Farm Fresh Harvest Pasta Sauce

Just days before our trip, while I was in fact hip deep in Concord grapes, cherry tomatoes, and other fresh produce that wouldn't wait for our return, we stopped to chat with a neighbor while on a walk through the neighborhood....

This neighbor, who has a small farm, was busy that day harvesting everything she possibly could before they moved. They were being forced out, not by a giant food conglomerate, and not by the government policies that hobble small farms. No, it was the simple act of their rent being raised to the point where they could no longer afford to remain. It's a sweet little farm with a tidy little house to one side with contented cows, happy pigs, and chatty chickens wandering about. The kind of sweet little farm that could only exist because of the hard work and commitment of two conscientious and genuinely nice people.

She asked if we'd like some tomatoes
Well, we couldn't say no. Who can say no to homegrown tomatoes? We may have had a truckload of cherry tomatoes this summer, but it's a little hard to make a BLT with tomatoes the size of marbles. So we finished our walk and Hubby went back over with a bowl. What he returned with were the most glorious Roma tomatoes I'd ever seen. There were a couple of big heirloom beauties also, and an onion that left me speechless, it was so fat and healthy looking.

Birthdays Give Me Cramps

I had a birthday not too long ago. Do you ever get them? They seem to pop up more frequently than they used to. They are also much less welcome than they ever were.

Well, the most recent birthday was looming large on my horizon as I chatted with a friend about a concert I'd been to oh-so-very-long ago. And far away. Well, after our chat, I went nostalgia-tripping and looked up the band on YouTube. I was flat-out amazed to find actual blurry, grainy, footage from the very show I'd been to way-back-when in my old hometown. Really! I kid you not!

What... you're not impressed? Keep in mind that this was back in prehistoric times, when cameras of any kind were not allowed in shows and the video camera that was smuggled in on this occasion would've been a thousand times larger than today's mini-tech toys. So you can see why finding that footage was such a quantum leap back in time.*

Lemon Pepper Pasta With Chicken

I've been wanting to make this dish for a while now, but I knew I wanted to tackle making the actual lemon-pepper flavored pasta itself from scratch... so that's just what I did. 

It's nothing more than my favorite go-to pasta recipe, but I added the zest from 2 Meyer lemons and about 20 cranks of the old pepper grinder. It might have been more, I lost count. Let's call it a 1/2 tsp.

The pasta itself turned out great, the only drawback was that the sauce pretty much stepped all over the subtle lemony-pep of the noodles. But, in a good way... it's an easy sauce with great flavor. I'm just thinking that this would be a perfectly fine dish with regular pasta. Or... I might try doubling the lemon zest and pepper when I make the pasta next time. Either way it's an easy and tasty dish that we both really enjoyed. We must've... we ate all of it in one sitting.*

Turkey Soup with Noodles

This soup marks the end of Tom Turkey–well, almost, I still have some of that great turkey gravy in the freezer. There are biscuits and gravy in our future for sure, but tonight, it's Turkey Soup with homemade noodles. After defrosting the turkey stock and the bag of leftover cooked turkey, I just added some herbs, carrots, celery and noodles. In virtually no time at all, it was a soup. A simple, good tasting, nourishing soup.

Play dough for grown-ups
Initially I was going to just make my regular pappardelle noodles and cut them into short pieces, but wouldn't some other shape be more fun? And wouldn't a different shape of pasta just taste so much better too? Without an extruder however, options are somewhat limited. Without years of experience hand-shaping pasta at an Italian grandmother's side, my options dwindled even further. So, after making up a batch of my favorite go-to pasta recipe, I sort of followed the instructions found here for hand-shaping pasta. I say "sort of followed" because I off-roaded just a bit. Okay... I played. A lot. Try it yourself and see if you don't too.

A One-Pot Wonder

Oh, how much do I love a delicious dinner with only one pot to clean at the end of it? Let me count the ways. Or not. Why go to all that trouble? Let's just recap: it's delicious and clean-up is a breeze. I'm good with that. 

