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15.107 Linguine in Roasted Onion & Garlic Tomato Spaghetti Sauce

katch4246

April 21

Cycle 15 - Item 107

21 (Sun) April 2024

Linguine in Roasted Onion & Garlic Tomato Spaghetti Sauce

2.5

by DJ (+ me)

at home

-Changgok, Sujeong, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea-

with the Family

Another lesson in DJ's going-off-to-college culinary training (see most recently 15.099 AHQFGT Charlie Primo), this time the quick and easy, infinitely modifiable, all-in-one pasta with jarred sauce. The ingredients are available everywhere, they're cheap, and keep (if unopened) at room temp forever (or at least a school year).

Like with the lesson on fried eggs (see 15.084 Fried Eggs (with Chicken Adobo)), I hadn't realized how many techniques go into such a simple thing, which I can now do without thinking about it, until I tried to explain them: like how (and why) to add salt to the pasta boiling water, how to twist the noodles in hand before dropping them into the water and then stirring a few times to prevent them from sticking together, how to retrieve a noodle near the recommended cooking time and bite into it to check the cross-section for doneness (also explaining the concept of al dente), how to reserve a cup of the starchy pasta water before draining, how to heat up the sauce in a separate pot and combine with the pasta immediately upon draining it, how to add the pasta water to make sauce come out silky. (Unsure whether he's ready to grate parmesan cheese by hand - in any case, it's not an essential ingredient - I did it myself.)

I keep cheap pasta on hand - like this Baronia Linguine, which is eternally on sale for 2,480 won at our supermarket - to be used in dishes where pasta is needed but secondary and the quality doesn't really matter(see for example 15.079 Chicken Noodle Soup).

It turned out quite nice. The sauce, by local food producer Cheongjeongwon, was surprisingly well-balanced and tasty - despite my generally poor opinion of jarred pasta sauces. DJ seemed very impressed with himself.

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)