{"id":98,"date":"2007-10-22T19:45:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-22T19:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2007\/10\/22\/98\/"},"modified":"2015-07-30T19:40:38","modified_gmt":"2015-07-31T00:40:38","slug":"98","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"PASTA IN POINT:"},"content":{"rendered":"

To follow up on my essay from Saturday, I took some pix at a relatively nice Italian restaurant, one with classy aspirations (they have osco bucco on the menu). I ordered penne arribiata, i.e. penne with a sauce of tomatos, onions and cherry peppers. Here\u2019s what it looked like:<\/p>\n

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The sauce was quite fresh and tasty and the tomatos still had some body; they were not over-processed into a Campbells Soup consistency. So, the sauce was not the problem. It was the pasta portion — too big. The dish was simply pasta and sauce. That\u2019s the mindset that needs changing. In my opinion, a restaurant entree should be a complete, satisfying meal in itself. Most of the meat dishes in this place are indeed that \u2013 they come with potatoes and veggies. But with pasta, the prevailing mindset is that you only want noodles and some sauce; you want carbs and little else. If you want some vegetables to make it a more satisfying meal with a better protein balance, you have to order them and pay extra. So I ordered some brocolli rabe saut\u00e9ed in garlic, as seen in this shot:<\/p>\n

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OK, now we have a nice dinner going. But the pasta is still out of proportion. The plate here should only be half-full of pasta and sauce, and the rabe and garlic (or some other nice combo, perhaps something with chick peas) should take up the second half. But you can\u2019t get such a meal anywhere that I know of — other than my own kitchen. If I had a lot of time to kill and $$$ to lose, I\u2019d open up a restaurant that served tasty, wholesome, balanced pasta dishes. But given that I\u2019m an underpaid, over-50 bureaucrat with an invalid mother to help support, well . . . I\u2019m afraid that Jim\u2019s Place won\u2019t be opening anytime soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To follow up on my essay from Saturday, I took some pix at a relatively nice Italian restaurant, one with classy aspirations (they have osco bucco on the menu). I ordered penne arribiata, i.e. penne with a sauce of tomatos, onions and cherry peppers. Here\u2019s what it looked like: The sauce was quite fresh and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5591,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/5591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}