Only vaguely do I recall when Rice-a-Roni came on the market. Way so many years ago. 1958 to be exact. It was a time when food producers were coming up with just the beginnings of boxed mixes. Cake mixes had been around for awhile, but not much of anything else. I thought the rice mixture was quite good. Tasty for such an easy combination in a box. But then the food police told us about sodium, and I began noticing how much was in lots of the foods I purchased. There still is a lot of sodium in many prepared foods. I started avoiding those products, especially after the medical experts told us we were only supposed to consume a max of 2,000 milligrams a day. It’s easy to consume double or triple that if you eat out and/or eat pre-packaged foods. Because Rice-a-Roni was so high in sodium I stopped buying it. By the way, it’s now owned by Quaker Oats.

Beginning in the late 1960’s I started avoiding nearly all packaged and ready-made foods altogether, in favor of making things myself, adding only fresh food, fresh vegetables, my own herbs and spices. And I’ve continued to adhere to that with only a few exceptions. There are a couple of cake mixes I do use for some family favorites. I do buy an occasional frozen vegetable, some Trader Joe’s mixes (that contain no additives or preservatives). And once in awhile I buy Pillsbury biscuits because I have one recipe that is just so good and easy. I try to buy organically fed meat. Sometimes I buy organic produce. Not always, depending on the quality or freshness of it.

Having done a search for this posting today, I discovered that the combo of rice and pasta is an Armenian thing. I thought it was Italian, but no. The founders of Rice-a-Roni actually created it from something served to them by an Armenian neighbor. Thus, the rice boxed mix was born. And why they must add so much sodium to it is beyond me. But they sure enough do.

Because I always walk right past that boxed mix section in my grocery store, I’d forgotten all about the rice/noodle combination until a recipe was printed in my local food section last week. Labeled Carrie’s Rice, it is identical to hundreds of other pilaf recipes out there on the internet. Some add mushrooms, garlic, maybe some dill weed, pine nuts perhaps, but they all contain noodle-type pasta or orzo, white rice, butter, onion and chicken broth. Some recipes brown only the pasta; others brown both pasta and the rice. If you use low-sodium chicken broth, as I did, you’ll likely want to add some salt to it. And you can vary the amount of butter. Many recipes call for a full stick of butter for 1 cup of rice and 1 cup of pasta. I cut it down by half, and think that was still too much. So I’ve reduced the amount even more in the recipe below. It’s a very quick side dish. The kids will like it, and since you’re doing all the cooking of it, you know exactly what’s in it. Unadulterated rice, pasta, butter and canned broth. Maybe some onion, and/or garlic too.
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This recipe requires the telling of a travel-related story. Some years ago (I’m guessing it was about 15) my DH and I went on a white-water rafting trip in Idaho. My DH was quite surprised when I mentioned the trip to him. What, he said? You WANT to go camping in the remote wilderness? I said, well, yes, because the guides do all the work, all the cooking, and we’re just there to immerse ourselves in the scenery and enjoy the food. The relaxation. The clean air.

I have fond memories of my childhood when my parents and I went camping in the High Sierras (the inland ridge of mountains that divide, almost, California from Nevada). My dad loved to fish; my mom not so much, but she enjoyed lazy days in the camp, reading magazines, a book, playing games of Scrabble (which I still love to this day). Sometimes I went fishing with my dad, but usually got bored after awhile. I had my own pole, usually a hand-me-down from my dad. We fished for trout in those cold, crisp mountain streams, seeking out the deep pools of water, near rocks, where the trout loved to hide. We tent camped, but my parents did 99% of the work, so I didn’t realize until I was an adult about how much effort was involved in setting up the camp, or cooking meals. Or doing dishes. Or laundry. Or even the packing that went on at home for a couple of weeks before the trip.

Since those days I haven’t camped much, and would prefer to do it in a camper or trailer if the option were to come up. My DH, however, has no interest in camping, even in a luxury vehicle. He likes water. The ocean, mostly. (We have a sailboat, and that’s HIS idea of camping.) But when I suggested the Idaho river-rafting trip, maybe it was the water that intrigued him. At any rate, we went, and signed up for a trip that was not only a “gourmet” trip, but a wine-tasting trip as well. Salmon River Outfitters had been written up in Gourmet. That’s all the mattered to me – if Gourmet thought it was a great trip with great food, surely we would too. And indeed we did. SRO has new owners, but I’d suspect they would have continued the tradition.

