Tom Valenti’s Soups, Stews, and One-Pot Meals

To some extent, all good food conjures images of friends and loved ones gathered around a table to eat. But when I think about casseroles, stews, and chili, I don’t just picture people eating; I envision big groups of people engaged in raucous times that last for hours and hours.

To me, dishes like Texas-Style Chili, Beer and Beef Stew, and Macaroni and Goat Cheese bring to mind fall and winter football parties, with guests moving to and from a buffet table, replenishing their bowls from a seemingly bottomless pot, and returning to the living room to watch the Sunday game. Similarly, Tuna Noodle Casserole, Spaghetti with Tuna and Tomato, and Lamb Pasticcio make me think of an extended family (Italian-American in my mind’s eye) laughing and lingering for hours over a table, drawn there as much by the food as by each other’s company.

These are just a few of the reasons the foods in this chapter are universally beloved. Another explanation for their wide appeal is that all are fun-to-eat hodgepodges of textures and flavors—from the meat, beans, and spices in a chili to the tomato, garlic, and seafood in a pasta sauce to the beef, vegetables, and grain in a stew.

What’s more, because they feature so many ingredients, these foods offer almost endless opportunity for personalization that can instantly redefine them—as when you adjust the amount of pepper in a chili or alter the selection of vegetables in a stew. Even after they’re delivered to the table, these dishes can be adapted to each diner’s personal taste, whether by livening up a pasta sauce with crushed red pepper and enriching it with extra-virgin olive oil; topping a risotto with lots of grated Parmesan cheese; or dressing a chili with Tabasco sauce, crushed saltines, sour cream, and Cheddar cheese. These are dishes you can practically recreate at the table and not offend the cook.

Here are a few thoughts on the recipes that follow:

Chili

When I think of the best chilis I’ve had over the years, I have to say that my personal prerequisite for chili is not beef or beans or tomatoes. To me, what’s truly essential is that chili is spicy and the heat is interesting. What I mean is that anyone armed with a jar of cayenne pepper or a bottle of Tabasco sauce can make something spicy. The challenge is to make the heat taste good, to compose a little three-alarm aria that’s compelling from one bite to the next by including ingredients of varying heat levels that deliver wave upon wave of pleasurable punishment to your taste buds. As far as I’m concerned, great chili doesn’t truly fade from the palate until about 30 minutes after you’re done eating it, like the triumphant, gradual fade-to-black at the end of a great movie.

This means different things to different diners. Like fingerprints, no two people have the same tolerance for heat. When making chili, we have to factor in our audience, especially if it contains that culinary wimp in our lives who can’t stand heat at all. You know who I’m talking about; the one who chokes on a generous amount of black pepper in a nonspicy dish.

The best way to accomplish this is to know your peppers and spices, so here are a few notes on those used in the chili recipes that follow. To state the obvious, there are countless peppers out there—many more than I could justify detailing here. I encourage you to explore the wide world of fresh and dried peppers and get to know as many as you can. They will all expand your options—not just when making chili, but whenever you need a little something extra to perk up a sauce or a soup.

Of the peppers I use in this chapter, bell peppers are by far the most commonly available and widely known. They are the peppers you no doubt picture when you hear the word pepper: sweet and crunchy, available in colors from green to red to orange to yellow, and mild and flavorful, if not particularly hot.

For a more complex flavor, I turn to one of the most popular items in the Mexican cupboard, dried ancho chile powder, which brings an alluring combination of heat and fruitiness to its surroundings. In contrast, when pure heat is what I’m after, there’s no quicker way to get there than cayenne, which is the pepper that fuels red Tabasco sauce and other hot sauces. If you only want to have a few peppers in your pantry, think about creating the overall flavor of a chili with ancho chile powder, then upping the heat level with careful additions of cayenne.

