From: a@invalid.url (AjD)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: FTSD [late]: Deep-Fried Pasta
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Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 12:04:13 -0500
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Deep-Fried Pasta
  With remarks on phenomenology in the form of
  ad-hominem insult.

Ingredients:
1 lb uncooked pasta
  Copious amounts of water
  Salt and miscellaneous spices, or seasoned salt; see below
1 quart (minimum) deep-fat fryer oil (available from
  restaurant and catering service suppliers - canola should 
  work. olive oil is for poncy jackoff haute-couture wannabes

Equipment:
  Two large (over 1 gal.) cooking pots, one of which you
     don't mind destroying
  Two large colanders, at least one of metal wire mesh
  Wire mesh splash screen
  Large ladle-like metal device with straining holes for
     extracting things from boiling hot oil
  stove
  Copious ventilation
  Disabled fire alarms

Procedure:
First, Boil the pasta in copious amounts of water. On a
stove. In a pot. This is not unlike how you have always
cooked pasta, unless you're dangerously absent of even
fundamental dorm-room cooking skills. Heavily salt the water
and intentionally overcook the stuff. Whatever comes out of
the deep-fat fryer is going to be more crispy than whatever
was put into it, so if you use al dente pasta, you'll have
tooth-obliterating chew-bits. Get it? Anyway, boil the stuff
almost long enough for it to fall apart. Strain the results
in a colander and repeatedly rinse and toss with cold water
to keep everything from sticking together. This removes the
uncongealed starch and makes the glop easier to scoop into
your vat o' oil, and prevents your snacks from being
fist-sized globs of half-chewy fried dough.

Now, the pasta i use is that wagon-wheel-looking stuff. The
motive being that there aren't any pockets for retaining
water or oil. Spiral pasta will work okay, and so should the
radiatorre stuff, which i haven't tried yet. Probably, using
the shells-stuff or whatever the italians made up words for
would win you displays of cold water hitting boiling oil and
fleeing straight up and in all directions out of sheer
evaporative terror, shredding your face and arms with firey
liquid fury. Failing that, the vision of serving your guests
small decorator bowls of culinary delights coated with the
waxy paste of cooled oil deposits would set you right, if
you're too cowardly to try eating what you cook.

Now, you've probably used the wire-mesh colander to strain
out the boiled pasta. You moron. Transfer the wet pasta to
the other colander or to a bowl. You need the wire-mesh
strainer to let the just-fried pasta sit and cool.

A word on oil: i use GFS Heavy Duty Creamy Liquid Frying
Shortening (Partially Hydrogenated), because it was the
cheapest and was available at my local restaurant supply
superstore. It looks unnatural and is obviously bad for you,
and this is good because you need reminders like this that
you're making stuff that is food only in the sense that it
will travel through your digestive tract, not in the sense
that you will derive nourishment from it. Your local
availability may vary, but if there are any restaurants near
you, there's probably a restaurant supply shop too.

Now, rev up the oil in your cheapo disposable cookpot. When
the Creamy Liquid Frying Shortening is hot enough, it will
have transmogrified from a disturbing near-paste whiteness
to a faded corn oil color, with suspicious ripples on the
surface. If you feel the need, you can test it by dipping
your fingers in some water and dripping them over the oil.
Ha ha, now your eyes will be scarred by the scalding water
that flew into them! Wasn't that fun? Feel around the
stovetop until you find the knob to turn the heat off. If
you retain enough of your sight, you can try again once
you're out of the hospital.

Drop a small handful of pasta into the hot oil, and cover
the pot with the wire mesh splash screen. A wire splash
screen reduces, not eliminates, the mess. It is no more
capable of stopping your runny, impotent spooge than it is
the violent force of lavalike hot oil. If you're reading
this recipe all the way through before trying it, here's a
tip: cover your stovetop with aluminum foil to mitigate the
inevitable mess. I'm sure you couldn't think of this
yourself.

When the little boogers are done, they will be floating and
a turkey gravy brown. This means you overcooked them. But
you have a clue to timing and quantity, and haven't wasted
much food in learning. See, every time you chuck cold pasta
into hot oil, you bring the temperature of the oil down. If
you drop a lot of pasta in, you will cool the oil down a
lot. This means the pasta will take longer to fry up, and
will end up more chewy than you want. If you had an ounce of
reason, you could have forseen this. So fry small batches at
a time, even though it makes more work for your poor lazy
slob self.

Use the large ladle-like metal device to remove the
overcooked crispies and drop them into the metal wire
strainer. Drops of oil and bits of food will now fall
through the colander and away from the pasta. This ensures
that the pasta is free of caked grease and means they will
stay crisp in storage. Add salt and spices. The best stuff
I've used so far has been a garlic-pepper salt sold for
about fifty-nine cents the shaker at the local Big Lots.
Garlic-pepper salt is, in general, good for this sort of
food, providing a harsh metallic and salty flavor that
augments the disturbing mouthfeel, but read the ingredients
on the label carefully; most seasoning blends contain
dextrose which carmelizes on the hot pasta and makes the
stuff sticky-sweet. But hey, if you're all for sticky-sweet,
go for it. Don't invite me to your parties, though, because
I don't want to know you. Goya Adobo seasoning ("Con
Pimienta") tastes delicious, but is more granular and
doesn't cling to the pasta as well. Feel free to also add
garlic powder and dried oregano. Don't use table salt, 
because it's too granular; for plain salt try to get popcorn 
salt, which is ground fine and works well on junk food. If 
you can get the salt and adjuncts onto the pasta while it's 
still moist from hot grease, the stuff will stick better, so 
don't fry a couple batches and season 'em all at once. It's 
lazy and it shows.

Now that your countertop is covered with grease and wasted
seasoning, you might have considered putting a bowl under
the colander. Please, though, don't let me do all your
thinking for you.

Repeat the frying session, little by little, with the rest
of the pasta. Occasionally, you will get splashovers falling
onto the oven burner. Your well-wired house, with its alarm
system that automatically dials up the firehouse, will take
care of that for you. You'll have delicious crispy snacks to
serve them, a bit of entirely man-made factory food product
that you were able to prepare in your own kitchen. Store any
leftovers in a tupperware bowl, where they can keep for
weeks, assuming you aren't the sort of person who would drop
your lazy ass down in front of the television and mindlessly
chanel-surf for hours while mechanically stuffing lumps of
charred grease and starch into your swollen flabby face.

Mangia,
AjD
-- 
sometimes, in the cusp between the alarm going off and my 
being awake enough to know where i am, i do not feel doomed.
                         http://www.statesecrets.com/