A Box of Great Meals

Last night we managed to polish off our first half-share box from our CSA. Here's how we did it:

Asparagus Risotto

Crispy Noodle Cake with Kale and Mushrooms (we included our single CSA garlic scape, minced)

Grilled Spring Onions

Green Salad with Bloody Mary Dressing

Strawberries for breakfast

As we move into the summer, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to finish a boxful of vegetables and fruit in a week, but we promise to give it our best shot.

Broccoli Pesto: Low-Fat, Vegan, Extremely Tasty

We love pesto. On pasta, or on pizza. However, there are two potential problems with it. 1. Basil is not available most of the year. 2. If you're watching your cholesterol, the wonderful parmesan edge in traditional pesto is no-no if consumed too often.

We came across this broccoli pesto recipe in a Vegetarian Times eLetter the other day and altered it just a bit. We expected blah pesto and were more than pleasantly surprised by how good it was. The bonus is that it's also vegan, meaning no dairy, and low-fat — without tasting like it's food penance.

Broccoli Pesto on Pasta
3/4 cup toasted walnuts (toast them in a hot skillet, flipping almost constantly so they don't burn). Save a few for garnish.
(The VegTimes recipe calls for blanched hazelnuts, but we didn't have any on hand.)
2 cups broccoli florets (1 small bunch was about right)
1-1/2 cup loosely packed parsley leaves (we chopped the stems off a supermarket bunch)
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup mint leaves (fresh from our yard because you can't kill this plant)
4 tsp lemon juice (1 juicy lemon or 1-1/2 regular lemons)
1-1/2 tsp grated lemon zest (about 1 lemon's worth)
1-1/2 tsp capers (VT says rinsed and drained and optional, but we threw them in from the jar)
3 large garlic cloves (VT said 5, but 3 was about right for us; 5 for real garlic LOVERS)
1 tsp salt
1 lb bowtie or ziti or other pasta (VT called for 12 oz. but we found 1 lb just right)

1. Toast the nuts 3-5 miutes in a skillet or until golden brown. Chop very coarsely and set aside.
2. Boil a large pot of water. Blanch/cook broccoli in boiling water until tender, maybe 3 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon, rinse with cold water, set aside.
3. In a food processor, pulse nuts, broccoli, parsley, oil, mint, lemon juice, lemon zest, capers, garlic and salt. Use a little cooking water if too thick. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
4. Cook pasta. Reserve cooking water.
5. Toss pasta with pesto. Add small amounts (1/4 cup at a time) of cooking water if too thick. (It should be thick, but it should coat the pasta.) Garnish with a few nuts. Drizzle with a little olive oil.

6. Open a bottle of crisp, rich white wine or a red Zinfandel — something that can stand up to garlicky, rich, strong green sauce — and enjoy as a main dish or as a filling side.

Surprise Dinner Guests? Try This!

We've all been there: Beloved pals drop by for a surprise visit around dinnertime, and although you're delighted to see them, you're not sure what to feed them. Ro Ann Redlin rides to the aid of Eat Well, Eat Cheap readers with this quick, easy, delicious dish:


She notes, "If you have a well-stocked larder, this should be no problem. Suspend your thoughts about anchovies. The anchovies will dissipate in this recipe, leaving a deep, smoky flavor." 


Ro Ann didn't provide a name for this dish, so we kicked around a few, including Pearl Harbor Pasta and Apache Linguine. But finally, in the interests of offending as few readers as possible, we decided upon a name that seemed to describe the ingredients as well as the circumstances:


Delightful Surprise Linguine 

7 to 8 ounces dry linguine
high-quality olive oil
2 to 4 ounces good bottled or canned anchovies
2 cloves minced garlic
chopped flat leaf parsley to garnish



1. Cook linguine until al dente (it will continue cooking a bit), drain, and turn into a large pan. 


2. Add anchovies and olive oil to taste. The pasta should be nicely coated. Cook until the anchovies "melt" and add the minced garlic at the very end. 


Serves 3 to 4. 


Note: Do not add cheese. Anchovies and Parmesan are both 'braggarts'' and together can overwhelm your dish.

Video Recipe: Pasta with Pumpkin, Sausage and Kale

Here's another video recipe by our friend John Ross. This one was shot for Fine Cooking magazine. Now you have something to do with those leftover jack o lanterns. The recipe is for pasta with pumpkin, sausage and kale. Click the link or the video arrow below.

