It recently came to my attention that I make the best spinach fettuccini parmesan in the world. At first I was shocked, then honored, then humbled; finally, I felt … a responsibility … to the world. My gift must be shared. Below, you’ll find detailed and inspiring instructions – a “recipe,” if you will – for making my famous fettuccini parmesan.
Preparation is essential for good fettuccini, and requires a proper state of mind. For me, this means television. Nothing inspires kitchen wizardry like a little late-night tv news. Try to catch the last fifteen minutes, where most of the stories are on sports, weather, and fourth graders cleaning up freeway off-ramps; avoid the top stories as they often show gruesome images of death, confusing political intrigue, or off-putting medical discoveries.
TV news is tailor-made for cooking; it’s dumbed down so that you could understand it even if oxygen levels were to drop by 30%. Barring any kitchen fires, this shouldn’t be a problem.
Ingredients: 1 head of garlic, some ginger root, salt, spinach fettuccini (thick, flat noodles work best), olive oil, black olives (optional), baby clams (optional), baby seals (just kidding).
A word of warning: This is not a meal to consume pre-going-out-to-mix-and-mingle. You’ll stink of garlic and probably have olive oil all over your face and in your hair. Trust me; this is private-time cuisine, so plan on going to bed after you do the dishes.
Enough proselytizing. Fire up the television, place the remote control next to the chopping board, and verify that the fire extinguisher is up to spec.
- Start boiling the water.
- Relax on the couch for five minutes. Maybe there’s a cold front over central Canada? How ‘bout them Lakers?
- When the water starts to look hot, get off the couch.
Do you like garlic? If you do, read on. If you don’t, cease cooking. Go to Taco Bell instead; their beef meximelts are at least as good my fettucini.
Garlic is neat, and you should enjoy handling it. It tastes so good and makes you smell so bad, but you’ve given yourself the night to purge it from your system. Pull off a section as large as a grape. Cut away the garlic’s tough ends, then mush it down with the flat side of a knife or with your fist. This will remove the dry, flakey skin, which you should NOT EAT.
We’ll be treating garlic as if it were a vegetable, and you’re free (encouraged) to use more than I recommend, just avoid people for a few days. I’ll bet Ted Kazinski ate a lot of garlic. I’ll bet astronauts eat none.
- Chop up the garlic. Careful.
- By now, the water is boiling. Add salt to it. Add a pretty generous amount. The water will heave a little like it’s bubbling up from an underground hot spring. For effect, say “Oooopah!”
- Drop in your spinach fettuccini. I usually eat Ronzoni brand, but you can experiment with other brands or gourmet stuff. Never make your own noodles; it takes too long.
- Bust out your stainless steel frying pan. You can use Teflon, but it’s much more difficult to control the temperature and I’ve never had luck with it. Start heating the pan up.
- Ginger time: You should have a big, knobby chunk of this fine stuff. Ginger is a root and grows in the ground like potatoes and carrots. Look at it. Do you think of smiling worms and the hobbit and gnome people? Cut off a chunk as big as half your thumb; slice off the skin (its, not yours) and chop up the moist interior.
- If you haven’t strayed from my directions thus far, there should be equal amounts of garlic and ginger, in small, finely shopped pieces, ready to be fried.
- The frying pan is hot. Put three tablespoons of olive oil on it. Tilt the pan so that the oil gathers in a corner. Drop in the garlic and the ginger, which should start sizzling on impact.
- Once the garlic and ginger are a little bit fried, turn off the heat. You do NOT want to burn the garlic.
- Now, add a few forkfuls of baby clams to the frying pan mix. These tasty fruits of the sea are ready to munch right out of the can, I think. Don’t quote me. At least, that’s how I eat them. You can also drop some clam oil/juice into the frying pan mix, or go crazy and put some in the noodle water.
- Chop up ten black olives. Munch on a few.
- The fettuccini should be ready by now. Turn the heat back on under the frying pan. Drain the noodle water in a strainer. Careful. Hot.
- Drop the noodles into the frying pan mix. Swish them around. The olive oil holds the ginger/garlic taste and should evenly cover the noodles. Yum.
- After no more than a minute, stop frying the noodles.
- Put the noodles onto your plate, where the olives have been waiting. Add six forkfulls of grated cheese. Mix up everything, so that every noodle is infected with parmesan mania
- If you’ve timed it right, the news is over and a sit-com has just begun. Eat and enjoy this multi-media dining experience.
Buen provencho.