I could write up an entire post about the week-long trip itself (the wildlife, the hikes, the campsites, the conviviality of the small group, the thrill of the rapids, and even getting to the imbarkation point too) but for now I’ll just talk about the food. To say I was amazed at the food is an understatement. Here we were, out in the middle of nowhere (on the Salmon River, the South Fork, with nothing but ice chests of food and camping gear – no roads – no civilization whatsoever – no supply boat or car to deliver food to us) and the group of guides (four on our trip). We rafted the river for a couple or three hours in the mornings, then they’d spy a favorite sandy bank and our three rafts would pull in. They’d set up comfy chairs right at the riverside, bring in the potty box (which went with us on the trip from beginning to end) and set up a small secluded toilet for the group, then they’d start preparing lunch. Lunch was usually cold food – salads, sandwiches, and maybe brownies, fruit and cookies, hot coffee in thermoses from breakfast, soft drinks. We stopped long enough to enjoy more of the scenery and let our lunches settle, then we’d pile back into the rafts and off we’d go for the afternoon run. Another couple or three hours on the river, more rapids perhaps, maybe a hike into an abandoned gold rush era village, and we’d stop again for the day. They had their favorite spots. There are a few other river outfitters plying the same waters (the state mandates a limited number of rafts on the river at any time), so everyone jockeys for their favorite sites. (And, incidentally, every single minute amount of detritus we had on this trip – dirty tissues, paper towels, wrappers, was all taken along on the trip and disposed of properly – nothing, absolutely nothing – was left on the river or in campsites.)

The weather was unseasonably cold the year we went (in July), and we were very, VERY limited in what we could take with us (they had mailed us a small waterproof cloth duffle bag and everything, absolutely everything we took had to fit into this bag). We slept in sleeping bags they provided with a small 2-man tent that goes up in nothing flat. We were required to set up our own tents and if rain threatened, we needed to dig small drainage ditches around the tent. We did have rain a couple of times, so it was a good thing we dug the ditches. A couple went along on that trip from Granite Springs winery (in California gold country, and now part of Latcham winery), and every night they provided some delightful wines for all of us to enjoy before and during dinner. The meals the guides prepared were positively amazing. I don’t remember now what all they made, but they were outstanding. The guides set up a couple of small camping prep tables and two kerosene stoves, and from those limited resources, they prepared meals you’d think were from a gourmet restaurant.

So, one night, they made this pasta dish. And everyone just adored it, me included. Toward the end of the trip they told us they had a “book” they’d sell us for a fee. It contained the story of Salmon River Outfitters and some, but not all of the recipes, but the most popular ones, this pasta dish one of them. So, of course, I had to buy the book. And I’ve made this pasta numerous times since, and never fail to remember the fun we had on that river rafting trip, and how scrumptious this tasted as we sat by the burbling river, listening to the hawks, the birds, the bees, spotting eagles soaring at high elevations too.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” Well, the quote doesn’t exactly fit my purpose here, but close. There are creative people who thrive on finding a different solution, an innovation, to a problem. In the culinary world, chefs need to create on a dime. Every day. Here, we’re talking about pasta. And there’s nothing quite like overcooked pasta. I do like it just barely done – but al dente still. So, instead of guessing and having to remove a strand of lingine from the boiling pot, here’s a foolproof and very Italian method. There really is more than one way to boil pasta. I know, this isn’t exactly a very interesting post subject, but I ran across something in my stack of recipes that I’ve had for years, and used many times. So, I thought I’d share it with you.

The advice came from a cooking instructor. What class, I can’t tell you. It’s something she passed out to all of her class participants, every class she teaches. And it’s a photocopy from the back of a package or box. Agnesi is an Italian company – they do have a website, but it’s all in Italian.

Anyway, the instructor was also a caterer, and she said this is her failsafe method. She uses it always. And as long as I remember, on those occasions when I do make pasta, it’s worked like a charm.

