Weekly Dish

When the tomatoes are nice and fresh and summery, I like to serve the first version of the oven-roasted sauce right over pasta with no accoutrements at all. But now that the summer tomatoes are on their way out (even though summer appears to still be going strong–it hit 100 degrees here in Baton Rouge last week!!), I am trying different methods to make the sauce go further without sacrificing freshness or variety. I have an old, old Italian cookbook that my husband gave me eons ago when we were dating that recommends adding carrots to tomato-based sauces. So, I thought, I roast the tomatoes to enhance their flavor, why not give the carrots the same treatment? The result is a sweet, chunky, delightfully bright orangey sauce that retains traditional Italian flavors without being boring. As a bonus, the velvety texture that the carrots take on when roasted makes the sauce adhere nicely to the linguine. If you have the base sauce leftover, dinner can be on the table in about 30 minutes…and it’s good for you too!

Linguine Marinara with Roasted Carrots

6-8 whole carrots, peeled and cut into thick chunks

Olive oil

Kosher salt

Cracked pepper

1 - 1 1/2 cups tomato sauce (see recipe below)

1/2 pound linguine

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss the carrots with enough olive oil to coat, and season liberally with salt and pepper. Roast for about 15-20 minutes, until beginning to shrivel. Meanwhile, cook the pasta, and heat the tomato sauce over low. When the carrots are done, place them in the bowl of a food processor and process until paste-like (think baby food texture). Add the carrot puree to the tomato sauce and stir to combine. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary (it may be too sweet and need salt). Serve over linguine, and top with fresh Parmesan.

For the bread:

Hollow out a half-loaf of French bread and fill it with a mixture of chopped Roma tomatoes, garlic, basil leaves, and olive oil, all salted nicely. Wrap in foil and bake at 350 for about 10 minutes. The bread will soak up the juices from the tomatoes–yum! The filling is even better if you make it a few hours early and let it sit for a bit. Slice into rounds and serve with the pasta. This is a terrific meal to serve to your vegetarian friends!

When I was making my first attempts at meal planning, I often ended up buying lots of ingredients that I used only a little of, and then I wouldn’t know what to do with the rest before it went bad. This resulted in expensive grocery bills and a crowded fridge. One of the ways that I learned to compensate for such excess was to plan a week’s worth of meals using similar ingredients and flavors. Planning this way also allowed me to become comfortable with one method of regional cooking by practicing on it for a whole week. Italian week was one of my earliest themed endeavors, and it has stuck around. Tomato-based sauce is so versatile, and so I make a ton of it at the beginning of the week, and use it for different dishes as the week goes on. This week’s menu also serves to prove that I can, indeed, go at least one week without cooking chicken!

Here’s the basic sauce recipe, and then, as the week continues, I’ll tell you how I modify it:

Oven-Roasted Tomato Sauce

3-4 large tomatoes, chopped

Olive oil

Kosher salt

Cracked black pepper

1 large yellow onion, chopped

4-5 cloves garlic, chopped

1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes (I like the Contadina roasted garlic ones)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Arrange the tomatoes on foil-lined baking sheets in a single layer. Drizzle olive oil onto the sheets, and then toss with your hands to make sure all the pieces are coated with oil. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Roast for about 45 minutes, until beginning to blacken around the edges and fall apart. Meanwhile, heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large saucepan (this will hold all of the sauce, so use a big one). Add the chopped onion and garlic and cook over medium-low heat until very soft, but not brown–about 20 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. If they soften before the tomatoes are done, turn the heat off. When the tomatoes are done, scrape them and all their juices

into the pan with the onion and garlic. Turn the heat back up to medium-low, and stir, pressing the tomatoes with the back of your spoon to crush them. Add the canned tomatoes, and simmer this mixture for about 20 minutes.

This sauce will serve as the foundation for all the other mixtures this week. For the lasagna, you will need about 1 1/2 to 2 cups of sauce.

