arina and i opted out of eating at Alma for lunch during the school week. we hear about all the foods that the culinary students are practicing and can only imagine the deliciousness we are missing out on. but i like the hour of freedom to leave...(i want to say leave the campus, but it hardly is one) ...leave the school grounds to go home and eat what i want, do laundry, take a shower, sit on the balcony in the sun, lie down, whatever. so we were delighted when davide and lorenzo agreed to make us dinner. alma cooking skills in our own kitchen! they made us bucatini all'amatriciana: a typical italian dish. the boys were sweet and spoke english while we tested our italian as we shared wine tasting tips through blue plastic party glasses and heard stories of life in sunny sicily. they smuggly made fun of me because i asked a lot of questions and for wanting to take pictures. but really, i want to learn how to properly cut an onion, chop garlic quickly, when to salt the boiling water for pasta! arina and i teased them in return that if we were cooking for them, we would have made fresh tomato sauce - not from a jar - and we would have used real cuts of pancetta rather than packaged pre-cut bits. lorenzo countered that tomatoes aren't in season right now so that's why they make jarred tomato sauce. good point, but then make something in season, no? it was fun though and tasty. next time, ravioli aperto. si chef si chef si chef!
so, today, knowing that we probably wouldn't be using the little bit of tomato sauce or the little baggie of cut up pancetta, i decided to make my own version with the leftovers. i cut up some onion, sauteed with the pancetta, then added the remaining tomato sauce with some freshly cut tomatoes to add a little chunky texture as well as some capers, basil, and of course, spice - some crumbled dried peperoncino's and some squirts of harissa sauce - my new sriracha spicy-satisfying subsitute. i don't know if it's because it was spicier, if it's because i love leftovers, if it's because i just love the thick, chewy texture of the bucatini, or if it's because they made fun of my eggplant and lentil salad combination i was going to make for the pils pride picnic that also relates to the fact that they don't think arina and i can cook very well, buttt, i think maaayyybeee i liked mine better :) si chef si chef si chef!
buco means hole in italian.
did anyone else notice the link that the dish is also on the babbo menu? i swear i didn't copy it when i made my own version - i only was trying to see how amatriciana is spelled just now - to prove it, my recipe doesn't even match! capers?!
i ate too much pasta today. cold, leftover pasta, straight from the pot. i couldn't help it. nom nom nom.
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