Ed's Ultimate Greek Pasta
Feature by Guest Chef
Ed Murray

Serves 2

Years ago, I stumbled upon my teenaged brother-in-law making a quick, after-school snack in the kitchen. He had cooked some dried spaghetti and was adding oil, salt, and bread crumbs. I had a taste, approved, and asked him what he called it. He said simply, "noodles and bread crumbs," but when I quizzed him about its origins, he eventually said that it should probably be called "Greek Pasta." I thought that he had just made up the name on the spot to humor me, but since then I have discovered that the Greeks do have a simple and similar pasta dish, which they make with fat little homemade noodles called hilopíttes.

Well, I adopted his recipe as my own source of immediate gratification for carb cravings, and over many years slowly made improvements to it. The first thing I added was garlic and then a little butter just because I like them both so much. Next I started to use Italian bread crumbs for the quick fix of spices and herbs. Later on I added Kalamata olives and, of course, feta cheese; then Roma tomatoes and sweet red peppers. Eventually it evolved into the recipe described here.

Ingredients
1/2 lb. vermicelli or linguini 
2 lamb loin chops (3/4-inch cuts), sliced in finger-thick chunks
4 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, (more or less, as needed)
3-4 tsp. fresh rosemary, fine dice, divided
3-4 tsp. fresh oregano, chopped, divided
2 tsp, fresh oregano leaves (for garnish)
3 cloves garlic (or more, if desired)
1/2 onion, coarsely chopped 
5 or 6 Roma tomatoes, coarsely chopped 
1 cup Kalamata olives, pitted and sliced
1/2 sweet red pepper, sliced
1/3 lb. feta cheese, chunked and divided 
salt and freshly ground pepper 
Splash of red wine 
2 tsp. each butter and extra-virgin olive oil to finish (optional)
breadcrumbs (optional)

Preparation
If you are serving 2 people, take two, 3/4-inch cuts of lamb loin, slice them into small, finger-thick chunks-I usually just use the meat from a couple of lamb chops when I'm making such a small amount-paint them with olive oil and sprinkle with some of the chopped rosemary and oregano. Then sauté slightly and quickly in a hot pan with olive oil and garlic (at least 3 cloves). It won't take more than a minute or two (30 to 45 seconds on each side). Remove them from the pan and set them aside to add to the dish at the end of the sauce preparation. You can put them in a low heat oven (125° F) but I prefer to just keep them in a small pie pan in between the burners on the stovetop. They stay warm enough and don't overcook.

When preparing the herbs for the lamb, you will want to chop them up to make about 3 to 4 teaspoons of each herb so you will have more for later steps. I use just the leaves in a recipe like this because I don't like to chomp down on tough stems during a meal. It's easy to slide the leaves from the stems using gentle pressure between two fingers and your thumb. If the leaves don't come off when pulling along the angle of leaf growth from the stem, simply reverse the stem and they will pop off easily when pulled through your fingers against the angle of leaf growth. Whatever leaves you pull off with this technique are tender enough to use. Also, keep about two teaspoons of whole oregano leaves for a final garnish.

Whenever it is convenient for me, I use fresh herbs because of their superior flavor, but dried herbs will work when you are in a hurry and nothing else is available. To avoid wasting leftover fresh herbs like oregano, rosemary, basil, or thyme, I just grind them up together with olive oil in the small vessel of a food processor and then freeze them in a shallow container. The next time I cook, I break off a small chunk with the tines of a sturdy fork and, Voila, the next best thing to fresh. They last so long that you will rarely need to resort to dried herbs.

Add half a chopped onion to the pan that was used to cook the lamb and sauté it until it's translucent, then add 5 or 6 chopped up Roma tomatoes, and 1 to 2 teaspoons of the chopped herbs. If you have had no time to let these tomatoes ripen, you can buy some pretty spectacular canned Marzano (not a brand name), a type of Italian plum tomato, to use as a substitute. While the tomatoes are cooking, you can pit and slice your olives, but you do not want to add these to the sauce until near the end of the cooking time or they will render it a little bitter throughout.

You can also start your water for the pasta now so that it will be ready to go when you are ready for it. Salt the water and add a little oil to help keep the noodles from sticking together when you pour off the water after they are cooked. Somewhere along here, check the seasonings of your sauce, add salt and pepper to taste, along with a glug of red wine.

Obviously these ingredients are not going to create a lot of sauce, but don't worry-eventually, we are going to toss it with the noodles, and it won't take much to produce the flavorful effect we are going for. Since there is not much sauce, I usually keep a lid on the ingredients to conserve the moisture in between stirring and adding ingredients. You may need to add just a little chicken broth or tomato juice if it gets too dry.