Italian Sausage Lasagna

1 1/2 pounds Italian sausage links (I buy a package of 5 links and use 2 1/2 of them)

2 cups oven-roasted tomato sauce

9-12 uncooked lasagna noodles

1 cup ricotta cheese

1 pkg. sliced provolone (6-8 ounces)

2 cups shredded mozzarella

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Remove the sausage links from their casings, and cook in a large skillet over medium heat until brown, breaking them into small pieces as you cook. Drain off all but about a teaspoon of the grease from the sausage, and add the tomato sauce to the skillet. Cook and stir for about 5 minutes, so that the flavors are combined.

Cover the bottom of a rectangular baking dish with 1/4 of the sausage-sauce mixture. Lay 3-4 noodles directly into the sauce, pressing a bit to make sure they are nestled down nicely in the liquid. Onto each noodle, spoon a few dollops of ricotta cheese. Lay Provolone slices on top of the ricotta, pressing to flatten it. Cover the Provolone with sauce, and start the layers over again. End with the ricotta, and cover the whole dish with the shredded mozzarella. Cover tightly with foil and bake for about an hour, until the cheese is beginning to brown around the edges and bubble.

This is an easy recipe to double and either freeze or take to a neighbor or friend. If we were in Jackson, I’d take the second one to Jessie and Jerrod, but we aren’t, so I took it over to my next-door neighbors who have been housing refugees from New Orleans. I usually make it in a disposable aluminum pan, cover with foil, and write the cooking directions on the foil. That way, the recipient can cook it whenever she feels like it, or freeze it for another occasion.

Reserve the rest of the sauce for the linguine marinara, calzone, and eggplant parmesan.

This is my favorite summer pasta dish. Another Brick-Oven knock-off, this pasta turns up in my kitchen many times over the course of the summer. A couple of weeks ago, the vendor at the Market who sold me these tomatoes told me that would be his last crop until the fall ones came in. In honor of the last summer tomatoes, I decided to fix them in the way I feel best captures their pure flavor. If you can still get your hands on some summer tomatoes, please make this pasta before the season leaves for good. I do wish it would take some of this dreadful humid heat with it when it goes…a breath of fall air would do me some good.

FRESH TOMATOES AND BASIL

1/2 pound angel hair pasta

1 T. butter

2 T. olive oil

6-8 cloves of fresh garlic, sliced thinly

2 pounds fresh, ripe tomatoes chopped

1 cup fresh basil leaves, torn

Kosher salt

Cracked pepper

Parmesan cheese

Cook the pasta until tender and drain. Toss with the butter and set aside. In a medium skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat, until it shimmers. Add the garlic, and cook until it just begins to turn golden, but be careful not to let it burn. Add the tomatoes all at once and coat with the garlicky oil. Salt and pepper well. Lower the heat to medium-low, and cook until the tomatoes’ skins are beginning to shrivel (they should be soft but not mushy). Add half of the basil until just wilted. Pile each plate with a mound of the pasta. Pour the tomatoes on top, making sure to get plenty of the liquid. Top with extra basil leaves and grated Parmesan cheese. Serve with crusty bread (I cook mine right in the skillet after the tomatoes are done; it soaks up the leftover juices and absorbs that garlicky flavor). And, if you are one of those must-have-meat people (or if you cook for one), grilled shrimp or chicken works well in this dish. A quick, easy, and so delicious meal!

Apparently, the Brick-Oven (although the Brick-Oven in Jackson has closed, I understand that there’s a similar restaurant in Greenville, SC, called Trio. If I’m ever in Greenville, I’ll eat there.) has been on my mind this week. This pasta dish is one I also learned to make from the chefs there. On the menu, the entree was called Penne with Goat Cheese and Pine Nuts, but customers always ordered it with angel hair instead, minus the pine nuts, and usually with shrimp or chicken. So my order, when it went to the kitchen, would be called Chicken Goat or Shrimp Goat, which always sounded hilarious to me. I do like to make it with angel hair; the fine noodles are easily coated with the pesto-goat cheese mixture. I think the Brick-Oven recipe also called for spinach, but I always forget that; you can add some to your skillet if you have it.

