Theme Recipe: Squid Ink Pasta With Italian Cheese Sauce

This is the theme recipe for the Film Noir night that we did on the 4th.

Film Noir or dark movies (loose translation) do not always have to be black and white film stock, though most are; but even the few that are in color (thinking of House Of Bamboo from FOX) have to have a indelibly dark mood to them.  So I started thinking about dark or black colored foods that I had actually tried.  Black olives jumped to mind, then things like black beans, wild rice, black dhal, black licorice, even black truffles came up.  Then, since I have a really big thing about Native American food, the quintessential American "mushroom" and "weird food" of the Aztecs huitlocoche popped in the noodle.  But honestly, the real black food treat that occurs in cuisines all over the world is the use of squid ink.  Squid ink pasta as funny looking, but very tasty, and quite widely available.   It's a dark food to be sure, and seems exotic, yet it has a mild taste despite it's appearance.  It is also easier and easier to find these days, even in upscale supermarkets.  It used to be that you'd be lucky to find it at all, and then only made into fettuccine.  Nowadays, it is found in all types of pasta shape; so use what you like or can find.

Squid Ink Linguine

A member of All Recipes just made up a nice sauce for "black pasta" last year.  One Clyde Thomas came up with an innovative cheese sauce made with real Italian Gorgonzola,  that is turned pink with addition of tomato paste.  I really like this idea.  Usually when you find recipes for pasta sauces, they are either the red tomato affair or the white cheese and cream deal--finally someone had the guts to put the two together.  Follow link above for recipe.  I admit that I haven't tried it, but it is really appealing to me as I love blue cheese and black pasta, and I think the tomato paste, along with the Italian ham (Prosciutto) is likely to make it a nice rich dish.  Some reviewers didn't like it, but they also admitted to not liking some of the ingredients, like the cheese.  I can't for the life of me figure out why someone would go to all the trouble of making a fancy dish that they known ahead of time they probably not going to like.  The dish comes out like this:

Variations

Some of the reviewers made this with variations; they include:


Making it with vegetable stock, she remarks that the low sodium type is best because the ham is already salty.


Using other types of pasta in place of squid ink paste.


One person substituted Shrimp and Mushrooms for the ham (that sounds really good!).


My remarks:  If you find the squid ink pasta to be expensive.  Mix it with other types of pasta to stretch it.

Pen & Fork have a list of 5 black foods to try, amongst them squid ink pasta.

And here's a cool You Tub video of making the ink pasta.