Salami...mushrooms...penne...mmmmmm!

We had the fresh ingredients for Friday’s scheduled meal in the fridge, so we decided to shuffle the menu for the week and instead of spicy chicken tonight, we had mushroom and salami pasta. A dish Son has said kills us three times over ’cos it contains milk, cheese and salami!

We love salami and its close cousin cabanosi! It is one of the most flavoursome meats you can get. I tried to remember a line from Ugly Betty tonight where she describes some pseudo-food from an absurdly pretentious eatery in some awfully ostentatious hotel. I thought it befitting for salami because it was so extreme, but alas! I can’t remember it. May watch the re-runs late Saturday night to catch it again.

Salami and cabanosi have never been endorsed by the heart foundation. Son and I were out shopping at a deli a year or so ago and while we were waiting to be served at the cold meats counter he commented that the cabanosi looked good. I looked at it and salivated but said “Yes it does, but if we ate it our arteries would resemble it.” He cringed and said after that I had really spoiled salami and cabanosi for him forever. We laughed about it for a long time, and never buy it, even though we still drool over it.

Then a couple of months ago I was in the same shop when a woman approached me and told me that she remembered that incident. She and her husband were standing close by and heard Son and I talking about the cabanosi. She said her husband started seeing his arteries too, clad within by fatty globules, and has given up fatty foods since. I felt honoured that Son and I had the opportunity to have a positive effect on someone’s health, albeit completely unwittingly. Makes me also wonder how often we have just as unwittingly been bad examples too; like when kiddies have watched us do things like cross roads against the light, even though there were no oncoming cars.

Anyhoo, we are on a mission and follow our recipe book religiously, so we absolutely HAD to buy salami today. Son cooked supper on his own tonight while I went and threw myself at some gym machinery in an effort to feel better about eating. He prepared white sauce from scratch (I would have hauled out Ina Paarman’s). He sautéed mushrooms and garlic until tender and added the white sauce and a man size handful of grated cheddar. This was stirred until the cheese had melted and then the salami which was cut up into thin strips, and baby spinach (that vegetable of the conscience – neither adding nor detracting from the flavour of the dish, but there for good health) were added and the sauce removed from the heat. This most luscious and delicious of sauces was then used to drown a bowl of penne.

Son scored the dish at a comfortable 9, but said we can only make it twice a year for health reasons! I gotta love him! Keeps me on the straight and narrow.