Gross Football Lunch – Week 6, 2024 NFL Season

Recipe of the Week: Pasta alla Rob

(Note from the Editor’s Desk: This recipe was originally posted to this blog in February of 2021. It has been revised, edited, and updated for clarity, accuracy, and conformity to Gross Football Lunch formatting guidelines. It has also been further tinkered with, just because.)

This recipe, which I developed over the course of a few years, is designed to be simple. It is little more than a platform magical combination of pork and bitter, leafy green vegetables, placed on a bed of pasta for extra comfort food credibility. Broccoli rabe (also known as rapini) is a bitter, leafy green dotted with what looks like miniature broccoli crowns, and it goes with pork like gangbusters. You can almost certainly find it at your local grocer in the near the other cruciferous veggies. It is typically sold in bundles rather similar in size to bundled pears of asparagus. For this recipe, you will need one bundle of broccoli rabe per pound of penne and per pound of Italian sausage. If you cannot find any broccoli rabe at the store for the very life of you, substitute with either Swiss chard or Tuscan kale (also known as lacinato kale). You could use regular broccoli in a pinch, I guess, but regular broccoli isn’t all that bitter, and therefore won’t do as good of a job offsetting the sweet, fatty sausage. For my money, you’ll be better off using Swiss chard or Tuscan kale, which are also bitter, leafy greens.

Regardless of which bitter, leafy green you end up with, the first step in the process is to blanch it; you will cook them briefly in boiling water, then shock them in cold water so that they do not overcook later, when they are combined in a saute pan with everything else. This step can be done a few hours in advance, if you have the time, but it goes quick so this is optional. Put on a pot of moderately salted water to boil as you rinse off your broccoli rabe. Cut off the very ends of the stems and discard them, then cut the rest into approximately 1-inch lengths. Some broccoli rabe preparations call for discarding the leaves as well, and I’m here today to tell you that you must not discard the leaves for this recipe. You’re only getting rid of the woodiest bits on the ends, and keeping everything else.

Once your broccoli rabe is rinsed and chopped, and the water is boiling, dump it in for 60 seconds, setting a timer to make sure it’s not in there longer than a full minute. Your water will stop boiling vigorously once you dump the veggies in, but don’t worry, cooking is still happening. Drain into a colander as soon as your timer goes off, then rinse the broccoli rabe under cold water until steam stops coming off entirely. Instead of rinsing it under the tap, you can shock your broccoli rabe in a bowl of ice water. This the more correct way to blanch vegetables, but I find that a cold rinse works well enough and creates less mess.

Don’t worry about whether or not your broccoli rabe dries off. Sometimes when you’re blanching vegetables before sauteing, it is appropriate to dry the veggies in question off as thoroughly as possible; this will ensure that they crisp up nicely in the pan. This is not one of those times; the pasta will be firm and toothsome, and therefore, the broccoli rabe doesn’t need to be crisped up. If you are using Swiss chard or kale, this process is exactly the same. Wash your greens, but off the woodiest parts of the ends, slice them into strips, then blanch them. If you are using kale, blanch it for an additional 30 seconds (90 seconds total). When your broccoli rabe (or other greens) is cooled, set it aside.

The rest of this recipe will come together very quickly, so it behooves you to set out everything you will need in advance. Thinly slice eight to ten cloves of garlic to the best of your ability. Juice one lemon into a ramekin or small bowl, removing any and all seeds that fell in. Chop up a few handfuls of rinsed parsley leaves and set them aside. Grab your containers of olive oil, salt, pepper, dried Italian seasoning, and crushed red pepper, and keep them close to your stovetop.

Put a pot of heavily salted water on to boil, using more salt than you did for the blanching, and brown your Italian sausage while your water heats up.Ideally, you will be able to find ground sweet Italian sausage for this, but this world is not always ideal. Links will work just fine as well, but they’ll take longer to cook and be a bit more of a pain to work with, but if you have links you can remove the casings before cooking; this will allow you to cook them as you would ground sausage. If you are not able to find sweet Italian sausage of any sort, here is an imperfect, makeshift solution: mix one pound of ground pork with a whole bunch of salt, lots of pepper, and a healthy amount of fennel seeds.

If you are cooking ground sausage (or links with the casings removed), grab a large saute pan and put it on the stove over medium heat. Once hot, dump the sausage in, breaking it into chunks as it cooks. Store bought Italian sausage is already seasoned, but add a bit of salt and pepper, to be safe. Be sort of patient with this, as you will want the sausage to brown somewhat, leaving fond (browned meat bits) on the bottom of the pan. This will not happen if you’re breaking up the chunks and/or moving them around too aggressively. Remove the sausage from the pan once it’s cooked.

