The Superbowl That Keeps on Giving

Forget your yellow lab, boys. Pasta is a man’s best friend.

Its 10PM and your significant other, tired from an entire day of quiche-making, has retired for the evening. It’s snowing real hard, and your cars are completely buried in ‘da white stuff, and the streets are a ‘friggin mess. You’ve just watched four hours of speed skating, bobsled, and the biathlon (Cross-country skiing meets shootin’ stuff! Man that’s friggin cool. Thats so macho, only a Norwegian could have invented it.) But now you’re hungry, and you want something real to eat. Something hot. Something hearty. Delivery is NOT an option.

Clearly, a nice spaghetti with pasta sauce is called for — but it helps if you already have the critical mass to begin with. Fortunately, I had already had a large container of Italian sausage from ‘Da Bronx and some meatballs that I had cooked up with some peppers and onions in a marinara sauce for some Big Pussy-style hoagies for that Superbowl I didn’t much give a rats ass about. Hey, the Giants or the Jets weren’t in it. Or even the freakin’ Bills. Sausage and Meatballs was the fucking highlight of that weekend, to be sure.

Transforming a pile of cooked sausage and meatballs sitting in marinara into a meal fit for a Mafia soldier was a snap — I simply dumped said leftovers into a big saucepan, added a 14oz can of Italian tomatoes, and simmered the sucker for about 30 minutes, until the sausage and meatballs started to fall apart in the sauce, and I cut them up a bit with a knife. Then I reserved aside the meaty stuff that I could catch with a ladle, and hit the chunky stuff in the pot with one of my favorite tools, the Braun immersion blender. Whenever I use that thing I pretend I’m a mobster, disposing of the severed extremities of some goon or a despised enemy in some horrible manner. But I digress. Capiche?

After blasting the sauce, I simmered it a bit more to reduce the liquid and tighten the sucker up, dumped the meaty stuff back in, boiled up my Ronzoni in our 16 quart stockpot, chucked it in the colander when al dente, returned it to the pot, tossed it up with the sauce, and Bada-Bing, Bada-Boom, we got Dinner! And the little lady was pleased, if I say so myself.

So next year, when you’re preparing your vittles for the big game, remember hoagies first, goombada sauce later.

The 2006 Torino Olympics Extreme Quiche Cam

So last night, my little corner of the NY/NJ metro area got hit with a massive snowstorm — I estimate that its close to two feet of snow, but I could be exaggerating. EDIT: Okay, maybe not!

So when you’re totally snowed in and there’s no way to leave home for some vittles, what do you do for food? Well, if you got some eggs and butter lying around, and some AP flour, and leftover meats and veggies, you make Quiche.

Yeah, yeah, I know that quiche is sissy food. But consider the following:

See, quiche doesn’t have to be metrosexually inclined. It can be the stuff of sheer exhilaration, like zooming down an Alpine ski jump at 100MPH and flying through the air for over a hunded meters, and then landing squarely on your feet, twisting your skis, and having the snow fly as you brake to safety.

Okay, maybe quiche isn’t quite that exciting. But damn, there’s something about a butter pate brisee crust, combined with eggs, cheese, sauteed morsels of mushroom, salumi and heavy cream that gets my heart racing. Although, if you’re an olympic athlete in Torino, quiche lorraine is probably not a good idea, even if you made it with chopped up Italian salumi and Asiago cheese.

By the way, perhaps its just me, but does everyone hate these Corrupt European Assholes for disqualifying our top skeleton luge athlete for what amounts to using Rogaine, even though the entire International Olympic Commitee wants to see this guy play?