Ham and Banana Spaghetti

This American comfort food classic comes courtesy of an American couple I met in Seoul who, unable to find their favorites ready-to-eat in the grocery store, took to home cooking.

I first met Eileen when I ducked in through her open window as I was parkouring away from the group of high schoolers trying to use me as a demo subject for their extra credit history project about mummification. I sat there catching my breath and waiting for my hands to stop shaking for a while, as she cooked this very recipe and asked me sympathetic questions about what I was running from. Soon her husband and their daughter came home for dinner. We ate together, this hearty meal with the flesh of two different animals who lived their entire lives as captives and died at their captors’ whim. To me, it tastes like being the predator and not the prey. The Italian-inspired flavors, the Asian-style noodles, the tropical bananas—it’s easy to forget that bananas are tropical, when they’re one of the most boring sights in supermarkets throughout the temperate regions—really showcase man’s dominion over the whole globe and the heights we can rise to if we just work together.

I don’t find that this recipe tastes exactly the same as what you can get at the supermarket, with the banana slices in a little baggie waiting to be put on top after you’ve zapped the spaghetti. That’s because they coat the bananas in citric acid. I think it’s to prevent browning! It gives it a slight tang that goes well with the tomatoes. Eileen’s version feels more elegant and refined.

YOU WILL NEED:

one package ready-to-eat shirataki noodles

1/8 lb ground beef

15 oz pasta sauce (if you can’t find jars of it, you can make your own by boiling 15 oz of tomatoes with 2 tbsp italian seasoning and blending with an immersion blender once the tomatoes are soft)

4 oz shredded Italian cheese mix (if you can’t find it at the store you can make your own from parmesan, mozzarella, asiago, provolone, and romano)

cooked thinly sliced ham, cut into small squares

about 2 medium cavendish bananas

Brown the beef, stirring well, in a saucepan. Add the pasta sauce and simmer. Add the noodles five minutes before taking it all off the heat. Remove from heat, add half the cheese, stir slightly. Plate, and garnish with ham, sliced banana, and the rest of the cheese.

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Tuesday’s Classic Pizza

Remember the pizza restaurant where it’s always Tuesday? You’d decide to try visiting on a Friday, but when you walked in, you’d discover that you were mistaken and it was Tuesday after all, and the next day would be Wednesday. They were closed on Sundays, though I never happened to walk by on a Sunday; I meant to once but I didn’t manage it. Whenever I did wander down that street they were always open and the smell of pizza and the sound of laughter were spilling out onto the sidewalk.

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They closed three years ago now. You can still visit, if you want, if the last three years were just a nightmare and all you need to wake you up is to step inside and order your usual just like you do every week. We’ve all been there, some of us more than once, wandering through horrors-to-come until we fall off the calendar entirely.

That place was a real source of strength to me and a real anchor, for what really felt like forever. I knew no matter how bad things got, no matter how dark the future seemed, I could stop by for my usual, any time at all, as long as it was Tuesday, and afterward when I left I’d be ready to try again.

The last time I visited, I asked about the recipe, to have something to remember them by after they were closed, as I followed the march of calendar days away and away and further away. It was the last night they were open, and Danny wrote it all down for me, and here it is. Whenever I make this recipe, the classic taste really takes me back, metaphorically, to my favorite restaurant. I hope I never see it open again.

YOU WILL NEED:

One pizza crust

5 oz pizza sauce

4 oz shredded Italian cheese blend

Assemble and bake until done.

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A Milkshake To Bring Boys To Your Yard

Food brings people together. That’s especially true of this absolutely irresistible milkshake! You’d better be prepared to make a big batch, because if you start making it you WILL be mobbed by thirsty milkshake lovers. I used to make these all the time when I lived in a small town in the middle of the desert. Haven’t wanted to deal with the hassle ever since moving to the city, but today all of a sudden I remembered how much I used to love them and now I’m making plans. In case you want to try them, too, I decided to post the recipe on my blog.

I learned this recipe from my departed grandmother, who told me once that she invented it just to get on my grandfather’s nerves. She kept it up because her kids and grandkids liked it and really everyone in town liked it, by then, my grandfather being dead. I never knew him. She didn’t talk much about him; she didn’t like to speak ill of the dead and there wasn’t much but ill to speak of him. She put up with him because she came to him with nothing but the clothes on her back—which he insisted on replacing and buried someplace near the beach where they met, before they moved inland. The most she ever told me about all that was just before the trip we went on together, when she showed me the beach where she met my grandfather, where she drafted me to help her dig for buried treasure. That trip is one of the happiest and one of the last memories I have of her. Just the two of us by the beach, making sandcastles and talking together, going back to the hotel room with sand between our toes to pop popcorn and make hot chocolate. She told me a lot of things on that trip, some of which I will never blog about. But one of them was this recipe.

I know she’s in a better place now, and we’ll be together again someday when I tire of walking on this earth. But I still miss her.

Anyway, I’ve presented quantities that will fit in a typical blender all at once, but buy in bulk even if you think you only need to make a small batch. You WON’T get to taste the first glass.

YOU WILL NEED

one large scoop butter pecan ice cream

one large scoop vanilla ice cream

three slices of frozen peach

one tablespoon unsweetened creamy peanut butter

one frozen pea

a generous sprinkle of freshly grated nutmeg

enough whole milk to make everything blend properly, as little as you can get away with

Just blend it all together until it becomes smooth and irresistible!