Pasta with Tapenade and Veggies

Back in Connecticut, in the days when we visited more restaurants, we loved Carole Peck's Good News Café in Woodbury. Carole specializes in fresh, organic ingredients and always offers a selection of great vegetarian dishes. We adopted one of our favorites for home use, and over the years it has evolved into a dish we make any time we have nice firm green vegetables on hand—a big bunch of asparagus, say, or a bag of velvety green beans.

The recipe features three ingredients: very small pasta (sometimes known as "soup pasta"), such as tubettini or ditalini; a lightly boiled green vegetable; and a dollop of tapenade. You can prepare it in the time it takes to cook the pasta.

Pasta with Tapenade and Veggies

1 pound small pasta (such as tubettini, ditalini, or acini de pepe)
1 pound or so firm green vegetable (green beans, asparagus, and broccoli all work well), cut into bite-size pieces
3/4 cup tapenade (you may want more or less—if  you're not sure, start with a half cup and work up from there)
2 T. olive oil

1. Start boiling water for pasta and the veggies. You can cook the veggies in the pasta water before cooking the pasta, if you like, or you can use a separate pot to speed things up.

2. While the water is heating, trim and cut the vegetables. Cook them if you are using two pots for the pasta and veggies.

3. If you don't have tapenade on hand, now is a good time to make some.

4. When the water comes to a boil, toss in your pasta and cook until done. Drain it, place it in a good-size bowl, and toss it with the olive oil. Then add the veggies and tapenade, mixing thoroughly.

You can serve this either hot or at room temperature. Feeds four moderate eaters or two to three people of strong appetite.

Squash Pasta: An Autumn Delight

This is the time of year that our gardens and grocery stores are displaying a bounty of winter squash. Acorn. Butternut. Pumpkin. Spaghetti. And heirloom varieties of all kinds.

Our solution to this wealth of Cucurbita maxima from Central America used to be the tried and true Baked Squash with Butter and Maple Syrup. We got tired of it and, frankly, never like it THAT much. Last week we gave you a wonderful recipe for Pumpkin Soup.

Here's an idea that Tim's brother Ron picked up at a cooking class. It sounds weird, and looks a little boring. But it is very complex and works as either a vegetarian main dish or as a main if you add shredded poulty: Pasta with Squash Sauce.

Cut a large (3 lbs.) squash of any winter variety in half lengthwise, spoon out the seeds and bake cut side down in a 350-degree oven with a sprig of Thyme and a clove of garlic underneath and a drizzle of olive oil over the top. Test for doneness by spearing with a knife. It might take about 30-45 minutes depending upon the size and shape of the squash.

Spoon the squash meat and the garlic cloves into a food processor (remove the thyme sprigs). Add 3/4 cup of vegetable stock (you could use chicken stock), 2 Tablespoons of cream, a teaspoon of curry powder, a teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves (1/3 teaspoon of dried) a half-teaspoon of dried pepper flakes and salt and pepper to taste. You don't need much pepper, but you should start with a teaspoon of salt, and you can adjust again later if it's not enough.

Meanwhile, cook 1 lb. pasta (we used linguini) in boiling water. Drain the pasta and immediately mix in the squash sauce. (Taste the sauce again for salt, curry and pepper flakes before mixing.) Top with shredded chicken, if you're inclined. Either way, garnish with some thyme leaves and sprigs and parmesan cheese.

Serve with more grated parmesan at the table.

The curry and faint hint of heat from the pepper flakes give the otherwise mono-tasting squash a depth and complexity that is very fulfilling.

This recipe would taste great with a crisp and un-oakey Chardonnay, but we served it with a Zinfandel from the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma, which nicely complemented the spice in the dish.

Tapenade: A Love Letter

We love black-olive tapenade, especially in the summer, when produce is abundant and as often as not we eat dinner off the grill. Originally hailing from Provence, this pungent olive paste dresses up pasta, grilled vegetables, bruschetta—anything that can benefit from a wallop of Mediterranean flavor.

Not so long ago, we never would have considered making our own tapenade, for the same reason we don't make cherry pies—the prospect of laboriously pitting a couple of cups of stony fruit is overwhelming. (We bought a cherry pitter a few years ago and managed, after great effort, to successfully pit about three cherries; the pitter went into our Worthless Gadget drawer, where it now lives with the garlic peeler and the egg poacher while awaiting its final trip to Goodwill.)

Fortunately, companies like Trader Joe's and others now sell reasonably priced pitted calamata olives, so it's easy to make our own tapenade. Last year Guest Blogger Paul Spring provided this excellent recipe for homemade tapenade, and it's worth repeating, given the ripe tomatoes on the market right now.

Last night we mixed a couple of tablespoons of tapenade with a quarter-cup of olive oil, a tablespoon of sherry vinegar, salt, and pepper. Drizzled over sliced tomatoes and basil, it made an excellent light dinner.

