Pappardelle with Chestnuts, Prosciutto, and Sage

I can't believe I haven't written a post about this pasta dish!  It's been part of my regular rotation for years.  It's very quick and delicious!  I love chestnuts so it's one of my favorite meals to make, especially in winter when it's easier to get chestnuts.  A few years ago, Wegmans only sold Haddon House jarred chestnuts in the baking aisle.  They were nearly always sold out.  Thankfully, they now carry Galil bagged chestnuts year round.  Chestnuts are kind of earthy so I think the salty flavor of the prosciutto goes really well with it.  According to a random episode of Chopped I saw the other night, people don't like to eat raw sage.  This recipe calls for a little as a garnish and I think it's fine.

Spicy Sausage Ragu in the Slow Cooker

I'm back from falling off the face of the earth!  I was super pregnant at the time of my last post.  As a result of having a new baby around, most of my dishes over the last two months have been of the "what can we make really, really fast?" variety.  Most of them were tried and true quick favorites.  We also had a freezer full of pre-made food donated by friends and family, which is *awesome,* especially during the first few weeks when painkillers and coffee are food groups.

Since I'm on maternity leave, I decided to experiment with my slow cooker.  I bought a copy of The Italian Slow Cooker and used a recipe from it for the first time last week.  Generally, if the first recipe I try from a new book in my cookbook army isn't very good, it takes a long time for me to use the book again, I guess I'm judgy that way.  The Spicy Sausage Ragu was a huge success!! Not only did my husband and I love it, there was enough left to freeze!

It doesn't look pretty, but trust me it tastes fantastic!!

Bowtie Pasta with Mascarpone, Asparagus, and Hazelnuts

Back when I was first learning how to cook, this was one of the first "fancy" pasta dishes I tried to make.  In the beginning, I'm pretty sure I added way too much water to the sauce and ended up with watery, bland pasta with some asparagus and cheese on it.  But, I got better at it and it was on regular rotation in our house for about a year.  Then I started accumulating cookbooks.  I wanted to try Indian! Thai! Stir Fry! Mexican!  And this recipe was forgotten for a few years.  

A few weeks ago, I cleaned out my cookbooks to donate some to charity (and make room for more!) and found a "Best of Bon Appetit" cookbook.  This recipe was in it.  I got nostalgic and decided to make it again.  I'd forgotten how much I like it!  It's quick, easy, and vegetarian.  The sauce is pretty mild so it does need some salt and pepper.  But, it's very creamy, slightly sweet, and goes well with the roasted asparagus.  I added some sauteed garlic for extra flavor.  If you can buy blanched hazelnuts in bulk at your grocery store, that will make this dish really quick because then you don't have to do it yourself.  Honestly, if you're strapped for time, leaving the husks on will make your dish less pretty but I don't think it's worth it to remove them unless you're serving guests or have the time to spare.  My main alteration to this recipe is that I barely added any of the reserved cooking water to the sauce.  I did it very slowly and stopped as soon as the sauce reached my desired consistency, which for me was still relatively thick. It was easy to stir and coat everything, but not watery at all.  I definitely recommend this dish for a quick work night dinner.  I served it with some cantaloupe.

Chicken Scarpariello - Amazing!

It's not very often that I want to put a dish into my regular rotation after making it just once.  I'm making an exception for this dish.  It was fantastic!  The peppers had just the right amount of kick and the addition of a little lemon juice made it perfect.  The garlic cooked long enough in the pan to soften and taste like roasted garlic. The rosemary blended nicely with the rest of the sauce and made it feel more rustic.  The sauce had just the right consistency: not too watery, not too thick.  The chicken was juicy.  There was relatively little chopping.  I wouldn't call this a quick dish but it didn't take forever either.  It's totally doable on a work night.

As you can see, I had bad aim with the sauce. 

The Arteries are Evil and Must Be Punished!

My first memories of baked ziti are from the Maryland House rest area Sbarro's.  Growing up, my parents and I drove to Rhode Island a few times a year to visit family and we always stopped at Maryland House for lunch or dinner.  I was a weird kid; I didn't like pizza or hamburgers.  So I always ended up getting the baked ziti and thought it was the best thing ever, especially if they would drown it in marinara sauce for me.  Then I grew up to be a food snob and no longer appreciated rest stop baked ziti.  Now that summer is over and DC is getting cold again, I decided to make some comfort food in the form of my own baked ziti.  Well, not really mine, it's from Mario Batali's cookbook.  But whatever.

I'd like a side of Lipitor, please!

