Angelhair Pasta Salad with Peanut Sauce

 1 box cappellini 1 tin roasted, salted, shelled peanuts
1 cup peanut oil3 peeled carrots½ cup sesame oil1 bunch cilantro1 tsp crushed red pepper4 T peanut butter¼ cup rice vinegar1 bunch scallions2 handfuls snow peas2 cloves garlickosher salt
optional meat (cooked chicken, shrimp, or thin-sliced sirloin beef) Start a pot of salted water to boil.  Add 1 T of olive oil to water.  This will be for the pasta.  After careful consideration I believe a few extra steps should have been added to this recipe, as well, to make the dish more palatable.  I will add them here. 

First and foremost, clean your snow peas.  (Tony, you were right.)  You should do this one of two ways – use a knife held between your thumb and the rounded corner of the pea to just barely pierce the beginning of the end, and remove the string running along its length.  Do the same thing to the other side, rotating the pea clockwise.  Do this to all of them, rejecting any that seem wilted, wrinkled, or otherwise unsuitable.  After finishing all of the peas, cut them in half on the bias and set them aside.  The other way to clean a snow pea requires no knife – you can use your thumbnail to pierce the rounded corner, and pull the string away from each end of the body along the length of the pea.   This task can become painful after cleaning a large number of snow peas, which is why the first method is always recommended first, and is also why I avoided it, believing that what came in the package was pristine, de-stringed, and not difficult to eat.  How wrong I was!  Also, if you use the first method of snow pea -cleaning, begin by putting into use a smaller (paring) knife until you become adept at handling larger knives for small detailed work like this.  I generally prefer only using one knife for most kitchen jobs, but I’m not normal.  I come at you from a prep cook background, which is why I abhor the thumb-peel technique.  One pound of snow peas is very different from a fifteen- pound box of snow peas.   In this new recipe I want you to briefly cook the peas.   You’ll want to bloom them in a pan, only.   To do this you will first need to crush two peeled cloves of garlic under the flat end of your knife, and then mince them finely.  Center your knife beneath your palm and spread out with the edge of your knife in a radiant direction, flaring from the narrow corner of your knife like a compass center to the broader end of where your knife base is.  If you were to look at it as if it were the face of a clock, you’d be going from :25 of the hour to :15 of the hour, with the tip of your knife being the center of the clock and the edge of your knife being the minute hand.  To save yourself time and aggravation, you can also move from fifteen clockwise back to twenty-five and back again, over and over.  This saves you a lot of unnecessary energy.  Scrape the edges of your knife into the center of your board when the bits stick to it and mince away until each chopped piece of garlic is rather tiny. Use a small frying pan to precook the peas.  Pour about two tablespoons of sesame oil into the frying pan, increase the heat to medium/high, and then add the chopped garlic.  Stir and keep the garlic moving.  Add the snow peas, halved on the bias, to the pan as soon as the garlic takes on a yellowish cast, and move quickly.  Add olive oil drop by drop to coat if the peas are not all shiny with existing sesame oil.  (Sesame oil is very strong – it is quite good to start with, but the olive oil is there to temper its absurd strength.)  Stir with a wooden spoon or chopsticks and shake the pan back and forth to allow even heat, and when the peas begin to sweat – or release moisture, remove from heat.  To tell by color they will become a vibrant green instead of the duller light white-tinged green they started out with.  Latent heat from the pan might overcook the snow peas - so make sure that you are still stirring them after they have been moved from the stovetop.   In a bowl place crushed red peppers, peanut oil, rice vinegar, and sesame oil.  The longer the flaked peppers are able to linger within the mixture of oils, the better.  They are dried, and marinating them in fluid helps them to release their potent capsaicin (the main ingredient, the hot aspect of the pepper).   Later I will introduce garlic chili paste in a jar, which can make grown men cry.  Later, I promise.  I will bring it directly to you from the farthest shores of Argyle Street, where this fabled famed and infamous jar of tear-inducing chili can only ever be found.  It’s wonderful and terrible.  Until then, I’m asking you to make your own concoction of chili-oil… on your own… To Your Taste, and I think that’s a kind and gentle way to do things. When the water has begun to boil, but don’t attempt this step until the above steps have already been taken, add ½ cup of peanuts and ¾’s of the contents of the pasta box.  Reserve the rest for later use.  Angel hair or cappellini pasta does not take too long to cook, because it has (As Rob said so wisely during the lesson) a smaller surface area than normal pasta does.  Stir frequently, and taste frequently as well.  When the pasta is done, turn it into a colander and run cold water over it.  This dish, like revenge, is best served cold.  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)  When all the pasta (to touch) is cool, shake it in the colander until it has stopped dripping water and turn it into a bowl.  Add a few drops of peanut oil at a time and mix thoroughly.  It might be useful to get someone else to pour the oil per your request as doing both at the same time, all alone, is difficult.  Use your hands.  Each strand of pasta should be coated, but not soaked.   Add the snow peas and garlic from the sauté pan, which should now be cool enough to handle.  Integrate all items evenly.

Grate or shave slivers of peeled carrots into pasta, mixing to integrate.  Rinse your hands.  Using a whisk, add peanut butter to the oil and crushed red pepper/rice vinegar mixture and taste, taste, taste.  Add more peanut butter for body, more of either oil as well.  Add a little salt if necessary.  What you should have is something that tastes like chicken satay sauce but is just a tiny little bit more pungent and sharp.  It should make you go gack if you like spicy foods.  If you do not feel that there is enough sauce to cover the amount of noodles you end up with, add a little more of both the oils – always a measure more of peanut to sesame, and be sure to whisk more of the peanut butter for body and flavor.  Adjust things to your taste.  Actually, double the original recipe and add half, then a quarter more, and taste the pasta after every addition.  Keep it all moving.  It’s important to keep stirring and moving these things together. 

Very thinly slice scallions and add them to the pasta at the last minute, mix it again, and then toss together with your pasta.  Any meats you wish to add should be tossed directly after this, or if you want to be wild and unfettered, let them soak with the sauce for about five minutes so they can absorb the fire of the peppers.   Feel free to make an extra side serving of the same sauce – same proportions.  Mostly peanut oil, a little sesame, only a touch of rice vinegar, some crushed red peppers, whisked and mixed with peanut butter.  It is more than okay to add soy sauce but since it can overpower, I recommend letting your guests add it to their dish on their own.  It’s almost pure salt, and since this dish has so many opportunities to become over salted, soy sauce is optional.  It certainly adds to the asian flavor but is not at all an essential  part because it is not the main recipe.   What you should leave the table with after tasting this dish is clean, pure, cold, bright texture and something that fills your stomach in a happy light way.  It’s a cheerful dish, full of crunch, texture, and life. The cilantro is a garnish, and you should treat it just like parsley is treated on most American plates.  I like to hold a bunch of cilantro by its ends over my cutting board like you would a mistletoe, and run my knife down against the leaves in careful 30 degree angle cutting motions so that the leaves I shave from the bunch fall in a fluttering veil over my cutting board.  I set the originating bunch aside, and I comb through the heap upon my board -  rejecting all brown leaves and large unwieldy stems - and then I mince the cilantro the same way I suggested mincing the garlic.  You can do it like this, or you can just gather the leaves of a collected cilantro clump tip in a bushel under your fist, letting out small sections of leaves and chopping them as they are released.   This should be sprinkled over the pasta and immediately served for the effect of ultimate freshness.   

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