Links take longer and will require a bit more work. Grab a large saute pan and put it on the stove over medium heat. Once hot, add the links, turning them every so often while still letting them brown some so that fond forms on the bottom of the pan. These will take somewhere on the order of 15-20 minutes to cook fully, and perhaps longer than that. If you are using links, consider holding off on setting your water to boil until the sausages have been cooking for a while. Once cooked, remove from the pan, let them cool slightly, then slice them into thin coins.

You’ll notice that I didn’t tell you to add any fat to the pan, regardless of what type of sausage you’re using. Plenty of fat should render out of the sausage as it cooks. That said, if the pan looks like it’s a little too dry, feel free to add some olive oil, but only add the bare minimum needed to get things lubricated.

Once the pot of heavily salted water is boiling, add the penne. This may be while the sausage is browning, and that’s ok; everything else is going to happen rather quickly. If you want to pretend this is healthy, whole wheat penne is great for this, but note that it typically has a somewhat shorter cooking time. The box of penne will have basic cooking instructions which will specify a range of boiling times. Set a timer for the shortest time specified. Once there’s less than a minute to go on the timer, reserve 1 cup of the pasta water by any means necessary. Do not reserve pasta water prior to the final minute. Drain immediately when the timer goes off.

Once the sausage is browned and removed from the saute pan, add a couple glugs of olive oil to the pan and let it heat up, keeping your stove set to medium. Once the oil is hot, toss in your sliced garlic. Once the garlic is fragrant, add the dried oregano and crushed red pepper until those become fragrant as well, then add the broccoli rabe. Get the broccoli rabe warmed up, then add the sausage back in. This portion doesn’t take too long; if your pasta is lagging behind, you don’t need to start this step until there’s five minutes or so left on the pasta timer. If your aromatics, broccoli rabe, and sausage are combined before the pasta is done, turn the heat down to low and let it sit to prevent overcooking.

Once your pasta timer goes off, drain it in a colander. If the penne finishes ahead of your browning and sauteing, dump it back in the drained pot and toss it with a bit of olive oil to prevent sticking. Once both the pasta and other ingredients are done, dump the drained pasta into the saute pan with everything else, and put the pan over medium low heat. Drizzle everything with olive oil. Add the lemon juice and a about a third of the pasta water, reserving the rest for now. Stir everything together at medium speed, scraping the fond out of the bottom of the pan as you do so.

You’ll know that the sauce is coming together when the sausage and broccoli rabe look like they’re starting to get evenly distributed and the noodles take on a glossy sheen. If you’re stirring and stirring and it just doesn’t seem like that’s happening, add more pasta water bit by bit until the magic happens. Add a bunch of cracked black pepper, then taste for seasoning and adjust. Once the seasoning is to your liking, stir in the chopped parsley and take it off the heat.

Serve immediately with as much Parmesan cheese as will fit on top. Your reward for what turned out to be not that much work at all (especially if you blanched the broccoli rabe in advance) is a delicious, vibrant dish, wherein fatty sweet pork does a dance with bitter broccoli rabe, while the zing of the lemon juice compliments both. Feels good. Dig in!

Week 6 NFL Confidence Pool

The Vikings have their bye this week, which means I’m going to take my own advice and use this time to rest, relax, and contemplate the season so far. Now is the ideal time to take a step back and practice mindfulness as a sports fan. What better way to do this than by conducting my own open-ended fandom mental health self-assessment, as laid out in last week’s Vikings bye week column? To say the very least, this season has not gone the way I expected it to, and I have all kinds of feelings about it. So, without further ado:

1. Are you having fun watching your favorite team play football this season? Yes, albeit with qualifications. (See response to 4.)

2. How do you feel about your team’s performance this year? Are they playing well or playing poorly? I covered this in depth a couple of weeks ago, and not enough has changed in that time to warrant a drastically different response. That said, Sam Darnold did not play well last week against the Jets, and because I am a master overthinker, I have found reasons to be both optimistic and pessimistic about his performance. One the one hand, the Jets have a great defense and the Vikings found a way to win even with erratic play from Darnold; they are also 5-0 after what remains the most difficult stretch of their schedule. I really, truly expected them to be 1-4 right now, which makes the thought of complaining silly. On the other hand, winning despite poor quarterback play is the definition of unsustainable football. Not helping matters is Aaron Jones’ injury, as O’Connell all but abandoned the run in the second half last week. Without having done any real film study, my anxiety is free to raise concerns about whether or not Kevin O’Connell’s offense has been figured out or is suffering from other structural problems. The defense and special teams remain rock-solid.

