Butternut squash pasta with sage

Hard to believe it now looking out on the rainiest grayest day ever (and loving it), but just a week ago it was too hot to turn the oven on and two sad, neglected butternut squashes were on their last legs in our refrigerator. Too hot to roast winter squash... another one of those unique-to-southern-california problems.

NYT to the rescue, this recipe cooks shredded squash in a skillet until it breaks down into something like a sauce. Taking a cue from some of the comments, I used about 7 torn up sage leaves (added toward the end) instead of nutmeg and skipped the sugar, for a more savory dish. The result really did our CSA organic squash justice, highly recommended.

Playing: The Jezabels - Dark Storm EP

Zucchini pasta with watercress pesto

There is a special place in my heart for watercress on account of The Man Who Cooked for Himself (a children's story about ... well a shut-in who is out of food and goes foraging in the woods for himself and his cat, or an early introduction for children to the benefits of pescetarianism). Whatever your feelings about watercress, you must agree that it has the most appetizing name for a bitter lettuce ever!

Kristen found this clever recipe for zucchini "pasta" on Claudia Pearson's blog (you should click on that link, the recipe is very beautiful) -- shaved raw zucchini is tossed with a little salt and left to soften until it can be treated sort of like cooked pasta. I went for parmesan instead of blue cheese -- I'm sure blue cheese would have been good, but that's one of the few foods that I really never came to terms with... I can tell objectively that it should taste good, but if I'm honest with myself, blech.

We had a little white bean salad (with cilantro, red onions, and red wine vinegar) and a homemade baguette on the side

sweet potato mac & cheese

i have a few food obsessions--raspberry lemon scones, oatmeal walnut chocolate chip cookies, spiced carrot muffins, purple potato frittatas, watercress sandwiches, tempeh bacon, aaaaand cheese. macaroni and cheese to wit. and this, my dears, is no ordinary variation on the classic casserole. this is IT. the macaroni and cheese i'd walk down the aisle with. it's smoky, it's sweet, crunchy and creamy, indulgent but healthy (not that it's bathing suit season or anything).

i should point out to my vegan friends that the key ingredient here is the sweet potato, not the cheese. you can substitute and modify any of the cheeses, but i really wouldn't lose the sweet potato (maybe butternut squash, but i'm not a big fan). i have been known in the past to jokingly describe my cooking as "50% vegan", which is ridiculous i know. but part of why i've been hesitant to post this recipe is precisely because it's a non-vegan dish inspired by the vegan version that calls for squash, sweet potato, or carrot to sweeten (and color) the cheese sauce. this sauce is healthy in the same way (no butter and plenty of veggies) and most of the cheese ends up on the top (slightly brown and crispy).

sweet potato mac & cheese

1-2 white-flesh sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 cup vegetable broth
1.5 cups plain (unsweetened) soymilk
1/2 tsp nutmeg
pinch of ground cayenne or chipotle pepper
1 lb. macaroni noodles
about 4 oz. grated smoked gouda
about 1 oz. finely grated parmesan
about 2 oz. grated sharp white cheddar
handful of arugula, coarsely chopped
1 slice of bread, coarsely chopped (for breadcrumbs)
1 tsp. olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375. Bring milk and broth to a boil; add potatoes. Simmer about 20 minutes, until potatoes are tender. Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil and add the macaroni. Cook according to package directions (about 8 min). Puree sauce with stick blender until smooth. Add nutmeg, cayenne, salt and pepper. Stir in all of the gouda cheese and half of the parmesan. Then toss macaroni and arugula with the sauce before added to greased baking dish. Top with the cheddar and remaining parmesan cheese. Bake uncovered for 15 minutes or until cheese is slightly browned. Add breadcrumbs immediately before serving. To prepare breadcrumbs, broil the pieces of bread with olive oil and salt/pepper for 1-2 minutes.

5 pounds of flour

Given access to Kristen's family's giant kitchen, a digital thermometer, chlorine-free water, and their Bread Bible, I went a little nuts last week ...

Olive bread

As I was reading the recipe, I KNEW this was going to taste like Charlie's olive bread and I was so right! Thin crust, chewy, almost doughy interior. I think this was my favorite of the four


Pugliese

This was Kristen's favorite and definitely the best texture-wise, perfect crust and pretty big holes. Instead of the durum flour that was suggested I used 1/4 cup of whole wheat pastry flour; I have no idea whether that was a reasonable substitute but it definitely tasted good.


Tuscan Low-Salt Bread

This one was a lot like the pugliese except drier and with (duh) less salt. I liked it on its own, but I think everyone else felt that it lacked... drumroll... salt. It was pretty perfect for sopping up Kris's excellent homemade pesto (that's about a pound of fresh pasta that we made there too!)

Bread Baker's Apprentice and a pound of instant yeast are en route from Amazon, and day 1 of a sourdough starter on the counter. Man I hope I never try heroin.

EDIT: I remembered that we also made banana bread from America's Test Kitchen, chocolate chip cookies, and two pizzas. So yeah, if you were wondering what happened to the gigantic jar of AP flour...

Asparagus digest (ba-dum)

Here are a couple of really good asparagus dishes we made from the last week or so.

The first was a delicious spinach-asparagus-pesto pasta from Super Natural Cooking that Kristen made. The pureed asparagus gets a little bit lost in the spinach pesto, so we found it nice to have a few pieces of whole blanched asparagus on top, which also made for a pretty nice photo, if I do say so myself.

