Cooking Frenzy

I got fired up today and made granola, blueberry jam, and an Italian supper of salmon, fettucine with peas and saffron, and yellow peppers with mint.

I think this is happening because I'm happy to be home after being away for four of the last six weeks; and also because I've started a regimen of piano practice for a September program, and I love to alternate practice with cooking, just like I did when you were a baby.

The granola was a Joy of Cooking recipe with no sugar or salt, just toasted oatmeal with nuts and dried fruits. I'm looking forward to it for breakfast tomorrow with yogurt.

Blueberries are one dollar a pint now. We've stuffed in all the fresh ones we can eat, so I made a small batch of microwave jam.

In this hot summer weather I turn to Mediterranean recipes. My current favorites are Viana La Place's Verdura and Mireille Johnstons's Cuisine of the Sun.

The pasta was real Italian fettucine, so good after the whole wheat and rice pastas I've been trying to use. Saffron, peas, and green onions were delicious together, garnished with fresh basil. This was also a Viana La Place recipe.

Here is La Place's yellow pepper recipe. I couldn't handle her advice to garnish the peppers with raw garlic, so I added the garlic to the skillet for a few minutes at the end of the cooking time.



Fried Yellow Peppers with Mint
2 fat yellow or orange bell peppers
3 tablespoons olive oil
Salt to taste
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 large clove garlic, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint

Trim the peppers and sliver them lengthwise. Heat the olive oil until very hot and add the peppers, stirring until they have brown spots. Reduce heat, add salt, and cook covered until they are tender. A minute or so before they are done, stir in the garlic.

Off heat, add the vinegar, check seasoning, and stir in the mint. Serve at room temperature.

Pasta Puttanesca

I had a couple of episodes of stomach pain in the last week, which prompted me to look up my symptoms on the internet. All articles advised me to examine my intake of alcohol and caffeine--uh oh.

So I began to follow Dr. Andrew Weil's anti-inflammatory food pyramid, which advises among other things to drink only green tea for caffeine, and up to two glasses of red wine per day. And we are not cooking meat at home, only fish and vegetarian for a while. I hate to admit that I feel practically reborn. I'll try this for a while since it's easy and allows for almost all of the things I like (although I did not see margaritas on that list).

Last night we had collard greens from the garden, and Pasta Puttanesca. I hadn't made that for a while--so easy and full of flavor. This is revised from Joy of Cooking. I used brown rice pasta.

Pasta Puttanesca

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 teaspoon dried red chile flakes

Saute the garlic and chile in the olive oil until lightly colored. Add:

1/2 to 1 cup chopped pitted olives (Kalamata or oil-cured)

6 anchovy fillets, rinsed and chopped

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

Cook another minute. Then stir in:

1 one-pound can crushed tomatoes

Simmer for five minutes. Finish with:

3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

2 tablespoons capers

Salt and pepper to taste

Toss with cooked pasta.

Eating in the New Year

This whole January 1st meal was a New Year's resolution: pasta e fagioli (I used black-eyed peas for good luck); low-gluten bread; and a very fresh green salad.

Recently I've been making a very satisfactory bread of 1/3 unbleached wheat flour, 1/3 whole spelt flour, and 1/3 gluten-free baking mix and cornmeal. This recipe wouldn't work for anyone actually allergic to wheat, but it's a very digestible compromise for us.

And aren't Dad's winter salad greens gorgeous?

Winter Summer Pasta

It's mid-December, so all our garden herbs are dead except mint and parsley...so I made pasta with mint and parsley. I do what I can to feel alive during the winter.

Cook very slowly in a big pan until light gold:

• 3 or more cloves garlic, sliced
• Several T olive oil

Add:

• some vermouth
• a can of diced tomatoes
• red chile flakes
  

Cook slowly until flavors blend, but don't let tomatoes get that cooked flavor -- maybe 12 minutes?

Add:

• 1/3 cup ricotta
• a handful of chopped fresh mint
• a handful of chopped fresh parsley
• lots of pepper
• salt

The ricotta should be just enough to make the sauce a little thicker and richer -- it shouldn't be a cream sauce.

