pasta – Page 2 – Stephfood CLONE

Welcoming 2011 with Rapini and Sausage Pasta

Celebrating the start of a new year can be a cathartic experience. We feel as though some things can be left behind, along with the change in digits. The world starts over, and with that – for us in Canada – there is almost a glimmer of hope that the Winter will eventually end. The combination of the Winter Solstice and the New Year seem to bring hope for a new start.

That makes it a great holiday for us to celebrate. J and I don’t have our own Christmas traditions, and have always floundered for a day to choose for ourselves. This year, we made the decision to celebrate New Year’s Day. It’s a day to relax, tidy up from the parties of the night before, live in jammies and watch movies.

To this, we’re adding a special dinner for two.

Rapini Sausage Pasta — A frickin' adorable rapini bud. Delicious!

This year’s special dish is something that I’ve made in various forms over the year – pasta with rapini. Full of lemony goodness and topped with lots of Parmigiano-Reggiano, this pasta takes a bit of the bite out of the bitter rapini. With florets that are sometimes mistaken for broccoli, rapini comes in bunches of leaves and buds that can be sautéed or steamed.

It is quite a bit more bitter than broccoli or spinach, and requires a proper combination of flavours to ensure it doesn’t overpower your meal. I find that sweet, lemony, buttery flavours really help to incorporate the rapini into the meal. I often serve it as a side to steamed crab, as the sweet crab meat and melted garlic butter take the edge off.

This pasta dish is best when made with al dente, chunkier hand-shaped pastas like orecchiette or cavatelli.

Continue reading Welcoming 2011 with Rapini and Sausage Pasta

Mussels Twofer

No, I haven’t gone mad and decided to eat mussels every day! This post is a TWOFER! This is going to be an ongoing series of posts that show how leftovers can be used to make a second great meal.

Today’s dish was made with the leftovers of my Tomato Gorgonzola Mussels that I posted about earlier this week. Of course, you don’t want to keep leftovers for too long – especially seafood – so I made this up the very next day.

I loved the combination of tomato and gorgonzola, so I decided to make it into more of a sauce. First, I strained the broth to take out any bits and silt that came out of the mussels. I reduced the broth quite a bit, added some tomato paste, onions, garlic, herbs and a touch of balsamic vinegar. I also added some sautéed quartered mushrooms, green peppers (actually, I used poblano peppers because I had them on hand) and more gorgonzola. I added the remaining mussels, and tossed with some whole wheat egg noodles (did you know they make those!! Soo good! I’ve never seen a whole wheat egg though…).

Yeah, so that’s pretty much it! No real recipe here… just a concept. This is a part of our ongoing goal to reduce waste in our home – try to only buy what I need, and use it all up!! It doesn’t have to be boring.

Tomatoes in the Raw

I’m still avoiding any extended cooking, but I realized I’ve missed having a simple pasta dinner. For anyone that knows me, you know how strange it is when I say that we haven’t made a pasta dinner all summer. I’ve had some pasta salads, sure, but it’s not quite the same thing.

A trip to the Nathan Phillips Square farmer’s market on Wednesday gave me the perfect opportunity to combine my love of pasta with my desire to not be stuck in front of a hot stove.

Tomato season is in full swing here in Ontario, and I was inundated with piles and piles of fresh, ripe tomatoes of many varieties. I bought a few piles, in three varieties. To justify this purchase, I had to think of something that would use up a bunch of them at once. A raw tomato sauce was in order!

If you’ve never had a raw tomato sauce, you might be amazed at how simple and quick it is. It’s pretty much how it sounds – a sauce made up of uncooked tomatoes. “Sauce” might be a misnomer, though, as it’s almost more of a tomato salad that you toss with hot pasta.

There – I gave away my secret.

The real secret is just how amazing it tastes when you have fresh, LOCAL tomatoes on hand. Like a tomato salad, it really won’t work with mealy tomatoes, or tomatoes that spent most of their ripening on a truck. I picked up a basket of roma tomatoes for this, but you could use your favourite unmealy (is that a word?) tomato.

The recipe I used can be adapted to your taste – use the kind of tomato you like best, use the herbs you like best, the oil you like best, the shape of pasta you like best (although short stubby ones like penne seem to work best). I added in some grilled eggplant, and I think next time I might add some blanched green beans for crunch. It’s a dish that is as easy to customize as the usual pasta sauce, but without all of the stewing and cooking stuff.

Recipe after the jump!

Continue reading Tomatoes in the Raw

Daring Pierogi Ontariana

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge is to make pierogi from scratch, highlighting flavours and ingredients from where you live.

I grew up eating handmade pierogi from the Ukranian church around the corner from our house. They were fairly traditional, cheese and potato, and very good. I don’t think I realized how good they were until I started buying pierogi from the freezer section of my grocery store. Not quite so good, but edible. Years later, we found incredible pierogi from a vendor at St. Lawrence Market and we’ve been buying his ever since – saurkraut & mushroom, and jalapeno & cheddar. Amazing.