For smoky heat, I turn to chipotle peppers, which are smoked jalapeños. They are sold dried or reconstituted and stored in adobo, a tangy tomato sauce that can be used in chili, soups, and stews as well. One of the things I appreciate most about chipotle peppers in adobo is that they don’t need to be reconstituted in the dish, so they taste the same when they go into the pot as they do when they finish cooking. In contrast, most dried peppers reconstitute when cooked, so it’s difficult to control their heat.

As for hot sauces, Tabasco is just the beginning. There are innumerable sauces out there and, as with peppers themselves, they reward experimentation. The Tabasco folks have even upped the ante with versions featuring chipotle and hotter ’n hell habanero—the spiciest of all peppers.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention chili powder, which turns up in most chili recipes, including mine. Chili powder is actually a blend of dried peppers meant for chili-making. Every brand is made according to a different formula, so chili powders lack the consistency of specific dried peppers. When using one, you must taste the chili frequently and adjust the flavor as necessary.

Pasta

All of the pasta recipes in this chapter use dried pasta. There are additional notes on individual pasta shapes, but keep the following general advice in mind when cooking out of this chapter:

Not all pastas are created equal, so find a brand you like. (Let me save you some time: My favorite, and the favorite of just about every chef I know, is De Cecco for its great semolina flavor and perfect thickness in all of the many shapes it sells.) Cook the pasta itself in plenty of boiling, salted water. (The generally accepted formula is six quarts of water and two tablespoons of salt per pound of pasta.) And cook your pasta al dente (“to the tooth”), meaning that it still has a bit of a bite to it. I find that if you cut one minute off the recommended cooking time on the box or bag, you’ll get pretty close to the desired result.

Always err on the side of slightly undercooking your pasta because it will finish cooking in the sauce, which is one of the reasons I always toss pasta and sauce together just before serving. The other is that it’s the only way to fully integrate the two. In fact, it’s worth practicing the skill of tossing pasta and sauce in a wide sauté pan; you’ll be amazed at how much it improves the finished dish.

Risotto

The thing to understand about risotto, the fact from which all other truths follow, is that it takes a long time to cook. There’s a scientific reason for this: The relatively slow cooking in small amounts of gradually replenished hot liquid releases the rice’s starch, which is what binds the risotto together.

This means several things. (1) You need to have about 30 minutes available to stand over the stove and stir, and stir, and stir; do not plan to do other things while making risotto. (2) You need a heavy-bottomed pot because the rice will be in there a long time and you’ll likely scorch it if you don’t protect it properly. (3) Don’t get cute and try to pour in more stock than you’re supposed to at a time or crank the heat to get the rice to absorb it more quickly. It won’t work. Take the time and the risotto will pay you back with flavor and texture that’s worth every second of patient stirring.

Since this book promises the convenience of make-ahead cooking, I’ll share the best risotto tip I know for the home kitchen. Contrary to popular belief, you can make risotto in advance. Here’s what you do: Cook the risotto up to the point where you would add the last addition of stock. Transfer the risotto to a baking sheet, and spread it out so it can cool as quickly as possible. Then transfer it to an airtight container and refrigerate it for up to 6 hours or overnight. To finish the risotto, reheat it in a pot set over low heat while you bring the last addition of stock to a simmer in a separate pot. Stir the stock into the risotto and finish with any meats or vegetables, which you can also precook, cool, and reheat in the same manner.

Note that these pasta and risotto recipes also offer versatility in menu planning. Pasta and risotto are classically served as an early course in Italian meals, but the ones in this chapter are intended as main-course affairs. That said, you can also serve smaller portions as appetizers, or use them in a uniquely American way as side dishes to meats, fish, poultry, and game.

Stews

Like chili, stews are highly adaptable to personal taste and you should feel free to vary the ingredients in the recipes that follow, altering the meats, vegetables, herbs, and cooking liquids. As with the other recipes in this book, I’ve given variations following the individual recipes. But in the case of these stews, you’re on fairly safe ground if you deviate further afield, creating your own house versions that, due largely to this ease of adaptability, epitomize home cooking.