The Coming-Home Meal

A Special End-of-Vacation Post

Say you have been on vacation with family Up North to the Lake or Down the Shore, and you have just spent the previous week smearing sunscreen on unwilling children, running a Sisyphean quantity of beach towels through the wash, dashing to the grocery store for more drinks and snacks, cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen with dented pots and weirdly melted spatulas, scooping up and stowing toys and pails and art supplies and game pieces on your hourly prowls around the cabin, and—always, always—sweeping up sand. You come home from your vacation exhausted and ready for a break!

Or say you just got back from a lengthy road trip, you schlep your suitcase inside and unzip it, and Laundry Monster leaps out:

This is what awaited me after our family got home from a two-week road trip through six central European countries one summer. Alas, Laundry Monster is nowhere near as much fun as Cookie Monster.

Or say you are by nature frugal and hate the idea of wasting food, and so in the days before you leave for vacation, you have carefully strategized to use up every item in the fridge, including that old wilty celery¹ and every last lime,² and when you come home, your fridge looks like this:

With the addition of a bottle of wine, a half-drunk bottle of seltzer—why do I always forget to dump the seltzer?!—and assorted condiments, this is what our fridge always looks like when we get back from vacation. Photo by Enrico Mantegazza on Unsplash.

Or say your vacation was fancy, and so you’ve been feasting in Michelin-star restaurants and gorging on the hotel breakfast buffet and now you feel bulbous and bloated.

When we come home, whether we’re wiped out from too much vacation, or buried in laundry, or facing an empty fridge, or fed-up (literally), we are likely in no frame of mind for cooking a complicated, hearty dinner. The Coming-Home Meal to the rescue!

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A Coming-Home Meal should fulfill a number of criteria: It should be fast and easy to make so that we can get back to unpacking and battling Laundry Monster; use ingredients we can find in the pantry and freezer, or require at most a quick trip to the store; be reasonably light to counterbalance all the heavy restaurant food we have been eating; and be familiar, so that when we eat it, we feel like we’re truly home again. What follows are three recipes for Coming-Home Meals I like to make. (Or, if these don’t appeal to you, you can find my recipe for pasta puttanesca, a meal that can be made entirely from pantry ingredients, here. Another good Coming-Home Meal is pasta in lemon-cream sauce. Because asparagus is no longer in season, substitute 1/2c tiny tender peas for the asparagus.)

Pasta with Lemon Juice and Salt and Olive Oil

When they were little, my kids came up with this prosaic name for a dish that is actually my version of pasta aglio e olio. The only ingredient you will need to go out and buy is the lemon—the rest you can find in your pantry or freezer. Lemons from the corner liquor store or the 7/11 are perfectly fine for this humble dish.

Ingredients

2–4c rotini pasta (depending on how many people you are feeding)

about 1/2c frozen tiny tender peas (see Note)

1/2c olive oil, or more (this may sound like a lot, but you can use the leftover oil in salad dressing later)

1 garlic clove, thinly sliced

a sprinkling of red pepper flakes and dried oregano, a grind of black pepper and salt, and—if your herbs survived your week away—a sprig of rosemary and/or thyme

juice of 1 lemon

about 1/2c freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano (if you have it; if not, no worries)

Note: Our family has a Jack Sprat situation going on, pea-wise. My son utterly reviles peas and believes they are an abomination. My husband, by contrast, would happily eat this dish with only peas, and no pasta at all. Your family may be similar. Anyway, adjust or distribute the quantity of peas according to your family’s tastes.

Method

1. Boil the pasta until it is al dente, dump in the peas, stir briefly, and drain. (Be careful not to overcook the peas, or they will develop a horrifying mealy texture.)

2. Meanwhile, in a small kettle, heat the olive oil, sliced garlic, herbs, and spices until the garlic slices are just toasted, and remove from heat.

3. Apportion the pasta and peas in bowls and drizzle a spoonful or two of olive oil and one spoonful of lemon juice over each bowl.

4. Serve with grated Parmigiano Reggiano if you have it, or a few more grinds of salt if you don’t.

Pasta with Uncooked Tomato Sauce

“Hang on!” you are saying. “What’s all this about tomatoes? I thought these recipes didn’t require a trip to the grocery store?” But you have forgotten that this is August, and your neighbors’ gardens are bursting with more tomatoes than they know what to do with.³ They have probably already left a bagful of tomatoes on your doorstep to await your return. But if not, your neighbors won’t mind if you stop by and ask for a few. You are performing a service for them by putting tomatoes to use that would otherwise go to waste.

