You would not know, given my current love for pasta that some 40 years ago I was not all that enthusiastic about it. In fact I was as enthusiastic about pasta as I was about the cold pipes feeding the cold heaters we used to have in our little apartment in Communist Romania. My poor Mom was at no fault really, she was trying to make do and bake some sustenance from the ingredients she had on hand back then. The pasta, usually macaroni, would have a somewhat soapy taste. And I also remember the milk I used to get after long queuing at around 6 AM, that is if we were lucky enough to have any at all delivered. It was blueish in color and almost transparent. My Mom sometimes would add in some sugar, which was also rationed, thus also in short supply, making them slightly sweet, thus palatable. For years I associated pasta in general and macaroni in particular with the bone cold, musty and seemingly unending misery we went thru in the ’80s Romania. Every bit of overcooked pasta still transports me back to those times. Ugh! Anyway, it was only around maybe 2005 a very good bowl of Farfalle alla Vodka I had in Downtown Toronto managed to change my mind about pasta and the rest came almost naturally. Yes, I now love pasta and rush to test and try any interesting recipes I read on the internets or see on the TV. There’s a new Jamie Oliver show on Mondays, he had some pretty interesting recipes showing so far and this pasta I’m having here, is one of those which really sparked my interest thru the use of a couple of unexpected things. So here goes!
There are not all that many ingredients here, nothing neither scary nor fancy: cauliflower, one onion, 3.8% milk, garlic, pecorino, linguine, stale pita bread and shredded cheddar. Unexpectedly the pita bread is the only thing which brought me grief here, I’ll get to that in a minute.
First things first. The cauliflower gets stemmed, cut into smaller chunks and gets poached in salted milk along with the onion. This a little time consuming step as it is done covered on low simmering heat. Don’t rush it as the milk will have a tendency to boil over and ruin your day. Besides, slowly infusing the cauliflower, onion and milk together renders quite a bit more complexity if done slowly. You do have 20-25 minutes to spare, right?
Once the poaching is done we move the whole thing, milk included into the blender. This is the moment to adjust the sauces taste, creaminess and consistency. Cheddar or any other melting cheese adds body and creaminess, feel free to use as much as you want according to your own taste. The same goes for any seasoning which in my case is done with a judicious dose of grated pecorino. The blender makes for a really creamy, silky sauce but it is not necessary. The sauce can be done by any means, including by hand, if a chunkier, more “rustic” consistency is what we’re after. There’s no right or wrong here.
Here’s where the more interesting part comes into play. Most people will stem the cauliflower and compost the leaves and everything else but the buds. Not here. The leaves are actually a little funky tasting and will make a wonderful addition to a “regular” pangritata. What’s that I hear you asking? Well in the past, in Italy a lot of people were rather poor, therefore expensive ingredients such as parmesan were not all that accessible so they invented this garnish consisting from olive oil fried breadcrumbs garlic and salt. It is surprisingly tasty and works incredibly well as garnish for pasta among other things. Adding the cauliflower leaves to it adds yet another layer of “funkiness”, Jamie was 100% right here. The only issues I had here were with the stale pita bread. It was nice and crumbly and tasty but as soon as I hit it with olive oil it become like concrete. The only way to save it was to run it thru the food processor twice and press it in between paper towels in between. It was a mistake not considering pita is not all that “fluffy” in consistency to begin with… next time I will use regular stale bread instead. Yes, I ended up wasting some 20 additional minutes on it… however the resulting pangritata was excellent.
I won’t get into many details about the pasta. I used linguine because it was the only “long” pasta we had on hand. It was boiled in water as salty as the Mediterranean for around one minute less than the instructions on the pack. As per usual I reserved some of the pasta water to adjust the sauce consistency. The linguine were dragged into my larger nonstick skillet and tossed with the sauce until they were all covered nicely. Let’s put it on the plates.
Here we go… linguine with cauliflower sauce, garnished with pangritata, fresh chopped parsley and microplane grated garlic. The microplane grater is a late addition to my arsenal of gadgets I started using quite a bit. Its small, really sharp teeth are extremely adept at pulverizing anything from nutmeg to garlic while keeping your fingers safe. Well…. if one insists…. Anyway, that was all that was done for this particular dish. Sandra and I inhaled our portions. This cauliflower / pangritata combo is simply dynamite. Yep. But, as they say on TV, wait! There’s more!
I’m not finished whit these linguine. Sorry I gave that impression… The pasta pack is good for 5-6 people and we had only two portions. When the leftovers go into the fridge and they are reheated the next day… let’s just say they are a far cry from what they used to be only a day before. So let’s crack and whisk two eggs in some cauliflower sauce.
Pulled out a ceramic casserole dish from the cupboard, mixed the leftover linguine as well as I could with the egg sauce and set it in the casserole dish along a generous sprinkling of cheddar on top. You know where I’m going with this, aren’t you? I’ve set the oven on bake at 380F. In it goes!
This is after the 20 min oven trip. All nice and crusty. Next time I’ll pack some more cheese next to the casserole sidewalls. That crunchy rim cheese is something else, OK? Fortunes have been made and lost because of it!
So here it is, a “slice” of it, served the next day for dinner with the same pangritata on top, next to a small mixed salad. Both Sandra and I went for seconds. Must have been the eggs and the crusty cheddar but it seemed better than yesterday. Mission accomplished! And you know what’s even better? I have around 400ml of leftover cauliflower sauce plus lots of pangritata to go along with it. Can’t wait to use them on something else. Maybe some farfalle, and some funky vodka addition to the sauce? Coming full circle, yes!
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