Well, this here is just such a dish. A one-pot wonder if you will. It has the added feature of tasting so much more complicated than it actually is, and well, I  kind of like that about it too. Did I mention how adaptable it is? Substitutions, additions, and even subtractions, whether accidental or intentional, are no problem at all.

The recipe is built around pantry and freezer staples, so it's quite budget friendly and as a result we make it fairly often. Especially on weeknights. Especially in the winter. And especially when the thought of staring down another big pile of dirty dinner dishes will send me right over the ever-lovin' edge. Is it any wonder that this is one of our favorites?

Eat More Greens

It was a whim, pure and simple. And green. Very green. There was some fresh basil in the fridge (leftover from the bruschetta we made), and it needed to be used up fast. It wasn't getting any younger, if you know what I mean. Not enough left to make pesto with and too early in the year to start thinking about Caprese salads... why not try making colored pasta with it? So on the most spontaneous of whims, I began mixing up and rolling out beautiful, basil-y green pasta dough. The perfect thing for no longer spring but not yet summer.

Basil is one of those smells and tastes that seem like the very essence of summer. My dream garden would have basil, rosemary, sage and (of course) lavender are planted to form a labyrinth* with the tomatoes growing at the very center. Imagine it: walking and picking herbs in deep profound contemplative thought, then plucking ripe tomatoes and journeying back out, followed by cooking something wonderful and eating outside.

Of course, in the winter it would look like hell. Let's just say that my dream winter garden involves a plane ticket, a hammock and Piña Colada. Oh, but I digress. And yet, that really is the point of it all. Digression: to turn aside, to stray.  I made basil pasta yesterday and my mind digressed for a moment to summer days ahead and Caprese salads on the patio...

Basil Pasta
Makes 4 - 8 servings (depending on whether it will be a side dish or main dish)

1 big handful of washed and dried basil leaves
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper
3 eggs, lightly whisked
a good drizzle of olive oil
3 oz. water

Pulse the basil in the food processor until it's chopped up really fine. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the flour, salt and pepper, pulsing a few times to mix the dry ingredients together. Add the eggs and olive oil and start up the machine again. After a few seconds, begin adding the water slowly and process until everything is thoroughly combined and dough looks like very course, pebbly sand.

Dump the dough onto a floured board and start kneading. Knead until extremely smooth, at least 10 minutes. Divide dough into quarters, wrap tightly in plastic wrap and let it rest for 30-45 minutes.

Working with one piece of dough out at a time, knead it until it's smooth and pliable. Begin rolling it out, brushing it with flour if it starts sticking. Flip the dough over periodically to work each side and roll out as thin as possible; you should practically be able to see through it. Dust a little flour over it and fold it in half twice, then make 1/4" - 3/8" slices across it with a sharp knife or pizza cutter. Unfold the strips of pasta, toss in flour lightly and pile into "nests". Repeat with the rest of the dough.

Start boiling a big pot of water. As soon as it is at a rip-snorting boil, toss in a tablespoon of salt and gently drop the pasta nests in the pot. If you're cooking all of the pasta, you may want to cook it in two batches depending on the size of your pot. Stir pasta often and check for doneness at 3-4 minutes.**  Drain pasta, toss with a little olive oil and serve immediately with your choice of sauce.

If you won't be cooking it right away, you can freeze it for up to a month. Place the uncooked pasta nests on a baking sheet and freeze for 30 minutes. Place the frozen nests into a freezer bag, removing as much air as possible and put back in freezer. No need to thaw them before cooking either, just drop them straight into the pot of boiling water.

My Notes: We cooked half of it right away, and froze the rest for later. A little of the color came out during cooking but overall it was still plenty green. I think I'd like it even more basil-y though, so next time I'm putting a lot more basil in it. The dough might need more flour and/or liquid with the addition of more basil, I'll update this post with my notes the next time I make it.

• Read about how to make other colorful pastas in this article from The Kitchn.

*The first time I walked a labyrinth, I was blown away by the "distance" you could walk in such a relatively small space. I mean that both physically, and poetically. I thought them silly before I walked one, but they really are quite calming and focusing.

**The only accurate way to test pasta for doneness is to bite it. Fish a piece out of the water with a fork, let it cool for a second and take a bite. The "flinging it on the wall" technique is by no means accurate but must be done once, in your first apartment, when you're 18 and sharing a giggle-fit with your roommates.

