Weekly Dish

Oh, I wish this post had a different title. I’ve been wanting to tell you about Josie’s forays into the world of solid food for some time now. You’ve all been so kind to be interested in her developments and to comment on how much she’s growing and to let me know that it’s okay that I devote a little bit of this space to talking about her and not just food, even though this is, technically, a food blog.

But, well, I really wanted to have some good news for you. I wanted to say how much fun it is to share the wonders of fresh fruits and vegetables with my little one. I wanted to tell you how much she loves to sit in her high chair, how she leans forward to welcome the spoon into her mouth, how she can’t wait for the next new food. Instead, I have only this to show you:

Some days are better than others—she seems to tolerate spinach and carrots better than anything else, and yogurt for breakfast is sometimes okay with her. But, very often, she turns her head from side to side, tightly closes her lips, and refuses. If she’s feeling particularly witty, she’ll perform her newest saliva trick and blow bubbles right as the pureed food meets her mouth for a fantastic fireworks display of vibrant green or orange (as you see in the photos above). We’ve tried it all, it seems: mashed avocado; applesauce, both freshly made and from a jar; carrots, in commercial baby food form and steamed and blended by hand; spinach; bananas; rice; oatmeal; yogurt; yogurt and oatmeal with pureed fruit mixed in; butternut squash; sweet potatoes. She seems to dislike it all equally, with rare exceptions.

She’s eight and a half months old now, and I’m starting to get discouraged. So I come to you, dear readers, to ask: What in the world do I do to convince my child to eat? Will she just eventually accept that food is part of her life? Am I worrying too much? Is her dislike of bland food somehow connected to the way I eat? I tend to like my food on the robustly flavored side, and my taste for seasonings seemed more pronounced when I was pregnant; the more well-seasoned, the better. That has not dissipated since I’ve been breastfeeding, so is it possible she has acquired a taste for more flavor than the average pureed fruit or vegetable has? Should we go straight to table food? Has anyone else encountered this problem, or is this my particular punishment for being a picky eater as a child? (So sorry, Mom!)

At this point, I’m willing to try most anything (well, within reason, of course; the point is to get nutrients into her body and to cultivate her taste for healthy foods, so I’m not willing to give her chocolate pudding or ice cream just so she’ll like it. At least not yet.)

She’s usually such a happy thing, disgruntled only for the expected reasons — hunger, discomfort, fatigue. Oh, and when we try to put a spoon in her mouth. So, if you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them. I want her to look like this when she sees food coming:

While we’re waiting for the happy, food-hungry Josie to emerge, we have needed food to sustain our own appetites, preferably of the hearty, comforting sort. More often than not this time of year, that comes in the shape of a warm bowl of pasta. Because locally grown broccoli is so plentiful right now, we buy it at the market every week, and this little dish has become something of a standby. I particularly like it with whole wheat penne or tiny shells; the toothsome noodles stand up well to the cloak of creamy, ham-infused sauce. Plus, it cooks quickly, so there’s time for, oh, I don’t know, dancing around a baby in her high chair begging her to open up. One day, I’m hoping I will feed her whatever I’m making, straight from the stove, with minimal cajoling, and we’ll have put this whole baby food stage behind us. I can’t say that I blame her all that much; I’d rather have this pasta than plain, pureed broccoli any day of the week. Wouldn’t you?
Oh, well, in the mean time, at least I won’t be starving.

Pasta with Ham, Mushrooms, and Broccoli

The trick to this being a quick recipe is the order of the steps: if you start the water to boil for the broccoli and pasta, by the time the noodles are done, your sauce should be ready too. In terms of flavor, this is a dish that benefits from frequent sprinkles of salt: don’t save the seasoning step until the end, instead, sprinkle a little in every time you add something new to the skillet.
1 head broccoli, chopped up into bite-sized pieces
16 ounces small pasta shells or penne rigate
4 ounces ham, diced (we used leftovers from a honey-baked ham)
1 t. olive oil
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
3 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
1 t. flour
1/2 cup white wine (if you don’t have wine on hand, chicken stock would probably work too)
1/4 cup milk
2 T. heavy cream
Coarse salt, to taste
Parmesan cheese, grated, for serving

Bring a pot of salted water to boil. You’ll use this pot for both the broccoli and the pasta.

Meanwhile, prep your ingredients: chop the ham, broccoli and onions, and slice the mushrooms and garlic.