Sage-and-Walnut Pesto—Great in the Summertime

As we've noted, although sage flourishes in the summer, it tends to be used in autumn and winter recipes, and often in its dried state. But it's a shame to limit this velvety, pungent herb to the cold weather months.

You can use this sage-and-walnut pesto to coat pork and chicken before grilling. You can also add it to hot pasta for an easy vegetarian dinner, or mix it with cubed potatoes before roasting them, for an interesting side dish. Play with the balance of ingredients until you find a mix you like. These are the proportions that work well for us:

Sage and Walnut Pesto

2 cloves garlic
1 cup sage leaves
1/2 cup walnuts
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a food processor or blender.

Eggplant Pasta Sauce

Over the weekend Salon ran an interesting recipe for eggplant-based pasta sauce, written by a former eggplant hater. Admittedly, eggplant is a tricky vegetable. Properly prepared, it has a wonderful smoky silkiness. Badly prepared, it's bitter, spongy, and mushy. And, let's face it, no matter how well you cook it, the color is not terribly appetizing. How a vegetable that is so beautiful on the outside can end up such a hideous gray-brown in the pot is one of the mysteries of cooking.

This recipe, however, sounds delicious, and we can't wait to try it.

Asparagus Pesto

No sooner did we plug Mark Bittman's great vegetarian cookbook than the New York Times columnist proved again why we love him, with this simple but creative recipe for asparagus pesto, published in yesterday's Dining section:

Asparagus Pesto

Salt

1 pound asparagus, trimmed and cut into 2-inch segments

1 clove garlic, or more to taste

1/4 cup pine nuts

1/4 cup olive oil, or more as desired

3/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Freshly ground black pepper

Juice of 1/2 lemon, or to taste.

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt it. Add the asparagus and cook until fully tender but not mushy, 8 to 10 minutes. Drain well, reserving some of the cooking liquid, and let the asparagus cool slightly.

2. Transfer the asparagus to a food processor and add the garlic, pine nuts, 2 tablespoons of the oil, Parmesan, a pinch of salt and a couple of tablespoons of the cooking liquid. Process the mixture, stopping to scrape down the sides of the container if necessary, and gradually add the remaining oil and a bit more of the reserved cooking liquid to moisten if necessary. Add the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper to taste, pulse one last time, and serve over pasta, fish or chicken (or cover and refrigerate for up to a day).

Yield: 4 to 6 servings (about 1 1/2 cups).

Favorite Cookbooks: The Classic Italian Cookbook

We have an embarrassing number of cookbooks, on everything from Burmese to cowboy food, but there are only a few we couldn't live without, and they're easy to pick out from the crowd. Broken-spined, covered with stains and greasy fingerprints, they open automatically to our favorite recipes. Marcella Hazan's Classic Italian Cookbook is one of these. 

Published in 1973, this book lovingly explains Italian food from antipasti through dessert. The Italian-born Hazan (whose American husband, Victor, is generally thought to have written the text) emphasizes fresh ingredients and simple preparation. Her forthright recipes are fuss-free and invariably delicious. 

Our favorites are her Minestrone and her Fettuccine with Gorgonzola Sauce, but she's equally wonderful on vegetables, meat dishes, and basic sauces, including this one, for the Simplest Tomato Sauce Ever. 

Note: We've gotten reports that the link to the fettuccine recipe link is broken. Here's the original post: 


Fettuccine with Blue Cheese Sauce


At Eat Well, Eat Cheap, we aim to offer recipes that combine deliciousness, frugality, and healthiness. This one, for fettucine bathed in creamy blue cheese sauce, is spectacularly delicious and pleasingly frugal, but—we'll admit it—it falls considerably short in the health department. But it's so delicious and easy, and makes such splendid use of leftovers, that we're willing to cut it some slack. We deal with the guilt of eating it by eating it only once or twice a year.

After the holidays, we found ourselves with dribs and drabs of several great cheeses, including a French blue and an American blue that were rapidly turning the corner from interesting pungency to hair-raising rancidity. We did not want them to go to waste, and remembered one of our favorite recipes from Marcella Hazan's Classic Italian Cookbook, for Fettucine Gorgonzola.

Here's our adaptation:

Fettuccine with Blue Cheese Sauce

1 pound fettuccine

1/2 cup blue cheese (Gorgonzola, Stilton, Roquefort, Danish are all good, as are any combinations of them)

1/2 cup light cream

2 T. butter

1/2 t. salt

1/2 cup grated parmesan

1. Add fettuccine to a big pot of rapidly boiling water. Stir to separate the strands, which like to clot together.

2. While the pasta is cooking, heat the cheese, cream, butter, and salt in a wide saucepan that's big enough to hold the finished pasta. Mash the cheese into the hot butter and cream. Keep warm while the pasta finishes cooking.

