Thursday, April 4, 2013

What Kind of Noodler Are You?

One of the sticky issues we love to tackle here at P-CPPP central is food. Well, not sticky foods. No, that’s not right. Controversial foods, maybe. No...that’s stuff like veal and fois gras. Ah, shit...we just like to talk and argue about trivial stuff, and sometimes that stuff is food. And the food I want to talk about is noodles. Pasta, specifically. Thus the title.*

(Psst!  Christian--you usually start these things off, and now I see why. It’s hard. Hat’s off to you man!)
Pat:  Hey buddy. I’ve been struggling with something really important lately. If you could only have one kind of noodle for the rest of your life, what would it be? I’m curious, because in all of this talk of influenza and zombies and Justin Bieber, I kinda’ wanna’ stock up, and I want to make sure I get the right one.


Christian: Why? Are you planning on having me over if/when the apocalypse happens? If so, to be honest, I don’t know how much of a mood I will be in for pasta. Seems kind of heavy for an end of the world type meal. Is there something else I could order instead?

Pat:  Nope, you nailed it. I’m calling it the A-pasta-lypse! I’m gunning for orrechiette. Did you know it means “little ear”? How cool is that? I think I wanna’ serve it to my vegetarian friends and freak them out.

Them: “What?! I’m eating little ears?!”

Me: “No...that’s just the name of the pasta”

(But what they don’t know is that the sauce is simply pureéd steak. Hah hah! Suckers!)

Christian: Well, isn’t the reason why there are different pasta shapes is because of the different kinds of sauces and whatnot that goes along with them? For example, your more curly type pastas were designed to hold onto more sauce and flavor while the long skinny ones were designed to drive you mad with frustration while you try to wrap some around your fork.

So for me to chose just one pasta I’ll need to know what you will be putting on them. Apocalypse or no apocalypse I’m not going to be caught dead eating cappelletti noodles with a clam based sauce.

Pat:  Right. Again, you’re spot on, buddy. See...I think in the apocalypse, sauces are going to be kind of hard to come by, what with the unclean water and such. So which shape do you think makes the best UNIVERSAL noodle, good with any sauce or even--gasp!--sans sauce?

Christian: Wait, you’re not suggesting we are going to eat noodles without anything on them are you? Just because it’s the apocalypse doesn’t mean we have to start living like hyenas.

Pat:  Well, I certainly HOPE not. I AM one sixteenth Italian, remember. And in keeping with that hope, I’m just curious which noodle has the best potential for pairing well with the greatest number of sauces or sauteés. And...in the unfortunate event of a sauceless world, it might behoove us to spend a moment considering a noodle whose shape is so delightful that it does not need a sauce to bring about a small amount of joy.

Christian: To be honest all the noodles taste the same to me when they are sauceless. I think the real question here is, would we really want to go on living in a sauceless world? I think the obvious answer to that is no.

So with that settled, let’s assume there are still sauces in the post-apocalyptic world. Although at this point I would imagine sauces would be the new currency.

“Be still my dog of war. I understand your pain. We've all lost someone we love. But we do it my way!
We do it my way. Fear is our ally. The sauces will be ours. Then you shall have your revenge.” - Humongous

Thus since we would now be living in a violent world with day to day power struggles over who would rule supreme over all the sauces, and I can only choose one noodle, I would probably pick whichever noodle has the most square area of scooping ability so that it could hold as much sauce as possible. So I don’t know, I guess cannelloni?

You should stock up on cannelloni.

Pat:  But cannelloni is usually filled with stuff, isn’t it? That kinda’ makes the sauce irrelevant. Right? So listen, little buddy, I’m nothing if not amenable to new ideas. What say we turn this into a discussion of the ideal sauce, then? Hmm?

What say you to that? And I defy you to come up with a better all around sauce than the Argentinian chimichurri. Done. There...see? That was a nice discussion.



*Not to be confused with Okie Noodling. Honestly, I didn’t even know that shit existed. Is it real?

36 comments:

  1. I've always been partial to the little bow ties.

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  2. I want spaghetti, also I can make sauce out of ketchup and other stuff...I will be queen!