When the water is boiling, add the broccoli, and blanch for about 3 minutes; it should be crisp-tender and bright green. Drain the broccoli and set it aside, but reserve the cooking water, putting it back in the pot. Let the water return to boiling, and add the pasta. Cook until al dente.
While the broccoli and noodles cook, heat the olive oil in a large, heavy skillet. Add the ham and cook over medium heat until well-browned. Remove the ham with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Add the mushrooms and onions to the skillet and cook over medium-high heat until the onion is beginning to turn golden. Add the garlic slices and stir them in, continuing to cook until all the vegetables are tender. Season well with salt. Rubbing it between your palms, sprinkle the flour evenly over the vegetables, stirring quickly to coat.
Pour in the wine, and cook over medium-high heat for a minute or two, then stir in the milk. Reduce the heat to medium. Season with salt. Keep stirring and cooking until the liquid has reduced by half, about 5-7 minutes. Stir in the reserved ham and broccoli, and finish with the cream. Cook for just a minute more. Serve the sauce over the pasta, and top with plenty of grated cheese.

I have posted many a recipe on this site that I have labeled “Comfort Food.” Dishes that merit this distinction, for me, need to accomplish two things: the cooking process itself should be slow, patient, comfort-inducing, and the eating experience must create warmth and happiness. These two categories cannot be separated, and my suspicion is that it’s because somehow I can taste the care that goes into comforting dishes. You’ll find that most of my comfort foods involve a good bit of stirring. As I have written here before, stirring is therapeutic in ways no other activity is for me. But also, the stirring process infuses the air with smells that remind me of other days: days shared with people I love, days spent cooking for those I love, days enjoying the simple process of creating a warming, delicious dish of food. This comforting cooking process should fill my house with feelings of calm and peace, and in these busy days especially, friends, I welcome the scents and sounds that bring those feelings.

A lot to ask from a simple dish of food, you say? Well, a body has to eat, but sometimes a soul also needs to cook.

When I saw that Ivonne (a long-lost sister I have only discovered in the last year–we are certain that our families, particularly the women, are kin, at least culinarily speaking) and her cohort, Orchidea, were requesting dishes of comfort, I set my sights on the ugly fall tomatoes at my farmer’s market and a hefty hunk of butter.

The process for this simple, simple sauce is neither complicated nor labor-intensive, but it does take time. I like to make it on a cold, dreary day, when I can curl up on the couch with a blanket and a book in between recipe steps. When it’s finished, David and I can sit down in a house filled with the rich scent of roasting tomatoes, and enjoy the way this velvety sauce coats our noodles and our tongues with a soft blend of tomato and butter.

Fresh tomatoes are my recommendation for the best flavor, but high-quality canned ones will do in a pinch. If you have tomatoes you put up from summer (I freeze batches of roasted ones), those will work too, but my favorite way to make this is to start with fresh tomatoes (I bought these out of a box that read “fall tomato rejects, 3 for $1″), roast them until they fall apart, and then simmer them with the other ingredients for a long, long time.

Angel Hair with Buttery Tomato Sauce

2 - 2 1/2 pounds tomatoes (should yield 2 cups tomato puree)
Olive oil
Coarse salt
Cracked black pepper
1/2 stick (4 T.) butter
1 medium yellow onion, quartered
2 carrots, peeled and cut into 4 pieces
1/2 pound pasta (I like angel hair for this dish)

Preheat the oven to 425. Wash and core the tomatoes, and cut them into large chunks (for medium-sized tomatoes, quarters work fine). Place them in a single layer on a greased baking sheet, close together, and drizzle with olive oil. Toss with your hands to coat the tomato pieces with oil. Sprinkle liberally with salt and cracked pepper. Roast. The time depends on you — I leave them for at least an hour and then check; they should be easily mashed with a fork and beginning to brown where the salt has landed. Remove and let cool. When cool, process in a food processor or blender to make a smooth puree.

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the onion and carrot pieces. Cover with tomato puree and simmer (don’t boil!) for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

When the sauce is almost done, cook the pasta to desired tenderness. Remove the vegetable pieces with a slotted spoon and serve them on the side. Plate up a mound of pasta with a ladle of sauce and a pat of butter. Eat, and be comforted.

As you know, I have, over the last few months, lost my taste for food. I’m sure for many pregnant women, those who dread cooking or find it difficult, this would not be the end of the world. But, I have to tell you, for a girl who loves to be in the kitchen, relying on peanut butter sandwiches and smoothies for nutrients has not been much fun. I guess I should have relished the break from cooking, as my husband cheerfully took over, but instead, I felt like a big part of my day was missing.

And I didn’t like it one bit.

In the midst of this cooking hiatus, I often scanned my favorite food blogs, searching for inspiration, hoping that something would awaken my nausea-weary tastebuds. For whatever reason (only the hormonal monsters in my body know for sure), one afternoon, a ravioli recipe that I’d bookmarked months and months ago from Chez Megane suddenly sounded good. Nevermind that I didn’t have sweet potatoes or ricotta cheese. I did have a butternut squash, one that had been looking longingly at me from the pantry for several days since I picked it up from the farmer’s market, and I had wonton wrappers. And, miracle of all miracles, I actually had an appetite!