3. Add the cooked pasta to the cheese sauce, quickly mix, and add a couple of tablespoons of the parmesan. Serve with the rest of the parmesan on the side.

Serves four as a guilt-inducing main course, or six to eight as a first course.

The Secret to Good Pad Thai

Anybody who loves Thai food has a special fondness for pad Thai, the most popular dish in the Thai repertoire. When prepared properly, this rice noodle concoction delectably balances salty, sour, and sweet flavors. Restaurants usually do a good job with it. But making pad Thai at home can be tricky.

For one thing, recipes vary wildly. Some people swear that ketchup is the key ingredient (indeed, some of the best restaurant versions have a distinctly ketchup-y hue), while others completely scorn it, preferring the tang of tamarind. Some use hefty portions of sugar; others leave it out. Some use lemon juice; others prefer lime.

But the trickiest part of making pad Thai at home is getting your sauce right without making your noodles mushy. Many recipes tell you to add the cooked noodles before you add the sauce ingredients, meaning that as you fiddle around with jars and bottles, trying to get the taste right, your noodles turn to mush.

For years we struggled with this dilemma, until we found a blog post that neatly solved the saucing problem. Pim at Chez Pim (who grew up in Bangkok and considers ketchup "an abomination") points out that if you make your sauce ahead of time, you don't have to worry about getting it right at the last minute, as your noodles fall apart in the wok.

In this excellent how-to for Pad Thai, Pim suggests heating a half-cup of tamarind pulp, a half-cup of fish sauce, and a half-cup of palm sugar (or a third of a cup of brown sugar) until the sugar is melted, then adding chili powder to taste. (You can find tamarind concentrate at Asian markets on online. Most supermarkets now carry fish sauce in their Asian sections; if you've never used it before, bear in mind that a little bit of this salty ingredient goes a long way, so use a light hand until you know how much you like.) Once you have this sauce prepared, it's easy to add it to your pad Thai.

We've had good luck with this recipe:

Pad Thai

8 oz. rice sticks

1/2 pound shrimp or tofu

2 t. cornstarch

2 T. sherry or rice wine

About 4 T. peanut oil

2 eggs, lightly scrambled

2 big cloves garlic, chopped

3 fat scallions: chop whites, cut greens into 1-inch lengths

1/2 cup pad Thai sauce

4 cups bean sprouts, divided

1/2 juicy lime, plus quarters for garnish

3 T. ground roasted peanuts

1. Soak the rice sticks in boiling water until al dente—about five minutes, depending on their thickness and freshness—then run cold water over them and set aside.

2. Mix cornstarch and sherry or rice wine, add to shrimp or tofu, and set aside for a minute or two.

3. Heat two tablespoons of oil in wok and add marinated shrimp or tofu. Stir constantly for a minute or two until the protein is cooked, then remove from wok and set aside.

4. Add a few teaspoons of oil to hot work, then add eggs. When they are lightly cooked, remove them and set them aside.

5. Add a few teaspoons more oil to the hot wok, add the garlic and scallions, and quickly fry.

6. Add the soaked and drained rice noodles, followed by the pad Thai sauce. Stir quickly to mix in the sauce, then add two cups of bean sprouts, the eggs, and the protein. Stir and taste—you may want to add a bit more sauce—but move quickly so your noodles don't get mushy!

7. Turn the pad Thai onto a platter, squeeze the half-lime over it, and sprinkle with ground peanuts. Serve with quartered limes and two cups of raw bean sprouts.

Serves two very hungry people.

Spaghetti with Garlic, Sage, and Olive Oil

Ruth's steak-loving sister is visiting, but between the Deadline, the Move, and a general lack of time for food shopping, we've been forced to scour our meatless pantry each evening for dinner fixings. The other night we remembered an Italian classic: spaghetti with garlic and oil, which is pretty much just that. It's also simple, delicious, and fast.

Mark Bittman's variation incorporates fried breadcrumbs, which provide wonderful texture to the slithery pasta. We added a handful of whole sage leaves just because we had them.

1/3 cup olive oil

2 T. minced garlic

1/4 cup whole sage leaves

1/2 cup breadcrumbs (either fresh or dried are fine)

salt and pepper

1 pound spaghetti

1. While the spaghetti boils, heat the oil in a saucepan, then fry the garlic over medium heat until it's golden—keeping a watchful eye on it, as just a few seconds can turn mellow deliciousness into scorched nastiness. Remove with a slotted spoon.