Don't put on as much Parmesan cheese as Lawson did above.

Simple Anchovy Pasta

Speaking of anchovies, as you were a couple of posts ago, I made an anchovy pasta from Kathleen Sloan's Rustic Italian Cooking yesterday.

Cook pasta for two. Meanwhile (such a loaded word in a recipe--"meanwhile", kill and dress a chicken and harvest and grind some wheat), heat 3 tablespoons olive oil and saute 3 cloves sliced garlic for 2 minutes. Stir in 6 canned anchovy fillets or rolls, 1/4 cup chopped parsley, and 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes and cook a couple of minutes more. Mash with spoon. Add to drained pasta, toss, and season to taste with salt and pepper. I topped it with Parmesan cheese.

We also had Brussels sprouts with mustard cream, and a tomato salad.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara

I got a pretty kitchen scale for my birthday.

I have of course read a lot about spaghetti alla carbonara, but I'd never tried it. Never knew quite what to think. But Emile was selling pancetta at the farmers market the other week, so we bought some and made spaghetti with pancetta and eggs and cheese.

I have to say, it wasn't my thing. Even with tons of parsley, which Lawson said correctly was key to the dish, it lacked any redeeming green-ness. It was too intense. Lawson, who has made it many times before, didn't like the pancetta as much as the plain old bacon he's used before.

I have used the pancetta since in other ways, and it's glorious. I cooked it with some collards last week. But maybe not so much with the eggs and parmesan and pasta.

Homemade Pasta with Pesto and Green Beans

The pesto Lawson made over the weekend was so fresh and good and perfumey that I decided it deserved some homemade pasta. The combination of pesto, homemade pasta, and green beans is not untraditional (though I skipped the potatoes).

The pasta recipe (from both Marcella Hazan and Jack Bishop) was simple: 1 cup of flour and two eggs, mixed in a food processor and then kneaded by hand. I ended up adding a good bit more flour during the kneading and rolling, but stiff pasta dough is not a bad thing.

After reading Ms. Hazan's rant in More Classic Italian Cooking about how pasta machines are evil, I nonetheless pulled out Lawson's lovely old hand-cranked Atlas pasta machine and proceeded to make some fettucine. Here it is waiting to be cooked. The local eggs I used had vibrant, almost orange yolks, which made the raw pasta a lovely yellow.

We had it with the barest salad: red romaine, lemon juice, salt, olive oil, and pepper.

Camping at Edisto

Here is our campsite at Edisto Island, South Carolina, where Lawson grilled local shrimp and we walked on lovely trails. The first night we had pasta with sausage accompanied by Brussels sprouts with a mustard sauce.

Tuna-Caper Pasta Sauce

From the department of Really Easy Late Night Dinners, here's some tuna-caper pasta sauce I made yesterday.

Lawson has a long tradition of kitchen-sink-style pasta dishes, usually containing tomatoes, canned tuna or clams, olives, parsley -- whatever's around. He hasn't made one in a while, though, and I wanted one, so I made my own version. It turned into a much more traditional Italian rendition than his usually are.

It's not a very tomato-ey sauce -- don't expect it to be red. The rich tuna flavor and the bright capers should be the dominant flavors. The garlic is more like a base.

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1-2 tablespoons garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup vermouth
• 2 cans tuna, with juice
• 1 tablespoon capers
• regular (14.5 oz) can diced or stewed tomatoes, seasoned or plain
• salt
• pepper
• small handful parsley, chopped

Saute the garlic very slowly over medium-low heat until light golden. Add the rest of the ingredients except the parsley and simmer slowly until flavors blend, 10-30 minutes. The sauce should be fairly wet; it very easily gets absorbed into the pasta.

If you like, you can roast a pan full of diced eggplant at 450 degrees while you're making the sauce, then toss the eggplant in with the pasta and sauce. In that case, make sure the sauce is really wet.