I put on some music and an apron and went to work. I cut the squash in half, smeared it with a bit of butter, molasses, and basalmic vinegar, and popped it into the oven. I harvested the last good leaves of our sad sage bush (which has since gone on to herb heaven, rest in peace), and carefully laid out all the ingredients I would need. I chopped garlic and beat an egg and grated Parmesan cheese. In fact, I decided while I was there, I might as well busy myself until the squash was finished and cool enough to handle. So I baked some bread and made granola.

And, dear reader, I am happy to report that when the ravioli was plated up and ready, I was starving. It tasted like the best meal I’d had in weeks. I know not everyone understands this, but, oh, the pleasure of preparation — of getting my hands dirty and anticipating the way the flavors and textures will taste in my mouth: this is what I’d been missing.

And, ever since I made that discovery, I’ve felt more like myself every day.

Butternut Ravioli with Sage Butter and Italian Sausage

1 1/4 cups of cooked, mashed winter squash
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/8 t. freshly grated nutmeg
About a dozen sage leaves
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, shredded, plus extra for serving
1 egg plus water
Wonton wrappers or pasta sheets
4 T. butter
1/4 cup pine nuts
1 link Italian sausage, sliced into rounds (you could, of course, leave this out for a vegetarian meal)

In a heavy-bottomed skillet, melt a tablespoon of butter. Saute the garlic over medium-low heat until translucent and very soft. Chop a few of the sage leaves and add them to the skillet. Sprinkle with Kosher salt and saute for another minute or so, until the leaves crisp up a little bit.

In a large bowl, scrape the contents of the skillet in with the mashed squash. Add the Parmesan and nutmeg, and combine well. Set aside.

Now, I am funny about the wonton wrappers: I don’t think they hold up very well unless they’re doubled up. So, I use 4 wrappers per ravioli, brushing one side of a wonton wrapper with egg wash and then laying another wrapper on top of it, pressing to seal. I repeat this process with another pair of wrappers. Then, spoon filling on top of one double sheet, then top with the other double sheet and seal the edges with egg wash. It’s a little extra trouble to do it this way, but I once had a whole batch fall apart in the boiling water with only single sheets, so I prefer to play it safe. (Of course, homemade pasta would be best).

Once the ravioli are assembled, set them aside. Bring a pot of water to boil. Add the ravioli and cook until they float, about 3 or 4 minutes. (You may have to do this in batches). Drain and arrange on plates.

While the ravioli are cooking, brown the sausage in the skillet (the one you cooked the garlic in) until cooked through. Remove with a slotted spoon. Add the butter and cook over medium until it’s just beginning to turn golden. Add the pine nuts and remaining whole sage leaves. Stir and cook until the sage leaves are crispy. Watch carefully so that the butter doesn’t burn. Divide the sauce evenly between the plates of ravioli. Top with the sausage and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Serves 2 hungry people for dinner, with a couple of extra ravioli left over.

–Inspired by Megan’s recipe for Sweet Potato Ravioli

You may not know that because I make way more pasta than I post about. Mostly because I keep dry pasta in the pantry for nights when dinner needs to be thoughtless and fast, throw some noodles on to boil, and top them with whatever strikes. No measuring takes place on those nights, to be sure.

I made this pasta dish several weeks ago in this fashion, and it was so good, I wanted to recreate it both so I could take the time to photograph it and share it with you and so I would remember what I did.

Some people immediately dismiss a pasta recipe if it has heavy cream in it, largely because restaurants have given cream sauces a bad rap. A plate of fettucine alfredo at a place like Olive Garden is probably at least 2 whole servings (maybe more) of pasta, and the noodles are usually swimming in a bath of butter, cream, and cheese, for a grand total of, what, at least 2 days worth of calories and fat grams? Not to mention the bread…

But who wants a bath of cream anyway, when you can add a small amount of cream to coat the noodles and soak into the vegetables, giving the dish the rich flavor you want without all of the fat? Some, yes, but not a week’s worth.

Dusting the artichokes in a bit of flour and seasoned salt and then pan-frying them in olive oil with the garlic deepens their flavor and makes them a little bit crispy on the outside, which I love, but it isn’t necessary. You can also just add them in with the olives and sundried tomatoes. I also added a grilled chicken breast because I had one leftover, but leaving it out won’t compromise the flavors in the least if you want a vegetarian dish.

Good feta cheese and high-quality olives (I like the Greek ones from the deli counter at my grocery) will make a difference, and I like the sudried tomatoes packed in oil for this, rather than rehydrating the dried ones.

Oh, and I love olives, so I use a lot; strongly flavored ones like kalamatas can overwhelm, so if you’re not a huge fan, you may want to reduce the quantity.

