I tend to think I spend way too much time on my phone, either scrolling or playing my game that I KNOW I spend too much time on. BUT in scrolling a couple of months ago I saw that Scott Conant was going to be kind of close to us and it was a few days after my daughters b-day. I know she would LOVE this so I booked 2 of the last 3 VIP tickets to a meet and greet. Honestly I didn’t really read what it was all about and didn’t really care as long as we get to meet him.
I did know that the city of Salem MA was honoring his ancestor Roger Conant who founded Salem in 1626. Funny thing is Scott didn’t even know this until it was brought to his attention. History is pretty fascinating how it works that way; families moving back and forth from country to country. I think Scott should do the show Finding your Roots. I love watching that show, history intrigues me. I have my father’s family genealogy back to 1400’s. My French Canadian roots go all the way back to Bologna Italy. My husband makes fun of me being an Italian Frenchman.
This night with Scott Conant @conantnyc is in my top twenty of lovely evenings. My daughter and I went out to an early dinner, which was fabulous, we sat at the bar and the bartenders told us that Scott and his family ate there the night before. I wanted to ask him how he liked their Popovers, which were fabulous! Our seats were 3rd row on the end, the theater was super small so we had great seats. Scott came out and basically had a conversation with the host and a bunch of the audience asked questions. His mother, wife and daughters were in the audience.
After their conversations and the question/answer section most of the audience left and the 3 rows of people stayed for a cookbook signing and pictures with the chef. I am usually pretty good about not getting too star struck, but this time I was simply memorized and found it hard to speak. Thankfully Abbi made a little small talk with him. We are hoping he comes to NH to host a local fundraising event called Steel Chef Challenge. She mentioned it to him, we were like we will have our people talk to your people LOL we have no people but we put a bug in his ear. Maybe we can manifest this to happen… Abbi and I met Alex Guarnaschelli and Michael Symon at this same event a few years ago!
We left the meet and greet with a personalized Peace Love Pasta cookbook and a jar of his new Martone Street sauce and a card with the instructions on how to make this recipe. I made it for my husband an I the very next night and loved it!
Martone Street Spaghetti Pomodoro
Ingredients
- 1 pound dried spaghetti
- 24 ounce Martone Street pomodoro tomato & basil sauce
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
- ½ cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese plus more for garnish
- extra virgin olive oil for finishing
- 15 fresh basil leaves sliced thinly
Instructions
- Bring a large stockpot of water to a boil and salt it generously.
- In a large Sauté pan over medium heat, add the sauce and reduce to about ¼ to further concentrate the flavor.
- Once the water comes to a boil. Cook the pasta about 80% of the way. Just shy of al dente
- Reserve about ½ cup of the pasta water before draining.
- Add the spaghetti to the sauce. Add a few tablespoons of the pasta water to the sauté pan and toss to coat. Adding more pasta water as needed.
- When the pasta is cooked to al dente, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the butter, cheese and 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil plus the sliced basil.
- Toss to combine, emulsifying the butter, cheese and olive oil with the sauce.
- Serve garnished with additional freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.