"Pesto" Crusted Mahi Mahi with Asparagus

I've become a little obsessed with coating fish with panko.  It's easy, relatively quick, and there are tons of variations!  This picture is terrible, but my camera was telling me it had .0001 seconds of battery life left and so I didn't get a chance to redo it. The crust looks burned, but it really wasn't that bad.  That said, I don't recommend the power burner for heating oil  Just sayin'.

The sauce from the asparagus goes well with the fish, too!

Fettuccine with Sausage, Basil, and Sun Dried Tomatoes

I love pasta!  I'm always looking for fast, simple recipes with only a few ingredients for when I don't feel like spending a long time cooking.  I figured Mario Batali's book, Molto Italiano, would have some good stuff.  The snobby part of me internally scoffed at the idea of buying a book from a celebrity chef.  But, I got over myself and ordered it.  I'm glad I did!  A lot of the recipes look very tasty and easily doable on a work night.

I already had all the ingredients for this recipe in my kitchen except for sausage. I don't know if you have this problem, but I make a lot of recipes that call for 1 tablespoon of tomato paste, leaving me with the rest of the can, even when I buy the small one.  It gets put in some tupperware and then it goes into the fridge until it achieves consciousness. It's not pretty.  This recipe is a great way to use up leftover tomato paste!  If you make the full recipe, it needs 5 tablespoons.

I made 2 servings of pasta but the full recipe of sauce. I suspect that if I'd halved the sauce, the dish would have been maybe little bland.  I used fresh garlic from my husband's grandmother's garden.  Soooo good. The recipe calls for fresh tagliatelle but I didn't have any, so I used some dried fettuccine and it was fine.  If fresh pasta is easily accessible to you, go for it!

Pasta a la Power Outage

Last week DC got hit by a derecho, which I had never heard of until it was mentioned on TV.  It was a relatively short bout of rain accompanied by severe winds that took out enough trees and power lines that almost a million people in the DC area lost power. Actually, I missed the entire storm.  I went to see Magic Mike (chef recommends!) with some friends and then we went to a bar that was downstairs and had no windows.  It never lost power so I had no idea what was going on until people started texting me. I expected Metro to be in its usual state of weather-related fubar, but shockingly I made it to an above ground station without any problems. My husband picked me up and I came home to a house without power during one of the worst heatwaves on record.  It was over 90 degrees in our bedroom.  We ended up sleeping on the first floor on a mattress that we dragged down two flights of stairs.

Fifty.  Hours.  Without power.

Needless to say, we threw out the entire contents of our fridge and freezer.  Our cooler is tiny and it didn't seem worth it to try and salvage the one chicken breast that would have fit inside.  At least it was a good excuse to give the fridge a good cleaning.

The power came back on early on Monday morning and since I had to work, the big Wegmans run wasn't going to happen.  We've got a relatively new Safeway near our house, but I haaaaaate it.  It never has enough checkout lines open, the store layout was designed by a lab rat who ate three times its body weight in meth, and they are always out of things that I need.

So, we went to the Italian deli around the corner and bought some fresh pasta and the stuff I needed to improvise a tomato sauce.  What started out as an experiment turned into an excellent sauce! (Awesomesauce?) Since I bought a 28 ounce can of tomato puree, I ended up making the sauce twice to use it all.  The second night I tweaked it a little and it was even better!

This sauce is very tomatoey, but not in a sweet, commercial tomato sauce way. I added kalamata olives and capers for a little saltiness and a TON of garlic.  It took me about 20 minutes to make this.  I'm sure it could have simmered longer, but I was starving.  It's easy and vegetarian.

Awesomesauce version 1. I put cheese on half of the pasta so I could take a picture of the sauce.  I'm so considerate. 

Braised Quail with Polenta and Leek Broccoli Soup

I got an immersion blender for Christmas and now I want to blend EVERYTHING.  But I started small and made a quick, easy leek and broccoli soup.  I also went to Balducci's for the first time in a few years.  They had pheasant, rabbit, wild boar, venison, and quail!  I've had quail several times in restaurants and wanted to cook some, but never saw them at the grocery store. This was my first attempt at cooking quail.  I posted my other quail dish first because I thought the sauce was awesome.

Even though the quail have to sit in the fridge for a bit after they're rubbed with the spice mixture, this dish isn't very labor intensive.  The meal doesn't really take long to put together. I served my quail with some sundried tomato polenta (just heat it up out of the tube!) and I made some leek and broccoli soup with my immersion blender. 

 A few years ago, I watched Kitchen Nightmares (back when they still filmed it in England).  One episode featured a chef who overthought all of his recipes and ended up taking a simple concept, such as broccoli soup, and creating a recipe that called for 25 ingredients.  When I was looking for a broccoli soup to try, I remembered how Gordon Ramsay's soup had about 5 ingredients in it and it looked much better than the other chef's.  The recipe is from the Williams Sonoma Soup book and is pretty simple and straightforward.  If you like broccoli, you would love this soup.  If you only like broccoli when it's disguised to the point of being undetectable, you can probably give this one a pass.

