Spaghetti Recipes: Pasta Alla Caruso!

This week I thought I would make another one of my favorite spaghetti recipes, Pasta Alla Caruso or Pasta Con Fegatini Di Pollo, Aglio, Cipille E Funghi! This is one of the great spaghetti recipes: Spaghetti with chicken livers, garlic, onions and mushrooms! Of the many spaghetti recipes that I do this one is named after one of my favorite opera tenors, Enrico Caruso was born on February 25, 1873 in Naples, Italy and he died on August 2, 1921 in Naples, Italy, his homeland!

Enrico Caruso was a foodie at heart long before the word foodie ever came to be and he loved to cook and this dish was one of his favorite spaghetti recipes just as it is one of my favorite spaghetti recipes! Enrico Caruso dominated the opera scene of the day at the Metropolitan Opera house in New York City for eighteen years. Caruso, As an early foodie we come to find that Caruso loved chicken livers and incorporated them into this dishes whenever he could and as he did with San Marzano tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and garlic to create one of his favorite spaghetti dishes which we now call Pasta Con Fegatini Di Pollo, Aglio, Cipolle E Funghi or Pasta Alla Caruso!

Enrico Caruso loved to use pale yellow chicken livers if they could be found as they are usually fatter and have a sweeter taste than the usual dark red chicken livers that you find in supermarkets today. So if you plan to make this dish you should check with your local butcher or supermarket to make sure you get the fatter yellow chicken livers. As with so many spaghetti recipes it is best to saute the chicken livers separately from the spaghetti sauce and then reincorporate them later in the sauces development. You will get a hint of the livers flavor in the sauce when you remove the livers from the saute pan and sweat down the garlic and onions. Then once reincorporated into the sauce you will have all the flavors of the dish together making for a lovely pasta dish experience.

Many folks don't know that chicken livers are widely used in Italy for both spaghetti recipes and other recipes as well. One example would be chicken livers being used for Tuscan chicken liver crostini. Also there are times when the chicken livers are just sauteed in olive oil with garlic and onions and served on a plate. This is done in so many cultures that this is why I love food so much because many peoples from all over the world so many times do the same things with food! Food is one of the glues that bind us all together as human beings and I think the similarities in how we prepare foods is one of the things that bring us together.

It really has been awhile since I have made any of the spaghetti recipes that I enjoy and in my house I rarely go more than three days without eating some kind of pasta dish or I go through PWT's(Pasta Withdrawl Tremors) if I don't have my pasta hit! So when I thought about what I wanted to cook this week I was listening to a Caruso CD and viola! Here it is! Pasta Alla Caruso! As far as I am concerned Enrico Caruso could have been a famous chef with his knowledge of spaghetti recipes that he developed for himself and his knowledge of the food of his native home of Naples, Italy. Many people don't know this but during the time that Caruso was singing opera at the Metropolitan in New York City he out of his own pocket sponsored the immigration and citizenship of over a dozen chefs from his home in Naples, Italy and he helped them to open restaurants in what is now known as "Little Italy" in New York City! There you will find some of the best Italian food anywhere in the world and that includes Italy herself! I consider this to be a great benefit for the Italian food community in New York City that has lasted all these years and has made New York one of the finest cities for foods of the world! As an early foodie a neat little factoid is that when Enrico Caruso was not singing at the Metropolitan he would be working in the kitchens of some of the restaurants that he helped to open! For all we know Enrico Caruso could have been the Jaques Pepin of the Italian food world!

Now in the anals of food history there is some conjecture as to the origins of Pasta Alla Caruso. Some historians think Caruso invented the dish and named it after himself and this is or course the story that I ascribe to! Other historians believe that one of Enrico Caruso's chef friends created the dish and named it after the great tenor. Well, the only one that will ever know for sure is Enrico Caruso! Either way Pasta Alla Caruso is still one of my favorite spaghetti recipes!