• “The ANGESI Advice for a Better Pasta Cooking Method: cook pasta in boiling water for just 2 minutes. Measure this time from the moment the water returns to a boil after adding the pasta. After the 2 minutes are up, remove pot from the heat, cover with a lid and leave to stand for the cooking time indicated on the box. Drain the pasta and . . . buon appetitto! This is to encourage you to try a new way of cooking pasta. You will see that when the cooking time is over, the water is almost clear. This is because the pasta has retained most of its precious nutrients, some of which are lost during the normal, longer cooking method.”

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You know, orzo is a rice-shaped pasta. Once it plumps up, it grows a bit in size, but still looks like large, very large, grains of rice. And carbonara is a rich, cream-laden Italian preparation of pasta with bacon as the primary flavor. Yet, risotto is a creamy rice preparation too, that can vary with the additions. So, Phillis Carey combined all of these culinary variations and created a great risotto-like pasta side dish. Since I like bacon a whole heck of a lot, and thyme is my most favorite-est herb, this satisfies like comfort food.

The preparation is fairly simple, although you do have to heat up the broth and be near the range when you’re making this. But you don’t have to stir for 30-45 minutes like you do with risotto. It comes together in about 30 minutes.

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I’m on a roll. Trying some of the recipes amongst the hundreds of clippings I sorted through a few days ago. This one was only about 7 months old – after I broke my foot last summer I watched a heck of a lot of television, and this was one of Giada’s Italian recipes that sounded so good, and I knew I’d enjoy it. It’s easy to make, too. Can’t beat that combination. I really can’t say that I make all that many recipes from Food Network shows. I enjoy watching some of them (as theater, I suppose) but only occasionally do I go to the Network’s site and print out a recipe.

Here is Giada De Laurentis’ stuffed jumbo shells, placed in a baking dish. Photo from the Food Network.

I almost always have pancetta on hand, but I didn’t have the 3/4 inch cubes Giada mentions in the recipe – I had the tiny cubed pancetta that I get from Trader Joe’s in 4-ounce packages. DH offered to go grocery shopping for me, so I wrote down “large pasta shells.” I should have known that “jumbo” was what I wanted. Soooo, I had to improvise a bit. The large shells are way too small to stuff, so I just made a casserole of them instead. Am sure they tasted the same, but most definitely didn’t look as attractive as Giada’s. The Asiago cheese is part of what “makes” this dish, since it has a kind of sharp taste. Good, though. And the dash of nutmeg in the mixture was really delish. The dish is rich, so it’s filling. Maybe a bit too rich for me. DH liked this a LOT. Said I could make this anytime. Any day. Night. Whenever.
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It was a few years ago and we flew from California to Philadelphia to attend the wedding of a young couple, friends. They’d met in San Diego, actually sailed with us on our boat one afternoon soon after they’d met. He was, is, a Navy pilot and close with dear friends of ours from Philadelphia. We thought they made a fine couple and wished them much happiness. The groom’s mother prepared a lovely feast for the rehearsal dinner. There were many hands helping in the kitchen, mine among them, and I fell in love with this incredibly easy side dish (or, it could be a main dish as is, or add some protein of some kind too).

I watched as MaryAnn made this sauce – she opened cans of chopped tomatoes, cubed up some cream cheese, chopped some basil, added a tad of wine vinegar, fresh garlic, and olive oil. All this was stirred up in a very large bowl, covered with plastic wrap and left to sit out for about 6 hours. The flavors developed, obviously and the cream cheese kind of dissolved, sort of. At serving time she made a heap of hot penne, combined the sauce and poured it onto a very large platter with additional basil and sprinkled the real-thing Parmesan cheese and it was done. The total amount of actual work in this is about 5 minutes. (I’m not counting the time to cook the pasta, of course.) Maybe 10 max. If you need to hold the sauce for longer, put it in the refrigerator. Just bring it back to room temp before serving. The dish can be served at room temp, actually, but I think it’s best hot.

And I’ll tell you, this is absolutely fabulous. I’ve made it many, many times since. It’s a cinch for guests. Tastes beyond wonderful.  Thank you, MaryAnn.

What’s good: well, that it’s so incredibly easy to make. You and your guests will rave about it. And yes, you DO leave it out at room temp. I think the acid in the tomatoes must be what keeps the dairy (cream cheese) from developing bacteria. It’s also delicious as left overs. A must make.
What’s not: nothing whatsoever.