Marvelous Meyers

Our dwarf Meyer decided to finish it's inaugural year with a "huge crop" (6 lemons) all ripe at the same time. In light of this unexpected bounty, I combed through my bookmarked recipes to find something wonderful to make with them. Now all I have to do is decide...

• Lemon Pepper Pasta with Capers sounds like a lovely light supper. I may even try making my own lemon-pepper noodles to go with it.
• Always wary of the label "ultimate", this one may well be justified... The Ultimate Lemon Butter Bar at epicurious.com
  
• Glazed Lemon Cookies from ATK by way of Serious Eats sound pretty tasty...
  
• ...as do the Lemon Ricotta Cookies with Lemon Glaze from Giada at Food Network.
  
• Can't decide between cake or pudding? Make individual Lemon Spongettes from The Kitchn
• This Lemon Curd Tart with Olive Oil from Gourmet.com looks absolutely stunning.
• Super-Lemony Soufflés from David Lebovitz sound sensational but they will have to wait for the next dinner party or the Hubs and I will be forced to eat all 6 servings...
  

A Tale Of Two Soupies

It's been my observation that a great many people with a public school education from a particular decade or two, were required to read Charles Dickens in their Jr. High/Middle School English classes. The Dickens novels they read varied with the school, the year, the teacher, and the city, and it became something of a party-lull conversation starter for me. "So, which Charles Dickens novel did you have to read?". The other person would look at me strangely for a moment or two* while it sunk in, and then you'd see the understanding in their eyes as they nodded and replied, "Great Expectations... how 'bout you?". If they hadn't been required/forced to read Dickens, then I knew that they were much younger than myself or they'd had alternative schooling (which meant they were much much younger than myself). People much older were usually obvious to spot and didn't need to answer silly questions in order for me to guess their age-range. But if necessary, I would just fall back on the "Who was your favorite James Bond" or "What was your first rock concert" line of questioning** to instantly peg them.

For the record, my English class read Charles Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities. As I was forced to read it under duress (much preferring my beloved Ray Bradbury paperbacks), my brain absorbed precious little from my requisite Dickens. I wonder if I should reread it. I've come to appreciate Dickens more over the years, and it might make my English teacher smile (wherever she is). That would be nice for her, since she'd no doubt be frowning a great deal over my poor grammar and sentence structure. Ah well, you can lead a horse to water... right? Yeah, that was me. A stubborn horse suffering through page after page of A Tale Of Two Cities. It was a pretty dreary tale. Downright depressing as I recall. There were lots of downtrodden peasants and ignoble noblemen, tragedy, revenge, knitting needles and guillotines. Quelle horreur! Not the sort of thing I want to be reading right now.

The weather outside is frightful enough; I want comfort and warmth from my reading matter as well as from the meals I prepare. Homemade soup really is the best thing for these cold and blustery days, but I couldn't decide which of these two soups to make. Even indecision is a decision, so I decided not to decide... and made both. Like a lot of soups, their ingredient lists were not long, nor were their preparations complex. Peasant food (or as I like to call it, "pleasant food"). Flavorful, filling, and cheap. And (a drum roll if you please)... I didn't have to go to the store for anything! Which is just fine with me, since it's absolutely raining buckets. In other words... perfect soup weather, regardless of which one we decide to have tonight.  Vive la difference!

Roasted Garlic And Potato Soup from thekitchn.com
See also: Roasted Garlic Soup on page 66 of How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

My Notes: Used one small head of garlic, dried thyme, 4 sm-med red potatoes, a chunk of Romano rind. Had no chives. Salt & pepper to taste. Tasted good but needed something more. Added a couple of glugs of vermouth. That really made it, adding another layer flavor and deepening the whole. Recipe didn't say when to add cheese/rind, so I added it with the potatoes. Potatoes took WAY longer than 10 minutes to soften. More like 40 minutes.

