On Top of Spaghetti

When it’s dark and rainy (even in the middle of summer) there’s something reassuring about a big bowl of spaghetti with red sauce. We make up a batch of what we call “schaumgummi red sauce” every few weeks – enough to have some for dinner and the rest, to stow in the freezer for, you guessed it, a rainy day. I have gradually been trying to rotate out the white flour pasta for the mixed grain varieties from Trader Joe’s – so far the flax is the most popular, with the rice flour pasta being awful and gummy and the whole wheat too crunchy for the likes of some people. But there are times when you just want old school spaghetti.

The folks from Natural Home sent me a selection of bamboo kitchen tools a while back – I was holding out on writing about them until I’d had a chance to use them all and to see how they held up after washing. I was pretty excited that they’d seen fit to include a spaghetti fork, there’s something oh so appealing about the shape of those things. They asked me to review them – I’ll tell you that they so far have held up better than my old wooden spatulas, that they are good looking, and feel very nice in your hand. The husband cooed a little when I opened the box because they’re so pretty and we both have a lefty knee jerk fondness for things made from bamboo. If the stuff falls apart over time you can bet I’ll let you know, but so far, so good.

Yesterday, in the midst of a March day that some how found itself in August, I got up from my work and wandered into the kitchen with a brief stop to get a box of spaghetti from the pantry. Husband was standing at the counter preparing  a batch of “schaumgummi red sauce” for the defrost cycle in the microwave. We had a little moment of domestic serendipity, clearly.

Schaumgummi is the German word for foam rubber and it’s what we call tofu in our house. When I introduced tofu in to my Central European’s diet, there was some resistance, but I am a damn fine cook, if I may say so myself, and that resistance turned to acceptance, requests, and then actaul cravings – “We should cook up a batch of schaumgummi red sauce!”

We keep tofu in our freezer for just this eventuality. You have to freeze the tofu, defrost it, and then crumble it. Essentially, you are making a bolognese sauce only instead of ground beef, you use the crumbled tofu. I could give you a recipe, but honestly, I make it different every single time depending on what else is in the fridge. I’ve added (either individually or in combination) diced carrots, salt cured olives, capers, chili oil, and greens of all varieties.

I always start by sauteeing the daylights out of a big yellow onion, whatever Italian style herbs I have kicking around, and the crumbled schaumgummi. Then I add a two cans of diced tomatoes, one can of tomato paste, red wine if I’ve got it, and whatever else I feel like throwing in there. I cook it for as long as I can stand without eating it because a big batch of red sauce makes your house smell like dinner for a very long time. Once, I put it through the food processor to make it really smooth and then, made a lasagne that was, no contest, the best damn lasgne I’ve ever had.

I realize you can get perfectly good red sauce from a jar, but until I see schaumgummi red sauce on the shelf at the supermarket, we’re making our own.

Disclaimer: In case it’s not perfectly clear, the folks from Natural Home sent me some kitchen tools. I don’t have a lot more to say about them beyond, yeah, they’re actually quite nice.