Category: Pasta

July 23, 2007

Christine’s family is here for the weekend, and we made fresh fettucine with pesto from our basil, using walnuts as well because we were low on pine nuts and Nettle Meadow fromage blanc in place of parmigiano. Ethan, who is 10, rolled out most of the pasta and did a fine job. All the kids were excited to make it from scratch. We had a huge salad, and the sausages that remained from the night…

July 20, 2007

This actually started in my studio, where I noticed that I need another large tomato can for paint thinner. So I decided to make pasta tonight, but we were out of pasta. Thus a trip to the store, where they have this stuff called cheese, in this case taleggio and the local fromage blanc that can become so very many things. And it was raining today. And so the ingredients spoke, and dinner was penne…

July 11, 2007

Super simple, yet super good: penne in a sauce of ground lamb, onion, garlic, lots of herbs, and fresh peas plus canned tomatoes with a gorgeous salad. To drink, a 1998 Franciscan Magnificat that did a good job with the lamb while still being quite young; it has a lot of reticent Bordelais complexity and should really open up over the next 10 years.

July 8, 2007

Sirkka and Danny came over for a mellow Friday dinner. Christine had been to Fleisher’s earlier in the day, and their housemade sausages are very good, so I whipped up a variation on her Mom’s sausage pasta sauce- with hot & sweet sausage and lots of herbs. Whole wheat spaghetti has a nice body and flavor for a big sauce like this (even though we don’t like the other shapes; the penne, etc. are too…

June 12, 2007

As regular readers know, I am a huge fan of fridge soup, wherein all the random scraps and leftovers from a week’s worth of meals contribute their various qualities to a rich and efficient pot of goodness that can then be polished off or further transformed depending on quantity. I began dinner thinking that tonight’s would be such a dinner, and we had some good stuff to throw in: the pork-flavored tomato sauce from last…

June 11, 2007

There wasn’t enough pulled pork left to make a meal from, so it became the base for a pasta sauce: herbs, onion, garlic, and a can of tomatoes cooked together for a couple of hours to integrate the deep BBQ with the fresh new flavors. Milo and I rolled out some fresh fettucine- half white, half whole wheat flour- and cut turnip greens and mesclun in the garden. There’s a fabulous chewy density to fresh…

April 5, 2007

Christine bought some cod, and some mushroom fettucine, so I got to work. For the pasta, a simple idea ended up as a pretty complex sauce: turkey bacon, spicy green olives, dried tomatoes in oil, parsley, garlic, and pepper all cooked in a bit of butter and olive oil until lightly caramelized, at which point I added a pinch of flour to turn it into a roux. Then yogurt, parmesan, and white wine completed the…

March 15, 2007

I went to Fleisher’s to replenish the freezer, and get a lamb shoulder for tonight, and I also got some of their pastrami, which is insanely good- really salty and peppery and smoky- and used some of it in place of pancetta in the soffrito for cannelini (made from dried, of course) along with onion, carrot, and herbs. I sautéed a head of escarole with lemon, oil, and garlic, just like they do at Pepe…

March 8, 2007

Turkey meatballs, with minced turkey bacon, onion, garlic, herbes de provence, and a pinch of flour, in a tomato sauce with chiffonaded kale, piquin peppers, more garlic and onion, oregano, and a splash of wine. The spaghetti in question was organic whole wheat pasta, and the wine a 2003 Raymond Usseglio Châteauneuf, which was just right, since its relative lightness kept its youth from interfering with the expression of all the nice fruit, herbs, and…