National Noodle Day

My friend Jen gave me a great honor. She told me that she used my blog last week in her classroom at Brooklyn College. This is from an email she wrote me today, when I asked her to explain:

Your blog/my class: A couple of weeks ago the memoirs my classes read were an excerpt from "Autobiography of a Face" by Lucy Grealy and "My Face" by Robert Benchley. I gave them a writing exercise to write their own autobiography of a body part, and since both pieces we read were face-based, I wanted to give them some other examples.(And, since Grealy's memoir is pretty heavy, some lighter examples. Plus, teeth are not necessarily the first thing you might thing of, so it gave them other ideas to consider.) Your blog was the perfect thing to bring up--you're writing an autobiography of your teeth, and you use your teeth to examine all kinds of other topics, ideas, and identities.

I had no idea my blog was so intellectually potent. Imagine these people in the same sentence, Lucy Greely, Robert Benchley and me. Since Jen is now my unofficial writing coach, maybe this is a sign that my novel will actually get written.

You may not know it, but today is the most auspicious National Noodle Day. I am charmed by this for a few reasons:

1) An old boyfriend used to call me Noodle as a term of endearment, and I did love this. It encompassed so much--my love of food, our many trips to Chinatown, and how I was so cozy that I was as relaxed as a noodle.

2) Noodles are actually a food I can eat with these braces, not "al dente" of course, which literally translated means "to the tooth." No, these "tooths" cannot take the Italian treatment, even if they were bathed lovingly in gorgeous olive oil and roasted garlic. Even if.

3) The fact that noodles and pasta are not the same thing. Vermicelli is pasta. Fettucini is pasta. Bow ties and ziti are noodles. Ramen are noodles. Spaghetti is the bridge between pasta and noodles. You can use your noodle. You can't use your pasta. Mac and cheese is always a noodle dish, even if, as on Ina Garten's The Barefoot Contessa show the other day, she made it with truffled sherried mushrooms. (Oh man, I would so pop a bracket for that!)

4) This quote: "A little more of the possible was every instant made real; the present stood still and drew into itself the future, as a man might suck forever at an unending piece of macaroni." --Aldous Huxley

In honor of National Noodle Day, I would like to share one of my treasured noodle dishes. Two years ago I made Tuna Bolognese for my dear friends on New Year's eve. It was one of the my most magical New Year's and I think that's why this tasted so good. The recipe is based on one from Dave Pasternack's The Young Man & The Sea (A beautiful book, I might add.) This is my version of the recipe, rather altered, but I was happy to have his lovely book as a guide.

Ingredients:
One large can of Italian tuna
A good drizzle of olive oil.
1 onion, diced 4 cloves garlic, crushed
One bottle of red wine (oh, yes!)
1 bay leaf
A few dashes of good cinnamon
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 28-oz can of whole peeled tomatoes and their juice
Sea Salt
Black pepper
1 pound pasta (He likes rigatoni, I did spaghetti. If you're going to celebrate Noodle Day, use the spaghetti or noodle of your choice as specified above. Wagon wheels are noodles according to my unscientific classification, and that might go nicely too.)

Heat the oil over medium flame. Add onion and garlic and cook until translucent, 3-4 minutes. Add the tuna and cook stirring with a fork until all juices are dry, about 7-10 minutes. Add the whole bottle of wine (except for the bits that you've already sipped), bay leaf, red pepper, cinnamon and cook until dry, about 15 minutes. Add tomatoes, crushing them by hand, their juice, and 1/2 cup water. Season with 1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp pepper. Simmer uncovered for 1 1/2 hours. (I did it for longer, much longer--about 4.) The sauce should be moist, but not wet.

Discard the bay leaf. Cook the pasta and divide it into serving bowls. Top with sauce and dollop with marscapone. As a variation, you can use goat cheese, and add some parmesan, which I did and both were luscious. This sauce was even better the next day if you let it sit.

Pair with good wine, good friends, and New Year's fireworks!