The Cooking Critic

Nigel Slater likes to call this dish Pappardelle with Olive Paste and Gruyère. I didn’t include the pappardelle, olive paste or Gruyère but still used this recipe as a base for dinner one night. The word on the street is if you make three major changes to a recipe, you can call it your own. I’m not sure if my changes count as major, but I’ll name the dish just in case: Christine’s Veggie-Crunch Pasta. Not sure I like that. Feel free to submit better names.

Adjustments: I like pappardelle just as much as the next guy, which is basically the widest noodle you’ve ever seen, but it’s not the easiest noodle to find, so I used fettuccine instead. I’ve made the dish using the 1/3 cup black olive paste, and it’s good that way, but this time I used Trader Joe’s Roasted Vegetable Tapenade, and since you don’t have to worry about the overwhelming flavor of olives–olives can be bullies and gang up on you sometimes–go crazy and use 3/4’s cup if you want. Instead of pine nuts (expensive!), I use pumpkin seeds, and about 3 tablespoons instead of the 1 suggested since I hunt down the pumpkins seeds when I eat this dish because I like the slight crunch. And instead of Gruyère I used Asiago. Sweet, sweet Asiago. So basically I changed everything in this 5-ingredient meal except the olive oil. There isn’t a thing wrong with olive oil. (Anyone catch the shout-out to Junebug? Amy Adams was robbed! But Rachel Weisz is an excellent actress as well—I don’t want to piss Rachel off. I’m sure she reads my blog all the time. And I want her to know that I have a bias toward Southern actors and actresses or non-Southerners who play Southerners in all their complexity with a credible accent. Rachel is a Brit playing a Brit. Nothing Southern about that.)

Assessment: I wouldn’t plan a dinner party around this dish or anything, but it’s a great, satisfying meal to eat on my own. Prep work amounts to very little, so I’m going to put this dish in the “(Relatively) Easy” category, but since you have to boil (6 minutes) and bake (15-20 minutes), you will end up waiting a little while for your supper. Don’t worry, it’s worth it. And I don’t have a picture of this dish, but I do have a picture of my gleaming kitchen. I mopped! And those dishes in the sink are clean, drying dishes, I’ll have you know.