I used bowtie pasta and several garden eggplants. It was enough for two dinners and one leftover lunch -- perfect.

Scallops and Pasta

Here's an easy way to fix scallops, especially little Bay scallops.

Toast some pine nuts, chop 1/4 cup fresh basil, and set those aside. Start the water boiling and cook the pasta.

Meanwhile, heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet. Saute 1/2 red bell pepper, 1/2 green bell pepper, and 3 chopped cloves of garlic. When they are starting to get tender, add 3/4 pound of Bay scallops and continue to cook for 1 or 2 minutes. Add 1/4 cup vermouth, 1 tablespoon strong smelly fish sauce, and the juice of 1 lemon and boil hard for a minute or less until the scallops are cooked. Salt and pepper to taste.

Serve the pasta topped with the scallop mixture, garnished with the basil and pine nuts.

Mountain Macaroni

Unlike the last time we went to the mountains, we brought food this weekend and cooked it.

It was a fairly eventful trip: our friends Ken and Melanie and their baby came. When we got up to the house Friday night the power had been off for several days, long enough for all the food in the freezers and fridges to spoil and for various horrendous goos and oozes to leak out all over the kitchen floor. We started up the generator, and the power company restored the power a few short hours after Lawson called them, and we avoided opening the fridge all night. The next day Mel and I cleaned it out, which involved throwing out a lot of economy sized tubs of mayonnaise and frozen shrimp and rancid orange juice concentrate. Also some odoriferous baby back ribs. Yuck.

Otherwise we were fine: we hiked, we drank, we pulled ticks off the dog.

Lawson smoked some ribs. They were salty and delicious. I steamed some okra. Lawson made a salad of Vidalia onions, red bell pepper, cucumbers, lemon, olive oil, and blue cheese.

And I made Southern macaroni and cheese, the baked kind.

I've had plenty of variations, eaten it at potlucks and holidays and barbecue joints, but I never knew much about it. Melanie explained to me that there are a few major schools of mac and cheese preference: the egg school and the creamy school. Lawson's family is the former, as is Ken's. Mel's family is split, with Mel in the creamy camp. I tend to like creamier kinds, I guess, especially because prior to moving down here I considered "macaroni and cheese" a synonym for "Kraft dinner." But I understand the appeal of egg.

I've made lame mac and cheeses in the past by following various recipes, so this time I decided not to use one, and I was very happy. I made a pretty good hybrid of the two styles unintentionally. I'm almost embarrassed to write it down, Mom...it is calorific redneck hiking food, that's for sure.

Mountain Macaroni

Cook about 12 oz. macaroni until not quite al dente.

Meanwhile, saute in olive oil until soft:
- one small fresh onion, diced
- one small fresh red chile or bell pepper (I used a mild Anaheim), diced

Remove to a bowl. Mix in:
- 1 cup half and half
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
- several T mayonnaise
- salt and pepper to taste
- 12 oz (1.5 smallish blocks) sharp cheddar, cut into cubes

Mix all together with the pasta; pour into big casserole dish; bake at 350 degrees for about half an hour.

On the Road Again

We just returned from driving to Alaska and back--10,000 miles and a morally reprehensible amount of gas--but we get good mileage in more ways than one!

Here is a typical camper meal of sausage pasta sauce served over fried polenta slices with Brussels sprouts on the side. We were staying at Big Lagoon County Park in California (because the California state parks don't allow dogs on their trails).

On Clams

Clams are so fun to cook with. This wasn't the most successful dish I've ever invented, but I love the magic of clams: you add to your sauce a bunch of rocklike chunks sealed up tight and cold, turn the heat up, cover the pan and hold down the lid, and a few minutes later you open it to find gaping, iridescent shells full of moist clam meat completely filling the pan. It has all the drama of a souffle.

I thought this would be like a Portuguese version of linguini with clam sauce. And it might have worked had the chard been milder, but it was really strong locally grown chard. The bacon was local, too -- from Caw Caw Creek, wonderfully brick red when cooked even though it looked fatty when raw. The clams were delicious, nothing at all like the chewy bits in a can of clams, but were somewhat overpowered by the chard. I used garlic, too, and dried red chile and salt and black pepper and vermouth, and it was completely edible but not amazing.

