One of the things that I regularly keep in my kitchen is a tin of anchovies, most of the time bought at Trader Joe’s. I thought it has been toooo tooooooo long since last I made anything from a Jamie Oliver cookbook and it was time. Also few months ago my friends S & S finally gave me my Xmas present and HELLO it was the Jamie’s Food Revolution cookbook. This cookbook is geared towards people that can’t really cook so to me means simple recipes! I was flipping through the book and came upon this recipe for Pasta Al Pangrattato. All you need are bread crumbs, anchovies, thyme, dried chili and pasta. Luckily I had everything except thyme. Once I got the thyme I prepped everything and made the dish. FYI, the anchovies that Trader Joe sells do not melt in the pan. I have tried it many times and every time they don’t melt like they should. I have bought anchovies from higher end grocery stores and they do melt.

I wasn’t a big fan of this dish because it was too dry. I like my pasta with a bit of sauce but this was hella easy to make and good way to use up old bread.

Click for the recipe

I had no idea it was THIS difficult to find a decent breakfast place in Tribeca. But thanks to Serious Eats I found Locanda Verde which perfectly was connected to the hotel that my sister was staying while she was in town. Though I thought I had found a new place to eat but she had already gone there for breakfast the day before. Ah oh well it was new to me.

There weren’t that many things I wanted to eat on the menu but finally decided on Uova Modenese poached eggs with cotechino hash, spinach, and tomato hollandaise. I didn’t know what “cotechino” was and wasn’t having high expectations. When the dish came I still wasn’t expecting much seeing how tiny the dish was, yes yes I eat a lot. It does look pretty though. With the fork I got a some eggs, spinach and sausages and ate it. !!!!!!!!! WOW!! The tomato hollandaise sauce was amazing! It was my first time having hollandaise sauce with tomatoes in them and I’m sure without them this would’ve just been a plain dish. I really wanted to eat slowly just to savor the moment and wished there was more bread.

- Locanda Verde 377 Greenwich St New York

This week of cooking a Jamie Oliver recipe is his Wild Rocket & Chilli Spaghetti recipe. This recipe was super duper easy and quick and tasted good too. Arugula is the same as rocket right? I used wild arugula and chilli flakes instead of dried chillies. Give this recipe a try and I’m sure you can use whatever greens you can find instead of wild rocket/arugula.

Sort of a quick meal like under 20minutes, thats quick right? While the water for the pasta was heating up, I cleaned and chopped the chives and added few tablespoons of fennel seeds into the ground pork and seasoned it. Prep everything before cooking the pasta. So while the pasta was cooking, I added the ground pork to a very hot pan because if its not hot enough I’ll just be steaming the pork. When the pork was all done cooking, I added the chives. The chives doesn’t take that long and then I added couple big spoons of creme fraiche. Tasted the pork and chives mixture and seasoned correctly. I also grated some parmesan cheese and gave it a good stir. Add pasta when done and mixed it really well. Then I added some more cheese, why not. This was pretty good, the Chinese chives were a bit awkward only because I’m used to eating it as a Chinese dish and the fennel seeds in the ground pork really added a lot to it and transformed plain old pork into something fantastic.

So this week I cheated a bit. The recipe called for pancetta and thyme or rosemary. I didn’t use pancetta, I know its in the title but pancetta is pricey, so instead I used bacon. Also I had 5 strips of bacon in the fridge already. As for the herbs I wanted to use something different, something I have never used before…..like…..tarragon! I think sage would’ve worked good in this dish also. Well I guess I might as well just say that I didn’t use tagliatelle pasta either! Geez… This wasn’t my fault I couldn’t find any so I got linguine.

Parsnips have sort of a licorice taste to it, I think, and so does tarragon. What I made tasted okay but probably tarragon wasn’t the right herb to use because it taste like parsnips, I don’t know. Will try again with sage! Love sage.

Dude, when you crave for a meatball sandwich you GO and get a meatball sandwich but where?! I found out my beloved Cafe Express with a question mark in the front was closed and was replaced by a stupid generic Pret A Manager, WTF?! UGH. I was hoping to get a meatball sandwich from them, so instead I walked a little further to Salumeria Biellese. The meatballs at Salumeria Biellese were as big as my fist. For close to $8 I got a giant sandwich with 4 meatballs halved and smooshed into the bread then topped with sauce and cheese. Oh… It was a bit messy to eat but when you’re starving and actually eating what you were craving for, I didn’t give a damn. It was a fine fine sandwich even though the bread was just okay.

- Salumeria Biellese 378 8th Avenue, New York