Happy New Year :)

It's been a long time since I've posted on my blog, and with the start of a new year, I can't think of a better time to start again.

The past half year has been full of adventure and new things (new job! new apartment in a new neighborhood! new car! and indeed, the license to go with it! new friends! new restaurants and food! etc), that it feels like it simply swirled by in a crazy and colorful blur. Many times, I found myself thinking 'Ohh this is so delicious/amazing/neat,  I have to share this on my blog!' and just as many times, I never was able to do so. Always rushing off to do something else, or when I was just too worn out from it all, just trying to catch my breath and re-center myself! 

This year, now that my life has somewhat settled down into a more steady flow, I would love to post more on this blog and share my discoveries with you. I've missed this community, the wonderful feeling of sharing a great discovery with you, and the exchanges of inspiration, and vow to be a more active and participating member in it!

Since I founded this blog on my love for food, I think it only makes sense to start off the new year by telling you about a new dish I've experimented with tonight. 

It all started with a story my friend M told me one day last year, at work, about a pasta dish her Greek grandmother makes. Not just any dish, of course, but her very favorite - macaroni and cheese, a special treat she looks forward to each time she visits her grandmother. She explained its composition to me: Greek pasta or 'makaronia' with a special cheese called mizithra (alternative spelling: myzithra). The pasta is like spaghetti, but, as she put it, 'with a hole through it.' The memory of my sweet friend trying to impress and convey this unique quality of the pasta upon clueless (but intrigued) me still makes me smile. And as for the cheese, I went immediately to Google it even as she stood there describing it. I guess I was already hooked.

Fast forward to tonight. Snowed in by Winter Storm Hercules, and loathe to go out yet again to peruse the grocery store (my 20 minutes spent unearthing my car was enough!), I decided to make the best of what I had in-house. I had pasta, manchego cheese, salmon defrosting in my fridge. Suddenly, I remembered a blog post I had very quickly scanned and mentally bookmarked a few weeks ago, a post by my lovely friend at Dare to Eat a Peach (you'll remember her from this post)! And here I must stop and take you back in time yet again, but just a few months this time, when I traveled for work to Seattle, and ate some of the most delicious pasta I'd ever tasted. One of the pasta dishes may even have been life-changing, or at the very least, I had no idea that the simple ingredients in it could come together to create something so unique and mouthwateringly delicious. 

You'll see why I have to take you with me down memory lane to Seattle, because my friend's post is also about a pasta dish she tasted while in Seattle (sadly, we didn't cross paths in Seattle as our trips took place nearly a month apart), and that dish was a life and game changer as well. During my trip to Seattle, my team and I ate at Tavolàta, a restaurant most enthusiastically recommended to us by a knowledgeable colleague. He was a strong advocate of their spaghetti with anchovies, which had me interested from the moment I heard of it. Tavolàta is a beautifully rustic and elegant space, all wood, reclaimed-chic tables and decor, and an almost medieval sense with the dim lighting and candles flickering on the tables. From the moment we walked in, we were greeted by the most tantalizing aromas, and I just knew that a dish named in such a deceptively simple way had to be special. 

As it turns out, our colleague was spot on in his recommendation of the restaurant and of the spaghetti with anchovies. I know when someone says a dish is life-changing, 'anchovy' is probably not the first ingredient that comes to mind, but what an incredible change in perspective that dish afforded us. The pasta itself was fantastic, perfectly cooked and textured, but the sauce was something else. If a typical red pasta sauce is Brooks Brothers, classic and tried-and-true, an everyday staple, then that anchovy 'sauce' is Proenza Schouler, boldly quirky and yet balanced enough to become a classic itself. 

The flavors paraded by and sang on my tongue. The spaghetti was enrobed in a luscious and yet sheer concoction that was earthy and savory, umami with a hint of heat comes to mind, and lightly pungent and smoky reminiscent of roasted garlic. Forget the stereotypical 'stinky fish' smell that anchovies are unfortunately associated with. I wasn't able to detect anything fishy about the pasta, just that complex and addictive blend of flavors. I am certain I can eat that pasta a few times every week and never tire of it. 

Anchovies and all the lore surrounding them have their redemption in that sauce. Definitely a game changer, and perhaps even a life-changer for me, because I now have a better sense of anchovy's potential.

