Garden Treats: Basil Pasta, Zuchinni, and Mashed Turnips

Back to some food pictures.
Here's a picture of a recent meal that Ken whipped up one evening with produce from our garden and the local farmer's market.

He made homemade basil pasta with some of the massive amounts of basil we've harvested from the garden and a sweet tomato sauce to top it. The zuchini dish was just amazing - I've never had anything quite like it - and can't wait for Ken to make it again before zuchini season is over. The mashed turnips had a really unique flavor but the texture was not as creamy as regular mashed potatoes. I think next time we'll try half potato/half turnip and see what we get.

Hope everyone's summer is going well and that you've all been able to enjoy some of the abundance of amazing summer produce.

Ravioli

Apologies again for being bad about posting. I have a whole bunch of images just waiting to be put on-line but I seem to be continually pre-occupied with this whole school thing... and sleeping. Sleeping is nice.

In any case, I thought I'd put up some photos of a recent visit from a couple friends of ours. We had a lovely weekend with them and spent a lot of time playing cards, drinking, and catching up. On Saturday night, we decided to make ravioli as its sort of a fun and interactive dish. In fact, making ravioli always reminds me a bit of doing arts and crafts during day camp... except that you can eat your final project. Hmmm, well I guess arts and crafts often involve dry pasta, which technically you could eat... and there are always some kids that eat a bit of paste... but I'm sure this final project tastes way better.
Anyway.

We started the meal with a scrumptious fresh cesear salad with homemade crutons and dressing (see above). Ken made the pasta and the fillings but we all worked together to stuff them. The fillings were a shitaki mushroom and cream filling, a chevre and savory filling, and a roasted corn and peppercorn cheese filling. The fillings were all pretty amazing and we ended up eating the extra with spoons. Once the pasta was cooked, we tossed it with butter and roasted garlic and served it with green beans. The three raviolis went together very well and melted in your mouth. Mmmm. To the left you can see pasta pictures and Friel and John putting the ravioli together. I also have other pictures of homemade pasta from different dinners, so I hope to write a more detailed account of how to make pasta when I post about one of those meals.

Take care and I'll try to post again soon.

Penne with Sausage, Shiitake and Portobello Mushrooms, and Zinfandel

I made this dish the other night while Ken was at work. It was delicious and not very difficult to make. The recipe itself is based off of a recipe found in The Wine Lover's Cookbook written by Sid Goldstein. Ken and I like this cookbook quite a bit. I originally found it in the sale section of a bookstore, leafed through it, and was drawn to the detailed explanations of wine and food pairing. While many of the recipes are a little too complex for a beginner and call for rare and sometimes expensive ingredients, there are a number of innovative and really quite remarkable recipes as well. A number of our favorite dishes were directly inspired by recipes in this book. I would certainly recommend that a dedicated cook check this cookbook out... but vegetarians beware, most of the recipes involve meat or seafood.

Here's this recipe.

12 oz. Italian sausage
2 T olive oil
1 1/2 C chopped yellow onion
4 cloves garlic, chopped
8 nice shiitake mushrooms
(original recipe calls for 2 oz. dried porcini)
3-4 portobello mushrooms
1 T crumbled dried rosemary
1 T dried thyme
2 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp fresh black pepper
1 1/2 C Zinfandel
(original recipe calls for Syrah)
1 C chicken stock
4 tomatoes diced
(can use 2 cans of diced tomatoes)
2 T tomato paste
shredded Asiago cheese to top

1 lb. dried Penne

Saute the sausage over medium heat until browned. Remove the sausage with a slotted spoon and reserve (pat dry with paper towels).

Heat the olive oil and saute the onions and garlic until the onions are translucent (approx. 5 min). Add the mushrooms, herbs, salt and pepper and continue to saute until the mushrooms start to soften and cook down (4-6 minutes).

Add the wine and bring it to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the wine is reduced by half. In a saucepan, start heating water for the pasta.

Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, and chicken stock. Simmer until the tomatoes soften (10-15 minutes). Add the pasta to the boiling pot of water sometime while the sauce is cooking. When the sauce is at the desired consistency, add the sausage and heat through. Salt and pepper to taste.

Drain the pasta and add the sauce. Mix thoroughly (for the picture, I didn't mix the pasta and sauce which was sort of silly. It tastes better all mixed together and is very pretty as well.)

Top with shredded Asiago cheese and serve with Syrah or Zinfandel.

Pan-Fried Tilapia with Salsa Verde and Spinach and Tomato Pilaf

I don't really have much of a story for this recipe. We wanted to have fish for dinner one night last week and Ken came up with this recipe. We chose tilapia because it is a mild-flavored and affordable fish. Most tilapias, according to Ken who knows a lot about fish for some reason*, are omnivores. This means that they are easy to raise in fish farms and the flavor difference between wild and farmed tilapia is small.

