drop of olive oil, only a drop, makes easing the rolled dough through its metal cords smoother. So here, using the wider spaced cords and leaving the dough nervy but not as much as for a tagliatelle noodle, good 0 stone-ground flour, a dash of salt, and real eggs.

Where is this logorrheic note going? I suppose it’s the way work, extant expression, context…. make their way into new expression beyond full awareness. Or… a simple, hearty-ish, satisfying pasta recipe. Or something else. It’s the receiver who decides, the reader of these words, if there may be any. Condiment.

Part IV:

Ease. Treating things with respect both in their choosing and alteration. Tomato. Flavor.

Most of the time people use a passata of tomato or fresh ones after pealing or worse, using a blender. (No, no, no. The horror.) Not if the tomatoes are relevant, their input, as a primary flavor. Here they are part of the mix. It’s their time so find them kind-by-kind in the market, not the tasteless ones made in some vertical green house in Denmark or Spain or Mexico. The fruit carries with it the composition of the soil, its salinity, all the time and care, past, to create the varieties. And mix to an end, as often I use 3 kinds, one for the ‘roundness’, what we call simple vine tomato, fire engine red and shiny, full scented, vine ripened; one for depth, here I use Piccadilly, and one for tang, smaller usually, either cherry well-ripened or date, here I used the former grown in Sicily. Heated them and then remove the skins after a quick cooling. Then comes the lovely part, the ease: you use your hands to scrunch in a high bowl, no knifes, no metal at all….let their flavor come through. Show respect. Anyway.

Part V:

Adjustment. You know what it is you’re looking for so stick to that, not any recipe. Once you’ve decided how to make a balance… see how it goes.

Don’t have parsley to cut the edge off the fattiness? Use a bit of celery and celery leaf in the soffrito, maybe sweet onion or scallion leg as well instead of stronger flavored onion. And if you want a bit of decadence, not too much… add a hint of minced garlic after the first bit, the onions and such, have weakened, become translucent, let loose thier own oils and flavors. Even after you’ve put in the sausage – find a good one, maybe at a local butcher, not too flavorful but not too plain either – and wait for it to melt some of itself into the pan with the rest. Don’t turn up the heat too high… merely keep the temperature going enough to never interrupt the cooking. Once it looks right, all colored and brown – not caramelized in this sauce – in with those rich tomatoes. Then after a bit do a first scrunching of the tomato chunks with a wooden spoon and breathe in the changing scent as more flavor enters. Salt. Pepper, bicarbonate of sodium and less than a pinch of sugar to counter or less than a few tears of good honey. Now cover the whole and let it slowly concentrate over slow heat, maybe open it once to re-adjust and scrunch the remaining enough that by the cooking’s end, 30 minutes? 40? it will have become one flatter topology in your mouth.

Toward the end of it put the water on to boil in back then uncover up front and pour in some cream but not too much, stir and re-cover. After about 8-10 minutes one last taste of the whole, one final adjustment of whatever: pepper, salt, cream…. then turn it off, cover and let rest.

By now the water is boiling, salt it and in with the noodles – which if you’ve left… fully tangible, might take more than few minutes to boil, even 6 or 7 but if they’re thinner make sure not to overcook as such a foolish mistake ruins the whole…like an invitation to kiss unreceived or inhibited, a road that closes forever. Life isn’t filled with those moments. But those fewest moments sometimes fill, by their absence or presence, the rest of life.

And don’t forget the salt.

Once the noodles are about done, turn off their heat and let them finish cooking, almost, in the water… as you turn the heat beneath the sauce back on and uncover, if it’s cooled too much, the sauce. Then strain the noodles and plump them into the pan, turn off the heat and toss until the two elements have mixed themselves into one absurdly, simple, delicious whole. The real recipe part here ends.

Post-parts:

So that’s what I did, and the result was basically exactly as I wanted. That is, since there was a confirmation outside of representation, outside of institution, that word, a thing we do very much as a species: institutionalize, it remains and will remain, likely, as influence. And something so simple as starting and finishing a pasta dish - all the way through to its end - despite being in company… is simply not what I’m used to but for whatever reason yesterday… it was. An action that instead of carrying with it the usual, for me, defeat… it carried its own victory. From the beginning. Through its end.

Oh, I would dive into the other things there and here but after taking a word count – about 2700 – I suppose it can be closed. But. It began with a dish of pasta...