Fettuccine with Tomatoes and Crispy Capers

So, there's a reason my posts have recently been more sporadic.  Dave and I adopted a rescue dog!  He's a beagle and German shepherd mix.  He's our little sous chef, he loves sitting in the kitchen while I cook.  Usually, he likes laying right up against the back of my legs so if I move without thinking about him, I'll fall on my butt.

Look at my ears!  No one can resist my floppy ears!

Last weekend, I made a fettuccine dish and didn't use up all of my fresh pasta.  I saw this recipe for Fettuccine with Tomatoes and Crispy Capers in the most recent issue of Food & Wine.  I've made a dish with fried capers as a garnish before and they're really awesome.  They crisp very nicely, but retain their tanginess. 

The original recipe didn't call for sundried tomatoes, but I thought they would be a good addition.  I used enough fresh pasta for two people and the vegetable and meat amounts for a full recipe. I omitted the anchovies. 

This dish was quick, simple, and really really good.  The simple addition of some crushed red pepper made the prosciutto taste almost like capicola ham.  This dish was pretty quick to make because there wasn't much chopping and the tomatoes and garlic don't cook for very long.  The most labor intensive part of the meal was frying the capers, which isn't very complicated. 

Smoked Lasagna. Or, My Dad is Awesome for Humoring Me.

Last Sunday was Father's Day.  My mom is in Ireland with her cousin.  At my parents' house, she's the cook.  So for the past two weeks, Dad has been eating Bachelor Chow.  He's always been willing to eat my experiments, so I decided to feed him a few times this week.  For Father's Day, I made lasagna.  Now, one of my rules of cooking is never to experiment on guests.  Normally, I only cook tried and true recipes for my friends and family, because I know some of my experiments end up looking like Klingon food, and sometimes they probably taste like it, too.  But, I was having problems choosing the perfect dish to cook for my dad.   He's the opposite of a picky eater, but I wanted it to be special.  

I got it in my head that I would make lasagna.  Prior to this, I had made lasagna once in my entire life.  And that, according to the date stamp on my picture, was in June 2008.   So pretty much three years ago.  It was a spinach lasagna.  My dad is a meat fan, so I decided to use a new recipe, thus violating my rule about experimenting on family.

After extensive googling, I decided to make Michael Symon's lasagna recipe.  I love Michael Symon, to the point where I happily fangirled all over myself when I went to his restaurant, Lola, with my husband and in-laws.  Anyway, I picked his recipe because it wasn't super complicated.  And it was Michael Symon, how could it go wrong?!

The lasagna looks awesome.  But you should smell my house.  And my hair. 

This recipe seemed like it would make enough lasagna to feed a family of 25 for a month.  But, somehow, it all fit into this dish.  It's not deep enough to be a lasagna dish, but it's the most appropriate dish that I have. 

Shiitake Risotto with Lemongrass and Ginger

I've watched enough Top Chef to know that risotto needs to be made perfectly or people will be grievously offended.  After the most recent season, I learned that risotto is supposed to "spread" when you put it in the bowl.  When I was on vacation in St. Barth a few months ago, Dave and I went to an Italian restaurant.  The owner had imported the entire staff - waiters and chefs - from Italy.  I had some wild boar risotto and prodded at it for a few minutes before eating it. It was *fabulous,* and nothing like anything I'd ever made.  I thought I could make a great risotto before I tried this stuff.  It definitely spread out nicely, unlike the risottos I've attempted.  My risotto tends to "pile," which means that I make it too dry, probably because I get impatient and declare it finished when it looks like risotto in the pan instead of giving it some extra liquid to finish it.  So, when I made this shiitake risotto, I tried to make it with additional chicken broth so that it would "spread."  Initially, it did, but I made a ton of it, and by the time I got it all in my bowl, it looked like Mt. Risotto.  So, it's something for me to work on. 

Dave recently decided that he no longer hates mushrooms, which is awesome because I love them.  He likes shiitakes, so I found this recipe for shiitake risotto.  It was very tasty, despite being more pile-y than spread-y.  It has only a few ingredients.  I didn't have enough chicken stock, and ended up using a mix of chicken stock and veggie stock.  I think that this dish could easily be made vegetarian by using veggie stock and a little extra salt.  If you love shiitakes, this is a great dish because the mushrooms flavor the rice, too.  I was skeptical of this recipe because other risottos I've made always included a ton of cheese, but I didn't notice its absence. 

