Buckle in, here’s a story.
So last year, around this time, my oldest brother died. Better Half and the Faithful Hound and I took the funereal road trip. Normally, my family members wouldn’t think of allowing me to stay in a chain hotel, but people were a little freaked out, it was a very sudden death, and grieving and whatever, and I had Better Half and insisted on taking Faithful Hound. Also, I’m not in a wheelchair yet, and I hope never will be, but I’m not as spry as I used to be.
There we were, after the wake, and preceding the funeral the following day, and I said, “I booked a huge suite, so I think you should all come back and we’ll order in dinner.” That sounded good in theory, but in practice the options were few, because this was the exurbs, and that was when, friends, I had my first Olive Garden meal! Yes, there were like 20 of us, and Better Half paid for the whole thing. We were hosting, after all. Everyone else seemed to be fluent with the menu (even BH, but he used to travel a lot for work) but I’d never seen one, so I ordered this. [For reference, I’m slightly older than Michelle Obama and a little more younger than Barack. It was the first time in my life that I thought we were touching modernity and I’d live to see a President I might have gone to high school with, so I achieved this with Barry. Not so in 2016 or 2020, unfortunately. But my thoughts on this shall remain my own.]
The ziti is the definition of comfort food, at least for me. This supposedly feeds four. Not when you’re experiencing “Hospitaliano” at my Kopy Kat Kitchen Table it doesn’t.
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds Italian sausage [use the spiciest you can find, because you are not feeding Olive Garden patrons]
1 1/3 cups chopped green bell pepper
6 tablespoons olive oil divided use
28 ounces canned Italian-style or plum tomatoes
10 3/4 ounces tomato puree
1 teaspoon minced garlic [chop the garlic, don’t mince it, and use three, four cloves. Again, you’re not cooking for the Olive Garden clientele]
1/2 cup fresh basil
salt and pepper to taste
3/4 pound ziti pasta prepared according to the package directions
5 cups marinara sauce
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
Instructions
Bake or pan-fry the sausages until fully cooked; drain and cool. Halve the sausages lengthwise and cut them into 1/2-inch slices.
In a skillet over medium heat, sauté the bell peppers in 2 tablespoons olive oil until they are no longer crisp, but not yet soft.
In a heavy saucepan, combine the tomatoes, tomato puree, garlic, 4 tablespoons of olive oil, and fresh basil and bring to a light simmer over medium heat. Add the sautéed peppers and cooked sausage and let simmer for 3 to 5 minutes.
Serve the pasta topped with the sausage, peppers, and marinara sauce and garnish each plate with parsley and Parmesan.
Back in the day I could put away a serving of ziti for four no problem. Nowadays, I’ll still have a taste now and then.
I love ziti. I think I posted a recipe for baked ziti at some point. But I love every kind of pasta and my carb-heavy diet is one of the reasons why I now resemble a cross-dressing Ursula from The Little Mermaid.
For the record, Ursula’s pretty hot.
I never said she wasn’t. It’s just that it’s not what I looked like even five years ago. I believe I mentioned before that when I was in my 30s I could have been PM John Major’s body double. Which is sad, because he’s 20 years older than I am, but I still had some appeal, so I guess a younger John Major, and anyway I was married off.
I especially like it when just pasta isn’t enough and you have to the starch-saturated water the pasta cooked in to your sauce. #TeamPasta
Exactly. But that’s why you use juicy tomatoes for the sauce: the acid from the tomatoes tempers the starch so you get this nice pH balance. I think. I think I read that somewhere.
Olive Garden makes me think of this:
I Ate Alone at the Times Square Olive Garden for Ten Days, and I’m Different Now
See, this is what makes me cry when I think of what Herb Spamfellow did when he took over and “rebranded” Get/Out Media. This is the kind of writing that you used to see in Gawker, and Jezebel, and The Takeout, and The Root. Now, it’s just cluttered spon-con and “kinja deals” and videos no one will watch, and the slideshows and the unspoken ban on commenting. Please, Herb. I’ll give you $100 and a first edition of Spare if you’ll just let me have this operation. It’s got one foot in the grave but it’s not dead yet and I think I can bring it back to life and make a go of it.
It definitely reminds me of Caity and Rich doing “The Best Restaurant in NYC is:” features.
That whole series was genius, especially the doll aspect. “Is the restaurant good for dolls?” or whatever the questionnaire topic was.
When that series was in full swing we went to a restaurant and a friend showed up for brunch with a large stuffed animal. I thought, “Is this a Gawker-inspired trend I’m missing out on?” No, it turned out that the friend, like so many of us childless folks, is a godparent, and was heading off to a post-brunch birthday celebration for one of his godkids.
There was also the Caity Weaver piece where she ate TGIFridays Mozzarella sticks for 14 hours.
https://www.gawker.com/my-14-hour-search-for-the-end-of-tgi-fridays-endless-ap-1606122925
Genius. Every word of it.