Not Pretty, But Pretty Darn Good

I need to save up for a better camera.  I made a delicious pasta dish tonight, and this photo makes it look rather less than appetizing.  I took nine shots of it, and this was the best I could come up with.  Granted, the primary ingredients were cauliflower and whole wheat pasta, so you might assert that, photo or no, it is unappetizing.  But trust me, it's damn good.  Check out this blog, Pink Bites, for the recipe.

The only difference from that recipe to this, was that I used four times as many onions (2, instead of the suggested 1/2), twice as much liquid or more (pasta water and white wine), and cilantro (instead of parsley).  However, Ms. Pink Bites' photos are ten times better than mine.  

Speaking of whole wheat pasta, Adam made an astute comment this evening while we scarfed our dinners.  Whole wheat pasta is like whole wheat bread.  You grow up (if you're an average American) preferring white bread.  When you take a bite of wheat bread, it's dense and unpleasant.  But then you grow to love it, and find white bread is actually pretty pathetic.  We're hoping that whole wheat pasta will become like wheat bread: an acquired taste.

Heart-y Fare

My, how time flies.  It's about as hackneyed a statement as I can think of, but it's really describing my life right now.  It's the tail end of a three day weekend, and I'm finding myself making rigorous lists of the things I need to do to relax today, since I spent the first couple days of the weekend running around accomplishing things (another house-showing, meeting with the mortgage banker, clean the house, help a friend move, wedding errands...).  But wait: should the words rigorous and relaxation be used in the same sentence?  Probably not, but today I want to go for a hike, take a peek at the Superbowl, and do homework for an online class I'm taking.  So though my much-adored ArmchairFoodie provides respite and therapy from my workaday obligations, I'm only going to give some pretty cursory descriptions of two meals we ate this week.

This is just a repeat on a running theme: pasta with sauteed veggies.  This is a great meal because it's always different, and if the precept that one learns from one's mistakes is true, then it's always better than the last.  This time we set chopped onions, garlic, tomatoes and artichokes to a saute.  Boil pasta, and while you're taking the pot of pasta to the sink to drain it-- don't forget this part!-- pour about 1/4 or 1/2 cup of the water into your saute.  This helps break down the veggies and turn them into a sauce. 

Yum.  Good toppings: chopped parsley, toasted pine nuts, parmesan.
A couple days later I took out some leftover green chile enchilada sauce from the freezer.  See former post on that here.  This time though, I whipped up some calabacitas ("little squash," if I'm translating that correctly) to stuff the enchiladas with.  Chopped zucchini, corn, and onions, sauteed with salt, pepper, and oregano.  When they're just tender, roll scoops the stuff in tortillas, line up in a baking dish, top with cheese and bake covered for a while.  After a while is up, take off the tin foil and bake for a smaller while so the cheese gets brown and bubbly.  
This was truly awesome.  While eating it and loving it, I was pondering my favorite foods: enchiladas and lasagna.  They are really just different realizations of one basic concept: an Americanized "ethnic" dish using the appropriate herbs and spices of their respective native lands, but really just centering around the combination of bread and cheese.  Granted, the more veggies, the better; but I'll admit where the real attraction lies.  Noodles layered with ricotta, parmesan, and fontina.  Tortillas smothered in jack and cheddar.  Pizza dough dressed in mozzarella and fontina.  Ah well, at least I'm not a sedentary person.  My fierce attachment to the bread and cheese duo might not be so wise in that case.  And speaking of which, gotta run.  Happy Feb!  

Autumn's Up

When I got home from work this evening I was knocked squarely in the face with the full force of fall.  A crisp bike commute and the fact that it's Halloween did no little work to invigorate me to the season of spices and woodsmoke, so I went inside to get my camera and came back out to just sort of roll around in the leaves a bit.  You know when the clouds get that fuzzy, quilted effect?  (See above picture for a pathetic representation.)  Like the whole world is tucking in and hunkering down.  Which reminded me: I went inside and tossed some firewood into our new favorite contraption, the woodstove, and got it goin' nice and cracklin' hot.  Woodstoves are what every home should come with, because we have not turned on our heat but once or twice this year.  We've also been sleeping on the foldout couch in the living room because our bedroom, on the other side of the house, is the approximate temperature of a meatlocker.  But anyway.

The evening called for something hearty, and the last of the late season's crop of tomatoes, courtesy of our friend Raina, were duly chopped, tossed with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and thyme, and roasted in a big Pyrex with garlic.  I kept the cloves whole, but probably wouldn't again with this recipe.  If you decide to give this a whirl, give your garlic a nice chop.

Meanwhile I boiled a mess of spaghetti and when I poured it out to drain, I let some ricotta melt in the hot pot.  Suggested ratio of pasta to ricotta: about a half pound of pasta to 1 cup ricotta.  For greater richness and fat content, add more ricotta to taste.  

When the tomatoes are shriveled and brown around the edges, spoon them with all their attendant juices into the pot with the ricotta.  Mix the two till you get a thick, pink sauce and add more salt and pepper to taste.  Stir in pasta, and if too thick, add a couple tablespoons of the pasta water, which you have wisely reserved.

Enjoy in front of a hot woodstove.

Jammin!

Ok so this post is supposed to be about making jam-- my first jam ever!-- but I have to take a second to brag about the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink dinner I just made.  Check it:

So as both a Virgo and an ISTJ (I recently took the Meyers Briggs test for work), I tend to plan somewhat compulsively.  Culinarily speaking, this means I start to think about dinner while I'm munching on breakfast, at least as far as the skeletal ingredients are concerned.  I knew I wanted to use a withering leek I had leftover from potato leek soup last week, and I wanted to find a way to incorporate that with a gorgeous bunch of chard bought yesterday at the farmer's market.  Perhaps some rice? and, Don't I have some leftover arborio somewhere on the cupboard?  I let that stew during the rest of my shift.

But then I got home and opened the cupboard and said despite myself, Ooh!  (While I did it, I realized that that is one of the great pleasures of my life, opening the cupboard, seeing something perfect, and saying, Ooh!  That's sort of what this whole dinner was like.)  There lay some pasta my grandma Neenie loves and buys from Trader Joe's, and bestowed upon me the other night (I think I inherited from her the notion that presenting your host with a package of good pasta is a perfectly respectable alternative to a bouquet of flowers, or bottle of chardonnay): spinach and chive linguine.  Even better than rice!  So I got that boiling while I sauteed some garlic, the leek, and a few minutes later, the chard.

Then the poking began.  I will admit that a shot of tequila and the new Breeders album fueled my recklessness.  I looked in the fridge, way into  the back, past the tower of salsa tubs and crusty hummus (gonna throw it out one of these days) and Adam's perennially empty gallon of soy milk and found... CREAM.  Oh jees, I thought, there goes my food awareness.  Though I was fully aware that cream would make the dish much much better.  Then I pushed the dry goods around on the cupboard.  Hm!  Sunflower seeeds!  Better save those for a garnish.  Wouldn't want them to get soggy.

And, apropos of my recent herb-mania, I traipsed out to the garden and snipped off some oregano, basil and parsley and chopped them all up coarsely.  Then I mixed the whole shebang together-- veggies, pasta, cream, a tad more olive oil (ok and a little butter), s&p, and then sprinkled some sunflower seeds and a few shards of smoked white cheddar.  My LORD it was heavenly.  Probably the best non-recipe'd dish ever.

Well, this post was meant to be about jam, and yet it's turned out to be a rock n' roll inspired pasta dish.  Ah well.  We write about what moves us.  Jam tomorrow, I promise.

Good Gracious.