Just to give you an idea of how many people there are now in the fair city of Baton Rouge, when I went to Calandro’s last week to get my groceries, I got the LAST package of angel hair pasta in the whole store! Traffic is horrendous too, but I try to only travel within my neighborhood. People seem to be in good spirits about it all (some people, anyway); I saw a bumper sticker last week that said: “Traffic is congested, but we’re glad you’re here.” Anyhow, if you have pesto on hand, this is a quick and easy pasta dish, and subject to many variations. Here’s the gist of it:

1 pound angel hair pasta

4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1/2 red onion, thinly sliced

1/2 yellow onion, thinly sliced

1 carton sliced mushrooms (about 2 cups)

1/2 cup chopped Kalamata olives

1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes

Olive oil

Pesto

4 ounces goat cheese

Grilled chicken or shrimp (optional)

Cook the pasta until tender but firm, drain, and toss with some olive oil. Set aside. In a large skillet, cook the garlic and onions over medium heat until the garlic is soft. Add the mushrooms. Continue to cook until the onions begin to brown, about 15 minutes. Add the olives and sun-dried tomatoes (and shrimp or chicken, if you’re adding) and cook another minute or two. Place a nest of oiled noodles on plates and ladle vegetable mixture on top. Finish with a teaspoon-ful of pesto and a handful of crumbled goat cheese. Drizzle once more with olive oil and season with Kosher salt and cracked black pepper. Serves 4-6, depending on how much pasta you can eat in one sitting.

Oh, and just in case you’re keeping up, David killed another one of my plants this week. He took my three-year-old aloe plant out for some sun (the one that’s always been inside), and didn’t bring it back in until most of it’s plump leaves were fried. I must say, though, that I am painting quite a one-sided picture of his gardening abilities; the lovely basil I used to make my pesto would surely be dead by now without his attention, and we have some fun lettuces already poking their heads out in our backyard. He does seem to have it out for plants I’ve been caring for, so maybe I should just leave all the gardening to him! Oh, and one more thing: yesterday, he bought me some more rosemary. Just so you know.

One of the things that I really like about Sara Foster’s new cookbook, Fresh Everyday, is that she gives a lot of what I call template recipes, basic ways to cook, and then lots of ways to vary that basic dish. If you don’t have her cookbooks, I highly recommend them both; I have learned a lot of techniques from them. One particular section demonstrates different ways to make risotto, flavored with seasonal vegetables.

Risotto is one of my favorite things to make with leftovers anyway, and this one with tomatoes and corn suited perfectly what I had in my kitchen this week. If you’ve never made risotto before, don’t be intimidated by all the stirring and adding, stirring and adding. It does take time, but it’s definitely not an exact science, and once you’ve made it a few times, you’ll find yourself getting into the rhythm of how long it takes and how much time you have to do other things while it’s cooking. I use Fontina cheese instead of Parmesan; it makes the risotto even creamier. I also used cooked corn from our grilling night on Monday, in place of the raw kernels.

Risotto with Tomatoes and Corn

3-4 cups vegetable broth (hint: simmer water with stripped corn cobs, onion trimmings, and a lemon)
Olive oil
Butter
1 small yellow onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 ¼ cups Arborio rice
Salt and pepper
½ cup dry white wine
2 large fresh tomatoes, cored and chopped
Kernels from 3 fresh corn cobs (I used the leftover corn from the grilled corn I made on Monday)
A handful of basil leaves OR a tablespoon of basil pesto

In a small saucepan, bring the broth to a boil. Sauté the onion and garlic in about 1 tablespoon each of butter and olive oil until soft in a very large sauté pan. Add the rice to the pan and stir constantly for a few minutes until the rice grains begin to glisten and they are all coated with the oil and butter.

Stir in the white wine until the rice absorbs it, and then begin adding broth ½ cup at a time, until the rice absorbs it too. Stir frequently; when the rice begins to sizzle and there is little liquid in the bottom of the pan, it’s time to add more. Add a little salt and pepper with each batch of liquid. The tricky part is knowing when to stop; you want the rice to be tender, but not too mushy. It usually takes me about 25 minutes of adding liquid and stirring until it’s done, but you should taste the rice to make sure before you add the vegetables. Stir in the chopped tomatoes, corn kernels, and half of the basil or the pesto (or both!). Then, stir in the Fontina until it melts. Serve topped with the extra basil. Season with Kosher salt and pepper. Serves 4 as a main dish.

–Adapted from Sara Foster’s Fresh Every Day: More Great Recipes from Foster’s Market.