Dear friends and readers,
I am a naturally greedy person. I want it all. The work, the friends, the favors you get asked and do from time to time. The newest movies, and newest shows. Clean laundry, organized groceries, packed lunch, immaculate apartment.
As much as I try to hold on to everything, perhaps out of excitement, perchance fear, some inevitably slip through my fingers.
Making food for myself is one of those things that have really slipped past me these past few weeks, even though it’s the one thing that keeps me sane.
It’s not like I haven’t been making food for myself. I have actually created quite a dent in our apartment’s enormous dry pasta collection by abusing one-pot pastas over and over again. At least all the macaroni and penne are gone now.
I think one-pot pastas are very funny constructs. They are the epitome of my greed. God, just throw everything you can in a pot, keep stirring everything, and hopefully it comes out right. Praying that nothing burns, stick to the bottom, or shrivel up past their prime. It’s cosmically hilarious that this is the one thing I’m making so much of at the moment.
I had a conversation with my therapist about work-life balance. He was trying to make me aware that I need to take more time for myself, and it’s about balancing that time for myself and time for other people.
I told him my gut reaction; which is that… if I make more time for myself, then I can do more!
My therapist laughed and shook his head. I still have a bunch of work cut out for me, it would seem.
Technical thoughts on one-pot pastas
In some respects, one-pot pastas are more technically demanding than usual pasta recipes. Ingredients always have different caramelization and cook time requirements. The onions and aromatics can take a good stewing, but any thing that need to avoid being overcooked (pasta especially) becomes a ticking time-bomb once you put it into the pot. The art of one-pot pastas, is to orchestrate this synchronized swimming so that all of its participants come out alright.
I think a good short-hand for one-pot pasta is to imagine that it is a risotto.
In a risotto-style preparation, there are three major technical hurdles; building a flavor base, gauging the cook of the grain, and making sure nothing stick to the bottom. You want to do the same thing for one-pot pastas.
Quick, throw things into the pot
For flavor bases, it’s hard to get this part wrong. I like just using onions and a little pork mince to start. Throw in some dry thyme, salt, black pepper.
I did have some interesting stuff coming through the community supported agriculture boxes that I subscribe to. I was trying these delicata winter squashes for the first time and I was pleasantly surprised.
It’s a remarkably beautiful vegetable. I tried a little bit while the squash is still raw and it had a deep nutty flavor. I wasn’t quite expecting that at all. I thought it’d pair with spinach pretty well, so I added some of that.
So yeah, pretty simple, just threw everything into a pot. Keep stirring it
and then you drop the pasta, keep stirring it. Add water incrementally, keep tasting the pasta to see if it’s done. Make sure to keep stirring it. Don’t check you phone. Just don’t do it. You have the time later.
After all that work, you get to receive a somewhat decent meal. It’s certainly not fancy, but it will feed me alright.
Signed and posted,
Cheers,
Jeff
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