The best part? The sauce was ready to toss with the noodles by the time they were finished cooking, AND it tastes fabulous. My kind of meal.

Ziti with Olives, Pan-fried Artichokes, and Sundried Tomatoes

1 pound ziti
2 T. olive oil 1 14 1/2-ounce can artichoke hearts, drained
Flour
Seasoned salt
1 clove garlic, minced
1/3 cup sundried tomatoes, slivered
1/3 cup roughly chopped black olives (I like the Greek ones)
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup lowfat milk
1/3 cup feta cheese, crumbled

Put the pasta on to boil. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over high heat. Drain the artichoke hearts and lay flat on paper towels. Dust with a bit of flour and sprinkle with seasoned salt. When the oil is hot, lay the artichokes in the skillet in a single layer, as many as will fit at once. Press down with a spatula and let them fry undisturbed for a couple of minutes. Flip them over and fry until brown on both sides. Remove that batch (if you need to do two), and repeat with the remaining artichokes. Reduce the heat to medium and add the garlic. Saute the garlic until fragrant and soft, a couple of minutes, then stir in the tomatoes, olives, and fried artichokes. Turn the heat up to medium high and add the cream. It should reduce quickly; add the milk, and stir continuously until the sauce is thickened. Stir in the feta. Drain the noodles and add them to the sauce; toss until the noodles are coated and the vegetables are evenly distributed. Serve immediately. A simple green salad with mint, lemon, and olive oil makes an excellent accompaniment.

My husband has been so supportive since I’ve been in school. He’s indulged my study-break cooking frenzies, patiently cleaning up my messes and dutifully tasting every test recipe; he’s done an awful lot of laundry and cleaning of the bathroom; and he  rarely every complains. The job I’ve been reluctant to give up, of course, is the making of our dinners. David is completely competent and capable in the kitchen, so it isn’t that I don’t trust him to do it (though he gladly would), it’s just that for me, somehow, making dinner every night is the one chore that keeps me sane, that helps me to feel like a normal person whose life is not completely chaotic. It brings order to an otherwise out-of-control schedule.

But some nights I just don’t have it in me. And now that David is a full-time student too, our schedule has become even more unorthodox. Dinner, for example, on Wednesday nights is served promptly at 10 p.m., when David gets home from class. For the nights when I have so much to do before the morning that I can’t think how to fit in cooking dinner too, rather than turn to take-out (which we try hard not to do), I turn over the kitchen to David.

He has a couple of standard classic recipes that are his specialties, and I’m hoping to introduce you to most of them, one at a time. You’ve already become acquainted with his famous roast chicken. Number 2 on the list of his favorite things to make is carbonara. He first learned to make it in Italy (which he will tell you about in a moment), and he’s been fixing this hearty comfort food for me almost as long as I’ve known him.

Most people who make carbonara feel pretty strongly about their way of doing it, and David is no exception. But if you’re stuck in the kitchen at 5:30 without any clue about what to make for dinner, and you happen to have eggs, bacon, noodles, and some Parmesan cheese, this meal comes together in less than half an hour. Low-calorie, it is not, but what it lacks in nutritional value, it makes up for in taste. Certainly, we would not eat a meal like this every night (and usually when we plan on carbonara, I try to limit the fat content of the rest of our meals), but for nights when we’re busy and we need sustenance, this hits the spot.

Here are David’s unedited instructions. I quote word-for-word from the cook:
1. Boil water. Insert 1 pound noodles. (Note from Jennifer: Usually, we use the traditional fettucine, but this night we only had rigatoni, and we actually prefer it. The ridges hold the eggy sauce quite nicely.)

2. Get out: 3 eggs, bacon, Parmesan cheese.

3. In a bowl, whisk 3 eggs with 1/4 cup cream (or whole milk) and salt and pepper. Not tons of salt–the bacon and cheese are also salty. But pepper: use as much pepper as your wife will let you get away with.

4. Cook some bacon. If you like a lot of bacon, cook a lot. If you’re trying to be healthier, or you don’t like a lot of bacon, not so much. Completely up to you. (Note from Jennifer: chances are, if you’re trying to be healthy, you aren’t making carbonara. But who knows?)

5. Grate fresh Parmesan. A lot. You can never have enough. Not-fresh Parmesan is a Republican plot to make us all lazy and compliant. Have you seen Kraft’s political platform?

6. Think about Italy while you grate the cheese and wait for the noodles and bacon to cook. If you like, I will tell you the story of how I learned to make this. I once went to Italy with a group of artists. We had carbonara at this fabulous restaurant, and as we were lamenting the fact that you can’t get carbonara like that anywhere in Mississippi (because we were all from Mississippi), a member of our party — Father Canonici, a lovely old priest with deep Italian roots — shared this recipe with us. You know, the one I’m giving to you now in such specific detail. What can I say, I didn’t write it down, and my memory is fuzzy. What I do know is that you should never, ever put peas in carbonara.