Soppressata Pasta Fagioli from seriouseats.com
See also: Pasta e Fagioli on page 52 of How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

My Notes: Made this without the soppressata. Used a little oo with the onions. Sliced the garlic cloves in half and fished them out later. Omitted the pepper flakes. Used 2-14.5 cans of diced tomatoes. Used canned chicken stock. Added 2 tsp Sundance dried herb blend. Salt & pepper to taste. Pre-cooked navy beans in the slow-cooker. Used 16 oz. elbow macaroni, cooked separately then added in when dishing soup into the bowls.

*I get this a lot.
**Roger Moore and The Go Go's, respectively. Now you know everything.
Quelle horreur!: French, meaning "How awful!"  Pronounced: Kel Uh-Ruhr (or something to that effect).

Pasta Bolognese At The Clean Plate Club

I was determined to try-try-again with the whole homemade pasta thing. This time using an actual recipe and my fantabulous new food processor (thanks Santa!). But what to put on top of it? Between you and me, butter and Parmesan cheese would be just fine. But homemade noodles deserve something less spartan than that. And they certainly deserve something more special than our regular old everyday spaghetti sauce. Kind of like when you get new furniture and suddenly the walls need to be painted, and then the carpeting looks so... boring, old, dated, shabby. It's a universal law that one new thing begets a need for another.

Well, we happened to have on hand most of what we needed to make a meat sauce, so that's what we did. Yes, we. Hubs and I tag-teamed this thing. I relayed the steps for the sauce to him while I rolled out the pasta dough, and he did all the rest. And a fantastic job he did of it too. We had a blast making up cooking terms a la the BBC Posh Nosh* series. Silly things like: "Irritate the carrots and celery...", or "Thoroughly confuse the tomato paste with the ground meat...". This was such an easygoing meal to prepare, from start to finish (it helped that we weren't in a hurry).

In order to balance all the awesomeness of the food, Hubs brought out our favorite Sangiovese from the cellar**. Whoa! Real wine... from a bottle? What's the occasion? Well, keeping in mind that universal law, he said, "homemade pasta with homemade sauce called for something a little more special than wine poured from a plastic spigot on the side of a cardboard container".***

We absolutely enjoyed every bit of this meal: the making of it, the eating of it, and the talking about how awesome it was afterward. Oh, and the wine was pretty great too. Salute!

Big Fat Bolognese from Joy The Baker

My Notes: I used half of a container of mirepoix that I had in the freezer (about two cups). Did not slice the garlic cloves, peeled them and tossed them in whole. Didn't measure the olive oil. Alas, we had no pancetta or even bacon. Used 1-lb ground beef and 1-lb JimmyDean ground pork sausage, 2 x 14.5 oz. cans of diced tomatoes, Vermouth, dried thyme + dried herb blend. All other ingredients as listed.  

Followed recipe instructions as written. After an hour of simmering, sauce had not reduced at all. Took off lid and simmered for another hour. I knew the extra cooking time wouldn't hurt it. After it reduced some, I skimmed a bit of the fat from the surface. Added salt, pepper and cream, then simmered some more. Was way worth the wait. Leftovers filled two big jars (froze one for later).

*Posh Nosh was a series of 10-minute shorts from BBC, that brilliantly lampooned television cooking shows. Watch episode #6 on youtube... then when you've stopped laughing, watch the rest (eight total).
**Coat closet.
***Yep, true confessions. Boxed wine. Don't judge us... we really do have good taste in wine, but times are tough all over. At least it was a mid-range box.

Ode To A Culture That I Love But Can Not Claim Ancestry In

Things I will need if I ever make pasta from scratch again:

• A six-week upper body intensive workout prior to pasta making
  
• Brakes on my kitchen cart so I don't have to chase it around the kitchen while kneading pasta dough
• An anti-inflammatory
• An Italian Grandmother by my side, shaking her head and saying "Tesoro, let me show you."
  
• My head examined for not using my Kitchenaid mixer (hello, dough hook) or food processor
  
• A heavier rolling pin
• More than one CD repeating on the stereo*
  

This makes it sound like I don't recommend making your own pasta from scratch, and/or that I am never going to attempt it again. Both summations would be wrong. Since writing the above, something has happened to me. It could be the release of some sort of hormones or endorphins** in my system that make me feel all loopy and in love with the pasta-making process, or it could be that I just finished cooking and eating the results of all that hard work. I made egg-noodles! How cool is that? Ask me tomorrow when I can't use my hands for all the pain and swelling going on.

