Pasta Primavera Herb Flop

Sometimes I cook something that's just not that great. This is one of those dishes. However, I think the problem was really in the herbs. Herbs can impart so much flavor, but if you add the wrong ones, it ruins everything. So I think this is still a recipe worth sharing, but I also think that if you want to cook this, you should change the herbs. Basil or parsley would be wonderful. Stay away from chives and especially peppermint.

They are pretty, though aren’t they? These are herbs from our old garden in Indiana. I also used those huge asparagus from the Main Street farmer’s market in downtown Lafayette.

This is an America's Test Kitchen recipe, so it's heavy on the measurement and precision. Of course, I am not nearly this precise in my execution, so I made a few edits. I cook with what I’ve got on hand, and I didn’t have any white wine (drank it all) or vegetable stock (never buy it). So instead I used a bubbly from New York and homemade chicken stock. I refuse to believe these things could have possibly made the dish taste worse.

I was very excited about cooking the pasta using a method typically reserved for risotto. It gave the dish a wonderful creaminess without any added fats or dairy.

Overall, it tasted pretty good. The texture was lovely, and the veggies tasted fresh, but really, I don’t know why mint was ever a recommendation for an herb to add here. Keep your mint for tzatziki and mojitos.

Pasta Primavera (adapted from America's test kitchen)
3 large leeks
1 lb asparagus (1 bunch)
2 cups frozen peas, divided
4 gloves garlic, 2 crushed, 2 minced.
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup champagne
1 lb campanelle pasta
½ cup grated parmesan
Olive oil
Herbs of your choice

Prepare vegetables, but keep all the trimmings:
Cut off dark green parts of leeks.
Cut off bottom portion of asparagus.
Chop up and rinse trimmings.
In medium saucepan, combine stock and 1 cup of water. Add vegetable trimmings, two crushed garlic cloves, and 1 cup of frozen peas. Cook on medium, with lid on pot for 10 minutes until trimmings have flavored the stock. Strain veggies and put liquid back in pot and keep warm with lid on and at low heat.

Prepare the rest of the vegetables:
Cut up leeks and rinse.
Rinse the asparagus, and cut on the bias.
In large dutch oven, with olive oil, cook leeks over medium heat with lid on until they have wilted.
Stir regularly as to not let vegetables burn.
Add the asparagus, and cook until tender.
Add minced garlic and 1 cup of frozen peas. Cook until heated through and fragrant.
Remove vegetables from pot and set aside.

Cook up the pasta and sauce:
In dutch oven, over medium heat with olive oil, and add dry pasta and toast. (Just like you would risotto) Cook for about 5 minutes, until pasta is toasted, and brown in some spots.
Add champagne (or wine), and stir until absorbed by pasta. (Again, just like risotto).
Add broth that you’ve been keeping warm. Let the pasta cook for about 10 minutes or until cooked through. If you noticed that the pasta is getting dry, feel free to add more water.

Take pot off heat, add cheese, and combine. Add the cooked vegetables, and around 2 tablespoons of your favorite herbs.

Enjoy!

Catch Up

I've been too busy to post what food I've been cooking because I moved to Missouri! But I have pictures of what I've been up to since May. So here are some of my adventures.

First, I want to give a huge (but delayed) congratulations to my very clever and very hard working husband for getting his PhD. WAY TO GO, NICK!!




Second, here is my haul from the first farmer's market of the year in Lafayette, IN. I got skinny asparagus and fat asparagus for different purposes. I picked up a couple bunches of baby kale, and very skinny little leeks. The picture shows the farmer's market variety next to standard grocery store leeks. I'm a sucker for miniatures. I also bought a pretty pink bunch of rhubarb, and some tarragon.


 








Third, I wanted to do some baking. I had some old, not so great looking strawberries and my local rhubarb. So I wanted to make some tiny galettes. This recipe originated in Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce. Smitten Kitchen also tweaked this recipe to her liking. I think my recipe might be somewhere in the middle.

I used my farmer's market rhubarb, and leftover strawberries to make a kind of jam or compote.




The crust is a real hybrid with some of my favorite grains including organic, whole wheat pastry flour and stone ground organic corn meal, both of which were purchased at the farmer's market stand from City Foods. It's very convenient because you can make the whole crust right in the food processor.