The dish turned out quite well and the contrast between the salsa verde and the mild fish and rice was tantalizing. Unfortunately, the final pictures did not turn out as well as usual for a few reasons (which include things like pan frying instead of deep frying, which yields a less evenly coated batter; the similarly mottled appearance of each component of the final plate; over-sized portions; and an impatient and starving photographer.)
Huh. I guess I did have something to say after all. In any case, I've included a recipe below.

Spinach and Tomato Rice:

When Ken makes rice, he usually begins by sweating some small onion pieces over low heat in a saucepan with a bit of oil. Once the onions turn translucent, he adds the rice and fries it for a bit over high heat (stirring frequently). When the rice turns a sort of pearly color, then he adds the appropriate amount of water, brings the pot up to a boil, covers the pot, and puts it in the oven at 350 until it is cooked (20-30 minutes). I always used to make rice on top of the stove, but I have been completely converted to this method of making rice. Not only do you save stove space, you avoid having to watch for boiling over and the rice NEVER burns to the bottom of the saucepan. Its amazing. If you don't cook rice this way, you should. (If you don't want onions in the rice just leave them out and lightly fry the rice before adding water.)


In any case, this rice was slightly more complicated than what I've described above. Before Ken added the water to the rice, he also added about 1 C of diced tomato and fried the tomato with the rice/onions until they were a little soft. He then added a bay leaf and the water and put the covered saucepan in the oven. Once the rice was cooked, he removed the pan from the oven and set it on the stove to cool. He opened the lid and added several large handfuls of fresh spinach and covered the pan again. The spinach began to wilt while the rice cooled. Once the spinach was a bit wilted he tossed the spinach into the rice until evenly mixed and added salt and pepper to taste.

Salsa Verde

10 tomatillos
1 medium white onion
poblano chillies (or favorite green chili) to taste
fresh cilantro to taste
lime juice
salt
pepper
sugar to taste (very little- just enough to cut the bitterness of the lime)

Roast the tomatillos in the oven until they are soft and the skin starts to have dark spots. Let them cool and then put everything in a food processor and blend until it is of the desired consistency. Cool in refrigerator.

Pan-Fried Tilapia

To make the tilapia, ken cleaned and washed the fish and then evenly coated it with corn flakes. He lightly fried the fish in oil over the stove.

So that's all seems easy enough, huh?
It was a nice refreshing meal on a summer's day and really didn't take too long. Plus, we had mad left over salsa verde which was very nice.


*Ken wanted me to point out that "some reason" is actually that he enjoys fishing as a hobby and that it is also part of his job to know about the fish he cooks. I maintain that all of those rationales were adequately covered by the more general category of "some reason". Nevertheless, now I've explained it all and everyone feels happier. Relationships are all about compromise folks.

Marinara Sauce Attempt

While there are some fantastic advantages to dating a cook, there are some disadvantages as well. I get spoiled with amazing food, on-site food expertise, and someone who enjoys doing a lot of the cooking work (in a quarter of the time it would take me). That may not sound like much of a disadvantage, but it means that when my chef is at work (which as anyone in the restaurant industry knows-- is a lot of the time), then I am at loose ends in my kitchen and often scrounging for edible scraps.

Today, I found myself searching through the fridge and trying to decide whether the jar of pickles or the last ancient fossilized piece of pizza called to me more. As it was already a good 90+ degrees in my kitchen, I figured "hey, what's a little more heat" and began making pasta. Of course, there was no sauce in the house, just noodles, so I attempted to whip up a quick marinara sauce in the stifling heat.

First I chopped an onion and 4 cloves of garlic. I began sautéing the onions in a bit of butter and olive oil while I chopped some carrots and some fresh basil and oregano from my wilting herb plants. (I would have added fresh thyme as well, but my chef, it turns out, is not as gifted with plants as he is with food and it died while I was away camping.)

I added the garlic to the pan for a bit, and then added the carrots and herbs. Then, I poured about 1/2 cup of an old opened red wine into the pan and let it cook off.

I added a can of diced, unflavored tomatoes (I know, I know, but I didn't want to run to the store for fresh tomatoes) and let the whole thing simmer while I started the pasta. I also added a bit of water, a large pinch of brown sugar, salt, pepper, and a few additional spices. Once the carrots were soft, I used an emulsion blender to make the sauce smooth.


I finished the pasta and ate. It wasn't as good as a 5 course gourmet meal but it was certainly better than gnawing on old pizza.




After cooking something, I often discuss the recipe and technique with Ken. He has a lot of helpful comments and usually manages to not sound patronizing. I've written a few of his suggestions below.

-dice the veggies very small
-use celery as well as carrot and onion
-sweat the vegetables in a bit of butter until they're completely soft and starting to brown
-then add garlic (raw or roasted as is your preference)
-add any whole dry spices
-use a bit of tomato paste and brown it in the pan
-use fresh tomatoes if possible
-use granulated sugar instead of brown (although, personally, I prefer the smokey molasses taste so I'm not changing that)
-also ken says to use ground beef (he's a really big fan of meat... as a matter of fact this is where his helpful comments ended because he started ranting about how delicious different meats were.)