Below is a list of links to various pasta recipes online. Maybe I should say varying instead. For something with essentially two ingredients, the ratios vary widely, as do the suggested cooking times and dough-handling techniques. Some recipes say to knead the dough like you would bread dough, others specifically say not to knead it like bread dough. Some say to roll the dough out gently while others say to do it vigorously. Who's right? Your Italian Grandmother is. Don't have one? Just pick a recipe and follow it. I have a sneaky suspicion that they'll all work out just fine. Seriously. Did I make mistakes? Oh yeah. Did it still taste like rich and wonderful fresh pasta? Uh huh. I just kept up the following mantra: "You can't overwork this dough. You can't overwork this dough. You can't overwork this dough."

I will definitely make fresh homemade pasta again. Why not? It's cheap to make, tastes great, you can freeze it, or you can dry it and keep it in the pantry. Not to mention the sense of accomplishment, which I have to say is pretty huge. Next time I'm trying one of the whole-egg versions though. And if I'm ever faced with the challenge of what to do with 14 egg yolks again, it's a safe bet that I'll be making lemon curd.

Homemade And Handmade Pasta from Joy The Baker
Basic Egg Pasta Dough from Jamie Oliver via MSNBC
Fresh All-Egg-Yolk Pasta from Busy Nothings blog
Seven Egg Yolk Fresh Pasta from French Laundry via Evie Eats Everything blog
Rich Man's Golden Pasta from Lidia Bastianich for Cooking Light April 2008 via MyRecipes.com
Pasta Fresca from Cafe Lago via seattlepi.com
How To Make Egg Noodles at Saveur magazine
Fresh Pasta on page 92, Martha Stewart Living magazine, April 2000
Homemade Noodles on page 218, BHG Complete Step-By-Step Cookbook, 1978

My Notes: I used 12 egg yolks, 5 cups of flour, a splash of olive oil and a splash of water. Did not get anywhere near all the flour incorporated into the dough, and I ended up adding a whole egg to the dry shaggy mess to try and salvage it. It came out o.k. and tasted good. Not fabulous, but not horrible for a first attempt. Dried the rest and cooked it up a couple of nights later. Ugh. Big mistake. Back to the drawing board.

My Notes (1/10/10): Used the Café Lago Pasta Fresca recipe for amounts and for their stellar suggestion of using a food processor! I barely had to knead the dough at all. They should have called it "No-Knead Pasta". After letting it rest for 45 minutes, I cut it into quarters, then rolled it out and sliced it up into long strips. It was gorgeous: it looked gorgeous, it felt gorgeous and it tasted gorgeous. It made me want to make fresh pasta every day. Put what we didn't cook into the fridge. It was just as good cooked up the next day. Life is good.

Tesoro: Italian term of endearment meaning "treasure".
*To get in the mood, and tap into any hidden Italian-ness in my genes, I put The Hot Frittatas: Caffé Liscio CD on repeat. It provided the perfect soundtrack for playing with pasta. I think it's important to engage all the senses, and besides, it just made the whole thing seem a lot more fun.
**or en-dolphins as we like to say.

Turkey Vegetable Soup

Two weeks ago the Hubs & I watched some Jacques Pépin episodes for the first time. It was one of those head-shaking, "Where have we been all this time?"-moments for us. The man is a total rock star! Well, the next day I was out "thrifting" with a friend and she finds a Jacques Pépin cookbook on the rack. Of course I bought it. It was all of a dollar I think. How could I not?

Yesterday I made turkey stock with that big carcass from Thanksgiving, and today I went looking for a turkey soup recipe. Imagine my surprise when I found the perfect one in my new Jacques Pépin book! Coincidence? Maybe... maybe not. Using some of that fantastic turkey stock from yesterday and armed with my rockstar cookbook, I made up a batch of turkey soup, packed with vegetables...