 

Anniversary Dinner! Pasta with Lamb Ragu and a Nice Bottle of Bordeaux

This weekend was my seventh wedding anniversary!  After all these years, my husband and I are as in love as we were when we met in law school (we met in torts, how romantic!).  Sunday was our actual anniversary, but we went out on Saturday so we didn't have to care about being out late.  Conveniently, A Game of Thrones premiered on Sunday night and we took the opportunity to cook something tasty and geek out in front of the TV.

This pasta dish is something we make a lot in the winter.  I've altered the original recipe a bit to make the spice mixture more to my liking and eliminate some waste.  Instead of using one rib of celery, I use a shallot because I always have one around and I rarely find a good use for random celery.  I added a clove of garlic and some extra ground fennel seed.  The fennel seed makes the sauce smell heavenly and it brings out the lamb really well. Instead of buying a tub of ricotta that would sit in the fridge until it achieved consciousness, I used grana padano.  Sometimes, we make our own pasta to go with it.  This time, we bought some fresh pasta from an Italian deli up the street.

This meal is a good excuse for a nice bottle of red wine.   Wine is a hobby of Dave's, so he decided to pair the dinner with one of his special bottles that we've had for a few years.  He picked a bottle of Chateau Tour St. Bonnet 2005 Médoc, which smelled wonderful and went well with the cheesy, fennel-y goodness of the lamb ragu. I lack the vocabulary to adequately describe the wine, it's definitely worth a try if you can get ahold of it.  It sells for around $20.  I would link to the official website but (1) it's in French and (2) it looks like it was designed in 1997 and my eyes can only take so much of the blink tag. 

Man Can Cook - Spaghetti and Meatballs

It's still winter in DC, blech!  It's cold and gross out, which means it's time to make comfort food!  I have an awesome husband, David, who can fend for himself in the kitchen.  He even makes his own tomato sauce from scratch! This dish is one of the main comfort food meals we eat.  Dave normally makes a ton of sauce (way more than one serving each) and then we garnish it with pasta.  :)

The recipe for this sauce has evolved over the years that Dave and I have been together.  I think it's finally perfect, now that we switched from plain diced tomatoes to San Marzano tomatoes. Back in law school, when I still considered adding a packet of soy sauce to my ramen noodles to be "cooking," Dave and I decided we wanted to make spaghetti sauce.  We found a random recipe that involved adding some kind of dried soup mix to several cans of tomato sauce.  We made that a few times and it was meh.  Dave eventually found a basic recipe in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook.  It called for more tomato sauce than we had.  So, we used what sauce we had and substituted a can of petite diced tomatoes and a can of tomato paste.

Later on, we started toying with the spices.  At first, we used separate basil, oregano, *and* Italian seasoning.  But we eventually decided that a ton of Italian season worked the best.  In the summer, we grow basil, parsley, and oregano.  Fresh herbs are the best, but Italian seasoning works perfectly fine if they're unavailable.  Even when we use fresh herbs, a little Italian seasoning makes in into the sauce.

For a long time, the sauce was nice and thick on top of the pasta and watery on the plate, which was annoying.  We mostly solved this by draining the tomatoes really well.   When we finally made the switch from petite diced tomatoes to San Marzano tomatoes, we got rid of the watery issue entirely.  I handsquish (it's a technical term!) the tomatoes to get the juices out and then strain them really well.  This keeps the sauce from being watery. When handsquishing, make sure to do it with your hand down in your sink.  The first time I did it, I neglected to do so and splorted tomato seeds and juice all over my shirt, the counter, and floor.

The meatballs, I confess, are not home made.  Dave's mom makes AWESOME meatballs, and whenever they come visit, we demand politely request that she bring some frozen ones out for us. I've included her recipe in this post.  It's for a huge amount of meatballs, but they keep very well in the freezer.  I normally eat 4 and Dave eats 5.

Mushroom Marsala Pasta with Artichokes

Sometimes, I just want to make pasta and smother it with cheesy cream sauce.  I *love* mushrooms, which I know qualifies me as a total freak in the eyes of some people.  My husband originally hated them, but has been actively trying to get over his aversion for a while.  He actively likes mushrooms if they're thinly sliced or finely chopped.  It's the "mushrooms as meat substitute" (i.e. portobello) that grosses him out.  So, when I saw this recipe for Mushroom Marsala on Smitten Kitchen, I knew I had to try it. 

This was a good, hearty meal.  As usual, I did the pasta math and saw that 1/2 lb pasta was supposed to be enough for two servings.  But as I always do, I looked in the pot and thought, "that's not nearly enough pasta!" and I added more.  So, I ended up with way more pasta than I needed.  I don't think I'll ever learn.