Pasta
My Mom's 15-Second Trick to Make Plain Weeknight Pasta Seem Fancy
A speedy formula for dinner, coming at you.
Nobody pulls off a 20-minute dinner quite like my parents.
They mastered the art of a quick supper when my sisters and I were young. It probably helped that they worked and carpooled together, which made it easy to plot on the way home and, when critical, pop into Southdown for last-minute basil recon.
Their coterie of recipes was deep: Marcella Hazan fettuccine riffs, tuna melts, matzoh brei, quesadillas on folded-over corn tortillas from which cheese oozed to form fricos on the hot griddle. At one point, despite being schmaltz-evangelists, they succumbed to the zeitgeist and purchased a George Foreman grill, which enabled a particularly obsessive spree of countertop chicken satay. They regularly served a shiitake mushroom and spinach dish called simply "Amy's Sauce," after their friend and fellow 20-minute dinner maven.
But my favorite of all was perhaps the most basic: ricotta pasta. Which is what we called a generous dollop of cold ricotta (a couple tablespoons, or more if you were having a bad day), swooshed onto a plate or bowl with the back of a spoon, topped with a bird's nest of hot al dente spaghetti and an unfussy marinara sauce.
The trick of it lies in the application of ricotta to the serving vessel (plate versus bowl would be dealer's choice). Rather than mixing cheese in with saucy noodles, isolating it as a separate bottom layer fulfilled two purposes. It created textural diversity, which implied a multi-step production that lent the dish fancy restaurant vibes. And, it introduced an activity for the lucky recipient, who'd get to swirl each bite of sauce and spaghetti in the cold ricotta—a motion that I still suspect feels exactly like world domination.
While I've always associated this plating strategy with my mom, recent scrutiny revealed a more shadowy provenance.
"It was something your dad first made me when we were living in Fort Greene in 1987," she told me by phone. "He seemed to have borrowed the trick from his brother Jeremy, and exercised it liberally apropos of discovering Pomi in a box."
Over time, their sauce formula developed into a speedy version that came together while water was boiling: Sauté a couple cloves of minced garlic in olive oil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon to avoid letting it brown. As soon as the garlic's soft, add whole peeled tomatoes you’ve crushed well with your hands, and cook just until it's hot all the way through and beginning to bubble. Add salt, remove from heat, and stir in lots of fresh shredded basil.
Or, use whichever sauce you like, marinara or otherwise. The ricotta swoosh would make a transcendent bed for a tangle of tagliatelle in herby pesto, or a bacon-y rigatoni alla vodka. It's a game-changer for any straightforward weeknight pasta, really, and after several decades, it remains my favorite of the 20-minute dinners.
No offense to the George Foreman chicken.
A New Way to Dinner, co-authored by Food52's founders Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, is an indispensable playbook for stress-free meal-planning (hint: cook foundational dishes on the weekend and mix and match ‘em through the week).
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Written by: Ella Quittner
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38 Comments
kids get involved with just how they want to texture each bite of pasta.
My go-to quick dinner is an expanded version of our favorite Italian potato and octopus primi—a bed of sliced potatoes topped with octopus and vinaigrette. We make our dinner version on a platter. I build from a scant bed arugula, escarole, or bitter radicchio. On that, layer cold sliced potatoes, then top with meat, ideally culled from leftovers. Our favs are thin slices of cold prime rib (if there’s any leftover jus, drizzle it over the meat), steak, slices of roast or smoked chicken breast (dark meat gets gone on the first round), grilled or poached salmon, or some quickly cooked shrimp. (Also, not to forget octopus.) I usually pile the ends with leftover or fresh-blanched veggies—green beans, asparagus, carrots, squash. On top I strew pickled or salted onion. Sometimes I add diced tomatoes, shaved fennel, cucumbers, etc. Beat up a simple vinaigrette, adjusted to the composition, ie using lemon juice for fish, dry mustard and horseradish for beef. I set a pile of warmed, sliced flatbread nearby because it’s fun to pick from the platter to make little pita concoctions.
Ours was whipped ricotta and then it was dolloped on top. Then you mixed it in with each bite of pasta. Genius? Well I don't think so but I guess if you didn't grow up with it then maybe you would think so.
My family’s favorite quick supper is simply cantaloupe, burrata, and prosciutto drizzled with basil olive oil and balsamic vinegar glaze. If we have crusty white bread on hand, I drizzle the glaze and oil on it before putting it in our panini press. If I have arugula on hand, we add that too. We all love this, including my kids—aged 5, 3, and 1.
BTW, I’m a great skeptic of the 30-minute meal prep, since I was never able to do it, and once wrote a humorous essay on the timeline of getting one of these meals on the table. When my children were preschool age (5, 3, and 1), and my husband was NEVER HOME, a 30-minute meal prep could take upwards of 1 1/2 hrs, interrupted as it was with hygiene needs (theirs and mine and frequent hand washing), breaking up altercations, attempting to chop veggies with one hand as I’d be holding a kid with the other, and more adventures. I certainly could have used a Fairy Godmother or Mrs. Weasley in those days!
Now my kids are grown and we cook together, having the greatest fun hand-shaping pasta with one while another is making the sauce and the third is stirring up cocktails!
I look forward to what you have now with your grown kids...especially the cocktails!
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