But wait, you exclaim to me - weren't you just rambling about a cheese and pasta dish earlier on?? 

Why yes, I was! And here's where it all comes together. M's grandmother's mizithra pasta dish, my life-changing pasta dish in Seattle, plus my friend's life-changing pasta dish that she also experienced in Seattle except with mizithra, not anchovies, and her recipe for - ta da! - pasta with mizithra! 

We have come full circle! The universe has conspired to link all these elements together, bringing you today's post! (OK, that may have been a little overly dramatic but you see my point :)

And tonight, I urge you to read her post all about the wonders of that mizithra pasta dish. Tonight, this was the dish I wanted to create for myself as a snow-day meal/treat, except, if you'll remember from above, I had manchego, not mizithra, cheese. This made for some interesting results.

As my friend notes, that particular dish is a success largely due to an interesting property of mizithra, which is that it doesn't melt when heated, but allows for some amazing caramelization action. Then, as described in my friend's recipe and post, those little bits of caramelized mizithra coat the pasta, along with garlic and olive oil, resulting in a very tasty dish. 

Well, manchego cheese, though it may be similar in taste and texture, definitely melts, and not only that, grated and heated manchego cheese clumps. I followed my friend's recipe in all respects, except the type of cheese used (and the amount of garlic! I doubled it; garlic lover, right here!), and very quickly found myself standing over a hot skillet stirring an egg-sized lump of fried cheese and garlic in the oil and wondering what I was to do with the mini-monster I'd created. It didn't look like pasta bliss at that point, though I might have been able to give cheese curds a run for their money :)

As it turns out, the pasta I ended up with was still really, really delicious. The oil benefited from the high heat and the strong flavors of the cheese and garlic, which essentially left it lightly perfumed enough to coat my pasta with a wonderfully deep and rich flavor. I added some pasta sauce as well, good old red sauce from Rao's, and upon plating my portion for my dinner, decided that freshly squeezed lemon (I had a wedge of it sitting around from making lemon-ginger-honey tea earlier) and a few drops of truffle oil would be an extremely good idea. And so they were. I intended to eat that pasta with my salmon, which was baking away in the oven, but it was so good that I just inhaled it right there in my kitchen, standing over my plate and gleefully finishing it to the last bit. 

What happened to that glop of cheese and garlic? 1/3 of it sits on my counter top. The other 2/3, well, let's just say that that gooey, chewy, garlicky little chap didn't stand a chance against me :) 

Sometimes my improvisations work, sometimes they just don't, and sometimes they lead to a new discovery. I will probably never serve anyone that cheese and garlic glop, but that pasta with an arugula salad (tangy/sharp dressing), and a fried egg, would make an amazing and quick meal any day. I'll try my friend's recipe again - either with mizithra cheese for which it was intended, or by simply letting the grated manchego and garlic melt into the pasta itself instead of trying to caramelize them first. Even though I wasn't able to make that exact dish today, something delicious and new still resulted (whew, thankfully. Otherwise, it would have been a sad night for me!).

And in this spirit of discovery, I wish you a wonderful new year full of happiness, good health, and of course, good food!

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Here is my friend's pasta with mizithra and garlic recipe. I would recommend following her recipe and not messing around like I did, because her recipes result in amazing food and I know this one is extra-special:

http://ieatthepeach.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/pasta-with-mizithra-and-garlic/

However, if you feel like being adventurous, or would like to try to replicate my happy accident, go ahead and substitute manchego for the mizithra. The pasta dish I made tonight was a result of letting the grated manchego and chopped garlic cook in the hot oil; I stirred frequently, and when the garlic started to caramelize, I removed the cheese clump and added my cooked pasta. Stir thoroughly to coat your pasta, add enough of your favorite red sauce just to coat the pasta (there shouldn't be excess sauce that's not bound to pasta), stir again and heat through, then plate your portion and enjoy. 

Lemon juice and truffle oil: Lemon juice is a must, truffle oil is an optional 'nice to have.' I have a tiny bottle of good truffle oil which I parcel out very occasionally, and tonight just a few drops gave the pasta that extra 'oomph.' The lemon juice's tang brightened everything perfectly and even without the truffle oil, makes the pasta sing.