I was tempted to try making saurkraut & mushroom pierogi for this challenge, but then I realized I probably couldn’t compete with the market guy and might end up disappointed. Instead, I chose to go with the ‘local flavours’ theme and use things that I could get from my garden or from the farmers at the market.

Today’s pierogi are filled with ingredients that are local to my home province – Ontario, Canada.

I came up with a combination of potato, sweet potato, rosemary, crunchy garlic scapes, Canadian old white cheddar and onions caramelized in maple syrup and Ontario beer. This combination of flavours is more like what I would have in the Fall, but all of these things are fresh and local now. I was really happy with how the filling turned out. I could taste the hint of maple syrup and beer, I could feel the slight texture added by the garlic scapes, the woodiness of rosemary and thyme, and the creaminess of the blend of potatoes.

With that taken care of, I had to tackle the dough. I’ve made fresh pasta before, but that dough is drier and I found the pierogi dough to be more difficult to handle.

The dough was very sticky, and I had to add a LOT more flour to it. Apparently, this isn’t the way to do it — you’re supposed to slowly add the water to the flour and monitor the texture of the dough in the early stages, so you don’t have to try to ‘correct’ it with more flour later on. I’m learning as I go.

I had a bit of trouble rolling out the dough – the gluten had been worked enough to make it pretty elastic, and it wasn’t easy to roll it out thin. As a result, some of my pierogi were thinner than others. We also had quite bit of the filling left over when we were done. I could have made another batch of dough, but instead we made croquettes with it the next night.

I always enjoy these kinds of meals. It’s a great project on a rainy day, and I find it almost therapeutic as you get into the process. Roll out the dough, cut the circles, add some filling, fold it over, pinch. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s a great break from the computer.

In the end, the pierogi were declicious, imperfections and all. We topped them with some thick Balkan-style yogurt and green onions. I took half of the batch and froze it, so we would have some to enjoy later. We’ll see how well they freeze — I have a feeling they’ll be just fine, and I’ll be happy to enjoy the results of my hard work for a second time!

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

Recipe after the jump!

Continue reading Daring Pierogi Ontariana

Cappadocian Cave Lunch : Turkish Food Log Pt. 1

I know it’s taken a while, but here is my first in a series of posts about my food exploration in Turkey. I thought the best place to start would be the best meal of the trip.

Continue reading Cappadocian Cave Lunch : Turkish Food Log Pt. 1

Daring Nut Butt

This month, we dare to make our own nut butters, and use them in a savoury dish. I’ve done the peanut sauce thing before, and have used ground almonds to thicken curries (almost counts as a nut butter… almost more of a nut flour, but close enough!). I’m totally open to having a nutty dinner.

Being busy as I have been lately, I took the path of least resistance and used cashew butter in a Thai-inspired noodle salad (one of the recommended recipes). I know I should have picked something a little more challenging for myself, but how could I resist a simple meal that was destined to be amazing?

Amazing it was. I am a sucker for this kind of thing.

Daring Cashew Butter and Roasted Cashews

First, I had to make the cashew butter. I figured it would taste that much better if I roasted the cashews first, so I quickly pan roasted them. Some of the oils escaped in the roasting, so I had to add some vegetable oil when I made the butter. My trusty food processor was great at grinding up the cashews, but they needed the extra oil to come together properly and form a paste. I probably would have thinned it out a little more but I knew I was making a sauce next, so I didn’t worry about it too much.

I decided to follow the sauce recipe as closely as possible. I was tempted to add some of the things I add to my own sauce, like keffir lime leaf, but I stayed pretty true to the recipe. What’s the point in remaking my own sauce recipes over again? I wanted to try something new. I chickened out about the amount of garlic, though. As much as I love garlic, 8 cloves sounded a little bit steep. I used 4, and it was plenty garlicky enough.

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

Recipe after the jump!

Continue reading Daring Nut Butt

What do I do with this? Garlic Scapes

This is a new monthly challenge that I’m imposing on myself, where I find an ingredient that I have never used before (or even better – have never even HEARD of before) and make something with it.

My first entry is the Garlic Scape. I first heard of this earlier in the year, but had never seen any in the market before. I actually tried to grow my own, but failed miserably.

I finally found some at the market this month.

Garlic scapes, or green garlic, are the stalks of the garlic plant, growing above ground. They’re sort of like scallions, but garlicky tasting and much more dense. To me, they seem like a cross between a garlic and a green bean. Raw, they are pungent and crunchy. When cooked, they are soft and mild.

My first big dish using garlic scapes was a simple pasta tossed with sauteed vegetables, garlic scapes, garlic scape infused yogurt and Parmesan cheese.