My friends look at me like I am crazy at times. "Your adding chicken livers to tomato sauce?" You bet I do! Chicken livers add a creamy and pungent richness to the sauce and in unison with the earthiness of the mushrooms, garlic and onions this dish makes for an excellent primo piatto(first course) or a lovely main course!

Enrico Caruso had a distinguished 25yrs career in opera that spanned from 1895 to 1920 and he performed at the Metropolitan opera house in New York over 800 times before he passed away leaving us without his great talent as both a great tenor and a great chef! I would like to think that if Enrico Caruso was alive today that he would have his own cooking show and he would be teaching us how to make great spaghetti recipes!

I think back to the days when I hated music classe in high school and college and how I couldn't stand classical music or opera. Now here I am almost 50yrs and I find it hard to listen to most of the new music out there and I find myself drawn to listening to the opera! I LOVE Maria Kallas Callas the greatest soprano operetta to ever grace a stage, and I LOVE Luciano Pavarotti who as Caruso is one of the greatest tenors of the modern era! But as far as classics go I Love the sound of Enrico Caruso and one of his favorite spaghetti recipes which is now one of my favorite spaghetti recipes, Pasta Alla Caruso! Enjoy the video!



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Thai Food Recipes: Thai Salad Recipe: Yum Woon Sen Salad Recipe

I just love Thai food recipes! They are so varied and unique that you can do just about anything you want with them. On of my favorite aspects to Thai food recipes is the wide array of flavors and textures that you find in Thai foods! This is why I am writing about the recent Thai salad recipe that I had for dinner last night. It has been really hot here in Vegas lately. We have had temps around 101 to 107 and humidity between 20 and 40 percent which is huge out here in the high desert.

I made a Thai salad recipe last night called Yum Woon Sen which is a Thai salad recipe that can be served hot or cold. I prefer mine to be chilled. I made this salad recipe because I didn't want to turn on my oven for a long period of time adding heat to my house. I did have to fry up some garlic and shallots for this Thai salad recipe but that was only for a couple of minutes at a stretch. I did have to boil some water to cook the noodles but no extended periods of heat in the kitchen this week.

The Yum Woon Sen Salad recipe is made with mung bean noodles that are called by many names in the Asian markets that you may shop at. Names like Saifun, Glass noodle, Glass thread, Mung bean thread, and Cellophane noodles. This neat little noodle isn't clear like glass until you cook them but I love the rubbery texture of this noodle and it sucks up the flavors of whatever they are mixed with.  These mung bean threads really make a  great Thai salad recipe.

There are as many variations of Yum Woon Sen as there are Thai people eating it. My  version of this Thai salad recipe will use dried shrimp that are fried. In some restaurants they add large cooked shrimp to the Yum Woon Sen salad recipe to dress it up a bit and that is fine.  Street vendors in Thailand make this Thai salad recipe with shrimp, pork, sausage and other seafood types like squid. Remember: "There are no rules in cooking!"

I have found that the two most popular Thai food recipes out there are Tom Yum Goong soup and Pad Thai! I find that many people are more familiar with these two Thai food recipes and are not to aware of Thai salad recipes. So the next time you go to your local Thai restaurant order up a plate of Yum Woon Sen you will love it! The best thing to do is to make it at home yourself because you can do so much with the recipe and make it to your exact liking and you will find that Yum Woon Sen is one of those Thai food recipes that are very versatile indeed! So check out my video and then make some Yum Woon Sen and make this Thai salad recipe your own!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm0vnn9Oaro
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Thai Food: Thai Recipes: Nam Prig Pad Thai Chili Paste

Thai Food: Thai Recipes

 

 

