Ron,
Yes! Massive they are. I’m looking forward to enjoying the constant and even heat properties they are known for. I figured there will be a bit of a learning curve as I learn their personalities, a longer heat up being one of them. I have not used All Clad, but I do have some HexClad skillets and wok and I really love those. Ill continue to use those and the Le Creuset for pots and dutch oven duties.
Folks:
I just made Papa’s Lemon Pasta per Paul’s recipe. One word- delicious and we are meat eaters! This will become a regular meal at our household.
We are attending a birthday party at the end of May at my son’s house. All of our children are vegetarians. We will bring some of PLP for them to taste. Would love to hear their comments.
Bon apetite.
I believe food scientists have written about how olive oil when heated, loses much of the flavor.
I remember seeing a video by Chef Thomas Keller where he spoke about the same thing and how there’s no need to spend a lot of money on cooking olive oil - spend the money on olive oil used raw for dressing foods.
Have a look at this new (18months ago) Australian cookware getting rave reviews…
SolidTeknics
Or grape seed oil which has a much higher flash point than olive oil and arguably healthier. You can sear using grape seed oil.
Awesome and glad you liked it. With tomato season approaching I look forward to variations on this with heirlooms. Big, red and yellow heirlooms. I take then and cut them into quarters, then use the knife to cut off the skin, then chop the “meat” into small
cubes. The better the tomatoes the better the pasta.
The taste of good olive oil is important in this recipe and it is also important to keep the heat at very low levels, as low as they can go.
I use regular Olive oil for cooking at higher temps and extra virgin for drizzling, like over this dish, once plated.
1 Like
For sure. No doubt high quality olive oil flavor surpasses all other oils. Wasn’t sure what temp the pot needed to be with the lemon pasta.
@RonP Good call on the non-virgin stuff for higher heat applications. I use the expensive extra-virgin in the same way you do. Good to have lots of options in your cooking arsenal.
I also use a lot of clarified butter as it has a very high smoke point, 482F.
Your recipe was a success with my family. Followed it pretty closely, and used yellow and pink heirloom tomatoes. Used linguine for pasta. Very good! Thank you!
1 Like
I have to admit, when we made ours (YUMMY!), I felt a lil bad about adding the chicken to it, given the originators vegetarian lifestyle. We did get over it though. 
(not to mention this whole ordeal “forced” me to purchase a $200 Le Creuset pot. PS audio will break me one way or the other…)
Next up - navy bean soup Paul?
1 Like
@Paul We used the recipe to great success with large red and yellow Texas heirlooms, barely cooking them on lowest possible heat keeping the tomatoes in tact, adding lots of fresh basil and a touch of truffle salt and shaved romano… mmm so good 
thanks Paul
Could do Papa’s Mornay sauce if anyone’s interested. Yummy and fattening at the same time!
2 Likes
Oh yeah, baby. That sounds like you killed it. I am hungry already!
@Paul Papa’s Mornay sauce? count me in, we’re on a roll… :+1
Paul, count me in as well.
Tried my hand at Papa’s Lemon pasta tonight. Need a couple more tries to get it right for sure. But still pretty damn good.
The pasta recipe to take the internet by storm…
You’ve got my attention!
Well, this is a recipe for one of the basic sauces I learned to make years ago. It is a béchamel sauce with shredded or grated Gruyère cheese added. Some variations use different combinations of Gruyère, Emmental cheese, or white Cheddar. is a savory sauce, made from a roux and a light stock. It is one of the five “mother sauces” of French cuisine.
At first, the idea of French cuisine made me nervous until I actually learned how to make the sauce and then realized it’s as simple as possible. It always impresses and you get ooohs and aaahs.
Mine is the vegetarian version but when I first developed the sauce some 35 years ago, I used Campbell’s canned chicken stock (if you’re going chicken, there’s no better type). So just replace the Not Chicken bouillon cubes with your favorite chicken broth.
This basic sauce starts with a roux (butter and flour) then depends on slowly adding hot broth, then the finishing touches. The broth MUST be hot for this to work.
- One clove garlic
- One small clove shallot
- Half stick butter
- 3 cups water (with bouillon cube (or chicken broth))
- Tablespoon all purpose flour
- Whipping cream
- Lemon
- White pepper
- Ground nutmeg
- Reggiano Parmesan
First step is to heat up the stock. In my case, I use a single Not Chicken bouillon cube in a few cups of water. Set it to heat up while you work on the rest.
Mince a clove of garlic and a small shallot and have at the ready. Gently heat half a stick of unsalted butter in a saucepan. Here’ it’s important to go easy on the heat (and have a heavy bottomed pan) as you don’t want the butter to separate. Just gentle heat. Throw in the garlic and shallots and gently cook until you smell the garlic and butter mix wafting through the house (a lovelier smell I don’t know).
Drop in a heaping tablespoon of flour and, using a whip, cook the flour for maybe a minute. It should coagulate in lumps (gentle heat!). Slowly, pour in the hot broth while whisking the mixture to integrate the broth. Pour in just enough to liquify the mixture. Keep whisking until it again thickens and then add more broth and repeat the process until you have enough sauce for your need (too much broth and not enough flour and you’ll thin the sauce too much). Keep the consistency a bit thicker than you want for the end result.
Slowly add some half and half or full whipping cream until the sauce turns a gorgeous white. Keep stirring with the whisk the whole time and keep the damned heat low! Gentle is the key here.
Squeeze a smidge of lemon juice into the mix and whisk in. Shake a small amount of white pepper in. Add a touch of ground nutmeg. Keep whisking.
At this point, you have a beautiful velouté sauce that is ready to put onto a plate and tickle palates. To turn it into a Mornay (béchamel) sauce you now need to add cheese (depending on the food you want to serve this with you may or may not need to add cheese). I used to use a Monterey Jack but over the years found it a little too heavy and now just use heapfuls of Reggiano Parmesan. Just load that sucker up and keep the whip moving to make sure it stays a velvety texture.
That’s it! Papa’s White Sauce is then spread over the plate and the entre placed atop it. In the old days I would pour the sauce over the entre item but it looks classier to put the sauce down first then the intended main course.
Few things get kids and adults alike reaching for the bread to sop up this wonderful fattening delight.
1 Like
Oh this sounds good. I’m going to try it soon. Sounds like it would have multiple applications as well, with different types of entree’s. I could see spreading on the plate and drizzling lightly over the entre as well. Yum.
Ya know Paul, it would seem that there are many of us that love cooking/food as much as you do*, maybe we should start a separate forum spot for recipes and such…sort of a “Paul’s kitchen” section. High end culinary delights for high end audiophiles.
*One of my motivations for starting the Papa’s Lemon Pasta thread was the look on Paul’s face in the video when he asked if he could stray from the topic to mention the pasta…you could see it was meaningful.