The galettes can be made free form, or you can make them in a muffin tin.

Fruit compote
1 lb. of rhubarb
1/2 qt. strawberries (ugly ones are OK)
1/2 cup natural sugar (like sugar-in-the-raw)

Cut up fruit, put it in a pot over low flame.
Add sugar, mix it in.
Let it cook till it breaks down a bit, around 30 minutes.

Crust & Galettes
3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup stone ground corn meal (it's got a more flour like consistency then regular corn meal)
1/4 cup sugar (I used the natural/in-the-raw kind)
1 tsp kosher salt
1 stick butter, cut into pieces and chilled
2 egg yolks
2 Tbsp heavy cream

Put everything into food processor, and blend until it starts to stick into a ball.
Put out onto counter, and gather into a ball.
Divide into 10 parts. Either roll out into circles, or pat down in muffin tin cups.
Fill crusts with 3 Tbsps of compote.

At this point, you can freeze the tarts and bake them when you want them.

To bake
Preheat oven to 375 F
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, straight from the freezer.

Eat.

How I Organize my Kitchen

I have a lot of kitchen stuff - a LOT. So I have to be a bit creative about how I get it all to fit in the existing cabinets. I also cheated a bit and bought a separate island thing for more counter space and storage too.

I'm going to give you a little tour of my kitchen. It's blue! First, here is my spice rack. I bought this rack for a few bucks at a yard sale 3 years back. I then added twist in hooks, which I adore, to the bottom to hold my most commonly used tools.

I keep the rest of my tools next to the stove in an Ikea crock, and in the top drawer which I divided with corrugated plastic from the home improvement store. I organize my tools by what I use most. Notice all the measuring cups and spoons are in the front. That's a sure sign of a baker!



Two other drawers I spent time organizing are my kitchen linens and my storage mish-mash. The linens are folded and sorted into (a) tea & kitchen towels, (b) rags, and (c) everyday napkins, which I purchased at Love for Earth. Those napkins and non-paper-towels are fantastic. I use them everyday. That drawer also has a space for napkins that have been used once or twice but are clean enough to use again. And in the mish-mash drawer I keep plastic baggies, cling-wrap, tin-foil, beer coozies, bread baskets and trivets. It's like a jig-saw puzzle.



I try to keep my cabinets organized by having a designated space for everything, and putting like things together. So my food processor, blender, and all their coordinated parts fit on one shelf. Then all my bakeware gets "filed" or stacked in the shelf underneath. Then in one cabinet, I fit all my mixing bowls and like-shaped things such as the salad spinner and colander. I also include things I use often like the spice/coffee grinder, and can opener. Finally, I squeezed in a few extras like the air-popper for popcorn, my mortar and pestle, and my citrus reamer.



But I think my proudest kitchen organization feat is my pantry. It took a long long time to get this organized, but once everything is put into pretty containers and labeled, I find things more easily and even enjoy retrieving ingredients. The containers are from Target, Amazon, Ikea and also Ikea. The labels are Post-its.


I know it looks a little OCD, but I just keep like things with one another. Really, I just have five sections, and things within those sections can move around within the designated areas: flours, sugars, other baking stuff, grains, and cans. It helps that I have 6 kinds of flour, 6 kinds of sugar, and at least 5 kinds of grain at any given time. And the lazy Susan in the corner for my cans, that might be my very best organizing idea ever.




I've also got shelves for more ready-to-eat packaged foods like a "snacks" shelf, which includes sweeteners and tea, and a "carbs" shelf, which includes bread, chips, crackers, and cereals.



The rest of the pantry is devoted to non food storage like my pots and pans, cookbooks, and other glass jars, just waiting to be filled with whatever other treats I pick up.




So that's my super organized kitchen. There are a few things I have not yet figured out how to organize, though. My food storage containers are actually glass, because microwaving plastic is dangerous. I have yet to find a good way to store them. They are currently in a drawer, all piles precariously on top of one another. And of course, the cabinet under the sink is just a big pile of cleaners and soaps, but I'm OK with that.

Hopefully I can create a similarly organized system when we move to Missouri!