There are many recipes for garlic scape pesto, which I plan to try making soon. Sounds right up my alley!

Now that I’ve tried them, I’m a little embarrassed that I hadn’t heard of them before. Anyone that knows me should be ashamed of me!! This was a great find, and a really fun thing to put in summer dishes. I know they won’t be in season for much longer, so I’ll be buying them every chance I get.

Next year, I plan to try growing garlic again. I’m not too sure what went wrong this time around, but I think it’s because bulbs don’t overwinter very well here when in pots. I might try planting them early March with my daffodils.

🙂

Leeky Pasta

This dish was inspired by something I had at a restaurant many years ago. I had never had rosemary or leeks in a pasta like this. While often considered ‘fall’ flavours, the combination of the woody rosemary and leeks with the fresh tomatoes and light olive oil sauce is really interesting. Topping it off is some crumbled chèvre that melts into the hot pasta. This dish is best when you can get fresh local tomatoes.

This is an olive oil sauce, the flavour of which is balanced with salt. This is more salt than I usually add to a dish, but it is actually important.

Since I usually make this dish from the top of my head, I decided to try to flesh out an actual recipe. I laugh at myself, because I actually bought too few tomatoes for the dish. Had I figured out a recipe years ago, I would have known how much to get. I also had a hard time guesstimating how much pasta to make. I found this neat page, on the Barilla website, to help you figure out how much pasta to cook (based on a 2oz serving size). In the end, I just estimated based on the amount in the package – I used half of a 900g package, so it’s just about a pound of dried pasta (or a 6-inch bunch, when you measure the circumference).

This recipe will feed 4-6.

Ingredients:

1LB Fettuccine or Linguine
3-5 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp chopped shallot or onion
1 Tbsp chopped fresh garlic (appx 1-2 cloves)
1 Tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped (plus some for garnish, optional)
2-3 cup chopped mushrooms
appx 3 tbsp white wine
1 medium leek, green part separated from white, halved and thinly sliced crosswise
1LB cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
appx 4 Tbsp chèvre (goat cheese)
1 Tbsp sea salt
pepper, to taste

Preparation:

Cook pasta in a large pot. Drain, toss with 1 Tbsp of olive oil, and keep hot (this is important).
In the meantime, heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a deep sauté pan, or large sauce pan. Sauté shallot/onion until translucent, for approximately 1 minute.
Add garlic, rosemary, and mushrooms. Sauté until mushrooms reduce in size and begin to brown.
Add the white part of the leek, and saute for another minute or two. Add a couple of tablespoons of the pasta cooking water, if it’s looking dry.
Add the tomatoes, and about 1/2 of the green part of the leeks.
Add the rest of the olive oil, the salt and stir.
Add the pasta and toss.
Serve hot, topping each plate with some crumbled chèvre, freshly ground black pepper, and some of the green leek.

Recipe Mashup: Baked Sweet Potato Pasta

This is my usual way of dealing with recipes – I steal from them and I smash them together.

Until I started my blog, I didn’t really follow recipes closely. I usually just use them for inspiration. I figure out what ingredients I have on hand, and I Google my way to a few recipes that sound neat. I take a little bit from one and a little bit from another, and there we go!

Tonight’s dinner was fueled by my wish to bake a pasta dish, and the sweet potatoes that were waiting to fulfill their delicious destiny.

I took most of my inspiration from Martha Stewart: Baked Mushroom Linguine and Butternut Squash and Sage Lasagna. Some people like to mock Martha, but honestly I’ve had great success with recipes from her website. I’m not embarrassed to say that I enjoy her show (on the rare occasion I’m able to watch it) and it’s now one of my go-to sites when I can’t think of what to make for dinner.

On that note, I think I need to add her link to my blogroll. Done!

Mashup Pasta & Sweet Potato Casserole

Soo… here’s what I did: I cooked up some rotini (ok, not either of the recommended types of noodle); baked my sweet potatoes as suggested in the squash recipe; loaded up a cheese sauce with some cream cheese, some Fizzy cheese from Quebec, herbes de provence, thyme, rosemary, nutmeg, cayenne and tangy mustard powder; sauteed some mushrooms and onions with mushroom broth; tossed it all together and threw it back in the oven topped with breadcrumbs. Whew!!

Pretty yummy!

So, how did it turn out? Not bad! The cheese sauce is a little different from my usual (shock! I didn’t put any anise in it!) and I’m usually too lazy to make a meal and THEN put it in the oven to bake. I ended up putting in too many noodles, which meant the sauce wasn’t as vibrant and saucey as it should have been. Blerg! I didn’t think the breadcrumb thing through – it ended up being a little too dry, because the sauce was mostly absorbed into the pasta. So I had to add a little more liquid and stick it back in the oven. Live and learn.