Celebs -

by tvff

Pasta Recipe: Keepin’ it Cool

Nothing’s better than a steaming bowl of pasta, right? Not when it’s 86° outside. That, my friends, was my predicament last week when we were enjoying some unseasonably warm weather here in the Northeast and I got an e-mail from Mrs. TVFF suggesting we have pasta for dinner. Not one to ever turn down the opportunity for a carb-heavy meal, I resolved to avoid the ususal pasta dishes — which certainly didn’t sound appetizing as I perspired my way around the city — and go for something that wasn’t quite pasta salad either. We’d meet in the middle with a hot pasta dressed with a room-temperature sauce.

First, the props: I’m pretty sure this originated as some sort of bruschetta topping or chunky dip from Jamie Oliver. His input forms the basis of this “sauce,” which is the olives, the cherry/grape tomato and the olive oil. The rest of the recipe is a bit more free-form.

Warm Pasta with Crushed Grape Tomatoes and Olives

– One pound of short pasta – penne, rigatoni and farfalle are perfect for this.

– One cup, olives without pits

– One pint, grape or cherry tomatoes

– Six tbsp. oil

– Whatever the hell your heart desires (see below)

Analyzing the Culinary Offerings of Our Former Colonial Overlords (with the Aid of My Comrade in Arms, Celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver)

Jamie Oliver lets me snap his pick while thinking up his next culinary masterpiece

Brit, you might not want to read this…..

When I was gallivanting about last month, one of my main priorities (apart from saving humanity and all that) was to understand the cuisine of an obscure little country located on the island of Great Britain—a nation that once struck fear in the hearts of even the most stalwart champions of freedom: England.

This tiny little swath of land, located in the Northern Atlantic, shares land borders with better known Scotland and Wales. Apparently, the citizens of this country “England” were some of the first immigrants to our great nation. Yeah, who knew! Having sampled some of the traditional English fare, I understand why these Englishmen put off the massacre of the indigenous Americans until after they learned some culinary skills from America’s first people.

I found all of this out over a gruesomely disgusting meal of black and white pudding with famous English celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. That’s a picture of him pondering the quirks of the English palate above. More on that and some complimentary analysis of the cuisine of our former colonial overlords after the jump.