ALDI Pizza Ravioli

The frozen-food cases at ALDI hold such delights - which rotate in availability with a baffling inscrutability - that I could probably write this blog exclusively about ALDI products and never run out of source material. Why, just the other day I went in for some bread and a head of lettuce - and nothing else - but the siren song of the frozen foods beckoned me and there I beheld PIZZA RAVIOLI.

There were two varieties available: Pepperoni and Cheese. I bought a bag of each and boiled them up according to standard ravioli operating procedures, and then served them without attempting to distinguish by sight which ones were which.

The Pizza Ravioli are as deliciously satisfying as frozen ravioli can be. That is not intended to be insulting or ironic, either: The ravioli I grew up eating was always frozen - I don't think I saw a "fresh" ravioli until I was like thirty years old - but it means that you're not going to find huge bursting-at-the-seams-with-ricotta ravioli in these bags. The filling is standard quantity, and standard-for-ALDI quality (which means, of course, that it's right on par with any name brand you might usually buy.)

I cooked and served the two varieties by dumping both bags at once into the boiling water, then fishing them out and intermingling them in a big shallow serving bowl. I wanted an adventure, because it's impossible to tell by eye whether the ravioli on the end of your fork is pepperoni or cheese. It's not until the mildly spicy taste of the pepperoni hits your tongue that the difference is clear. ALDI certainly got the taste down pat here. These ravs genuinely taste like pizza, enough so that even Lynnafred's boyfriend ate them, despite his declared distate for ricotta cheese (he usually only eats meat ravs, the heathen.) They were really delicious, and a nice change from standard ravioli. I would buy them again.

Remember if you can't find these in your local ALDI, have a chat with the store manager to see when the store is going to get some in. Like many of ALDI's products, Pizza Raviolis are generally a "limited time" item, and every store's schedule differs.

This time you've gone too far, ALDI

Imported Pasta: Maltagliati Brand

I was shopping in Ocean State Job Lot the other day and found a brand of imported pasta I hadn't seen before: Maltagliati, made by Pastificio Fabianelli S.p.a. in Arezzo, Italy.   Certified by the USDA as organic (if that's important to you) and made of 100% Durum wheat semolina, it was a bargain at a dollar a pound.  Also, as you can see by the picture at right, it featured a totally appealing early-20th century logo of an Italian chef looking pretty damn pleased with himself and his steaming-hot plate of spaghetts, so I really couldn't help but buy a couple of packages.

I'm glad I did, too.  It cooks up beautifully, maintaining it's al dente character and not getting "sticky" even though I had to hold it in the water a little longer than I liked while the sauce was heating up.  Excellent stuff - I'm going to get over there and buy some more while they still have some.  (That's the perils of shopping at a job lot store - they'll be selling something you get hooked on, only to run out and never carry it again.)

One thing, though... Maltagliati strikes me as a pretty strange name for a pasta brand.  The word translates as "badly cut," and in Italy it's used to describe randomly-shaped bits of pasta scraps left over from cutting standard shapes.  Maltagliati are usually used in soups like minestrone or pasta e fagioli and in the past few years it's gotten so popular that some manufacturers package bags of intentionally-produced pasta pieces as maltagliati.

Links:

This PDF brochure from Pastificio Fabianelli describes their Maltagliati brand pasta and includes a chart of the shapes available.  It's in English.

Click here to go to Pastificio Fabianelli's main website, which is Flash-based and completely in Italian.

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Pasta Week, Day 4 (Thursday)

Man, am I getting sick of pasta. I'm also running out of ideas on what to use this stuff for, so bear with me as I just kind of make stuff up as I go along.

Mmm, bacon mac.

Breakfast this morning was Bacon Mac & Cheese. Penne, homemade cheese sauce, and bacon. My cheese sauce was severely lacking in flavor because I didn't have a variety of cheeses to use, I only had American.  All in all, it wasn't bad, but I think that from now on I'll stick to either Dave's cheese sauce recipe, or rip open a box of Kraft Dinner.

Lunch wasn't anything special. I had repeats of the Turkey, Bacon and Pasta from Day 3. I used penne for it again, because I thought that it fits better than angel hair does.


So, if anyone has any suggestions on what I can do with even more pasta, I'd appreciate some suggestions on what I could possibly do with it.  I'd be eternally grateful, and you'd most likely save me from eating the same pasta dishes over and over again.


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Pasta Week, Days 2 & 3 (Tuesday and Wednesday)

What's better than a breakfast made of pasta?

Tuesday was kind of an unadventurous pasta day. In fact, it wasn't even really a pasta day at all.