Case in point, these beautiful tomatoes my parents’ neighbor brought by the other day. The basil is a gift from another neighbor.

You will still need to buy some fresh basil and a small log of goat cheese for this recipe, but that makes a good excuse to get out of the house.

Ingredients

2–4c rotini pasta (depending on how many people you are feeding)

8–12 ripe tomatoes (depending on their size and/or your neighbors’ generosity)

one clove garlic, thinly sliced

about 1/4c olive oil

several leaves of fresh basil, coarsely chopped

plenty of salt and freshly-ground black pepper

one 4oz log of plain goat cheese (i.e. not the kind with chives, honey, pepper, or other tomfoolery)

Method

1. Remove the stem ends of the tomatoes and squeeze out and discard the seeds and pulp. Then chop the tomatoes into small pieces and throw them into a large bowl.

2. Add in the garlic, olive oil, basil, and salt and pepper and stir. The sauce should look like the first photo below.

3. Leave the sauce to marinate for at least an hour at room temperature. Use the time to unpack and tackle Laundry Monster. After about an hour, the sauce will look like the second photo below—a bit more liquidy and mushy. This is exactly what you want.

4. Boil the pasta until it is not quite al dente. Drain and return the pasta to the pot. Pour in the sauce, put the heat on low, and cook for a few minutes, stirring constantly, until the liquid from the sauce is partly absorbed.

5. Serve topped with crumbled goat cheese and torn basil leaves.

Pesto Pasta

This option takes some forethought, but that will be no problem for a meticulous planner like you! The trick is to make the pesto before you leave and freeze it for when you return. (Pesto freezes really well.) There are lots of pesto recipes out there, but here is my quick and easy recipe:

Fill your food processor with basil leaves and add 1/3c pine nuts, 1 clove garlic cut in a few pieces, and 1tsp salt. Pulse a few times until the basil is partly chopped. Then, with the processor running, pour in 1/2c olive oil and process for about 10 seconds until a paste is formed. (Some people like to make pesto with a mortar and pestle, but in my opinion the slight improvement in texture is not worth the extra effort.)

Don’t be a hero. Make the pesto in a food processor like a normal person. Photo by Artur Rutkowski on Unsplash.

Pour the pesto into a container and add 1/3c grated Parmigiano Reggiano (or just regular Parmesan) and stir to blend. Stick the pesto in the freezer and enjoy your vacation. When you come home, your Coming-Home Meal is almost ready! Zap the frozen pesto in the microwave to thaw. Cook 2–4c rotini pasta until al dente and toss in the desired quantity of tiny tender peas at the very end. Or, for a much better alternative to the peas, you can dump the florets from one smallish head of broccoli into the boiling water for a minute. Broccoli is wonderful for trapping tasty bits of the pesto! Remove a ladleful of pasta water and stir it into the pesto. Drain the pasta, return to pot, and mix in the pesto. Serve with more Parmigiano Reggiano. (If you love pesto, I highly recommend this fun and informative article.)

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How about you, readers? Do you have a Coming-Home Meal? Please share your thoughts (and recipes!) in the comments!

The Tidbit

My daughter, Casey, is an excellent source of cute jokes from the internet. Here’s a shaggy-dog story she recently told me:

Noah⁴ is loading animals onto the ark before the flood, when Shem walks over and asks if his dog can come along with them on the ark.

“Gee, sorry,” says Noah. “God told me to take pairs of every kind of animal, but he didn’t say anything about additional animals. I’ve already loaded up a male and female dog, and space is limited. Your dog will have to stay behind.”

“I love my dog! PLEASE let him come!” says Shem.

But Noah is resolute. So the family, including a sobbing Shem, boards the ark, leaving Shem’s dog behind. It rains for forty days and forty nights. The floodwaters rise and eventually recede. Finally it is safe to leave the ark. All the animals and Noah and his family disembark, and who should they see waiting for them, happily wagging his tail, but Shem’s dog!

“How can this be possible?! It’s a miracle!” Noah says in wonder.

Shem replies, “Well, I always knew he was a very good buoy.”

1. Dice it and freeze it to put in chicken soup when you get back.

2. Pour an inch of vodka into a large glass. Add in the juice of one lime and a splash of either orange juice, cranberry juice, or ginger syrup. Fill the glass almost to the brim with seltzer and drink up while you’re cleaning out the fridge. Repeat as necessary until all the limes are gone.

3. Amusingly, every August the Minneapolis Star-Tribune used to run a “Tomato Help” column that offered readers suggestions for using up all their tomatoes.

4. For the record, this joke is about the biblical Noah. My son Noah would never, EVER leave a dog behind.