I love food. More to the point, I love good food. I was raised in rural Wisconsin in a very food-oriented household and though I didn’t appreciate it at the time (I pretty much just wanted burgers and PB&Js), my parents’ focus on exposing me to quality eating stood in stark contrast to the quantity-over-quality food culture that dominates most of the Midwest. We used to drive an hour and a half to Milwaukee to dine somewhere decent, and occasionally made the 3.5 hour drive to Chicago to eat at a really top-notch restaurant. My dad owned a food service provider (to colleges, etc), and was even named to the Restaurant Hospitality’s “Rising Stars” in 1986, alongside people who are now legends, like Alfred Portale of the Gotham Grill in NYC. Emeril Lagasse was on the list in 1987.

Anyway, now I live in one of the food capitals of the world - The San Francisco Bay Area - and I love it. There is an incredible emphasis on eating well here, meaning eating fresh, good food rather than just cramming manufactured crap down your gullet. As I mentioned, I started life as a food heathen, but over the last 10 years of living here, I’ve become, without a doubt, a foodie. I love to make new foods, sometimes take a Saturday or Sunday afternoon to go track down particularly quality ingredients, and when I’m picking somewhere to go on vacation, an abundance of great restaurants in the area can play a major factor in my decision to go somewhere.

I am not a chef, obviously, nor would I consider myself an expert on food. I’m just an enthusiastic hobbyist, but I’ve been wanting, for some time, to find a reason to write about food on my blog. Part of the joy of food is sharing it with other people. There are few better ways to spend time with friends than over a great meal and a couple glasses of good wine. As Epicurus wrote, “Before we find something to eat, we should find someone to eat with, for dining alone is living the life of a lion or a wolf.” I don’t fully agree, as I often enjoy taking a book to a restaurant alone and letting someone else serve me while I read and have a glass of wine, but the man was onto something.

Beyond my desire to share, I’m motivated by the fact that good food is not something typically associated with the games industry. Quite the opposite, unfortunately. I suspect if you asked most people what foods they associate with games, the answer might be something like, “Cheetos and Mountain Dew.” I’m not immune to the temptations of cheese-flavored petroleum by-product (though it does stain your fingers something fierce doesn’t it?) but I hate this kind of image. So, while my main motivation for talking about food is simply because I want to, I’m happy to contribute, in however small a way, to the effort to shatter undeserved negative stereotypes about gamers.

From time to time, then, I’m going to be writing about food here. I’m sure I’ll end up talking about recipes, ingredients, restaurants, fun places to visit for the food, and so on. I’ll try to occasionally related food with games/virtual worlds, but I don’t particularly feel like trying to force connections where there are none. If those of you reading the Forge particularly object to “polluting” the games talk with the occasional food post, then I’ll stop, so feel free to tell me this is of absolutely no interest. If enough say so, I’ll listen.

Anyway, I’ll include a “recipe” in this post. I put recipe in italics because a lot of what I cook doesn’t really involve a strict recipe. Recipes are required when baking (things like proportion of yeast to water to flour can be pretty important), but beyond that, one can learn to wing it.

Pasta Cake with Salad

This is a simple way of dressing up a simple salad of mixed greens.

Ingredients

  • Capellini pasta (also called angel hair)
  • Mixed greens (many grocery stores sell mixtures of field greens)
  • Olive oil (for cooking)
  • Extra-virgin olive oil (for dressing the salad)
  • Balsamic vinegar (Look for bottles that say “Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena” on it. That’s a protected term in the European Union, and it is a guarantee of a high minimum level of quality. Do not substitute cheap vinegar unless you just can’t afford the rather expensive good stuff. On the plus side, it only takes a VERY small amount of the real balsamic to flavor something.)
  • Fresh lemon juice
  • Roma tomatoes (or San Marzanos if they are in season and your market has them. Romas are much more common.)
  • Parmesan-Reggiano cheese (If it doesn’t say Parmesan-Reggiano, it’s probably made in the US or Argentina and it is of markedly inferior quality. If it comes in a tall green cylindrical can, just throw it away.)
  • Fresh-ground pepper
  • Sea salt

Cook the capellini slightly less than the package recommends. Drain it in a collander and run cold water over it to stop it from cooking. Set aside.

Heat up some olive oil in a reasonably small pan until it is hot, but not smoking (olive oil burns/smokes more easily than most other oils, so be careful here) 6″ is good. I actually use a wok for this, since the bottom of a wok is not very wide. Drop in the capellini and shape it into a roughly even-thickness circle, and then leave it alone for a bit. The bottom will eventually turn golden-brown (you’ll be able to lift up the cake to check it once it’s gotten a bit stiff), at which point flip it and cook until the other side is golden brown.

While the pasta cake cooks, assemble the salad. All you need to do is dice the tomatoes (use however much you like, or skip them if you feel like it) and mix them with the mixed greens. Drizzle just enough extra-virgin olive oil on the greens to lightly coat them (please, don’t drown your salad in dressing), then drizzle just a little balsamic. Trust me, you don’t need a lot of balsamic. It’s extremely potent stuff. Add a couple squeezes of lemon, a couple or a few grinds of pepper, and just a small pinch of sea salt (or normal salt if you don’t have sea salt. Go buy sea salt. Table salt is the salt equivalent of a chemical sledgehammer for your tastebuds).

Place the pasta cake on a plate, put your salad on top, and then shave or grate (shaving looks nicer on a salad, but it doesn’t make a huge difference taste-wise) some of the parmesan on top, and serve! You’ll find that the olive-oil fried pasta cake is an absolutely delicious partner to this simple, but tasty, salad and dressing.