When I finally decided to get up on Tuesday morning, I wasn't feeling all that adventurous or hungry, so I had a few fistfuls of cold pasta that morning for a makeshift breakfast instead. For lunch later on in the day, I still wasn't really feeling all too hot, so I decided to have the rest of that awesome sauce from the night before with even more pasta. So, nothing really special was done.

I told myself I had to make up for it on Wednesday, and when I woke up this morning, I had an idea of some cool things I could make with each of them that would probably still be tasty while I experimented in the kitchen.

I ended up starting today off with a bang because I decided to play a quick game of "Who Let You Cook" with my breakfast. Taking a lump of angel hair, two eggs, peas, and some salt and pepper, I stir fried the pasta in a little bit of butter, added the peas, and then added the eggs - scrambled style - to the entire mix and waited for the eggs to set. I didn't season it with anything other than salt and pepper, but in retrospect, putting some five spice powder in it probably would have been a good idea. And while I'll admit that it's not really all that pretty to look at, it tasted pretty good. This was actually a pretty versatile one-pan wonder that would've been pretty good if I'd added some chicken or something to it, too. If I'm ever so inclined, I might make it again.

Later on that day, for dinner, Dave and I made a repeat of something I've made before: take a simple white sauce and season it to compliment bacon and turkey, and pour it over some sort of noodle. In this case, we had penne. It was kind of like a "Turkey peas on Toast" thing, but better. Because it had bacon in it.

Pasta Week, Day 1 (Monday)

Between Dave and myself, I'm sure we're going to be able to use this delicious pasta by the end of the week. He and I both have different things in mind for today, for example.

Penne with butter and a touch of Aromat seasoning.

Today for lunch, I did one of my favorite things ever to do with plain, cold leftover penne: chuck some of it in a bowl, put a little butter on it, and put in it the microwave for a minute. When it comes out of the microwave, I sprinkle a little Knorr Aromat seasoning on it for extra amounts of awesome (though according to the package, it's mostly salt and MSG,) sit down somewhere cozy, and nom away.

There's things you can do with that above method to make it a little more exciting, though, like putting some chicken or turkey in it, or better yet, some frozen peas or fresh corn. But even just snacking on it in all of its starchy, carbohydrate glory is enough to keep me happy.

Angel hair with Dave's amazing sauce.

Dave, on the other hand, found something to do with the angel hair that never goes wrong, and it's name is good old fashoned tomato sauce. Using tomatoes from our garden and fresh herbs, he made a super-amazing sauce that went really well with a package of pork stew bits that I'd prepped earlier in the day. He cooked the pork bits in a pressure cooker for about 20 minutes while he made the sauce in another pot, heated up some of the pasta, and then added the cooked pork to the sauce just before serving.

The end result was nothing short of awesome, and was perfect for an eerily cold August night like tonight.

Lynnafred's Pasta Week!

A quick glimpse of the pasta you'll be seeing me talk about.

Thanks to my absolute hatred of seeing food go to waste, I'm now the proud owner of about eight pounds of pre-cooked pasta.

So, this week, I'll be posting things I'm doing with this pasta. Some of it might be simple, some of it, more detailed and involved. So, I'm cordially inviting you to walk down a weeklong path of madness with me as I figure out what to do with eight pounds of angel hair pasta and pene.

Here's to hoping I don't get sick of pasta by Day 3.

Dinty Moore Italian Vegetable Stew with Meatballs

Are my tastes changing, or are these packaged "quicky meals" getting somewhat better?  A couple  weeks ago, I tried Kid's Kitchen Cheezy Mac 'n Cheese by Hormel,  and found it to be pretty good - a bit on the salty side, but fairly honest ingredients and decent flavor.  This time, I tried out Dinty Moore Meals Italian Style Vegetable Stew - another Hormel product - and once again I find myself pleasantly surprised.

That's not to say Dinty didn't get a little weird with the ingredients - big chunks of potatoes and carrots in tomato sauce with pasta?? - but once I got through my initial surprise I found myself enjoying it.  

The potatoes are decent - not mealy or crumbly, but good, creamy waxy potatoes that hold up well to the cooking and heating process.  The chunks of carrot are sweet and distinct and add a richness and body to the tomato sauce, which itself is tangy and well-balanced - seasoned carefully and very flavorful.  The meatballs, although fairly standard canned-food fare containing a good dose of filler, are also delicious in their own way and have a good texture.  And the soft-cooked beans compliment the meal as well.