7. Weird how this is so good with no garlic. (Note from Jennifer: I don’t know what this has to do with anything, but I was instructed to take it down. Remember: not my words!)
8. Make sure the bacon is cooked to a nice crispy texture. I don’t really like crispy bacon (a common source of contention at our house), but it works with the carbonara to keep things from getting all clumpy.

9. Keep a close eye on the noodles; you don’t want them overdone.

10. Drain the noodles.

11. Dump the noodles back into the pot.

12. Pour the egg-cream mixture on top of the still-hot noodles. Now, this is the important part. You want to mix it up so that the heat of the noodles will start to firm up the eggs a bit before returning the pot to the burner. You do this for two reasons: 1. You want the noodles to get nicely coated before the eggs get too done. 2. It will be easier to clean the pot when you’re done because there won’t be as much egg stuck to the bottom of the pan. This was learned the hard way.

13. Once the eggs have begun to stick to the noodles, return the pot to a low heat. Stir gently and constantly (keep in mind: the more you stir, the less scrubbing you’ll have to do after dinner).

14. Now is the time to sneak in more pepper when your wife isn’t looking.

15. Crumble the bacon. We do it with kitchen scissors because the bacon is still very hot.

16. After cooking and stirring for 5 minutes or so, add the cheese. You don’t want to add the cheese too early, or it will get lost.

17. Keep stirring. Check to make sure you aren’t getting cheese clumps all over your spoon.

18. Finally, now everything will start to come together and you can add the bacon at last.

19. Adding the bacon is sort of like when you’re making muffins and you don’t want to overmix your wet and dry ingredients. Fold gently. If you mix too much, it will all end up on the bottom.

20. Serve immediately.

21. When you’ve served up what you plan to eat tonight, immediately put the leftovers in a different container so you can start soaking the pot. Believe me, you’ll be glad later.

22. Talk about Italy while you eat.

There you have it, David’s words on carbonara. Enjoy!

See all of those lovely vegetables? Garlic, spring onions, asparagus, yellow and green zucchini, all grown right here in my home state, in the ground just days before they arrived on my cutting board.

Every Saturday morning, David and I journey the mile or so down the road to our local farmer’s market, and I try really hard to buy most of my produce there. I also try to buy Kleinpeter or Smith Creamery dairy products, both local companies, and locally produced meat or chicken, and whenever possible, I look for locally made jams, jellies, and cheeses. Why?

Well, the first and most selfish reason is that local produce simply tastes better. Logically, strawberries harvested on a Thursday and sold to me on a Saturday morning are fresher than strawberries that must be picked before they’re ripe and have unnatural things added to them so that they can spend a week or longer on a truck or in a storeroom. That just makes good sense, right?

Also, though, I love to look into the faces of the people who grow the food I eat. The guy we usually buy strawberries from has a picture of his little girl taped to the top of the cash box, and, call me a sap, but I enjoy knowing that the money I put into that cash box is helping support the family of an honest, reliable small business owner and not to fund a multimillion dollar corporation. I also know, both from an economics class I took in college and from simple common sense, that money spent in my local economy returns to my local economy; buying local makes me a good neighbor and a smart citizen. And with increased gas prices, I’m guessing that the fewer miles my food travels, the better for the environment and the energy crisis. I’m no expert, of course, so if you want to read more excellent and well-thought out reasons to buy and eat locally, check out this post.

For the month of May, food bloggers are tackling the Eat Local Challenge. Largely an awareness-building and educational movement, the challenge is designed to get us all to be critical consumers, to think about where our food comes from and where we’re spending our money. While I don’t think it’s realistic to eat completely local all of the time–even more unrealistic for my friends who live in less agriculture-friendly climates than I do–, I support any effort to help people think about what they’re putting in their mouths, or, as I teach my students about media literacy, their brains.

While I’m not the kind of person who believes in beating people over the head with my politics, religion, or grocery-buying practices in order to convert them, I still thought it might be interesting for some of my readers to take a look at how I approach eating locally. For me, this commitment is year-round; every Saturday morning I try to make it to the market, and fortunately, I live in a place that grows at least some foods year round. I also check the labels at my grocery; I buy from a locally owned supermarket–not a chain–and so the owner is also invested in bringing local goods into the store. Plus, he is a local consumer, spending money in my local economy.

If you aren’t concerned with eating local, that’s fine by me. But if you are, I thought it might be useful to see how one gal does it. Lots of other people have done more research than I have and have stronger commitments to the movement, but for what it’s worth, this month, I’ll talk about the ingredients I’m buying and how I make my consumption choices. If you don’t care, feel free to skip down to the recipe; I’ll never know.

