EASIEST PASTA COMFORT FOOD

Photo by Carol Guilford

Actually, this is a classic Italian pasta with butter and cheese.  It is my ‘mac and cheese’ comfort dinner when I am under the weather and don’t want to eat anything but know I have to.

I call the picture ‘study in white’.  When I’m feeling fine, I crumble hot red pepper on it. The pasta in the picture is pappardelle, an egg noodle. You may, of course, cook your favorite pasta.

For one (can be doubled, etc.)

4-ounces pasta

2 tablespoons melted butter (I nuke)

grated Parmesan cheese, to taste

1. Boil the pasta in 2-quarts water for 4 ounces. Stir once or twice, should take 10 to 15 minutes.  Taste a strand to make sure it’s not underdone, or mushy. Drain in  a colander.
2. Plate the pasta, pour over the hot, melted butter.  Mix.  Lay on the Parmesan, to your liking.

EASIEST EARLY GUILFORD BLEU/BLUE CHEESE SPREAD

Photo by Carol Guilford

An 8 ½  out of  10 with a history.

We were nearly younger than springtime when the late Henry Gibson (the poet on Laugh In) and I appeared at the Willamstown Theater, then Yale University’s summer theater, in a new musical by David Shire and Richard Maltby.

Henry and I spent our salaries dining at the Williamstown Inn.  Every dinner table had on it a complimentary crock of this very rich blue cheese spread. I believe it to be the first recipe I thought I could replicate. I have made it for years. 

This latest version in from The Gourmet’s Recession Cookbook, only 99 cents at Amazon. Excerpt below.

You need a garlic press for the fresh cloves.

8-ounces cream cheese

(without bovine growth hormone) Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods are sources.

4-ounces blue cheese, softened at room temp

1 tablespoon mayonnaise

¼ cup milk

1 teaspoon raw garlic (about 3-6 cloves, pressed)

1. Mash all the ingredients together. 

 Serve in an attractive container with your favorite crackers.   Will keep three or four

days in the fridge. Take out 30 minutes before serving.

“I liked, your little book,” Marian Tracy said to me, at an annual cookbook awards luncheon where my book, The New Cook’s Cookbook lost to the Kitchen Primer, written by Craig Claibourne, then editor of The New York Times. 

Marian, a slip of a woman wrote Casserole Cookery (with Nino Tracy.)  The book had six printings from 1941-1945. with subsequent printings until 1968. Casserole Cookery was the hot book among the sophisticated set, subtitled, “One-dish meals for the busy gourmet.”

Marian lived through tough times—a depression and World War 11.

I learned from Marian that food writing can be humorous.  About eggplant, she writes.  “Some do and some don’t.”

That day, at the awards luncheon, all the buzz was about a woman of the British baronage who “wrote” a best-selling cookbook.  Turns out, all the recipes were verbatim, from Gourmet magazine.

I don’t remember my precise question to Marian about the truthfulness of  cookbook authors, but I’ll never forget her answer, “We are all honest pirates.”

Cg note.  Marian’s books are available, but I can find no biography of her to determine her birth date and date of death.  Write to me at guilfordcarol@gmail.com if you know. Thanks.