Even though I thought the pasta was actually the weak part of the meal - cut a bit too small, and kind of mushy for my taste - the meal actually comes across more like Pasta e Fagioli with added potatoes than it does "vegetable stew."  That little microwaveable bowl turned out to contain a fairly satisfying lunch.

And one more thing:  If you're careful about limiting your intake of high-fructose corn syrup, you have nothing to worry about here - there isn't any.  Thank you, Hormel.

P.S.  My inner 12-year-old giggles like hell every time he reads the label.  "Big Bowls."  You know what they say about Big Bowls, right?  They have Big Bowl Movements!  [tee hee hee]

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Kraft Spaghetti Classics: A Time Capsule of Crap

You know, it is really easy and fairly cheap to make a good spaghetti dinner.  There is plenty of decent and inexpensive pasta on the shelves of your local grocery store - chances are, even the store brand is made of 100% Durhum  wheat flour - and even if you haven't got time to make your own sauce you can get a bottle of Ragu for a couple of bucks.  (And yes, I occasionally use Ragu sauce.  Despite what some outdated websites might tell you, most Ragu sauces contain no HFCS and the ingredient list is pretty close to what I put in my homemade spaghetti sauce anyway.  Read labels.)  Anyway, the point is that a really authentic and delicious spaghetti dinner is so easy to make and so cheap to put on the table that I have to wonder why anyone would bother with Kraft Spaghetti Classics.  It takes more time to make than the real thing, and even a can of Chef Boyardee tastes better.

Actually, it was the very preposterousness of this stuff that made me buy it to begin with.  They might be calling it "Kraft Spaghetti Classics" today, but the product itself is actually the horrid "Kraft Spaghetti Dinner" from the 1950's with updated graphics on the box. 

This newspaper ad originally appeared in October 1958.

Everything about Kraft Spaghetti Classics is a throwback to the 1950's - a time in culinary history when Italian food was apparently still viewed as "ethnic" and "exotic."  Even the preparation instructions are unchanged:

1. Bring water to a boil and add the spaghetti, cooking until tender (10 - 12 minutes.)
2. Meanwhile, mix the Italian Spice Mix, a 6-ounce can of tomato paste, and two cans (12 ounces) of water in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil on medium heat, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Drain the spaghetti and tip it onto a serving platter.  Top with the sauce, then sprinkle with the enclosed grated Parmesan cheese.

The spaghetti in the package is really low-grade.  Good pasta is made from 100% Durum semolina flour - a hard wheat flour that stands up well to boiling, and produces a firm yet tender pasta with a slight pale yellow tint.  Kraft's spaghetti is made from regular flour which leaches gluey starch into the cooking water.  It cooks up sticky, bland, and flaccid and the color is a rather unappealing greyish-white.  Although we monitored the cooking carefully, and pulled strands out to check doneness frequently, the pasta still came out soft and slippery.  Even giving it a rinse before serving didn't help.  The texture was just awful and the flavor was - not surprisingly - closer to boiled flour than to boiled pasta.

Adding two can-measures of water to a can of tomato paste makes for a mighty thin sauce, as Lynnafred noticed during the sauce prep.  As the sauce came up to a simmer, she added the Tangy Italian Spice Mix and stirred it in.  The sauce thickened in minutes - thanks to the modified food starch in the Spice Mix.

The resulting sauce is sharp-edged and very rough.  I could be charitable and call it "tangy," but the tang is a byproduct of the unsophisticated "dump in some powdered stuff" method of preparation.  Even the most basic supermarket sauce in a jar has a depth of flavor that comes from long simmering.  Kraft's "quicky" method with the limited flavorings in the Spice Mix results in a harshly underseasoned sauce which tastes exactly like what it is:  tomato paste and pixie dust.

The final ingredient pouch in the kit was the Kraft 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese, and it's kind of sad that the cheese was the best component of the assembly.  For me, I suppose that's partly out of nostalgia; when I was growing up, my mom always had a container of Kraft Parmesan Cheese in the fridge (probably because it was inexpensive and easy to find back then, in the years before every supermarket had a huge WORLD OF CHEESE display by the deli counter.)  It's not my first choice for grated table cheese, but I confess that it is adequate.  In keeping with the spirit of our 1950's faux-Italian experience, we sprinkled the Parmesan cheese atop the spaghetti and dug in.

The presence of sauce and cheese did absolutely nothing to improve the taste or, especially, the texture of the pasta, which continued to be gummy and gluelike and thoroughly nasty, only twice as bad because it was topped with that awful sauce.  We actually had tons of leftovers that night - unusual for Spaghetti Night.

Kraft Spaghetti Classics?  Never, ever again.

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