This pasta dish quintessentially represents my efforts at eating locally: not everything in the dish is locally made, as the pasta, mascarpone, olive oil, and Parmesan were all imported. But the recipe resulted from my weekly trip to the market: zucchini, asparagus, onions, tomato, and peppers were all available from local farmers, and so I made them the centerpiece of the meal. And that’s exactly how I like to challenge myself: not necessarily to buy only local ingredients but to buy as many as I can as often as I can and use those ingredients to come up with fresh dishes that taste like the season.

I call this dish Pasta Primavera because (besides the fact that many other people before me have used the title) the Latin roots of the word can mean literally first (prima) and spring (vera). These vegetables were the first ones available this spring season, and so I offer them up in a simple cream sauce that highlights the crisp, fresh taste of seasonal, local vegetables. However you choose to enjoy the first fruits of this season, I hope you eat fresh and well.

I’m sorry my posting has been so sporadic over the last few weeks; thankfully, the semester is over, and I have a bit of a break!

Pasta Primavera

1 pound linguine or other thin pasta
1 yellow bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
1 T. olive oil
1 T. butter
1 white or yellow onion, sliced thinly into half moons
20 stalks thin asparagus, chopped
1 green zucchini, sliced
1 yellow zucchini, sliced
1/4 cup white wine
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tomato, diced
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese
1/4 cup half and half or heavy cream
Salt and pepper, to taste
Parmesan cheese, to taste

Preheat the broiler. Wash and dry the peppers and place on a foil-lined cookie sheet. Roast, under the broiler, for about 20 minutes, turning about every 5 minutes or so to make sure each side blackens. When all sides are charred, place the pepper in a bowl, and cover tightly with plastic wrap to steam. Set aside.

While the peppers are roasted, bring a pot of water to boil and cook the pasta. You can also use this time to prep the other vegetables. When the pasta is done, drain and place in a large bowl.

In a large skillet, heat half of the butter and olive oil. Add the onion. Cook over medium-high heat for about 10 minutes, until the onion is very soft and just beginning to turn golden. Add the asparagus and zucchini. Cook for 5 more minutes. Season well with salt and pepper, then pour in the wine and cover to let the vegetables absorb it. Cook about 2-3 minutes more. Dump this mixture into the bowl with the pasta and toss lightly.

When the peppers are cool enough to handle, peel the skin from them, remove the stem and seeds, and chop. Add them to the pasta bowl.

In the same skillet, heat the remaining half tablespoon of butter and oil. Add the garlic and cook for a few minutes over medium until soft. Add the chopped tomato and cook for another couple of minutes. Salt and pepper well. Stir in the mascarpone and half and half; cook and stir until it’s blended and creamy. Pour this sauce over the pasta and toss well. Top each serving with a healthy dose of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Serves 4-6.

Note: Seasoning is the key to bringing out the flavor of the vegetables; salt well at every stage and the vegetables will absorb it into their own flavor. If you wait until the end, you risk the dish being salty rather than flavor-enhanced. I’ve made that mistake far too many times!

If you’re interested in other ways to cook asparagus, check out Kevin’s growing collection of asparagus recipes over at Seriously Good.

So, it turns out that I love to make gnocchi. After my frustrations with the little dumplings, I would never have thought I’d say that. But it’s true.

It also turns out, as luck would have it, that gnocchi works with another thing I love: sweet potatoes. After Ivonne’s recipe convinced me that gnocchi was doable, I decided to experiment a bit. My love of sweet potatoes has certainly not been a secret on this site, so this is one more recipe to add to the sweet potato collection.

For those of you who don’t know, gnocchi are little dumplings, usually made of potatoes and flour (although Ivonne convinced me that an egg is the magic thing to bind the dough together; I’ll never make gnocchi without the egg). They can be served with a sauce, or vegetables, or simply topped with butter and cheese.

For the sweet potato gnocchi? I opted for simplicity: a bit of garlic, a bit of freshly grated nutmeg, a bit of mascarpone, a bit of fresh Parmesan. All I can say is that I’m very sad I did not double the recipe to have leftovers. Yum!

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

2 medium-large sweet potatoes (about 2 pounds)
1 egg
1 t. salt
1 1/2 - 2 cups flour
3 T. butter
4 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
2 T. mascarpone cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan plus extra to serve
freshly grated nutmeg, to taste

Bake the sweet potatoes in the oven until they are easily pierced with a fork, about an hour at 350 degree works for my oven. Set aside until they are cool enough to handle. Peel and mash thoroughly with a potato masher or a fork. Be sure to get rid of any big lumps.

