Food Notes: 3/24
Green spaghetti, conveyor belt sushi, meat, booze-less booze, and more
Last week, I mentioned that José R. Ralat declared Green spaghetti the next big thing. Obviously I wanted to get ahead of the curve, so I set out to make my own.
The first thing Ralat notes is there’s actually no definitive green spaghetti recipe. It’s a lot like “grandma’s meatballs” where everyone has their favorite way of making more or less the same dish. I decided to search a few versions to figure out the core flavor profile.
Since I had overlooked the important step of knowing how to make green spaghetti before heading out to the shop, I did this research on my phone while in the grocery store. The first version I came upon was on Reddit, but also I looked at Muy Bueno Blog, and another blog that called it Espaghueti Verde.
After looking over a few recipes, I decided to combine the best of each one. The essence of this recipe is the combination of green Poblano peppers and a tangy cream. The peppers should be roasted. The dairy suggestions included cream cheese, sour cream, crema, cream, and milk. I imagine buttermilk might even work well too, though I haven’t seen that as an ingredient.
I was expecting to do a supermarket sweet of the dairy section, but as it turns out, our local C-Town has crema Mexicana. And since the cream cheese was recommended, and on sale, I grabbed a block of that as well.
The cilantro, which can be used to top the pasta or integrated into the sauce, was not in great condition so I opted to skip it entirely.
For the pasta, I went with linguine, a suggestion made by one recipe writers. I went with broad, flat linguine. Bucatini would have worked great too, and I’m looking forward to the penne alla verde variations when this goes mainstream.
To get started, I charred the Poblano peppers on the open gas burner. I’m sure some toxic chemicals from the natural gas leached into the pepper, but you can’t char a pepper on an electric stove. I dropped the peppers into a plastic bag and let the steam strip off the skins (again, I’m sure we ate some microplastics as a result, but I didn’t have a paper bag). I’ve done this technique before with red peppers for a Julia Child sauce, and it works surprisingly well.
While the peppers steamed in their bag, I chopped up half a white onion and a Jalapeño for heat. (They aren’t that hot anymore) These went into the food processor. I threw in a few cloves of garlic, too.
With the peppers cooled, I peeled off the skins and stripped out most the seeds. These got blended together with about 4oz of cream cheese and 6oz of crema. I threw in some salt, and then waited for the pasta to boil.
When the pasta was nearly finished, I heated a little oil in a pan before pouring in the sauce. I intended to add a cup of chicken broth, but decided to try the pasta as a vegetarian dish and used a little pasta water. With the linguine cooked, I tossed it in the sauce and brought everything to a simmer to thicken it.
In about five minutes, the pasta was thoroughly cooked and the sauced thicker. We topped this with imported parmigiana cheese instead of Mexican cotija.
The conclusion? I would definitely make this again, and I see how this has the potential to be a new American classic.
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