Apricots

There is a class of desserts made in French homes that does not seem to exist here in the United States. It's a pie or cake made of unhealthy things, but topped and flavored with fruit, delicately nested in with the unhealthy parts. The purpose of the fruit is not to make one feel like this dessert is somehow healthier, no no no. The fruit is there to make it more sweet and delicious. Because really, fruit that has been baked doesn't really have any nutritional value anymore. It has just become jam.

This isn't true of fruit pies of course. Don't try to use logic on baking rationalizations, it just doesn't work, OK? Because if you make a fruit pie, it's practically healthy. If you make a pie that happens to have fruit on/in it, like instead of mounds of whipped topping or meringue, it's adding deliciousness (much like whipped topping or meringue) without adding heft or fat, just a very light touch of sweetness. My aunt Nadia makes this chocolate pear tart which is absolutely delicious, but I don't have the recipe. What I did manage to put together is this apricot almond tart. Yum.

I used a pre-made pie-crust for this, but I bet a graham cracker or cookie crust would work well too. Parbake the crust while you make the filling and cut up the fruit.

Ingredients:
pie crust
7-8 apricots
1 scant cup ground almonds (100g)
1 stick of butter (100g)
1/2 cup sugar (100g)
2 Tbsp flour
3 Tbsp cream
2 eggs
1 Tbsp dark rum
pinch salt






I used a hand mixer, but I bet a stand mixer would work really well here.
Preheat oven to 450F.
1. Cream the butter and sugar.
2. Add almonds and combine.
3. Add eggs one at a time and combine.
4. Add cream, then flour, then salt and rum. Combine until homogeneous.
5. Pour batter into pie shell.
6. Halve apricots and nestle them into the pie. Get as many as you can in there.
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until dough no longer jiggles.
You don't need to cool this pie very long before cutting into it. Just wait until it won't burn you anymore.

Fried zuke

My mom was not a big baker, but she did like making zucchini bread. Unfortunately for her, I did not like zucchini as a kid. I'll tell you, I was not a picky eater at all. I ate everything, including artichokes, and fish, and most everything else. But zucchini, and black olives, I would not eat. And for a couple of years in the mid nineties I completely refused to eat pizza. I digress... zucchini.
I have since grown to like zucchini, although not in all applications. I'm still not big on the zucchini bread, but I do like zucchini fritters.

They're pretty easy to make. I imagine these could go very well with hummus or in a pita or sandwich of some kind. I just eat them with flavored mayo. I don't typically measure my ingredients, so this is roughly how I made these, but feel free to add, reduce, or entirely remove the parts you don't like.

1. Crack and egg in a bowl.
2. Shred 4 to 5 zucchini into bowl.

3. Add some bread crumbs, Parmesan, salt and pepper, and any flavorings you may want to add.

4. Form into patties. I used a number 10 scooper - it's the same one I use for making muffins.

5. Coat in breadcrumbs. I found that without this step, the patties just don't brown up as nicely as I'd like.

6. Fry in a pan with some olive oil, or whatever you like to use. When I say "fry" I mean pan fry. Lie, just use enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan.

7. Enjoy! Make some fresh mayo in just a few minutes, maybe with some chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Yum.

Pink Sweater

I've made a bunch of socks, so far, including a baby pair! Now, I'm moving on to a full blown sweater. OK, it's not a full blown sweater, it's a sweater vest cardigan. So, no sleeves and one button. I'm making it for my grandma and I started making it in a large size. Now that I've knit the back, though, it's looking a bit small. This may end up being for my cousin or my mom or something... we'll see.

Also, I've been making muffins nearly every week. It makes for a very convenient breakfast. Here are my corn-pine nut muffins with currants.


These remind me of the multi grain pancakes because I used three grains.


Ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup AP flour
1 cup stone ground cornmeal
1.5 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp salt

2 large eggs
3/4 cups sugar
1 stick butter, melted and cooled (or consider using half canola oil instead to keep muffins moist)
3/4 cup yogurt
1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
1/2 cup dried currants

Making muffins is so easy. Combine dry ingredients, then combine wet ingredients. Then add the mix-ins and wet ingredients to the dry, and gently fold until combined. Scoop dough into greased muffin pan (I use an ice cream scooper) and bake at 350F for 15-20 minutes.