To make an ideal scampi for two you need one lemon, juiced generously; a sprig of parsley, ideally picked fresh from your girlfriend’s parents’ garden, although store-bought will do; three to five cloves of garlic, minced; a nice glug of a dry white wine you will also be sipping during the meal; six to eight ounces of linguine, and it must be linguine, as spaghetti has a time and a place; a dash of red pepper flakes for a tinge of spice, but not enough to overpower the dish, which is one of the many modern culinary sins overtaking America; three tablespoons of butter, KerryGold, the good stuff; a diced shallot if you aren’t poor; and of course salt and pepper to taste. Whatever to taste means. I like salt. Many underestimate my love for salt. I drink salt water. I sprinkle table salt in my water and stir it around until the negative chloride ions bond with the positive hydrogen ions and the positive sodium ions bond with the negative oxygen ions. So when a chef says salt and pepper to taste, they are grossly misinterpreting an individual’s taste for salt.
And you need shrimp, about three quarter of a pound. Or you can trade in your Honda Civic for the Rolls Royce of the sea, the scallop. I prefer sea scallops as they are larger, meatier, and easier to cook, although sea scallops are not quite in season as we speak. Bay scallops are an adequate compromise, and I’ve come to appreciate the sweet, shallow water taste the mollusk brings to one’s dinner table. Scallops are known as an intimidating protein to cook because the average dumb American mind, such as my own, associates the scallop with fine dining, especially when one hails from flyover country, where the closest creature you will find to a scallop is a dirty crawfish (pronounced crayfish) scuttling around in the bed of the creek in your grandmother’s backyard. Filthy cretins actually eat those swampy river bugs. To each their own I suppose, but you won’t find me sucking the brains of a crawfish, even if it has been boiled with enough aromatics to cover a grisly crime scene. But the scallop I quite enjoy, and I enjoy the challenge of cooking the scallop. And you should be intimidated because the creature is not easy to prepare. You have about a 30 second window to execute the cookery or else your finished product will be too firm and rubbery or too soft and structurally indecent. The pan must be hot but not too hot; nonstick is ideal, cast iron is for posers. I find that the bay scallop is most receptive to a shallow bath of a mixture of hot oil and butter. You must use your eyes ears and nose to determine when the cooking fats are ready to receive the scallop. The butter should be brown but not burnt. The oil should spit back at you when sprinkled with water. You must give the bay scallops one minute, give or take 15 seconds, per side, and good luck determining how many sides each individual scallop has, as bay scallops are often spherical, and not flat on either side like their larger sea variety. And you only have one shot to execute this beautiful dance with the ocean, because you certainly did not acquire extra backup scallops in case you err in your first attempt, and because you live in flyover country, you cannot quickly adorn a wetsuit and dive into the shallow coastal waters conveniently abutting your backyard. If you mess up its over. You’ll have to laugh awkwardly at your mistake and explain to your date that scallops are difficult to cook, and no matter how perfect your attention to detail and meticulous watching of the stove and pan and oil, there was still a possibility that all would go wrong. You’ll have to order a pizza or Chinese takeout. She will chuckle at your silly mistake but deep down you know you’ve blown your chance. You’ll stare at the endless abyss in the bottom of the white folded takeout box housing your Kung Pao Pork; you’ll see all the way through the Earth to China and Confucius will smack you in your loser face because you messed up the scallops. Your date will say she has to leave early because she has a big presentation at her project management job. She will hug you goodbye and leave. In reality she’s going to get hollowed out by a junkie methhead chef who sleeps on a piss-stained mattress and can’t afford to pay rent this month, but sure as Hell knows how to cook a scallop. You’ll cry yourself to sleep like the little bitch you are and Google cheap flights to Ottawa because you hear that euthanasia is legal there. But first you have to schedule a PTO day.
But assuming the scallops turn out ok, you’ve beaten the hard part of the game and are now ready for pure cathartic bliss - building the sauce. Now is a good time to boil the linguine, just about to al dente, leaving a minute or two left on the cook time because they will finish in the pan. With the scallops set aside to rest, you will start with the butter and garlic (and shallot, if you are not poor). A familiar fragrant smell will inundate your nostrils. Your date will have an orgasm, the first of many that night. 3 or 4 minutes pass, and the garlic and shallot is tender and brown. You decide to add the wine next, and let it reduce down to a simple sugar grape syrup, the pure essence of the alcoholic elixir. You now add the lemon juice and red pepper flakes, completing the tart and spice components of the sauce. Just a minute or two more and you will add the parsley, and then after a quick mix, you will add the pasta straight to the pan without draining, allowing some of the salty starchy emulsifying pasta water to make the journey alongside its counterpart. Finally, you will reintroduce the cooked scallops, might I add perfectly cooked, and you will get heavily involved at this point, mixing and tossing and flipping the linguine and sea food and wine reduction and fragrant root vegetables and rich fat and tartness together in unison, a panoply of flavor, until the components are combined and ready to be served. And you will serve.
Pasta is an elegance. You can take the simplest of ingredients, ingredients that even peasants can afford (except for shallots), and you can build a magnum opus all in one pan, in the same amount of time it takes to inch through a car wash. And you don’t even need a recipe. You are a maestro, no matter if you are standing in front of a stainless steel range top in a Michelin starred restaurant or a wood fire stove in a house with no electricity or running water. Many experienced chefs and food bloggers alike overhype the production of homestyle pasta dishes and under-hype the personality of said dishes. I remember reading about and watching videos on the making of Carbonara. I saw pictures of a finished product with perfect unbroken sauce and crispy bits of Guanciale. I was told I would mess up. I would get the ratio of egg to cheese wrong. When I first made Carbonara myself, the finish product looked like shit. The Guanciale did not want to stick to the pasta and sauce so I ended up piling the crispy bits of meat on top of the spaghetti after I had plated. My sauce was a bit too runny. I didn’t use enough cheese. Who cares. It tasted like the world’s greatest orgasm punched you in the mouth. Every time I made Carbonara thereafter, my aesthetics improved but the taste stayed relatively the same, which means it does not matter. Forget the noise and hype. The homestyle pasta dish is choose your own adventure. There’s no written down recipe anyway. If you travel to the Lazio region of Italy and knock on ten different doors asking for a Carbonara recipe, you will get ten different recipes. And if you mention to any one of the habitants of those ten homes that their Carbonara recipe differs from their neighbor’s, and even so much suggest that their neighbor’s recipe is better, you will start an Italian civil war. No one wants to see more bloodshed in the beautiful rural landscape. The only books we should be burning these days are recipe books.
And if you use heavy cream you will die a lonely and horrible painful death in a run down nursing home in a dying suburb.
DISCLAIMER: Tony is not a food blogger, despite his last two Substack posts being about food. Tony is just hungry.
Ha un filtro contro la gelosia
È una ricetta per l'allegria
Legge il destino, ma nelle stelle
E poi ti dice solo cose belle
-from the song Mamma Maria by Ricchi e Poveri
Onward,
Tony
Humble Wordsmith
Writer Boy
Scampi Swami
Nona’s Favorite Grandchild
Smoking a Cigarette in the Alley with the Rest of the Line Cooks after a Long Shift