When the sauce has only a few minutes to go for the tomatoes to soften up to your satisfaction, add in slices of half of a sweet red pepper. I like to wait until this late cooking point so that the peppers do not soften too much. They are more desirable with a bit of undercooked texture. Add the remaining chopped herbs at this time also-one to two teaspoons of fresh rosemary and oregano leaves. Adding fresh herbs at the end always seems to provide an additional level of flavor to the sauce.

By this time, you already have your pasta cooking. I like to use vermicelli for this recipe, but if you like a heavier noodle, linguini works well, too. When the noodles are done, al dente, and drained-I belong to the no-rinse school of noodle-thought because I find the rinsing produces undesirable effects; even in hot water, your noodles will get colder, and the water that clings to them will make your sauce runny-dump them back into the hot, empty boiling pan and toss with a little drizzle of olive oil (if you are a butter hound like me, add a pat), and a sprinkling of Italian breadcrumbs, if desired. Actually, you had better drizzle the oil in the pan first to keep the noodles from sticking.

That last step with the oil, butter and breadcrumbs is no longer really an essential part of this recipe and you can skip it if you like. It has become part of the ritual of the recipe for me, a Zen kind of thing. For me it is simply a sentimental reminder of the past and is there only to honor the historical beginnings of this recipe. For you biology types, its kind of like ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. The development that occurs with the first ingredients recapitulates the evolution of the recipe- nothing more, and yes, certainly nothing less.

After that little bit of ooey-gooey, we had better get a move on or everything will go kerplunk. I keep a low heat under the pan to keep things nice and hot during the preceding operation and during what follows. Just keep the noodles moving and be judicious with the total amount of oil that is used or we will end up with too much goo and precious little ooh. Then break up 2 or 3 chunks of feta cheese over the noodles in anticipation of the sauce being added.

By the way, keep your dinner plates warm too. I don't know about you, but there is nothing that will put more of a damper on a meal for me than to have it served cold, and a cold plate will really bring down the temperature fast. A quick way to warm up your plates in an emergency is to run hot tap water over them. Just give the heat time to penetrate all the way through before you towel them dry. This has actually become more of my routine method-forgetful as I am.

Toss the olives into the sauce, give it a stir, pour over the noodles, and toss everything together while keeping the pan over the low heat. You will find that most of the goodies gravitate to the bottom of the pan while the noodles are getting a good coating and absorbing the juices. Not to worry. Break out your tongs and arrange the noodles on your dinner plates, spoon the goodies onto the top of the noodles, arrange the lamb over this, and crumble a fair amount of feta over the top, followed by a sprinkling of the oregano leaves.

Be careful not to overdo the blending of the sauce with the noodles; toss gingerly or the gooey thing will happen, especially with the cheese in at this point. If you find that you have problems with this, just leave the cheese for the end rather than using it in both steps, although I will happily suffer a little goo just to have that wonderful flavor distributed throughout. The flavor of the feta is actually transformed into something marvelous when combined with the other ingredients in this way.

There are many variations of this recipe that I use. Here are a few changes and additions that you might want to try. First off, I have actually come to prefer Greek-style green olives in the recipe. I also like to spice it up a little with a couple of tablespoons of hot Adjvar, which is a Bulgarian concoction of eggplant and peppers that you can buy at many specialty food stores. Substitute shallots for the onions, or use both. Oyster mushrooms or chanterelles are also wonderful additions to the sauce. If you like more of a tomato flavor or more sauce, then add more tomatoes or tomato paste and water. You can substitute the final oregano leaf garnish with the leaves of fresh Italian parsley for an extra layer of flavor. The variations that I use are endless, either dictated by a particular whim or depending on what I have available in my kitchen at first inception. Experiment and have fun eating.

Serve with a crunchy French or Italian bread and a rich red wine. Until next time...

Comments from an e-Club member:
        "Ed Murray's reminiscing about his teen-aged brother's bread crumb pasta reminded me of the fact that many southern Italian dishes are topped with a toasted bread crumb sauce such as pasta con tonno e briciole and fagiolini al' aglio e prezzemolo.  In her fine book Savoring Italy, (Time Life 1999) , Michele Scicolone speculates that the 'custom probably dates to a time when cheese was too costly for the locals to afford.'  In any event, bread crumbs, olive oil, a pinch of red pepper and garlic make a great sauce for pasta any time. And clearly it's not confined to the Greeks.
        Thanks for your fine news letter and the many informative and helpful articles."
                                                                                    - James A. Hamilton