Turkey Vegetable Soup

Adapted from: Cooked Turkey Carcass Soup, page 16, Cooking With Claudine by Jacques Pepin, 1996

2 quarts Turkey Stock

1-1/2 cups carrots, sliced into coins

1-1/2 cups celery, diced

2 small zucchini, diced

3 cups baby spinach, roughly chopped

1 leek

8 oz. mushrooms, sliced

1-2 cups cooked turkey meat, chopped or shredded

2 cups egg noodles

3 big pinches of salt
ground black pepper

Put everything into a stockpot or dutch oven, except the noodles, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, drop heat to low and cook for 20 minutes, covered. Remove lid, add the noodles and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 10 more minutes. Serve with buttered sourdough toast. If not serving it right away, let cool before dividing it into containers. Will keep for a few days in the fridge, or a few months in the freezer. If you are not planning on serving it right away, do not add the noodles. Cook them separately and add them before serving. Otherwise, they will break down too much during the freezing/re-heating process. It will still be edible and probably taste o.k. but it won't look very good, and if you like your noodles whole... they won't be. Yield: approximately 7 cups of soup.

My Notes: The original recipe says to pick any meat off the bones after making the stock, but we picked the usable meat off the carcass before we made the stock. The meat was already cooked to perfection and I didn't want to cook it twice. Went a little nuts with the amount of veg in this soup. May have to add more stock to it when serving, to you know, make it "soupier".

Rosemary Lemon Couscous

Couscous has got to be the world's fastest and easiest side dish. That's why I love it. The Hubs is not so enamored of couscous in general, but he liked this one. That makes me happy because I like to make couscous. It was the rosemary and the lemon that did it of course. Did I mention how fast it cooks? Five whole minutes... five unattended minutes. You just gotta love that.

• Page 137 of Gourmet's Quick Kitchen, 1996 (or try this similar one at Epicurious)

Linguine With Raw Sauce

I first came across this recipe for pasta with raw sauce last summer while looking for tomato recipes in anticipation of our bountiful crop of heirloom beauties. The idea of an uncooked "sauce" was a revelation to me. I had to try it. After all, who wants to babysit a big pot of marinara in the middle of summer? I know I don't. This turned out to be so fresh tasting and easy to put together. Perfect for a summer meal and just the thing to highlight the flavor of our homegrown tomatoes.

I only had a chance to make this a few times though; we moved a couple of months later. It just killed me that it was right at the height of tomato season. We picked whatever was ripe at the time and gave the plants to friends. Our new home doesn't have room or sun enough for tomato growing on the scale we had at the old place. It makes me kind of sad to see the photos of our old garden again. I miss it. Don't get me wrong, the house was a slum and we're grateful to be away from there. The garden however... was an oasis.

Linguine With Raw Sauce 
Adapted from: this recipe at seriouseats.com

Serves: 4

1 lb linguine
10-12 small tomatoes, or 5-6 large ones
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tbsp fresh basil, chopped
Enough olive oil to cover
6 ounces fresh mozzarella, grated or diced
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Bring a small pot of water to a boil and blanch the tomatoes for 30 seconds. Remove tomatoes, drain and let cool slightly. Slit the skins with a sharp knife and peel them off. Cut the tomatoes in half and squeeze out the pulp and seeds. Chop the tomatoes into a coarse dice.

2. In a large bowl, mix together the chopped tomatoes, basil, garlic, and olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste. Let mixture stand and marinate for an hour (longer if possible).

3. Cook the pasta until al dente in salted water. Drain, then add the cooked pasta to the tomato mixture and toss. Add the mozzarella and toss again. Serve immediately.

My Notes (7/18/08): Added lots more tomatoes (cherry toms didn't work well, too labor intensive) and marinated them for well over an hour. 1 clove of garlic was MORE than plenty! Yowza. Added lots more of our own fresh basil and more black pepper. Cut up half a container of mini mozzarella balls (happened to have them in the fridge). Next time use the whole container of mini mozzarella balls or just get a regular mozzarella ball. A cheap Zin from Trader Joe's (don't remember which) went pretty well with it. The Hubs snarfed it down and even had seconds... said it "was o.k." when asked to comment.