We were in the city for the weekend (eating a variety of Asian takeout, plus a good brunch at my favorite Williamsburg Italian place) so tonight’s dinner was a study in the intersection between fast and delicious, using available staples. Eggs can often mean the difference between good and great, so since we had some I made pasta (no flavors, just basic) and pulled a jar of our strained yellow cherry tomato purée from the…
Category: Pasta
Sometimes having nothing easy in the fridge can be a jumping-off point for a much better meal than the standard go-to things that I grab or make by default. In this case, as with Easter breakfast, a couple of eggs saved my bacon. I mixed up some pasta dough, and while it was chilling in the fridge I took Tuscan kale, pine nuts, feta, garlic, and lemon juice and spun them all in the food…
Sunday seemed like a good day to do some cooking, since we were all kind of tired and it was the kind of blah day that inspires nesting. Milo found the last of our (uncut, still fine) Halloween pumpkins and wanted to make pumpkin pie. In addition, I wanted to turn the rest of the pork stew meat into sausage, and make more fresh pasta. So I busted out my Mom’s old Kitchen Aid and…
John and Debi brought Tim (up for the weekend from FL) for a decadent dinner. I made the food; John brought the wine. That was the deal. Normally with multi-course meals I can see the dishes in my head beforehand, but in this case they were a little blurry until just a few hours before dinner. Most of it came out pretty well, though I had to scrap one course and I forgot to add…
One of the problems with Thanksgiving is that it’s easy to eat badly for days beforehand since all the time and effort in the kitchen are in the service of delayed gratification. So this evening, after much toil on prep, I whipped up a quick roux-thickened, pancetta enriched milk and tomato sauce with some minced dried porcini, dried tomatoes, garlic and herbs and tossed penne in it, followed by a bag of our frozen peas.…
A perennial favorite, and great kid food that also satisfies a more sophisticated adult palate, I find that this is one of those dishes- like penne all’arrabiata- that is deceptively hard to get just right. The key (apart from cooking the pasta properly) is the integration of the various strong flavors into a near-seamless whole within a sauce that has to be just reduced and oily enough to coat the pasta. When it’s done right,…
That’s pretty much it. All homegrown, except the pasta; I used the last of the homemade butter in place of olive oil. The chard turned the pasta pink.
An easy but decadent one tonight: fat tomato with salt and oil, mash, chard, and whole wheat spaghetti with a sauce of Fleisher’s ground beef & bacon mix (it’s freakin’ genius, especially for burgers) and more tomatoes & herbs. A Magnien Bourgogne rosé completed the picture (along with Milo.)
Chris is on the road, so Sirkka and Nissa came over to hang out on a rainy, even chilly afternoon. A trip to the store yielded a bag of Cape Cod mussels, and some spinach fettucine. The garden gave carrot, fennel, celery, shallot, and green onion plus basil, parsley, thyme, and oregano. A few slices of guanciale got the pan going, and all the rest of the veggies sweated until soft. Then wine, mussels, and…