The classic tagliatelle with Bolognese sauce gets a wafu kakushiaji (“secret umami enhancer”)—sake, miso, mirin, and kombu dashi. For an even deeper layer of umami, make this sauce with chicken dashi or chintan dashi. What’s not to love? Serve this sauce over traditional pasta or udon noodles, or use it to make a wafu-ed lasagna
I eat this pasta twice a week and never get bored of it. Instead of giving the dish a fishy taste, the fatty anchovies melt into the sauce and give it a salty umami note that becomes hard to place, but who cares because it’s damn delicious. The briny capers, tart lemon, and sweet tomatoes round the whole thing out, along with the red pepper flakes, which leave a subtle spicy finish. It’s downright crave-worthy.
When Major Jackson was fresh out of college, he found a Cajun restaurant in Philadelphia that had the best Chicken Big Mamou he’d ever had. When the restaurant closed he tried to recreate the recipe but it never came out quite right. That is, not until one of our producers did some digging and found the original recipe for him.
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Israeli couscous may be Israeli, but it’s definitely not couscous. Couscous is ground semolina (crucially without being mixed with either egg or water) rubbed together with wet hands until tiny granules form and are then dried. Israeli couscous, on the other hand, is tiny balls (about the size of larger peppercorns) of true pasta made from both wheat flour and semolina then toasted.
Carbonara is such a quick supper. It is rich and creamy (without any cream), thanks to the egg yolks and mountains of cheese. Artichokes bring a slight citrus flavor that balances the richness of the sauce.
If you cook for others on a regular cadence, you’ll discover that not all the meals will be beautifully planned. Sometimes one thing leads to another and you forget to shop, or you forget that you need wood or propane or time to brine the meat. Sometimes you run out of time. Sometimes you run out of energy. Sometimes you just want to cook something simple and eat, toast one another, wash everything up, and take a long walk with the dog.
Shrimp spaghetti is to bayou kids what spaghetti and meatballs is to kids in the rest of the United States. This was my son Lucien’s favorite meal, which he would eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It’s a near perfect meal—simple, sweet, perfectly balanced—and it’ll feed a big family or a crowd of friends. The recipe draws from the Creole cooking technique of smothering tomatoes long and slow. This version is made with store-bought sauce, but you can certainly make your own tomato sauce and cook it down in the same manner. Homemade tomato sauce tends to be thinner, so you might have to thicken it a bit with tomato paste to get the right consistency.
This Sicilian-inspired pesto is quick to prepare, refreshing, and delicious, and can also be eaten cold, so leftovers are perfect for your lunchbox the next day. It makes a delicious topping for crostini, too, so it’s worth making plenty. You can store it in the refrigerator for a few days or freeze to use at another time.
My mom made this during Thanksgiving on year and upon tasting it, we knew we had to have it every year for the rest of our lives. My family and I absolutely love Thanksgiving. I think it was because it was the only day of the year (aside from Christmas Eve) that my parents were forced to close the restaurant early. We embraced this tradition, making every Thanksgiving meal traditional with dishes like stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce. This green spaghetti (and our black bean puree) was how we made Thanksgiving our own, beginning a new tradition for our family that blended both cultures. I really hope it becomes one of yours, too.