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  3. Uh-oh is rigatoni not an option!? Who am I kidding? I'd settle for a can of spaghetti-os!

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    1. Are spaghetti-os a noodle? I thought they were more of a synthetic rubber material than noodle.

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  4. It doesn't matter what kind of noodle you name, I can never remember if it's pasta or ham or cheese. I've heard that man cannot live by provolone, but that might not be a noodle. The important thing is to overcook it right off the bat to save time later.

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    1. I'm assuming cheeses will still be in abundance otherwise I definitely won't want to go on living.

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  5. I like ruffles, probably because they're good cold and that's how my food usually is by the time I get to eat it.

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  6. I like penne and cream sauces, although I think in the apocalypse tomato sauces will be easier to make and come by. I think we'll run out of breadsticks before pasta and tomato sauce.

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  7. I'm a sucker for the capelletti. I'll eat those suckers sans sauce any day! I hate to say it, but with unclean water sources, how are you going to even cook the pasta?

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  8. Pat- I really don't think you should be speaking French or Italian to Christian. It confuses him and makes him a little bite-y.

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  9. Please, please, please open up a shop on Etsy. The possibilities of what you guys could make and sell are endless, but I'm going to need that first pic and caption on a poster STAT.

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    1. Etsy requires you to actually physically make stuff to sell right? We're more interested in an online store that would let us just sell ideas, and then someone else would go make it or whatever. And then give us money.

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  10. Your Western bias is showing, Pat. I want pho rice noodles. In the end times, all I need is pho and a hunting knife...like Rambo.

    - Matt H.

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    1. Don't get me wrong, Matt. I likes me some Phó as much as the next white fella', but we're talking about noodles that I'LL have to cook. And I can NEVER get those rice noodles done right.

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  11. I will eat any kind of pasta without sauce. With sauce? If it's tomato sauce, I prefer angel hair or spaghetti or fettucine. But if I am making buttered noodles, it has to be shells. And if I'm making tuna noodle salad, or casserole, they likewise have to be made with shells. I have no idea why, but that's the only correct way to do it. Oh, and of course macaroni only goes with cheese.

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    1. Sounds like you got this noodle thing in the bag. I'm heading your way as soon as the apocalypse hits.

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  12. I didn't read the other comments yet, but clearly penne is the best. The sauce tucks inside, so it is not messy. I am a Virgo, so I pay attention to things like that. And if there is too much sauce hiding inside the penne, it has an escape on the other side. It is truly the perfect noodle.

    And Pat is right, Christian is a better blog starter. From now on, please have Christian do the intro to whatever topic you will be discussing. Pat, you might be the superior blog finisher-off-er. Let Christian start, you finish. You could eat your pasta this way too.

    xxo
    MOV

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    1. Wait, I don't think penne was on that chart. Pat that chart you added isn't complete!!! If this is the kind of attention to detail I should expect from you after the apocalypse, Pat, I don't think I'm going to be wanting to eat noodles with you. I can't risk it.

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  13. The only pasta I like is a brand called Stay Away Pasta. It's delicious with or without sauce as long as it's not on my plate. Italian women is an entirely different story...with or without sauce.

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    1. Yeah, I hope there's no shortage of Italian women after the apocalypse.

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    2. So you don't happen to have a private stash? ;)

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  14. It's become a game with my wife, that every time we make a pasta dish we try a completely new pasta, hoping it'll taste different somehow. It never does. Yeah, we're one of those adventurous married couples.

    Also, noodling (with fish) is very real, very dangerous, and very stupid.

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    1. I'm going to take you and your wife's pasta experiments as scientific fact since they confirm my suspicions. Thank you.

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  15. Pasta at the end of the world is definitely indicative of prep school going to have been. (I am channeling Yoda there.)

    Spaghetti is the only pasta that makes me mad so I vote for bacon cheeseburgers.

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  16. I too have a sick urge to sneak meat into the food of vegetarians. Well that's not entirely correct. I want to pin them down on a mat and shove bacon down their throats.

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