Mix the mashed potato with the egg; then, work in the flour with your hands, until the mixture sticks together and forms a dough-like ball (I started with 1 1/2 cups, but ended up using a little more than 2). On a floured work surface, knead the dough until it’s easily malleable but not sticky.

Form the dough into tennis ball-size rounds. Roll each ball into a long, snake-like coil, about an inch in diameter. Cut the coils into inch-long dumplings, sealing them with the back of a fork to make indentions. Put all the gnocchi in a bowl or on a tray, and refrigerate while you bring a large pot of water to boil.

When the water is boiling vigorously, add the gnocchi, one batch at a time, being careful not to overcrowd the pot. When they float, they’re done; remove with a slotted spoon to a colander to drain and finish cooking the remaining gnocchi.

When all the gnocchi are cooked, drain the water from the pot, and heat the butter over medium-low (I use the same pot). Add the sliced garlic, and cook until tender, about 3 minutes. Stir in the mascarpone and Parmesan. Season with grated nutmeg and Kosher salt. When the sauce is well-mixed, pour over the gnocchi to coat. Top each serving with extra Parmesan and extra grated nutmeg. Serves 2 hungry people.
And, to make this dish even more satisfying, sweet potatoes, although heavy on the carbs, are also packed with Vitamin A, B6, and C, making this gnocchi a good candidate for ARF Tuesdays over at Sweetnicks!

I love to learn about new foods. One of the great things about reading other people’s food blogs is that I often come in contact with ingredients that are unfamiliar to me, and then I end up running into them somewhere else.

The weekly ARF/5-a-day event over at Sweetnicks keeps me trying to incorporate vegetables into our diet, and with spring upon us, I’d been searching for new veggies to love. Then, last week, I read Rorie’s post about her favorite spring risotto, with shallots, red onions, and fava beans. I’d never seen fava beans, much less cooked with them, so when I saw them at my farmer’s market on Saturday, I grabbed them.

I intended to make Rorie’s risotto, but, as often happens with my good intentions, I didn’t quite have everything I needed. No red onions or shallots to be found in my pantry. Besides, I didn’t have any homemade vegetable stock on hand either, and it’s really getting too warm outside to leave a burner on for that long in my kitchen. So, I set about prepping my beans, dug around in the fridge and the pantry, and ended up with this pasta.

What I didn’t know going into it is that preparing fresh fava beans for cooking is a bit of a process. They look like gigantic, engorged snow peas or butter beans in their shells, which are my very favorite springy green color (my kitchen is almost the very same green as a matter of fact!) Once you unzip their little pouches, you’ll find large, kidney-shaped beans buried inside, resting on pillows of blankety fuzz. After you pop them from their shells, then you blanch them, and then, you must peel the individual beans, removing the translucent casing on the outside. The outer peeling slides right off, so it’s not difficult, but it would be fairly time-consuming to go through this process for more than one armload of favas.

In the end, it was worth it; this pasta tastes as bright and springy as it looks, bites of sweet-salty ham and soft, caramelized sweet onions alternate with the earthy crunch of the edamame-esque beans beneath a light coating of cream and freshly grated Parmesan.

If you spy some fava beans at your local market, grab them while you can; the farmer who sold them to me warned me that their season is fleeting.

Spring Bean Pasta

1 cup of fresh fava beans, shelled (the amount in the picture above yielded about a cup of beans)
1 t. olive oil
1 cup ham, diced (I used honeybaked ham)
1/2 a sweet yellow onion, diced
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1/4 cup white wine
1/2 cup heavy cream or half and half
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, to taste
3/4 pound pasta (I used rotini)

First, prepare your beans. After they’ve been shelled, fill a pot with about 2 inches of water (just enough to cover the beans), and bring the water to a boil. Add the beans and cook for about 4-5 minutes. Immediately drain and plunge into cold water. Let the beans cool. When they’re cool enough to handle, run your fingernail or a small knife around the outer casing, removing it from each bean.
Set the cooked, peeled beans aside. Cook the pasta in boiling water until al dente. Drain, and set it aside too.

In a large skillet heat a teaspoon of olive oil over medium heat. Add the ham and cook for a minute or two. Add the chopped onion and increase the heat to medium-high. Cook for about 5-7 minutes, or until the onion turns golden and soft. Add the carrots and garlic and reduce the heat back to medium. Cook until all the vegetables are soft and the onions are nice and caramelized, about another 5 minutes. Add the beans, and sprinkle with salt.

Pour in the wine, stirring until it evaporates. Douse the skillet with the cream, continuing to stir until the ham and vegetables are nicely coated. If you prefer to have a saucier pasta, you can add milk or more wine here. Serve the ham-vegetable sauce on top of a handful of noodles; top generously with grated Parmesan. Serves 4.

This recipe is my contribution to ARF/5-a-day Tuesday over at Sweetnick’s.

