NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665

December 23, 1998

Prairie Fare: It's Trendy, Love

I remember watching a talk show years ago that had as its guest du jour the ex-Beatle Ringo Starr. When it came time for the audience question-and-answer segment, a woman asked Ringo why he wore an earring.

Ringo's response was disarming. He said only, "It's trendy, love."

Now, I have no punctures in my ear lobes, or anywhere else for that matter, so I'm not exactly certain why Ringo's decades-old fashion declaration has stuck with me. Sure, the remark was way cool, but there's more to it than that.

I think it has something to do with the similarities I see between jewelry and pasta. Today, it seems that a significant number of Americans, male and female, are wearing some sort of adornment that first requires the piercing of one's anatomy. At the same time, people are piling on the pasta—in salads, in main dishes, for lunch, dinner and perhaps even for breakfast. And pasta is no longer the culinary domain of the Italians, if it ever was. We now know that the Asians have a way with noodles too.

While fashion trends generally can make you look only stylish or stupid, trends in food can produce more unexpected results. Take for instance a current trend in pasta presentation—hot pasta teamed with a room-temperature sauce boasting succulent fresh tomatoes, herbs, cheese and fruity olive oil.

What unexpected results? First, there's the preparation time, less than a half hour from start to finish. Second, there's the dish's temperature at serving, lukewarm, although the flavor and texture of this dish are anything but. I think its simplicity is responsible for the dish's success. And successful it is. This style of pasta is now appearing on restaurant menus in many larger cities. I've seen it offered in Minneapolis, and a friend of mine who has relatives living in and around Chicago says lukewarm pasta is all the rage among patrons of the ritzier locales there.

What follows is my adaptation of a recipe that, while definitely not a literal flash in the pan, may nonetheless turn out to be a figurative one. But then again, who knows? At any rate it's robustly flavorful, it's definitely different and ... it's trendy, love.

Not-As-Hotsa Pasta
(Note: Because this dish features a room-temperature sauce, its serving temperature will be lukewarm.)
Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients:
6 medium fresh tomatoes, coarsely chopped
½ cup tightly packed fresh basil leaves, minced
6 garlic cloves, minced
½ cup olive oil, preferably extra virgin
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
½ pound mozzarella cheese, cubed
1 pound of uncooked rotelle pasta

Procedure:
Mix together all ingredients except cheese and pasta. Let mixture stand at room temperature for an hour or more to let flavors meld. Just before you prepare the pasta, add mozzarella cubes to the tomato mixture. Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain pasta and place in large serving dish. Add tomato-cheese mixture and toss. Serve immediately with crusty Italian bread and a zesty olive spread (tapenade), if desired.

What's Your Take on This, Julie?

Trendy or not, Not-As-Hotsa Pasta is a dish you should begin eating right after adding the cheese and pasta. Then refrigerate the leftovers as soon as you're done eating. Why? Even pasta can become a potentially hazardous food after cooking, and potentially hazardous foods' exposure to danger-zone temperatures—from 40 F to 140 F—should be no longer than two hours.

Pasta has a fairly long history in the United States. It began with Thomas Jefferson, when he brought back a spaghetti die from Italy in 1786. Pasta has become a popular and versatile food. Not only is it inexpensive, but it can be used in any part of the menu—from salad to dessert.

Pasta begins as a dough made of semolina (a granular durum wheat product) and water—hence its name, meaning "paste." A variety of spices and colorings also can be added during production. This dough is extruded through metal dies to form a wide variety of shapes, from simple strands of spaghetti to complex comic-book character shapes we see in some canned soups and boxed mixes.

Pasta is a fixture in the grain group at the base of the Food Guide Pyramid. One serving equals ½ cup cooked pasta. Most of us generally eat more than a serving of pasta on our way to the recommended six to 11 servings from this group.

When you're judging how much spaghetti to cook, keep this visual image in mind: 2 ounces of long pasta such as spaghetti, linguine or vermicelli when bunched together in your hand is about the same size as the diameter of a quarter. Put another way, 2 ounces of dry pasta yields about 1 cup of cooked pasta.

To cook pasta, start with plenty of boiling water and cook until the al dente ("to the tooth") stage. You can add a small amount of oil to the water to prevent sticking or toss with oil after draining. If it is to be used in a recipe requiring further cooking, shorten the boiling time by about one-third. Pasta typically doubles in bulk when cooked.

A serving of Not-As-Hotsa Pasta contains 425 calories and 19 grams of fat. Even though we all should limit our fat intake, don't let the fat grams in this recipe alarm you. The main fat source is olive oil, which is monounsaturated and considered more heart healthy than other types. The Mediterranean Food Guide Pyramid even has a daily recommendation for olive oil. A serving also provides about 15 percent of the daily recommendation for iron from the pasta, 20 percent of the daily calcium from the cheese and 32 percent of the daily vitamin C from the tomatoes.

Be a trendsetter and try a new twist on an old staple. Some like it not-as-hotsa.

###

Sources: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136 and Julie Garden-Robinson (701) 231-7187

Click here for a pdf version of this graphic.