This week I am making one of my favorite and easy Thai Recipes,  Nam Prig Pad the famous Thai chili sauce/paste that is used in Thai Food cooking and it's also famous for causing a terror alert in Soho, London England sometime back in 2007 when a Thai restaurant was making it's own Thai Nam Prik Pad. The smell of the burning chili peppers set someone off and they contacted the authorities and off the cops went only to find a humble restaurant making their own chili paste! Now if that won't make chili paste famous I don't know what will?  Why am I making Nam Prig Pad you ask? Well I guess by this point that many of you that visit my blog know that I LOVE Thai Food and I love to work with Thai Recipes. I love the flavors of Southeast Asia, Thailand, Viet Nam etc. I find that Thai Food has a certain versatility and interchangeability that food from other cultures doesn't have in my humble opinion. The flavors! The aroma's! Oh man! Just can't be beat! Well I do a fair amount of Thai Recipes and other Asian dishes on this blog of mine and I always try to add my own twist to the recipes I make. Last week I made another of my favorite Thai Recipes called Thai Pad Cha which is one of my favorite Thai Recipes. It's a seafood Thai dish. The dish uses a sauce combination of soy sauce, oyster sauce and fish sauce. I thought to myself that this was going to really salty so I decided to substitute Nam Prig Pad in place of the oyster sauce.  So I used the Nam Prig Pad and then during this last week I received about 15 email from people asking me to make Nam Prig Pad on my Youtube channel. So I did! Nam Prig Pad is good in so many Thai Recipes but, it give many other foods a great flavor as well. Nam Prig Pad makes a delicious BBQ sauce and makes for a KILLER grilled cheese sandwich! No really!  Try it!


Thai chili paste or Nam Prig Pad is the paste that is very often used in Tom Yum Goong soup and other Thai Food. It is usually a dark brown to black chili paste from Thailand. The color of the chili paste depends on how much your roast  your chili peppers. There are many Thai Recipes for Nam Prik Pad but the base of the recipe is garlic, shallots, and dry chili peppers some salt and sugar usually palm sugar and in some cases there is the addition of tamarind paste, shrimp paste and dried shrimp. You can buy tamarind paste in your local Asian market in a jar or in block form but just make sure that when you buy the tamarind that it is only tamarind and water with no other ingredients in it. If you can't find it at your local market you can get it here online.

From what I am to glean in my research about Thai Food is that what I was calling Nam Prik Pad/Pao which is how I learned to call this Thai food mixture is actually supposed to be called Nam Prig Pad! Pad means stir fried. In Nam Prig Pad the ingredients are meant to be grilled and then ground up and then fried in oil and some sugar is added. The sugar acts as a kind of preservative and that is why Nam Prig Pad can last for months on your counter top. On the other hand Nam Prig Pow is when the ingredients are grilled and then ground rather than ground and then stir fried. Most Nam Prig Pow in jars are just the ingredients of Nam Prig Pow being fried and having sugar added to it and that's that! The problem is that most people including me have used the name Nam Prig Pow and Nam Prig Pad as meaning the same thing in Thai Recipes and it's not! Lesson learned! Another interesting fact about Nam Prig Pow is that in many places it's called Nam Prig Dang or red chili paste because of the deep reddish color that comes from the redness of the chili peppers. There are many varieties of Nam Prig Pad that you can get in jars at the local Asian market but in the last year I have gotten into making my own style of Thai Recipes of Nam Prig Pad. Some smoother than others. Some browner than others. Some more rustic than others.

I have made the standard Thai recipes of Nam Prig Pad using the chili peppers, sugar, garlic, shallots, shrimp paste and dried shrimps. As I stated there are many ways to accomplish making Nam Prig Pad. I have also made it with dried squid, dried scallops and dried cuttlefish. This week I am just going to show you how to make one of  the standard Thai Recipe of Nam Prig Pad with just a couple of additions and changes. These changes are as follows. I am going to be using Molasses instead of palm sugar or brown sugar. I mean brown sugar is just sugar with molasses added to it anyway! Palm sugar is sweet  and brown sugar is sweet and imparts that sweetness to the Nam Prig Pad. Molasses on the other hand is already dark in color and will impart some darkness and richness to the Nam Prig Pad and will also all more depth to the sweetness and in my opinion more character. I will also be adding some lime juice as a preservative and some cooked lemongrass to the mix as well. So if you love Thai Food as much as I do then sit tight and enjoy the video!


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