I live my truest life in that hour from 12 a.m. to 1 a.m., in the spirit of a spaghettata di mezzanotte, a late-night Italian spaghetti party, which often evolves (or devolves, depending on how you look at it) from the kind of evening that wants to linger. It’s one of the few things in life that is always within reach, even when your fridge is practically empty. As my colleague David Tanis once wrote, “The smell of pasta boiling is a heady cheap thrill.”
What I love to eat most during this cherished time is spaghetti, with its comforting slipperiness. Other shapes work, too: I’ve been known to make a mean midnight orzo with guanciale, Pecorino Romano and black pepper, sometimes egg yolks if I’m feeling “in the carbonara way.” Other nights, it’s something punchier, like an alla vodka sauce made à la minute with fusilli: tomato paste bloomed in some fat, such as butter or olive oil, then swirled with a splash of vodka and cream. For the man, it’s a ragù, made the way of his grandfather’s family in Ferrara. Maybe for you, midnight pasta is a fridge clear-out, where you turn all of your leftover crisper-drawer vegetables into a nubby sauce.
I’ve always felt that my best recipes come from real life, from discoveries I make in the kitchen when I’m strapped for time and ingredients. One mezzanotte, I tossed thin spaghetti with chopped capers and umeboshi, those salty, pink Japanese plums, in butter to great effect. Having just returned from Kyoto and Osaka, I missed those kinds of briny accents in my day to day. Another night, it was a simple lemon-buttered angel hair against a shield of simply dressed arugula with balsamic vinegar, like a yin and yang of salad and pasta, a remnant of my Macaroni Grill years in suburban Atlanta. Recently, I tossed a little tagliatelle with the leftovers of our Sunday roast chicken, with pine nuts and rosemary like a Venetian feast, something I learned from Nigella Lawson’s first book, my culinary bible, “How to Eat.”
A meal that is always within reach, even when your fridge is practically empty.
Midnight spaghetti, I’ve since gathered, is less a recipe than it is a means by which to linger into the night. My approach changes depending on the season, with my latest involving a jar of creamy peanut butter and a block of cheese. This nutty pasta is a dream to cook, requiring just a handful of pantry staples and one pot. Industrially produced peanut butter anchors a creamy sauce swathed in umami. Accentuated by a good, salty Parmesan, these noodles recall those cheesy peanut-butter crackers you can always find in a highway vending machine. They also happen to be an ideal dinner for one, whether you’re on the road or at your desk. Most nights, I love slurping these noodles hunched over my laptop, a glass of red wine in reach, my dog sleeping to my right.
