hooker noodles!

Because if you've only got 20 minutes to make dinner, you are obviously some kind of prostitute.

If you've seen as many gangster movies as I have you know that "putta" is some kind of insult. Well, that's because it had the same root as puttana, which means bitch, or whore, in Italian. And Pasta Puttanesca, so named as "in the style of the whore" was rumoured to be called such because it could easily be made in the few minutes a woman had between clients. Yeah, well, I've only got a few minutes between work, school, and homework. (I promise I will not go into feminist rants about dichotomous representations of women as either the madonna, who apparently had hours to cook 4 course meals every night, and the whore, who obviously needed something a little faster for dinner).

Pasta Puttanesca

What You Need:

• pasta, of whatever shape you prefer
• 1/4 c of muffaletta olive salad (stored in a pickled mixed veggies jar)

(OR

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• handfull of green olives
• garlic
• onion
• marinated artichoke hearts)

And

• 1-2 c cocktail tomatoes (or 1-2 normal size roma tomatoes)
• 1/2 c crushed tomatoes (or just more fresh chopped tomatoes)
• 1 c broth or wine
• 1/2 tsp Worchestershire sauce (or fish sauce, or a couple anchovies)
• 1 tsp capers
• handful of kalamata olives
• sundried tomatoes
• 1/4 c fresh basil leaves, chiffonaded

What You Gotta Do:

Okay, I totally did this in 20 minutes. Even set the timer to prove it. (bloody impossible to see, but it says 19 minutes, honest)

Get your water on for the pasta. If you cover the pot, it will boil faster.

In the large shallow pan, (makes for faster sauces because more surface area to cook on and to lose moisture from) over medium high heat, put your olive salad,

or if you don't have olive salad in the fridge (um, why don't you have olive salad in the fridge??) you're going to have to spend a few minutes chopping the olives and garlic, onion, and artichokes. Dump them all into the pan.

Dice the tomatoes, and use your thumb to squoosh out the seeds into the sink.

You can skip the squooshing step if you're okay with tomato seeds in your sauce, but I prefer it without. (If you had to chop artichokes and olives a minute ago, skipping the squooshing will probably make up some time)

Toss the tomatoes into the pan. Olive oil and other stuff should be just starting to sizzle.

Add the wine or broth. Somehow, I managed to run out of wine, so I had to use broth. One or the other or any combination of the two would work.

Now, I'm not a fan of anchovies, but I do have fish sauce handy for making Thai and Vietnamese food... (totally missed them in the ingredient pic)

I've also got Lea&Perrins. Worchestershire sauce is actually a reasonable flavour substitute for the anchovies.

If you used all fresh tomatoes, you can skip this step. If all you had handy was half a basket of cocktail tomatoes, add the crushed tomatoes now.

Okay, so the base of out sauce is in the pan simmering, and the water is boiling. We've got 10 minutes left on the timer (that one's a bit easier to see).

Get your noodles going. You can use any kind you like, but keep in mind that angel hair and spagettini are going to cook much faster than something like a penne. If you need the extra time, a bigger shape may be in order. I hedged my bets with farfalle, a smaller shape, but with that crimp in the middle that always needs an extra couple minutes to finish.

Dice the sundried tomatoes (you could leave these out if you need to save dicing time) and black olives, and shred the basil. Dump these into the pan along with the capers.

Once everything is in and simmering, use a couple minutes to put all the jars away and tidy a bit. Check the consistency of your sauce. If it's too thin, turn the heat up a bit to bubble off some of the liquid. If it's looking too thick, you can add more wine now (just pour a bit in from that glass you've got in your hand), or broth. Or, if you used the last of your broth in the first round, a bit of the liquid from the kalamata olive jar will work.

How much time is left?

1 minute! Holy hell I did it. I totally cooked hooker noodles in less than 20 minutes.... Farfalle. Needed the extra minute to get the crimp to doneness so I stirred the sauce a little. (really, this is just a bit of food porn)

Once the pasta is finished, drain almost all the water off. Dump the pasta and that last bit of water into the sauce. The starch in the pasta water, and on the pasta, will thicken the sauce a bit and take care of that extra water.

Toss it all together and then pour it onto a plate.

Top it with some freshly grated parmesan, and if you're feeling the need for something a little more substantial, serve with a bit of sausage. Sausage is the perfect accompaniment for hooker noodles.

This made enough for dinner for one (poor lonely hooker that I am) and lunch for tomorrow (because I may not have all this time between clients to cook).

Have you ever timed yourself making dinner? What's your fastest dinner recipe?

No, really, I can cook! - Urban Homestead Style**

Okay, so the chocolate cake in a cup was an epic fucking fail. I don't blame myself at all. It's a crappy recipe and nothing will convince me otherwise.

