By Dwight Garner, The New York Times
In John Guare’s play “Six Degrees of Separation,” there’s a scene in which a father asks a second-grade teacher, at parents night, why the art her students make is so especially brilliant. “Look at the first grade,” he says to her.
Blotches of green and black. Look at the third grade. Camouflage. But the second grade — your grade. Matisses everyone. You’ve made my child a Matisse. Let me study with you. Let me into second grade! What is your secret? And this is what she said: “Secret? I don’t have any secret. I just know when to take their drawings away from them.”
I think of this scene — the father is played by Donald Sutherland in Fred Schepisi’s film version — every time I make the sort of pasta dish that’s known in our house as pasta nada. The key to a true pasta nada is deep restraint. The Zen-secret is knowing when to stop.
Pasta nada is better known to the world as pantry pasta. These are the pasta dishes you make, vastly better and less expensive than ordering out, from ingredients that are already in your kitchen.
There are dozens of books, thousands of articles and many industrious websites devoted to the making of pantry pastas. The more the merrier; I like nearly all of them. But once I heard the phrase pasta nada for the first time three decades ago — from my father-in-law, chef Bruce LeFavour, and his wife, photographer Faith Echtermeyer, who used it to describe their own last-minute pasta dishes — I’ve never called it anything else.
Ingredients for a sage and walnut pasta nada. Starting with pasta and olive oil, the possibilities for pasta nada ingredients are limited only by what you have on hand. Food styled by Samantha Seneviratne. (Julia Gartland, The New York Times)
Names matter. Would you rather eat calf’s thymus, or sweetbreads? Would “The Joy of Sex” be a cultural touchstone if it had been issued under its original title, “Alex Comfort’s Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking”? A good name is the difference, as Mark Twain put it in a slightly different context, between the lightning bug and the lightning.
The word “nada,” from the Spanish and classical Latin, means “nothing.” It’s a word that implies renunciation, and it has a much better ring, in this context, than bupkis. If you don’t count olive oil (we don’t), the best pasta nadas employ two ingredients: Parmesan and fresh herbs. Olive oil, Parmesan and herbs are pasta’s rhythm section, and on their own they make sublime pasta nada.
Our longtime favorite, for its elegance, is sage and walnut. We tend to have a small baggie of sage in the fridge. If we don’t, we pluck a few leaves from one of the sage plants my wife, Cree, tends. Toast the walnuts in the oven. Chop coarsely or crush. Chop the sage leaves, too. This meal is worthy of any bottle of red wine.
If you make this as an off-the-cuff dinner, in a rental house or when friends drop in, people will be jolted by your minimalist dexterity. These dishes are a return to first things. A good baguette and a salad will seal the deal.
Pasta nada passes the Calvin Trillin test. The rule of thumb when ordering pasta, Trillin wrote, is that the dish “is likely to be satisfying in inverse proportion to the number of ingredients that the menu lists as being in it.”
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Our next-favorite pasta nadas are lo-fi variations on the theme of puttanesca. Instead of employing each of the classic ingredients — anchovies, capers, black olives, garlic and tomatoes — try just, let’s say, black olives and anchovies.
This won’t be for everyone. Novelist Beverly Lowry wrote that the fastest thing she ever saw was “Larry McMurtry pulling an anchovy out of his mouth.” Or use just finely minced garlic and a few capers. Or good canned tuna and tomatoes. These flavors cry out to be tested in variations.
“The great restorative” — that’s what writer and gastronome Jim Harrison called puttanesca. These pasta nada versions act similarly. Annia Ciezadlo, in her memoir “Days of Honey,” which is in part about cooking in Baghdad and Beirut during wartime, writes that because of its name — “in the style of the prostitute” — pasta puttanesca has “a residual taste of sex.” It’s earthy, honest, a little bit greasy. This is true of the pared-down versions, too.
Pasta nadas are so simple that sometimes it is a treat to make two at once — sage and walnut, and anchovies and black olives — and nestle discrete piles of each on a dinner plate. This is an inexpensive way to feel like Mario Puzo, the author of “The Godfather,” who when in his favorite restaurants was known to order every pasta on the menu, just so his friends could have a taste.
Recipe: Sage and Walnut Pasta Nada
Sage and walnut pasta nada. Restraint with ingredients — just some sage and toasted walnuts, for instance — is key to pasta nada. Food styled by Samantha Seneviratne. (Julia Gartland, The New York Times)
By Dwight Garner
Earthy, elegant and possessed of a Zen-restraint, this is an ideal — perhaps the ideal — last-second, I-can’t-cope-with-the-stress recipe. It even works for dinner parties. Everyone will like it and have thirds. Serve with a salad and a baguette. Crack a few good chocolate bars into pieces on a plate for dessert. Keep an eye on the walnuts while you are roasting them in the oven. They go from golden to burned in seconds. This meal is worthy of nearly any bottle of red wine.
Yield: As many servings as you want
Total time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
Pasta
Salt
Olive oil
Walnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped
Fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
Freshly grated Parmesan
Preparation
1. Cook the pasta in salted water until just tender and, before draining, save some of the cooking liquid.
2. Toss the drained pasta with olive oil and a splash of pasta water to coat. Salt to taste. Serve scattered with walnuts, sage and a generous amount of Parmesan.
Recipe: Puttanesca Pasta Nada
Puttanesca pasta nada. Already a simple preparation, puttanesca is a perfect starting point for pasta nada improvisations. Food styled by Samantha Seneviratne. (Julia Gartland, The New York Times)
By Dwight Garner
“In normal life, ‘simplicity’ is synonymous with ‘easy to do,’” Bill Buford wrote in “Heat,” his 2006 book, “but when a chef uses the word, it means ‘take a lifetime to learn.’” That’s true much of the time. But if you take care, a dish as simple as pasta with finely chopped black olives and anchovies can have a chef-like impact with minimum learning and minimum fuss. This dish resets your taste buds. No fancy shopping needed.
Yield: As many servings as you want
Total time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
Pasta
Salt
Any combination of anchovies, capers, tuna, black olives, garlic and tomatoes
Olive oil
Salt and black pepper
Any combination of fresh herbs, such as basil, parsley, sage or oregano
Freshly grated Parmesan
Preparation
1. Cook pasta in salted water to make a lo-fi variation on the theme of puttanesca. Instead of employing each of the classic ingredients above, try just, let’s say, black olives and anchovies. Or, use just finely minced garlic and a few capers. Or good canned tuna and tomatoes. These flavors cry out to be tested in variations.
2. Heat the ingredients of your choice in olive oil and toss in the cooked pasta with some of its cooking liquid. Season with salt and pepper and top with herbs and Parmesan.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.