There is a leap in evolution as a cook when you discover that behind each ingredient, in addition to being able to prepare a rich recipe, there is a powerful tool to achieve more transcendent goals, such as winning the hearts of the people.
In this beautiful battle, it is key to connect with what you do.
When cooking, one must become a bit of what one is cooking.
One must feel that it is that cuttlefish that cleanses its impurities and tentacles.
Live the stew of those cuttlefish
cubes in
balsamic vinegar with the same intensity with which you live your own life.
Within the hospitality profession, we use an expression that brilliantly defines that feeling of connection and dedication to the trade: the vocation of service. This aptitude reveals that, for example in this recipe that concerns us, the necessary gifts with which we make a homemade black pasta - patience, delicacy, tenacity ... - are, in reality, vibrations and symptoms of other greater impulses whose aspiration is to please others, and delve into their happiness.
This vocation must also be shown, and lived, generously, otherwise it is diluted.
Without generosity, passion just evaporates.
Only care (generous) manages to sauté our cuttlefish well and concentrate the aromas from the prawn juice, the tomatoes, the chopped chives and the butter nut.
Only the attention (generous) in the pan manages to give the exact fire to bind the sauce.
Only in this way, when adding the freshly cooked pasta to the final sauté, the wide variety of flavors provided by each ingredient are integrated.
The kitchen is only good enough if you think about others.
And in the face of the drift that society takes in these times, not taking sides means not being part of the solution, and therefore contributing to enlarge the current problem of mutual disconnection that we suffer.
Cooking with conscience and heart is the way.
And we say way because the kitchen will never be an end in itself.
The truly exciting thing about plating the
freshly sautéed
spaghetti
in the cuttlefish stew and the tomatoes, what really stresses us in a positive way as a person is reaching that magical terrain that is the table and, there, meeting the other.
Spaghetti nero recipe with cuttlefish stew and tomatoes
Ingredients (four people):
400 grams of clean cuttlefish diced
2 cloves of garlic
Olive oil
40 grams of
white balsamic vinegar
1 glass of white wine
24 units tomatitos
cherries
1 onion unit
1 unit of leek
2 carrot units
50 grams of tomato sauce
Water
12 rice prawns
Brandy
480 grams of spaghetti nero
40 grams of butter
Chive
Salt and pepper
Sugar
Elaboration:
Clean the cuttlefish, removing the skin, head, insides and tentacles;
save and reserve the inner ink bag;
chop the meat of the clean cuttlefish into cubes and reserve.
To braise the cuttlefish, mash the garlic cloves and sauté them over low heat in oil, together with the cuttlefish cubes and tomato sauce;
We cover the whole with the white wine and a touch of
white
balsamic vinegar
and bring it to a boil.
Cover the pan so that the steam that forms inside cooks the cuttlefish well and leaves it tender, in about 20 minutes.
Peel the tomatoes
cherries
;
season them with sugar and salt;
put them in the oven at about 130º to dry them slightly and thus concentrate their flavor.
Make a fish broth with the prawns.
To do this, sauté the leek, onion and carrot in a pot;
add the toasted prawns;
flambé with brandy;
add tomato sauce and water;
take the whole to cook.
Once you have reduced the broth, crush it and strain it through a fine strainer to achieve a concentrated juice.
At the moment of serving, put the stewed cuttlefish, the shrimp juice, the tomatoes, the chopped chives and the butter nut in a pan;
boil the mixture so that it is slightly concentrated and textured.
Add the freshly cooked pasta and sauté the whole to integrate the flavors;
transfer the preparation to the plate immediately.