After I Learn Italian-3/4/10

Cooking magazines love to use fancy names for recipes to make them sound more authentic and delicious. Tonight I made Buccatini all"Amatriciana, basically Italian for tubular pasta with bacon and tomato sauce. It sounds much fancier in Italian. I think everything sounds fancier in Italian. I need to learn Italian or at least go to Italy to hear it spoken for awhile. How I missed the entire country when I backpacked through Europe is beyond me. I think Eyrleigh and Richard would really love to go there too.
Though Buccatini all'Amatriciana sounds complicated, it wasn't and the use of store-bought tomato sauce made it downright simple. I replaced the pancetta with low-sodium bacon and realized I had no more Romano cheese so I used Manchego. It worked. The flavor added to the store-bought sauce was an improvement. I may not duplicate this recipe exactly again but this recipe reinforced that anything can be added to a commercial sauce to give it an extra dimension. That's worth remembering on the nights I get home and have to whip something together.

Though the combination of Caesar salad with Italian food is more an American invention, I went ahead and made the connection tonight. The Caesar Salad with Crispy Tofu Croutons on page 130 of May's Food and Wine was a creative twist on this classic salad. The croutons were definitely different from regular croutons in both taste and texture. Though I liked the little cubes of fried tofu, they remained soft in the middle and didn't fool anyone as to their true identity. The silken tofu used in the dressing, though, was a perfect replacement for the fatty oil and egg white used normally. The texture was identical, minus the oily residue, and the flavor was identical. I overdressed the salad, as the picture shows, and the lightness of the dressing made it tolerable. I'll need to remember this dressing for the future, though I'll probably return to good old bread croutons.


Caesar Salad with Crispy Tofu Croutons-B+

Buccatini All'Amatriciana-B+

Comments

SLW said…
Wanna bring me in your suitcase? All I ate when I was there was gelato. It was too expensive to sit down at a restaurant when in college because you pay a seating fee (at least in the touristy towns.)
May 9, 2010 at 8:37 PM
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