You Are Busy and Hungry. An Easy to Make Pasta is the Answer with Chorizo, Green Beans, Scallions and Anchovies

Maybe you are rushed because your work day is long or you are preparing a big meal for a party of relatives who are coming the next day. Taking care of yourself is important. A well-made, hot meal on a cold, wet and windy night is essential.

One of the easiest meals to prepare is pasta which cooks al dente in about ten minutes. In that short amount of time you can make one dish that will be a full meal if you include not just sauce but lots of good vegetables and proteins.

So no excuses about being too rushed or too tired.

Cook, eat and be merry
Tonight I used what I had in the refrigerator. Luckily I had some very good ingredients. I used green beans I bought at an Asian market in Little Saigon 30 minutes south of Los Angeles International Airport. I don't know why but the green beans I buy anywhere other than an Asian market are not good. Even at farmers markets.

At any rate, I had green beans because I like to make a salt-boiled green bean salad with shallot slices charred in a carbon steel pan. That was for tomorrow night. Tonight, I used a handful of the green beans, but if I had kale, spinach, broccoli or broccolini, I would have used those. The point is to use a "green" vegetable because it helps balance the richness of the chorizo and butter (which is optional but adds a wonderful silky sweetness).

The chorizo was a doggie bag treat that I brought home from a lovely lunch at chef Jason McLeod's Ironside Fish & Oyster restaurant in San Diego's Little Italy (1654 India Street, San Diego). Several years ago I met chef McLeod when he was in charge of the kitchens at the Toronto Four Seasons when I was producing an ABC pilot. He was kind enough to let me take over a station in his kitchen so I could cook for our lead actors and my fellow producers. The experience was fun and good relief from an arduous shoot. I learned an important lesson on that show. When you get really cold, like when you have been scouting a roof-top location at night in Toronto during the winter and the wind blows across a very frozen Lake Ontario, you will find it very difficult to get warm. Not a hot bath. Not several layers of clothing could get me to stop shivering. I think I finally got warm by standing next to a fireplace and drinking a tall whiskey.

Chef McLeod and I kept in touch for several years as he moved from Toronto to Whistler and then we didn't connect again until I happened to notice he had opened Ironside Fish & Oyster in San Diego. When I saw him last week, we caught up and then my wife and I had lunch while chef went back to running a very busy kitchen.

He treated us to an amazing appetizer of sea urchin, which I love and which he is able to source locally in the waters off San Diego. We had fish and chips, which came with very good cole slaw and seafood paella, which normally includes a generous helping of sautéed crumbled chorizo. Since my wife is pescaterian, the chorizo came home with us.

Hence it's availability for the pasta.

If you don't have crumbled chorizo, use crumbled crisp bacon or any kind of Italian sausage you enjoy, but do remove the sausage from the casing so you can create a crumble when it cooks so it combines better with the sauce.

The butter is certainly optional as are the anchovies. But I would recommend both. The anchovies disappear in the sauce and reveal themselves combined with all the other flavors.

A Quick and Easy to Make Pasta with Anchovies and Chorizo

Choose whatever pasta you enjoy, but preferably a bite sized pasta like ziti, penne or bowties because they coat well.

Use homemade stock because canned and frozen stocks have a high sodium content. When you roast a chicken, boil the bones, strain and reserve the stock to freeze in pint and half pint sizes. When you make shrimp or lobster, boil the shells, strain and reserve the stock to keep in the freezer. That way you will have a ready supply of healthy broth to use for sauces, stews and soups.

If you have uncooked chorizo and sausage, remove the casing. Heat a sauté pan with a drizzle of olive oil. Crumble the chorizo or sausage with your hands as you add it to the hot pan. Further crumble the meat with a fork as the sausage cooks. Remove when the sausage is lightly browned.

If using bacon, cook 6 pieces of bacon in a large frying pan, turning frequently until browned on both sides. Remove, drain and when cooled crumble.

Serves 4

Time to prepare: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

1 box pasta, preferably De Cecco, ziti, penne or bowties
1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup green beans, washed, ends trimmed, cut into 1/4" lengths
8 medium sized shiitake mushrooms, washed, ends trimmed, thin sliced
4 shallots, washed, ends trimmed, peeled, roughly chopped
6 anchovies
1 cup homemade stock made from shellfish or chicken
2/3 cup cooked, crumbled chorizo or Italian sausage or 1/2 cup crumbled crisp bacon
1 tablespoon sweet butter (optional)
1/2 cup pasta water
2 scallions, washed, ends trimmed, cut into 1/4" long sections
Sea salt to taste
Black pepper to taste
Pinch of cayenne to taste (optional)
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

Directions:

Boil a large pot of water with kosher salt. Add the pasta and stir well. Cook approximately 10 minutes or until al dente.

While the pasta cooks, heat a large sauté or carbon steel pan on a medium flame. Add the olive oil and sauté the green beans, mushrooms and shallots until the beans are tender.

Add the anchovies. Use a fork to mash the anchovies against the bottom of the pan to break them apart.

Add stock and stir well to dissolve the anchovies. Cook and reduce the liquid by half.  Add the cooked chorizo or sausage. If using cooked bacon, do not add until just before serving to preserve the crispness.

Check the pasta. If it is al dente, get ready to strain out the water. Put a heat proof container in the sink. As you pour the pasta through a strainer, capture 1/2 cup of pasta water in the heat proof container and reserve.

Set pasta aside while you finish the sauce.

If the sauce is too thin, raise the heat and reduce the liquid. If there isn't enough sauce, add some of the pasta water and stir well. If using sweet butter, add and stir to dissolve.

Separate the individual pieces of pasta if they stick together and add to the pan.  Stir to coat with the sauce. Taste and adjust the flavor with sea salt, black pepper and cayenne (optional). Add more pasta water if you want more sauce.

Add scallions, toss well.

Serve hot with freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese.