Sungold Pasta with Lemony Shellfish, Garlic, and Pistachios by Alison Roman

Since starting this project, I tend to think about food in terms “Before Alison” or “After Alison.” Before Alison, seafood pasta wasn’t on my radar at all. After Alison, I crave it all the time. I look for it on restaurant menus. I approached this recipe with great anticipation. And it mostly lived up to my expectations. 

This recipe requires a lot of multitasking, so the more you can prepare ahead of time, the less stressful the cooking process will be. I suggest slicing the garlic and fennel, and scrubbing and soaking the clams ahead of time. If you don’t already have toasted pistachios on hand, toast those first, too. The last thing you’ll want to do is wait for them to toast while your pasta is getting cold. 

In a large skillet, I first sauteed the fennel bulb and garlic, letting them become tender. Then came the spices, toasted briefly, and a pound of tomatoes. No Sungold’s at the grocery store, but I did find Sungold look-alikes which did the job well. (Yes, even vegetables have doppelgangers!) The tomatoes needed time to heat through and break down into a jammy sauce. At around the eight-minute mark, I started gently breaking them down with the back of my wooden spoon. Next, I added white wine and let it simmer and reduce. That’s four different steps, and we’re only halfway through the recipe! 

The clams need to steam in the sauce for a few minutes until they’re only slightly opened before the shrimp can join. The clams continue to open while their shrimpy partners cook and turn opaque. I’m always surprised at how little effort this seafood takes to cook! 

Instead of adding the pasta to the skillet (I used TJ’s GF brown rice spaghetti), Alison recommends coating the noodles with sauce in a giant serving bowl instead. Heed her advice! I chose to dump the pasta into my saucy skillet, only to quickly realize that there was absolutely no room to toss everything together. I quickly poured the meal into a wide serving bowl and proceeded to mix it from there. The final step involves a good sprinkling of toasted, chopped pistachios for a nutty finish. 

I really enjoyed this pasta. Jordan, not as much. He told me afterward that he could take or leave the seafood, and would enjoy the pasta with just the fennel and tomato sauce. I personally liked the added protein, but I see what he means. The seafood didn’t feel instrumental to the dish. More of an afterthought. If push came to shove, I think I’d prefer Alison’s other seafood pasta from Dining In, Clam Pasta with Chorizo and Walnuts. And that’s surprising, given my affinity for tomatoes. 

131 recipes cooked, 94 to go.

A Very Good Lasagna by Alison Roman

I’ve already met my favorite lasagna, and her name is A Nice Lasagna (by Julia Turshen in Small Victories). We became acquainted one evening in a cabin in the North Woods of Wisconsin as snow fell quietly outside. Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? We’ve learned each other’s love languages and speak them whenever opportunity strikes. She gives me gifts and acts of service. I shower her with words of affirmation and offer her the loving touch of a fork. We both share quality time, particularly with three of my dearest friends involved. For a short sweet season, these friends and I lived in Chicago. But in July 2017, we scattered to the four corners of the country. Now we come together once a year in October to stay up late and chat over red wine, pie, and of course, A Nice Lasagna. 

When I turned to nothing fancy’s pasta section and saw A Very Good Lasagna, I was skeptical. Could A Very Good Lasagna even approach the perfection of A Nice Lasagna? Only one way to find out. 

Allow me to evaluate A Very Good Lasagna through the only lens available to me -- a comparison to A Nice Lasagna. I’ll evaluate them on several key criterion. 

1. Sauce - It’s the best part of a lasagna and both sauces are truly excellent. Truly! And I’m quite particular about my tomato sauce! 

   1. Very Good - This sauce recipe calls for both crushed and whole peeled tomatoes. The whole tomatoes are squashed by hand, which creates a nice combination of small-medium sized tomatoes and some casual tomato juice. In true Alison fashion, anchovies add some salty umami. Finely chopped garlic and onion complete this well balanced sauce. One more benefit of this recipe is there’s no need to wait for the sauce to cool before assembling the lasagna because the noodles are parboiled (which I’ll get to, not a fan). 

   2. Nice - Only whole peeled tomatoes allowed here, crushed by hand in a large bowl. (If you’ve never had the pleasure of crushing tomatoes by hand, then I suggest trying it soon! Just be sure to wear something you don’t mind getting squirted with tomato juice.) Then there’s garlic, salt, and the X factor ingredient: creme fraiche. I think adding a tangy, creamy cheese to the sauce itself is actually another level of genius. Sadly, this sauce does need to fully cool before use so that it doesn’t make the noodles soggy. Which adds another hour of preparation time. 

2. Cheese 

   1. Very Good - Fresh ricotta, fresh mozzarella, and shredded parmesan make a tasty, but wet and clumpy combination. It was hard to evenly distribute the wet clumps of cheese across the pan, not to mention messy. 

   2. Nice - The cheeses used here are much easier to handle and distribute - just shredded mozzarella and parmesan. The third cheese is the creme fraiche in the sauce. This recipe also calls for lots of torn basil leaves, which I missed in Very Good. 

3. Noodles - I went Gluten Free in August, and this was my first GF lasagna. I was very pleased with the GF noodles I found--I barely noticed they weren’t regular noodles. These long noodles are made with brown rice, and didn’t leave me feeling bloated afterward. Here they are for reference. 

   1. Very Good - Okay, here was my main sticking point with this recipe. Parboiling the lasagna noodles. The noodles did cook nicely because of the parboil, but it’s a pain to keep them from sticking and adds yet another step to the assembly. 

   2. Nice - No boil, no fuss, still cooks great. (Julia tells you how to make your own noodles, but I don’t have the time or patience for that.)

4. Layers

   1. Very Good - He has 4 layers, which is a beautiful thing! 

   2. Nice - Julia just tells you to keep building layers till you run out of room. But since the sauce is a bit chunkier, I’m usually only able to fit 3 layers in my pan. 

5. Leftovers - I don’t appreciate how noodles continue to absorb sauce as they keep in the fridge. Since I love sauce so much, I like to have extra to spoon over my leftovers. 

   1. Very Good - Uses every last drop of sauce in the lasagna. I appreciate the math here, but I wouldn’t be mad about more sauce. 

   2. Nice - There’s usually a cup of sauce left over to use however you see fit. 

The Final Verdict: A Nice Lasagna still takes the cake, but I’ll give it to Alison. Her’s was a very good lasagna. 

24 recipes cooked, 201 to go.

Bacon-Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Caraway’d Cabbage and Apples by Alison Roman

Imagine you’re in a grocery store, and you’re tasked with selecting the most average, inconsequential ingredient for every type of food. I know it’s a strange hypothetical but stick with me here. 

Snacks: saltines, Cheese: swiss, Cookies: Fig Newtons, Meat: ground turkey OR pork tenderloin, Veggies: definitely cabbage

Apples and bacon are excellent, but still, I was quite skeptical. Oh me of little faith. Leave it to Alison to turn dull foods like pork tenderloin and cabbage into something so fantastic. I ate seconds and thirds. I’ve never enjoyed cabbage so much. Unless finely shredded, raw cabbage doesn’t do anything for me. Sauteed cabbage is limpy and sad. But a roasted cabbage head gets tender in the middle and crispy on the outside, now that’s the kind of cabbage I’ll eat weekly! Okay, monthly. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. 

There’s not much more to this dish outside of the ingredients in the title, except for two that really pull it all together: caraway seeds and red wine vinegar. 

I must confess, I don’t remember ever cooking with caraway seeds, and I couldn’t have told you, even remotely, what they taste like. So I did a bit of a deep dive. According to Wikipedia, caraway is “also known as meridian fennel and Persian cumin” and “is similar in appearance to other members of the carrot family.” Another site says it has a bit of an anise flavor. Based on those descriptions, I was even more confused. But when I finally got ahold of the seeds, I saw that they are practically identical to fennel seeds, just a darker brown and a bit finer. And as odd as it sounded on the internet, they did add a slightly cumin-y, licorice-y, anise-y flavor that complemented the salty pork, tangy apples, and bland cabbage. 

The final finish with vinegar, something Alison calls for a lot, made all of the dish’s elements feel lighter and brighter. It’s also what gave the cabbage the final flavor push it needed. (Small confession. In my old advertising job, I worked exclusively on a client that made vinegar. Their ads always talked about how vinegar could “brighten any dish,” and I thought it sounded like hokey advertising-speak, a little ridiculous. How could you actually “brighten” a dish, besides shining a flashlight on your food? But now, as I attempt to write about vinegar myself, I honestly can’t come up with a better word for how it transforms food. If salt makes flavors taste more like themselves, then vinegar brightens them. Fine, I was wrong!) 

This meal was the simplest main dish to assemble so far. Which served me well, since I needed to put it together quickly and transport it to a dear friend’s apartment to roast. Kailey and I spent the evening talking about how much this meal surprised and delighted us, among other fun topics like popular 90’s Christian rock bands. Jars of Clay, anyone?

15 recipes cooked, 210 to go.

Roasted Tomato and Anchovy Bucatini by Alison Roman

My goodness, this tomato sauce made me swoon. It’s worth every hour it takes to make. This recipe is NOT Alison’s Shallot/Anchovy pasta which went absolutely viral in 2020. That pasta is really good, but I liked this one better. Mostly because I’m in love with tomatoes.** And this sauce still has that lovely umami flavor that only anchovies can bring. (No, you absolutely may not skip the anchovies. Don’t ask that.)

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My cooking timeline. 

2:40pm - I slice and arrange the tomatoes in their baking dishes with some smashed garlic cloves and fresh thyme. Into the oven they go.

3:26pm - I’m sitting on my living room floor and writing the Hard-Roasted Cauliflower entry. My thoughts are suddenly interrupted by the smell of roasted tomatoes. Heaven. 

4:10pm - I turn on the oven light so I can spy on the tomatoes. 

5:30pm - I sneakily spoon a few of the smaller tomatoes out of the baking dish and snack on them with some flaky sea salt. I’m pretty sure I could just eat all the tomatoes for my meal and feel totally satisfied.

5:48pm -  Tomatoes will be ready soon, so I slice and sauté the red onion. I add the anchovies, watching them melt and disappear before plopping in some tomato paste. 

5:59pm - I start bringing my pasta water to a boil. 

6:05pm - I take the tomatoes out of the oven, the sizzling olive oil makes crackling sounds as the roasting pan sits on top of my stove. I spoon the tomatoes into the pot with the onions and stir. The smell is incredible. 

6:10pm - I cook my pasta. I used yellow lentil & brown rice spaghetti noodles from TJ’s, and quite frankly, I couldn’t tell the difference between regular wheat pasta. (I’m GF by necessity, not by choice, believe me. So no bucatini, but something close enough.)

6:12pm - I watch the tomatoes slowly break down and the sauce thicken in the pot. 

6:18pm - I add the cooked pasta to my sauce pot with some cooking water and swirl it all until the sauce sticks to the noodles. I plate the pasta with a simple kale salad with lemon. Dinnertime magic. J confirms that this is the only tomato sauce I should ever make in the future. 

6:45pm - I do the dishes, and remember to reserve the leftover olive oil from the tomato dish. I’ll use it on a roast chicken for a dinner party with my in-laws tomorrow.  

I eat the pasta leftovers for my lunch the next day and feel zero bitterness about eating leftovers for lunch. 

8 recipes cooked, 217 recipes to go.

**Below are several anecdotal memories I have of tomatoes, because I’m trying to write about my experience with food as much as the recipes themselves. 

1. My first memory of tomatoes is eating my mom’s spaghetti with “red sauce.” I grew up on a limited rotation of dependable dinners like ground beef tacos, chicken and broccoli casserole, and spaghetti. The best nights were always spaghetti nights, not because of the pasta, but because of the tangy jarred marinara sauce. 

2. I’ve lived about 40% of my life in the Chicagoland area which is known for its deep dish pizza. And since you (didn’t) ask, I will declare that the best pizza in all of Chicago is from Lou Malnati’s for the sole reason that their pizzas are sauce-forward. Their sauce is made from a balanced blend of tomato chunks and pureed tomato, and it’s perfectly salty and infused with garlic. I always ask for an extra bowl of sauce to dip my pizza into, because it’s that good. 

3. In 2019, my husband and I lived our best lives in Italy. We took a 3 week trip there to celebrate his grad school graduation. We hiked by the ocean, looked at countless pieces of art and architecture, and Vespa’ed through wine country. If I could really live anywhere, I’d pick the quiet hillside town of Assisi. Since most of our days were filled with nonstop carbo-loading (and cheap wine drinking), we figured we better eat at least one meal on the “healthier” side each day. So every few days, we’d find a local food market and buy butter, a carton of eggs, and a box of fresh cherry tomatoes to cook our own breakfast (before later going to a cafe to buy fresh croissants). I don’t know if it was the lack of pesticides, or the climate, or the novelty of being in Italy, or some combination, but those cherry tomatoes really were the most juicy and flavorful tomatoes I’ve ever had. No cherry tomatoes, even in California, have matched them since.  