So, as proof that I'm not as klutzy in the kitchen as I am in an analytical laboratory (I still hold the record for most broken thermometers in a single day) I decided to pre-empt my intended post for this week and make something a little more challenging.

Crepes.

No, not pancakes. Not even really thin pancakes. Crepes and pancakes are totally different things. Pancakes are a quickbread. They include oil and a leavener. They're flipped during cooking, and meant to be served flat, and they are almost always served for breakfast.

Crepes on the other hand are more of an egg dish. They include a relatively small amount of flour for binding purposes. They don't rise, they don't get flipped, and they are served rolled or folded. And they're dessert! Yes, I know, some people take advantage of the egg base and stuff them with savoury things like ham and asparagus and pour bernaisse sauce over them for lunch, but I prefer them sweet and fruity.

And so I give you:

Raspberry Crepes

I made them for brunch and I was a little hung over so I forgot to include all the ingredients in the ingredients pic and I miscalculated how long the cream had been in the fridge so there's no whipped cream... um...

Back to the post where I know how to cook.

What you need:

2 eggs

1 1/4 c milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

3/4 c flour

2 c raspberries

1/4 c sugar

cream cheese and / or whipped cream

icing sugar for dusting

(yes, I know there's no milk or cream cheese in the picture; part of being hungover is forgetting what ingredients you need when you're collecting everything)

What you gotta do:

Rinse the berries, and combine them and the sugar in a small pot. The little bit of water in there is just what you need. You can mash the berries yourself, or let the heat break them down. Either way, you want them over medium heat.

 

With a whisk, whip the eggs, milk and vanilla until it's frothy. (this is the point at which I remembered I needed milk; thankfully, there was some in the fridge)

Slowly add the flour, a quarter cup at a time, and whisk well after each addition.

You're looking for a perfectly smooth and creamy batter here. No lumps allowed. It should also be quite thin, more like a creamy soup or thin gravy. You want it to spread out in the pan, not sit where you drop it.

This batter was a little thick, so I added a couple tablespoons of milk.

Check on your berries. The sugar and juice should be a nice thin syrup and there should be a bit of foam and bubbles on top. If you've ever made jam, this will be looking a little familiar. If not, this is what jam looks like when it's cooking.

Heat a wide, flat, nonstick pan over medium high heat. You want that pan hot.

Using a ladel or measuring cup, scoop about 1/2 cup of batter into the hot hot pan and immediately lift it up and tilt it.

Tip it around in a circle so that the batter spreads out super thin. I'm talking an eighth of an inch or less.

They cook quickly! They'll be dry to the touch on top, and barely golden on the bottom when they're done. No, you don't need to flip them. This is eggs over fairly high heat; it doesn't take much to cook them. Genly lift the edge of the crepe with a spatula, then peel it out of the pan.

I keep the done ones on a plate in a barely warm oven (175 degrees), and I cover them with a damp towel so that they don't get crispy and curl around the edges. Crispy is not what we're going for here.

Check on your berries. They should be thickening nicely. If you're worried about them getting too thick, you can turn them down a bit. You're going for something between the consistency of syrup and jam.

When you get a bit more experienced at pouring the batter into the pan, try pouring into an already lifted and tilted pan. You can get a wider, thinner crepe that looks beautifully lacey around the edges. Not like an octopus. Oops.

Able to cook. Totally am.

Right.

Moving on.

Once you've made all 6 crepes, it's time to start assembling. Spread a tablespoon or so of the fruit onto each one, then fold into quarters.

   

 

I love cream cheese so I spread mine with about a tablespoon of it, and then folded them.

The 2 cups of berries will make enough to fill all 6, with a bit left for the top. But since mine had cream cheese in them, there was lots to go on top.

If you want to dust them with icing sugar, put a teaspoon or so in a fine sieve and gently tap it as you move around over the plate.

A lovely breakfast with a bit of OJ and some dark roast coffee.

Unlike pancakes which are supposed to be fluffy, crepes are a little more on the tender-chewy side of things. But they're not dense at all; they have a strange lightness to them that only comes from swiftly beaten eggs. The folds perfectly hide the smooth cream cheese, and the berries are tart and tangy.

There's a breakfast place in town here that makes giant ones filled with Nutella and bananas. And I have made ham and asparagus ones, I just prefer them sweeter.

What would you put in your crepes?

** re the title: Some jackasses have managed to trademarke the phrase "urban homestead" and are pissing circles around it all over the internet. Including on my friends Kelly and Erik and their book "The Urban Homestead". The Electronic Frontier Foundation is helping them and others affected by this bullshit. And a few people are flaunting the phrase by using it everywhere possible. The Dervaes Institute can kiss my ass. Fuckers.