3. Are they better or worse than their win-loss record, and if so, what reasons can you think of that may explain that discrepancy? Again, if Darnold and the offense continue to struggle, the Vikings will certainly start losing some of these games. They survived the Packers and they survived the Jets; in both games, they won because defense got big turnovers down the stretch, and forcing clutch turnovers week after week is a big ask, even for a defense playing this well. For what it’s worth, Pro Football Reference gives the Vikings a 4-1 expected record by point differential, while their DVOA-based win estimate is at 5.0. This is cause for optimism, as it suggests the Packers and Jets games were not as close in DVOA as their scoreboards would have you believe.

4. How is the team performing relative to your personal preseason expectations, and to what extent do you think your emotional state regarding the team remains tied to those expectations? The Vikings have wildly exceeded my expectations, and this is both a gift and a curse. At the risk of being ungrateful about the fact that my team is playing winning football, I was looking forward to a season of relatively low expectations and low stakes state-of-the-roster evaluation. To me, this felt like a good way to practice emotionally healthy sports fandom. If I didn’t think the Vikings were likely to win all that much, this would free me to enjoy the simple pleasure of watching them play football, win or lose. Now the Vikings are the last remaining undefeated team in the NFC, and everyone has adjusted their expectations accordingly. This means that it has become all too easy to filter each and every snap through a warped lens; the success or failure of each and every play becomes evidence for or against the team’s Super Bowl chances. Because of this, I have found ways to be grumpy about beating the Packers and Jets. Suffice to say, this lack of perspective is in no way an emotionally healthy way to watch football, especially when Darnold is slumping. If I’m going to be disappointed about beating the Packers at Lambeau, what’s the point of any of this? I will need to work on finding ways to relax and keep my head on straight during Vikings games going forward.

5. If your team is a true playoff contender, how are you holding up? What proportion of your emotional composition is genuinely enthusiastic excitement, and what proportion is nervous excitement? This is the problem I have been scratching at, but have yet to state aloud. I have gone from being pleasantly surprised and legitimately happy about the Vikings’ hot start to being paranoid, and always on the lookout for ways in which they will fuck this up. The early bye is not helping in this regard, as there’s still plenty of time left in the season for the team to crash out of the playoffs entirely.

6. Realistically, how far in the playoffs will they go? If the defense keeps it up and the offense recovers, the Vikings could win it all. However, the fact that they are starting a well-traveled veteran quarterback with a decidedly mixed reputation is enough for me to declare that they are headed for yet another crushing loss in the NFC Championship Game.

7. Will you be OK if they are eliminated early? No I will not. If the Vikings do not win at least one playoff game, I will start asking myself anxiety-driven questions about whether or not Kevin O’Connell has The Juice, and anyone wondering whether or not their team’s head coach has The Juice is not doing OK. If they miss the playoffs entirely, I will lose my shit entirely.

8. Are there any specific teams you’re worried about meeting in the playoffs, and if so, what makes that team a bad matchup in your eyes? Once again, the early bye week is working against these questions. The playoff picture is too incomplete for me to have a satisfying, well-considered answer. That said, I damn sure don’t want the Vikings to face any of their division rivals (rumors of the Bears’ demise have been greatly exaggerated), and if they do make the Super Bowl, I would not like their chances against, well, any of their potential AFC opponents.

9. How much winning do you expect in the seasons to come? Are you worried this is the last year of a Super Bowl window? Blessedly, after 900 words of complaining about a 5-0 record, I can end on a positive note. Even if this season ends in disappointment, I think this is only the beginning. The bet that the Vikings have made, from a team-building perspective, is that they do not need to find The Guy at quarterback to contend. They need only find A Guy who can succeed in this offense, with this much-improved pass-blocking unit, and with Jefferson, Jordan Addison, T.J. Hockenson, and a handful of reliable depth receivers to throw to. That this plan appears to be working already with Sam Darnold under center bodes very well for the years to come with J.J. McCarthy. Even if McCarthy kind of sucks, he’ll be put in a position to succeed to the best of his ability, and that’s a huge boon for any young gunslinger. And who knows? Maybe McCarthy is The Guy! Wouldn’t that be something? What, it could happen! Stop making that face!

To the picks!

Bye: Chiefs, Dolphins, Rams, Vikings