Every cook must have her proverbial thorn-in-the-side dish. You know, the one you’ve tried and tried and tried again only to fail miserably each time. My most recent thorn has been the little Italian potato dumplings called gnocchi. I once bought premade gnocchi from the grocery, and they were pretty good but really expensive for just potatoes and flour. So I tried to make my own. How hard could it be to bake a few potatoes and combine them with flour? I made a huge, sticky mess, and the dumplings (if you could call them that) tasted gluey and bland. My next attempts, using various recipes, were no different. So I decided to throw in the towel. If we were to eat gnocchi at our house, it would have to come from an expensive plastic package, much to my chagrin.

And then, the lovely and talented Ivonne at Cream Puffs in Venice posted a gnocchi recipe during her Piemontese foods series in honor of the Olympics. She swore it was easy and fool-proof, and her instructions, complete with pictures, looked as if they might end my gnocchi woes.

With some sideline coaching from Ivonne, I’m happy to report that the gnocchi turned out just as she describes: the dough was elastic but not too sticky, and the dumplings floated to the top when they were ready, just as they were supposed to. Mine aren’t quite as pretty as hers; I couldn’t quite get the hang of the fork indentions, but they tasted lovely nonetheless. I tossed the hot dumplings with butter and a combination of fontina and Parmesan cheeses, as Ivonne suggests. To make the meal a bit more substantial and add some color, I topped each serving with a spoonful of chunky oven-roasted tomato sauce. The end result was a delightfully simple and satisfying supper.

Notes: The problem, I discovered, with my earlier gnocchi attempts was that I was using regular baking potatoes that are entirely too starchy. Waxy potatoes make a huge difference! I used Yukon Golds for this recipe. Also, refrigerating the dumplings before adding them to the boiling water also helps a great deal. They hold their shape nicely after having some time to firm up in the fridge. If you’re looking for a fool-proof way to try gnocchi, I urge you to try Ivonne’s recipe. I’m already thinking of variations for my next attempt…

If you like your lasagna cut into perfect squares, standing up straight and regal because the filling holds it in place, this is not the recipe for you. This lasagna is messy, the filling spilling out of the noodle layers as soon as it hits the plate, more an amorphous blob than a straight-edged quadrilateral. On the other hand, if you’re more concerned about flavor than geometric preciseness, the earthy portabello mushrooms and rich tomato sauce dance together under fluffy ricotta, stringy mozzarella, and tangy Parmesan to completely make up for their unwillingness to stay in place between the noodles.

Plus, after a few quick prep steps, it’s just a matter of getting everything into the casserole in the right order. I stopped cooking my lasagna noodles before assembly a long time ago; I’ve found that if you place a layer of sauce on the bottom of the dish, lay the noodles squarely in it, and then make sure every other noodle layer is covered with either sauce or cheese, they will come out of the oven cooked every time. The other trick is to make sure you cook the lasagna tightly covered with foil for most of the baking time.

Roasting the vegetables ahead of time punches up their flavor before they go into the lasagna, and makes them work nicely with the Oven-Roasted Tomato Sauce that I use for the base. This recipe is very versatile; I’m sure many combinations of vegetables and cheeses would work, but this is my old standby. If you’re looking for lasagna ideas, my friend Rorie recently made a zucchini one with tomato-orange sauce that sounds delicious too.

Roasted Vegetable Lasagna

6 portabello mushroom caps, sliced
1 small eggplant, sliced
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Lasagna noodles, about 9
1 recipe Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce
6 ounces ricotta cheese
8 ounces mozzarella cheese, shredded
Parmesan, grated to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Lay the eggplant slices flat inside a mesh strainer; sprinkle with salt and let the moisture drain out, about 20 minutes or so. Wipe off any excess salt and pat dry. Toss the slices with olive oil, lay in a single layer on a baking sheet, and roast for about 35 minutes. Toss the mushroom slices with oil as well; sprinkle with salt, and slide them into the oven when the eggplant has about 20 minutes to go (the mushrooms will roast in about 15 minutes.) Remove vegetables from the oven and turn the temp down to 350.
In a square baking dish, cover the bottom with one layer of tomato sauce. Lay a single layer of lasagna noodes in the sauce. Top the noodles with dollops of ricotta cheese and shred a light layer of Parmesan over. On top of the ricotta, place a layer of mushroom and eggplant slices. Repeat layers. Cover the whole dish with shredded mozzarella; grate extra Parmesan on top too. Cover tightly with foil. Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour, or until the sides are bubbly and the cheese is completely melted. You can also remove the foil with 10 minutes of cooking time left; this added step gives the melted cheese a golden brown top.

This recipe is my contribution to ARF/5-a-day Tuesdays over at Sweetnicks.