Bastardized Pasta Salad recipe...

Everyone's been asking me about my recipes for stuff like the Bastardized Pasta Salad (again I can never seem to fully separate my palate & affinity for Mediteranean meets Southeast Asia). SO...since I don't really measure and kind of gamble with portions & ingredients, here's what I used:

Bizzastardized Pasta Recipe!

• GIANT corkscrew pasta (fusilloni)
• heaps of basil, one entire bulb of garlic (~10 bulbs? hahaaah)
• sliced half a red onion
• seasoned Athenos feta cheese (garlic & herb says ze packaging)
• non pareile capers (which I guess means having no equal--but just means it's from the South of France)
  
• halved cherry tomatoes (1 basket)
  
• half a lemon (maybe a little more)
• ....and here's the good stuffs--> FISH SAUCE!!! ^_^ OH YEAAAAAH.
  

Fizzzziiiish. Sizzzzaaauce. THAT's RIGHT--you don't even KNOW ese! ;) ...btw, I really prefer using Phu Quoc fish sauce over the other brands--the crab one is good, i can't remember others. MEH. I'll ask Mama Ly.

Direzione!

Start out sauteeing the giant-ness of minced garlic bulb in a relatively thick layer of oil (just like making the garlic & oil pasta except put on low heat after the garlic gets a little color, throw in the tomatoes, squirt in the lemon juice & fish sauce (i pretty much eyeball it all since I use lemon juice, fish sauce, and garlic a lot so I just...have an intrinsic gauge for what it'll be like I can't describe =/). I also like the tomatoes a little raw still in most the crap I cook but I like to bleed it a little (per se) cuz I guess the glycopene in the tomato makes the sauce congeal a little, and thicken the "sauce" and coat better.
Mix it all around a little, and if you want, throw in the cooked pasta (straight from the pot with a little of the water from boiling too it's still yummy) and mix around. OR, u can saute the red onions before throwing in the pasta but I like it with a little kick and purity in its own flavor in being a little uncooked and whatnot.
If you need to, add in a little more olive oil to coat the pasta, salt & season as u will (i only used pepper, the fish sauce adds a diff kind of salty flavor), and more fish sauce! but not too much b/c you'll get the savory & bite from the capers and cheese too so keep it on the bland side. I also don't add the sliced/shredded basil until the end but I add a little in the beginning to let it wilt and add some flavor. Mix in the other half of the shredded basil, mix mix mix!

Plate, break the feta over the pasta, scatter some capers over, stick some sprigs of fresh basil in it and call it a day.

Kefi on the UWS...

We were going to a Juno screening last wkd, but the line was ginormous and snaked almost completely full circle into Columbus Ave, so no seats =/ Claudz left so Karen & I walked about 12 blocks in the bitter cold to 79th St--I wore ballet flats, my feet froze and my toes tingled...HOWEVER, my god..kefi...mmmmmm. Gladly lose this little piggy for some Kefi meze plates :)

I forgot my camera so I borrowed these pics from a Yelp user and NY mag :) An NY Times article lamented the tapafication of dinners/restaurants, but WHATEVER. We got 3 meze plates and 1 small pasta dish but that were sufficiently full if not more so.

Firstly, we got the Grilled Octopus with chickpea salad. I don't know why, but after eating at Kión for Sam's semi-going away dinner, I just had a newfound appreciation for Octopus and more untraditional meats. Texture was great--you could cut w/ a fork, chickpeas, aka garbanzo beans were lightly seasoned and tossed in olive oil i think? (Btw, in my latest iron deficient anemic episode, I found out that chickpeas are an excellent source of iron, along with prune juice, and spinach :))

We also got some pita with melted feta cheese under a bed of tomatoes, dill, red onions, and ANCHOVIES ^_^ I can't just assume it's so good b/c it was melted--but it seems to really make a big difference in the feta flavor. *shrug*. I love dill. ohhh how I love dill. ANYHOODLE...the next thing...is SWEETBREAD!!

If you don't know, sweetbread is thymus/pancreas--u know, the ish that makes bile? :) WHO KNEW!! I used to do DNA extractions w/ my students w/ sweetbread--who KNEW indeed :) It was heavy on the garlic--as u can see in this pic, with onion rings-ish, and really tasty, but large, caper berries. FREAKISHLY large caper berries. but yummy :)

This next one is a pasta (brai) with pulled rabbit meat with Graviera cheese and other things. I was really excited b/c when I was in Florence, IT we were all at this little trattoria in the Oltrarno neighborhood that had the best olive tepanade & stuffed calamari (it was so soft we thought it was just pasta) and the local tavolo caldo that had coniglio cotto (grilled rabbit) but alas they were out that day =/ If you ever go back, it's across Ponte Santa Trinità and the other one was somewhere else =/ sorry it's been 4 yrs? But here's a picture of us outside of a giant Costco equivalent supermercato north of the Boboli gardens :)

oh yeah and here's a chinese restaurant in Venice//IT by the entrance of the ferrovia ;)