Next a super simple potato-asparagus frittata based loosely on this Bittman recipe. Mark used the microwave liberally in this recipe which is not something I am used to, but it definitely sped the process up.

Potato-asparagus Frittata
Serves: 3-4

6 medium eggs
2 red potatoes
large bunch of asparagus
1 medium onion
feta cheese (we used goat feta)

Preheat the oven to 400. Microwave (believe it or not) the potatoes for 4 minutes until they are nearly cooked through. When they've cooled, remove as much or as little of the peel as you want and cut into largish cubes. Brown the potatoes in a skillet over medium heat with a little bit of olive oil

Put the asparagus in a dish with a little water and sprinkled with a good amount of salt and pepper. Microwave (again?!) the asparagus for 2 minutes. Chop the asparagus into 2" long pieces and set aside.

When the potatoes are nice and brown, remove them from the pan, and sautee the diced onion (no need to clean the pan) for a few minutes until they start to turn translucent, then add the asparagus and continue to cook it until it's just cooked (a little bit tender). Add the potatoes, onion, and asparagus to a 8" pie dish. If you have a skillet that can go in the oven, transferring to another dish here isn't necessary.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl with a little salt and pepper, and then pour them over the potato and asparagus. Bake for ~15 minutes until a knife comes out clean. Top with a little bit of the feta and enjoy!

One thing I really hate about asparagus is that it seems like about one in three times I buy it, it costs $6 or more for a small bunch. Has everyone had this experience? By and large, I believe we should care more about food, and be willing to pay a little more for better food that isn't round-up ready or chemically ripened. And I am definitely a huge fan of organic foods and buy them whenever possible, but let me say this: if your budget gives you a choice between organic asparagus and conventional potatoes and organic potatoes and conventional asparagus, go for the organic potatoes!

Harissa linguine

Another recipe from 101 cookbooks, a delicious and a little bit weird Moroccan/Italian fusion sort of thing.

I'd never had Harissa until K brought some back from her recent trip to Morocco; it's sort of a salty, spicy red pepper sauce... it's very very good (in moderation). We used linguine, kalamata olives, and chard but otherwise followed Heidi's recipe pretty closely, so I'm going to be lazy and not write it out here.

Kale every day forever

Ok, I promise I am not going to post a picture of every dinner we throw together from leftovers, but this one was particularly great.

My mom was in town for a short visit last weekend and suggested we make fresh pasta again for dinner, partially because it sounded fun and partially to boost my ego I'm sure. She and I made a double batch (2 eggs + 1.5 cups flour) so I had lots for this quick dinner later on in the week. We chopped up 4 leaves of kale and 2 cloves of garlic, cooked them in some olive oil for about a minute and tossed with the cooked fettuccine, a little more olive oil, and a handful of toasted pine nuts.

Fresh pasta with red wine mushroom sauce

I decided to take on menu planning this week on account of Kristen being really busy with dissertation stuff... Since I'm totally uncreative I just tried to pick an Italian thing, an Indian thing, an asian thing, and something with lentils since lentils are awesome. Italian thing first!

This morning Kris sent me a link to this great blog 30 Bucks a Week about making your own pasta. Apparently something you can do without some sort of pasta rolling machine from SkyMall?? (I was also totally incredulous that two people could eat on one $30 trip to the grocery store a week, but we'll get to that)


I had to add a little water in addition to the 1 egg & .75 cu flour to get it into the right type of ball, but after that their instructions worked pretty perfectly. It took me about forty five minutes (almost a whole This American Life) to roll out and slice all the fettuccines... which was kind of a lot of work but rather entertaining on a Sunday night that would have been otherwise "duller than rolling out a bunch of pasta by hand" as they say.

The red wine mushroom sauce they used sounded really good too (well, at least having an excuse to open the red wine sounded good). I sort of made up my own recipe. To wit:

Ingredients
1 medium onion, chopped
28 oz can of whole peeled tomatoes, chopped up a bit
1 carton of mushrooms, sliced (I used white, cremini or whatever else would probably be tastier)
~1/2 cup of red wine (cheapo Pepperwood Pinot Noir was great)

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Heat up a medium skillet over medium heat. Add a tbsp or two of olive oil, the onions, and a pinch of salt. Cook until the onions are translucent. Add the sliced mushrooms and cook them a bit, maybe 5 minutes, before adding the tomatoes and another pinch of salt. Once most of the liquid from the tomatoes and mushrooms is gone, add the wine and keep cooking until it's sauce!

We topped it with some fresh mozzarella that was left over from something or other, and here is the result:

Yum! It was totally bizarre to me that this actually worked and actually looked and tasted like pasta (really really good pasta), though I can't imagine it would have tasted nearly as good if I hadn't worked so hard for it.

OK, the $30 story real quick since this is already way long: I spent some time looking through that blog this morning, thinking they were crazy since we usually spend twice that for each of multiple trips to the store in a week (I am embarrassed about this). We had almost no food in the house, so I put together a pretty massive grocery list for 5 meals. A few hours later, I'm checking out at Henry's, and by the how-heavy-the-basket-is metric I'm expecting somewhere between $60 and $80... The grand completely unexpected total: $29.67!! Too weird