Next time I find fresh clams I will try a more classic recipe.

On a related note, it will be interesting to see how cooking and eating change now that I'll be working from home more of the time. On the one hand, I won't be compelled to eat just because it's lunchtime, and I won't be eating sandwichy things from delis. And we don't really buy prepared food for home; except for cheese and fruit, just about everything here requires some cooking or preparation.

On the other hand, when I was writing about bacon just a moment ago, I realized that I definitely wanted bacon for breakfast/lunch (usually one and the same for me), and here I am at home with a stove and a fridge full of bacon, and so very soon I will be sitting down to a lunch of bacon, toast, and yogurt with strawberries.

Very Funny Raspberry Vinaigrette (and Sausage Pasta)

I've made this salad dressing a few times--it makes me laugh. I've had raspberry vinaigrette in restaurants, and I've bought pricey bottled versions. But now since we always have raspberry syrup on hand from Christmas gifts, I mix a couple of tablespoons of it with any vinegar-and-oil dressing, and voila! I cut it with a little wine vinegar if it's too cloying, and add some olive oil if it's too sharp. It's good. Last night's salad was red lettuce, oranges, walnuts, green onions, feta cheese, and the above raspberry vinaigrette.

I also made a pasta sauce with spicy Italian chicken sausage, bell peppers, garlic, and tomato--fresh herbs--and served it over brown rice linguine.

Easy Pasta with Canned Clams, Tomatoes, and Caramelized Peppers

Just yesterday we found fresh clams from the South Carolina coast; the guy who sells local shrimp at the all-local farmers’ market had brought up clams and softshell crabs, but he was out of the crabs by the time we got to him. The clams were lovely -– I made a pasta sauce of local chard, bacon, and clams that was okay-tasting but so, so beautiful to look at.

Anywhere, here’s what you do when you don’t have fresh local clams. I made this up recently and will make it again.

Cook slowly in 1 T olive oil over medium-low heat:
- 1 or 2 yellow, orange, or red peppers, sliced
- Several cloves garlic, sliced

When sweet and browned, add:
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes, some halved, or other tomatoes
- 5 saffron threads
- 1 bay leaf

Cook down slightly. Add and simmer, tasting for proper salting:
- ½ cup dry white wine
- Juice from two cans of clams (tuna can-sized)
- Red pepper flakes
- Pepper and salt to taste

Stir in clams from the cans at the end. Add parsley if you have it. Serve over pasta.

We also had artichokes. In the past I’ve served them the way you did when I was a kid, stem down. But the ones I bought had several inches of beautiful stem, and I read that in Europe they’re sometimes served the other way, stem up. So I did that. They were tasty.

Cafeteria Night

Mmmm: manicotti and slightly overdone broccoli. Lately I've had a compulsion to recreate classic cafeteria foods. I made spaghetti and meatballs a few weeks ago, and it tasted eerily like 4th grade lunch. We made green bean casserole for Lawson's mom. So far I have felt no urge to make that soggy pizza topped with ground beef, cheddar, and tomato paste, though.

We'd had these manicotti noodles in the pantry for too long, so I made some ricotta-parsley filling and doctored up some jarred pasta sauce, and here we are. It was pretty tasty in a generic sort of way. The broccoli was this recipe, but slightly overboiled for proper effect (okay, it was actually totally accidental, but it worked out).

So far, though, none of my almost-accidental cafeteria nostalgia has yet approached the glories of the Mid-Century Supper Club.

Asparagus Salad Pasta

Not pasta salad -- salad pasta. Pasta with salad in it. I like noodles a lot, but I like them better cut with greenery and fiber. I love Thai and Vietnamese noodle dishes with lettuce in them, and I wondered if I could make a good Americanized noodle with green leaves. So I made this, which was really, really good.