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It’s the capers, of course, that make this uniquely Sicilian. Whether the Sicilians were the first to utilize the little buds, I don’t know. I buy a giant economy sized bottle of capers at my local Italian market. A large jar isn’t cheap, but I’ve had this jar for about 5 years, I think. Caper berries are also available – they’ve just been allowed to mature to a bigger size, hence they’re berries, rather than buds. I do like capers a lot, but only in small quantity. I once ordered chicken piccata at some restaurant and it had so darned many of them, and probably a bit of the pickle juice, I couldn’t eat it. But in moderation, they add a kind of piquant character to any dish in which you choose to use them. Just be sure to rinse them a little before using them.

I think capers are not common in tuna salad, but when I had this, it was just really, really good. There’s nothing else in it that is that unusual. I’ve never been able to put my finger on why this combination is so darned good, but maybe it’s the capers and lemon juice together that bring something different to the equation. And the fact that you use imported tuna packed in oil. And there’s no mayo in it. There’s just lots of flavor there.

Sicily abounds with lemons. There are lemons on trees obviously, lemons in the market, lemons in art, lemons in ceramics, lemons even in the ancient carvings. If you buy dinnerware, often it will contain pictures of lemons. The early people obviously found every possible way to utilize the citrus. Sicilians use lemon juice in lieu of vinegar, so it’s found in every avenue of their cuisine. And how could I forget Limoncello? Oh, so good is that liqueur.

But we’re talking about a pasta salad here . . . this came from a Joanne Weir cooking class some years ago. I’d have gone right on by this recipe had I not tasted it, figuring what’s one more cold pasta salad with tuna. But this was just different. Better. Tastier. Tangier. Every time I’ve made this it has renewed my enjoyment of it.
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About 20 years ago a wonderful restaurant opened near our home, called Zov’s Bistro. Owned by Zov (pronounced like the letter oh) Karamardian, it was open for weekday lunches and a few nights a week for dinner. As the restaurant grew, and Zov’s well-executed Mediterranean food became more well known, they opened every day but Sunday. Zov is a wonderful philanthropist in our community, and loves to share her native Armenian cooking, although she has broadened the scope to include recipes from many different cultures around the Mediterranean. Now the restaurant houses the bistro, a bakery and a she’s opened a couple of other locations as well.

But back in the earlier days of the Bistro, Zov taught a cooking class starring some of her family favorites, of which this recipe was one. It’s not on the restaurant menu, unfortunately, or I would have it more often. I have no recollection what else she made that night, but I fell in love with this simple pasta dish, and have been making it ever since. You need to enjoy garlic, as it plays a prominent role. And the sauce needs to sit for awhile (at least an hour, or up to 2-3 hours) to develop its flavors. You can make this any time of year – it’s nothing more complicated than canned tomatoes, garlic, green onions, olives, capers and olive oil tossed with hot pasta and sprinkled with real Parmesan. It has some other things in it too that enhance the flavor, and you garnish with a lot of fresh basil. The anchovies (buy good ones if you can find them . . . they have so much more flavor than the cheap cans at the supermarket . . . go to an Italian deli if you have one) give it some character, but you never know they’re there. This is a great meal for a warm summer night.

So, I have a fun story to relate about this recipe. We had dinner with our son, Powell, and his wife the other night, and I mentioned that I had written up this recipe, which has always been a favorite of his. I’d forgotten that when he first met Karen he offered to help her with catering food for an art event a couple of weeks later. She wasn’t a caterer, but had offered to help a friend and was happy to have some help with it. Powell enjoyed cooking and loved entertaining when he was a bon vivant bachelor. Anyway, back then Powell had phoned me to ask advice on what recipes I had that might work for such an event where they could do no actual cooking, so they’d have to make everything ahead. This recipe was a standout for doing ahead, no question.

