Fake Pappardelle In Brodo
Here is my end of summer/transition into fall recipe for you. It’s good for a random household weekend dinner, and it’s good for end of summer when you’re like “ugh what is in this fridge?” It’s sort of inspired by the brodo recipes they’ve been cooking at Brucie on Court Street in Brooklyn.
Two disclaimers:
1. Italians will most likely be aghast at this. SORRY. I know, you perfected pasta. You people make gross desserts, so there. (Okay, sure, I’ll give you cannoli.)
2. This isn’t one of those braggy “look what I can dooooo” recipes! This is published not in the hopes that you’ll follow it, but that you’ll tell me how to improve it. I don’t actually know what I’m doing. So!
• Heat some olive oil in a pot, not a pan, add a couple cloves of chopped garlic, cook for a minute, add an roughly chopped onion or two.
• Pepper them, and I usually splash them with vinegar and honey. That’s cheating! But I like it!
• Add a couple cut-up slices of bacon.
• Put a couple soaked ears of corn on the grill, if you have corn and a grill. Check the corn for crickets. Or grill some fennel! Or sausage! Or… ???
• Once your onions and garlic are all cooked pretty well — no you don’t have to wait the full two hours for the onions to carmelize, just cook ‘em — add about a quart of chicken stock. Cover and get to a boil. (Some would add ginger here!)
• You can add a tomato, or half a tomato. You can add a sprig of rosemary. Add a little lemon zest for sure! Wait, wash the rosemary sprig first, there are always spiders having babies in my rosemary.
• I kinda let the chicken stock and stuff cook for like ten minutes? I usually get distracted and go smoke here.
• Get whatever you grilled off the grill, cut it up. Peel and flay the corn and burn your fingers. Cut up the sausages.
• Add pasta to your pot. Cook it till it’s done, not very long. It’ll absorb a bunch of liquid. Pappardelle is best; spaghetti works. I bet anything else does too. You can add a can of peas? Sometimes I do that. This is the very end, and it cooks fast.
• Ladle the stuff in the pot into bowls. Add whatever you grilled and then cut up into each bowl. Give it one stir, add a little cheese maybe. I put cheese on literally anything. The picture is from when I cheated tonight and used spaghetti! It’s definitely not as good, but you go to dinner with the pasta you have.
Two warnings: this comes out hot as can be, be careful. And also, sometimes it desperately needs salt, and sometimes it’s desperately salty. Dunno! Life is so strange. But here’s the good thing. When this mess comes out great, it’s GREAT. And when it comes out bad, it’s fine! So you never look like a total loser.