Me living my best life in Italy by the sea.

Slow Salmon with Citrus and Herbs by Alison Roman

Madeline took her first bite, and the next words out of her mouth were: “This is the best salmon I’ve ever had.” 

J asked for salmon for his birthday dinner. We were having our favorite couple friends in Minneapolis over to celebrate and I wanted a full Alison Roman meal, top to bottom. But salmon was not what I expected J to ask for on a cold January night. (I associate fish with warm, summer days!) 

Thankfully Alison has multiple salmon recipes between her two cookbooks, and I only needed to read the introduction to this Slow Salmon with Citrus and Herbs recipe to know which one I would be making. She tells us in no uncertain terms that the common response from anyone eating this fish is “this is the best salmon I’ve ever had.” In case I needed any proof, Madeline’s first words were verbatim from the intro. So without further ado… 

Buy a 1.5 lb salmon filet, preferably fresh but certainly thawed if from frozen. I primarily rely on Trader Joes and Costco to have affordable, fresh fish. The filet is laid in a deep baking dish (not a rimmed sheet pan because you’re about to let the fish dive into a legitimate swimming pool of olive oil). Cover her with plenty of salt and pepper. Then layer the top of the filet with thinly sliced citrus and sprigs of fresh herbs. 

I chose sliced lemon and navel oranges. I tried to slice them between 1/8th to 1/4th inch thick, but I’ll say that the closer you can get to 1/8th, or thinner, the better. My thicker slices rose above the oil and didn’t melt into the fish the way I hoped. Next time I’ll slice my citrus even thinner. I liked the orange and lemon combo, although you can use other citrus like tangerines and blood oranges. The herbs are also flexible. I chose dill, chives and parsley.

Lots of salmon recipes use citrus and herbs, but what makes this one so special is the seemingly excessive amount of olive oil it bakes in and the low-and-slow baking method. 

For years I watched my mother skimp on fattening ingredients like butter and olive oil. I spent my first years of independent cooking doing the same. She was doing her best to control cholesterol for her and my dad (important!), and that was back when fats were overemphasized as all bad. It wasn’t until I started learning about the science of cooking and following some other New York Times chefs that I became confident in using that whole stick of butter. So when Alison tells me to pour 1.5 cups of olive oil over my fish, I’ll do exactly that. 

The recipe says that the dish is baked at a low temp of 300 degrees for upwards of 30 minutes, which doesn’t sound terribly slow. Perhaps it’s a difference in ovens, but my oven did not cook my salmon in the time Alison told me. I started checking it with our meat thermometer at 30 minutes, and it was still 30 degrees undercooked. I was aiming for a 135 degree internal salmon temperature. I resorted to turning up the oven to 315, then 325, and checking the oven every 7-8 minutes. By the 55 minute mark, the salmon was cooked through perfectly. Next time, I’ll start with my oven set to 310 and start checking around 40 minutes, just to meet Alison halfway. 

The salmon I chose had a thicker center which means it rose slightly above the oil. While I think that is perfectly fine, I will say that that portion of the fish didn’t get as melt-in-your-mouth as the thinner parts did. So pay attention to the thickness of your cut and perhaps adjust the olive oil accordingly. 

Once the fish is cooked, it’s topped with 2 whole cups of chopped herbs. Yes, TWO CUPS. It’s like a lovely fresh salad on top of your fish, and it plates beautifully. Don’t skimp on the herbs, either. 

In case you’re wondering, here was my full menu: 

• Slow Salmon with Citrus and Herbs

• Crispy Vinegared Potatoes with Dried Chile (post to come)

• Garlicky Broccoli and Greens with Hazelnuts and Coriander

• Butter-tossed Radishes with Fresh Za’atar

• Gluten-Free Angel Food Cake (my only non-Alison recipe; J’s favorite dessert is angel food cake)

This was the best salmon I’ve ever had. It will most definitely be had again.

6 recipes cooked, 219 recipes to go.