2. Add the sage leaves to the hot oil, and let them fry until they are dark and curly. Remove them from the pan.

3. Add the breadcrumbs, and fry until crispy and brown.

Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and pour it into a large bowl. Top with the fried garlic, sage and breadcrumbs, and add more oil if you like your pasta on the slippery side. Season with salt and pepper. Serve proudly to even your staunchest meat-eating guests.

Red Pepper Pesto

Basil pesto is one of those flavors that people either love or hate. Most people seem to love it, and in the summer some pesto lovers can't get enough of it.

And there are lots of ways to make green pesto: with arugula instead of basil, for example, or with garlic scapes, as we've written about here in previous posts.

But if you are sick of green pesto and want a change, here's a recipe for red pepper pesto. As we've noted before, roasted red peppers are one of our all-time favorite flavors. This pesto has a bit less bite than the green pestos, because of the creamy sweet taste of the roasted red peppers.

This roasted red pepper pesto, which is adapted from a Food & Wine recipe, can be mixed with any pasta from spaghetti to bowtie to the mini-penne we used. We thought that the Food & Wine recipe needed more of a kick from the garlic, nuts and cheese.

5 large red peppers, roasted and skin removed

3 cloves garlic, peeled

1/3-1/2 cup basil, plus 3 sprig tops for garnish

4 Tablespoons lightly toasted pine nuts

1 cup parmesan cheese, grated, plus 1/4 cup for garnish

1/3 cup olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

1 lb. pasta

Just before you put the pasta in the boiling water to cook,

put the roasted and skinned peppers in a food processor, followed by

the garlic, basil, toasted pine nuts, and parmesan cheese.

Add a few good grinds of pepper and a half teaspoon of salt.

Pulse the processor until it begins to look like a sauce, then add the olive oil and pulse until relatively smooth.

Taste for salt and add more if needed.

When the pasta is done, drain and put in a pasta bowl.

Add the red pepper pesto and mix well.

Garnish with the extra cheese and the basil sprigs.

Serves four.

Serve with a very crisp Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay, or if you're craving red, a Pinot Noir.

Pasta Primavera

We long ago stopped ordering this spring classic in restaurants because too often it meant a blend of tough and mushy ill-matched vegetables covered with gummy goo.

Actually, we’d forgotten all about it until the New York Times Sunday Magazine ran a piece on the dish, complete with a newfangled update. The updated version was rife with the sort of make-work flourishes that make us grumpy, so we stuck with the classic, and we were glad we did.

The resulting mixture of fresh spring flavors and delicate textures was a delight, and we can’t wait to make it again. This is a seasonal dish in which you start with a base of nonseasonal vegetables—onion, carrot, garlic—then add whatever fresh veggies are at the market. 

It’s easy and relatively quick.

Normally, it’s made with fettuccine, but we substituted mini penne and liked that better. The delicate size of the pasta worked well with the small pieces of vegetable.

Recipe

1 pound mini penne

1 broccoli crown, cut into small florets

1 lb. green beans (or asparagus), cut into 1 1/2-inch lengths

2 T. olive oil 

3 T. butter

1 onion, diced

2 carrots, peeled and diced

2 to 4 cloves garlic, sliced

Half of an Italian (not hot) pepper, cut into strips, then 1 1/2-inch pieces (optional)

2 scallions, sliced crosswise into 1/8-inch lengths (if you omit scallions, make sure your onion is large)

1 tomato, diced (or half of a 15 oz. can, drained)

1 cup cream

½ cup grated fresh parmesan cheese

large handful basil leaves (or 1 T. dried)

1. Bring six quarts of water to a boil with 2 tablespoons salt.

2. Drop the broccoli and beans into the boiling water for 1 or 2 minutes to blanch. Remove and run under cold water to stop the cooking. Set aside.

3. Bring the water back to a boil. Add mini penne and cook until al dente, about nine minutes.

4. In a large pan, heat olive Oil and butter. Add onion, carrot, garlic, and pepper. Saute until tender, about five minutes.

5. Add blanched broccoli, green beans or asparagus, scallions, and tomato. Saute until tender.

6. Add cream, and let the sauce simmer until pasta is ready.

7. Add drained pasta, basil, cheese to the pan, then salt and pepper to taste. Toss and serve hot.

This dish would be great with a crisp Sauvignon Blanc,  an oaky Chardonnary, or a light-to-medium-bodied red. We enjoyed it with an inexpensive Spanish wine that blended Merlot, Cabernet, and Tempranillo.