When I was new to San Francisco, and still vegan, the North Beach neighborhood held a leftover mystique to me. It was easy to ignore the garish 1960’s Transamerica Pyramid at the base of Montgomery if one just looked up the hill to the comparatively tiny, but prominently situated, Coit Tower; if one then walked eastwards down the hill toward the Bay, a wooden sidewalk lined with Angel’s Trumpets (poisonous, I later learned) might materialize out of the chilly fog, straight out of Armistead Maupin.
But for the modernity of the cars, Columbus Ave. itself looked like it hadn’t changed since the time of the Beats, gentleman’s clubs and all. City Lights Bookstore was everything it should be: dusty, stuffed to the gills, tables loaded with new fiction and shelves teeming with old philosophy. Up and down the avenue, the Indian laurel figs alternated with Italian restaurants: tree, The Stinking Rose, tree, Macaroni Sciué Sciué, tree, Cafe Zoetrope.
The last of these became the occasional haunt of mine and a friend. I don’t remember how we found it — maybe we were heading for Caffè Macaroni (which at some point in the late aughts mysteriously dropped the Sciué Sciué), and it was closed; maybe the triangular restaurant with the wooden revolving door just looked worth trying.
It’s not particularly haute cuisine. The chairs are wicker; the cocktails are all served in martini glasses, Ameri-Italian circa 1950. The whole story of this restaurant, as far as I can tell, is that it serves Francis Ford Coppola’s wines. (This was a decade before I even dreamed of having a son named Francis.) We’d get a bottle of something, I the puttanesca pasta, and my friend the orecchiette with sausage and broccoli raab, and sit outside at a cafe table under the heat lamps in the chilly evening. (It’s always a chilly evening in SF — no matter how glorious the day has been, the fog rolls in promptly an hour or two before dusk, half-naked sunbathers grab the nearest scrap of faux fur and flee Dolores Park, and restaurants around the city fire up their heat lamps.)
Which brings me to Smitten Kitchen’s Pasta with Garlicky Broccoli Raab. Every now and then, at Cafe Zoetrope, I’d get the orecchiette, but hold the sausage please, I’m vegan. I always felt it must be missing something, so I generally reverted back to the puttanesca next time. But earlier this month, trying the above recipe for the first time, I suddenly got a whiff of what the recipe needed: sausage.
I’m no longer vegan, but I’m still only vaguely pescatarian. Sausage, to me, means Field Roast (though be it on you which type you choose). But adding it here brings a completeness to this already-meal-worthy dish. Also, though Deb’s version is agnostic about the type of cheese you use, in my present household, it’s all about the chèvre for lactose purposes. Which works, even in small quantities. (Though if you happen to also have ricotta on hand, and want to dollop it on top of just your portion, far be it from me to judge…)
A note here: In the SK post, Deb is quite clear about no iodized salt. The cooking salt I keep in a jar is already non-iodized, so I haven’t had the opportunity to find out what she means about it turning your garlic a funny color. But do you really want to?
It’s been 40 years since Maupin wrote Tales of the City, and rents there now an order of magnitude higher. I’ve moved on to Seattle, where the June days are longer, the fog is less novelistic (but the nearby hulking mountain serves for any of your poetic needs), and the rents (or so I’m told) have yet to catch up with SF. But somehow when I sat down tonight to write a bulleted list of pasta and veggies, somehow I ended up back on Telegraph Hill, surrounded in wisping fog, and some Italian-inspired NorCal red in my glass.
PrintGarlicky Broccoli Raab Pasta with Veggie Sausage (and San Francisco)
A quick dinner that integrates veggies, protein, and pasta all in one. Adapted slightly from the Smitten Kitchen original to feed two.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 25 minutes
- Yield: 2 large servings 1x
Ingredients
- 8–12 oz. broccoli raab (whatever’s convenient)
- 6 oz. pasta
- 2 Italian style Field Roast veggie sausages
- 2 oz. Laurel Chenel herbed goat cheese
- 3 huge cloves garlic
- 1/4 C olive oil
- Good shake red pepper
- 1/2 t salt
Instructions
- Put a very large pot of water on to boil. Seriously, bigger than you would if it were just pasta.
- Wash, trim if necessary, and cut up your broccoli raab to whatever size you want. (If you’re using small-ish pasta, cut it to roughly match.)
- Once the water is boiling, salt it and add oil if that’s a thing you do. Add the pasta, and set your timer for 5 minutes less than the total recommended cook time.
- At T-5 minutes, add the broccoli raab. Reset the timer for the remaining cooking time for the pasta.
- Meanwhile, cut up your sausage, and sauté it in a little olive oil over medium-low heat.
- When your overall timer is done, drain the raab and pasta, and put it in a serving bowl. Dollop the chèvre over it. When the sausage is done, add that to the bowl.
- In the same pan as you used for the sausage, add the olive oil, garlic, red pepper, and salt. Sauté over medium/low heat until the garlic is light brown and smells nutty. Add to the pasta bowl.
Notes
The raab-to-pasta ratio will feel hugely disproportionate. Don’t worry, it’s not. The raab cooks down, and it’s really nice to have a veggie-forward dish.
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