According to Karen, she was mightily impressed when Powell made this in a very large quantity for her event. According to Karen, her thoughts were along the lines of wow, this guy may be a keeper. It was a black-tie event, and the two of them served this dish and a bunch of others to the crowd of people. Toward the end, with Powell standing nearby in his tux, a businessman approached him and asked for his card. Probably Powell looked at him askance. Uhm. The guy said, we’d like you to cater something for us at our home. Powell laughed and said, we really don’t DO catering, etc. The guy said, well, what do you do and Powell explained that he is in the investment banking/bond biz. The guy looked at him and said what in the world are you doing here? Powell & Karen had a good laugh over that. So, a romance was made that night, according to them, over a big bowl of Pasta a la Puttanesca.
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I’d forgotten about this salad and how much I love it until last weekend when I went to Joan’s daughter’s home to greet their newly adopted infant, and Joan had made it as part of a lovely luncheon. Joan is rather “famous” for this salad – it’s one other people request too, not just me. We used to have season tickets to our local summer symphony series, and we’ve had many a picnic dinner on the lawn at the amphitheater, and every time Joan and Tom would attend I requested she make this. And she graciously gave the recipe to several people. So, thanks very much, Joan. I needed a salad for an outdoor dinner, and this just fit the bill.

Nothing about it is hard. It probably takes about 40 minutes to make it, including boiling the pasta. Be sure to not overcook the pasta. You don’t have to use penne, but that’s the way Joan makes it, and that’s the type I prefer too. You can add more sun-dried tomatoes if you wish – her recipe calls for 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup. I used 1/4. And our basil plant is proliferating, so I pruned it back for this salad. The basil is crucial in my opinion. It also will keep a few days, although it’s best the day it’s made.
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I absolutely promise that my blog is not going to be all about casseroles. It’s too bad that the word itself is a semi-bad one on blogs. I don’t have all that many casserole recipes. Honest. But those of you old enough to remember the casserole era (that would be the 1960’s and into the 70’s for you young’ns) probably have many of your own of similar ilk as this one. I’m trying to give you some variety here on this blog, and I wouldn’t have chosen this as a subject of a blog post except that this happened to have come out of the freezer the other night – literally it kept falling out of the freezer every time I opened the door. It was trying to tell me something, I finally concluded.

Some of you may know that way back in my deep, dark past, I was a Navy wife. My former husband was an air intelligence officer, and we lived in a variety of places (Florida, Washington, D.C., Whidbey Island, Washington and Denver, Colorado) over the years of his Navy service. During one of the early years I acquired a Navy Officer’s Wives Cookbook, with hundreds and hundreds of recipes from other American Navy officer’s wives from all over the globe. Actually there was a series of them (one of each of these: salads, desserts, casseroles & breads, meats, and one on international foods too). I still go to those cookbooks sometimes to get ideas about dishes to try, even though the plastic spiral bindings are nearly disintegrated on all of them. I was in my mid-20’s then and new to the day-to-day cooking arena when these books went to press, so I didn’t even think of submitting one of my recipes for any of the books. I’m not even sure I had any recipes I could call my own at that time.

As many of you probably remember, casseroles were a staple in every cook’s repertoire. They were popular for family meals, and more elegant casseroles were very popular for guests too. They certainly were in mine, and they were inexpensive. In the 1960’s my normal weekly food budget was $20, and that fed two people for 7 days, 3 meals a day. So, in the Meat cookbook of that era, amidst the little spots of food that spilled there is this recipe for Mister Charlie. Heaven knows why it’s called Mister Charlie. Was Charlie the inspiration? Was he the cook and his wife submitted the recipe? Or, I like to think it’s the dog’s name, because he ate Suzie Q’s portion when she dropped it on the floor? Do you ever ponder why recipes receive the names they do? I’ve asked myself this question about this dish for many years. Undoubtedly I’ll never know the story. I even did a Google search for the title to just see if there was anything official out there for a pasta casserole called Mister Charlie. Nope. Over the years I’ve adapted the recipe some (I use Italian sausage rather than ground beef) and I’ve added mushrooms and cheddar cheese to it. So maybe I should call it Missus Carolyn? What do you think?

Well, then. There isn’t anything startling in this casserole – pasta, meat, mushrooms, a variety of cheeses and a tomato-based sauce. That’s it. But in combo, they make a very tasty dish. Casseroles sometimes don’t look very appealing. Does the photo convey a little bit of the 1965-ish boredom of the tops of many such casseroles? What it does have going for it is that it makes a LOT. It can be made ahead. It’s high in carbs (sigh). But all-in-all, it’s still a keeper. Most of all, it’s American comfort food. So, enjoy Mister Charlie, wherever he is. Woof.
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