Beat one egg in a bowl with a pinch of salt. Then beat in a bunch of olive oil. Really -- up to 1/3 cup.

Cut one bunch asparagus into 3" lengths (2 to 3 pieces per stalk), toss or spray with olive oil, and roast at 500 degrees for 6 to 10 minutes, until sizzling, cooked through, and just beginning to color. Toss in with the egg and oil.

Make a small amount of pasta -- maybe 1/3 of a standard box. I used linguine snapped in half. Drain and immediately toss with the asparagus, egg, and oil. The pasta should be hot enough to cook the egg.

Add salt to taste, a bunch of pepper, and about 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg -- just the tiniest bit.

Add 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice and a few shreds of zest.

Toss in a few ounces of grated Parmesan and/or Asiago cheese.

Mix in several large handfuls of mixed small greens or red romaine torn into small pieces. It should wilt slightly.

Serves 2 as a small main dish.

Broiled Radicchio Pasta

Your roasted pasta post, along with the lovely radicchio I bought the other day, inspired me to make this pasta last night. I love broiled or grilled radicchio -- it's so bitter and sweet and weird. So I made this easy and delicious dish in whcih the fresh mozzarella is sweet enough to balance out the radicchio's intensity. It made me feel better about winter. It would have been good with some wilted spinach or another sweet green, I think.

1. Roast a few cloves of garlic. I like to peel them, put them in a coffee mug or ramekin, and cover them with olive oil, then roast the whole thing at 250 degrees for 35 or 40 minutes -- that way you get some leftover garlic olive oil and can be happy. But the method you use here is faster (with a "hot oven" being only 300 or 325 in my case).

2. Soak about 10 sun-dried tomatoes in warm water (or not, if using oil-packed). When soft, dice up and mix with mashed gooey roasted garlic in big serving bowl.

3. Quarter the radicchio and brush it with olive oil. Broil or grill until quite brown but not charred, turning several times.

4. Make pasta. I used ziti.

5. Drain hot pasta and toss in big bowl with garlic and sun-dried tomatoes.

6. Add salt and pepper to taste and olive oil to moisten. Then toss in:

- 1 ball fresh mozzarella, cubed
- 2-3 tablespoons Parmesan
- the chunks of broiled radicchio

Fresh herbs would be good but it's winter and I don't have any.

That's it!

Roasted Cherry Tomato and Garlic Pasta

Susan told me how to make this when we were visiting them in Texas last week. She just gave me the general idea, so I hope this is what she meant. It was great, anyway.

Roasted Cherry Tomato and Garlic Pasta

2 cups cherry tomatoes

1 head of garlic, cloves separated but not peeled

Roast the garlic and cherry tomatoes in a hot oven for 20 or 30 minutes, or until garlic is soft and the tomatoes have collapsed and charred.

2 servings penne or other pasta

1 tablespoon olive oil

Pasta water

Red chile flakes to taste

Salt, pepper

Cook the pasta. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a skillet. Squeeze the garlic out of the skins into the skillet and mash them into the oil. Add the cherry tomatoes and do the same. Put in a few tablespoons of pasta water to form a sauce. Season with red chile flakes, salt, and pepper to taste.

2 to 4 cups arugula leaves
Parmesan cheese

Drain pasta, but not too thoroughly, and toss with the sauce. Add arugula and toss until wilted. Serve at once, topped with grated Parmesan.

Pasta with Italian Sausage

No, we didn't eat the dog. We adopted her, and that's why I haven't posted much this week. I've been exhausted and, I'm sorry to say, eating nothing very interesting -- pizza from our local Greek pizza joint; lettuce with salad dressing and nuts; cereal; grilled cheese sandwiches. I'm ready to get back to cooking more.

A few nights ago, though, I made a pasta sauce with Italian sausage, red peppers, onions, oregano, basil, and tomatoes. On Lawson's recommendation I added fennel seeds, some dried red peppers, and parsley. It was good. I love sausage because I love the idea of meat as seasoning rather than giant chunk of main ingredient.