Pg. 51 – Lucky Peach Issue #3 – Chefs

First off, let me apologize for taking a month for my next post. What a loser! I got crazy busy in a writing frenzy for another project, and I had a visitor from the east coast, so things been good – but hectic!

We like to have Sunday (or sometimes Saturday) dinners over here at our apartment compound and that usually consists of my neighbor Alex cooking something incredible (that takes awhile) in Sharon & Stu’s kitchen. Chris from down the street comes over, and I often contribute fresh ingredients from my garden, or even make a salad. This night, Alex was teaching Chris how to make eggplant parmesan and our friends Beto & Vic were in town (they recently wed for fun in Las Vegas, so stayed in the So Cal awhile after). I decided I should make some good sauce for Alex’s dish – plus, Sharon and I were trying to mastermind some spinach spaghetti (whole other story). I’m part Siciian, so usually making sauce consists of several hours of dedication. I was curious how Mr. Mario Batali’s basic sauce might turn out – it only cooks for like 30 minutes! Unheard of!  Here’s what you need:

This recipe was crazy to me because it called for a CARROT! That’s just insane. But, I complied.  Also, Beto is a fantastic photographer and he shot many vertical pieces of documentary art for this blog entry!

And they’re big photos, but I’m too lazy to resize, so enjoy us just a little bit larger (Sharon will kill me for this prolly). I started the prep by getting some fresh thyme ready and then I added the good extra-virgin oliver oil I hoard into a large pan over medium heat.

I added the garlic, as thinly sliced as I felt like.

Then added these onions – look how dangerous I am about it!

The onion and garlic cook about 8 – 10 minutes. Let them turn a nice light brown color. Then add the carrot & thyme for a few minutes more, just let the carrot get soft.

So, the peeled whole tomatoes have to be crushed by hand – yuck! Sharon volunteered – she admitted to having experience doing this. I never put my hands in the sauce, so I let her demonstrate.

She added the tomatoes and juice and we brought it to a boil, lowered it, and let it simmer for 30 minutes – stirring often. Can I say that Beto’s color temperature operation has my kitchen coming in all spectrums, trippy…

Meanwhile we attempted homemade pasta (not a part of this Lucky Peach recipe). Here’s how cool it was:

I had just got that blue manicure and man, I totally wasted it in less than 24 hours. Our sauce and spaghetti was pretty epic.

Seriously, the sauce was delicious. Very easy and quick to make, and yummy. 

The eggplant parmesan came out pretty good too.

We can thank Mr. Chris Butler for delighting us in a do-rag that I think came from the stork stash for the Jenkins’ baby (OLIVER! he was born! Look for him to guest star in the next post).

The gang scarfed (that’s a technical foodie term).