Fresh Pasta with Spicy Tomato Sauce

Lounging around on a hot Saturday afternoon, you don't want to think too hard about dinner. You read your book, you cheat and start the Sunday crossword puzzle a day early, you watch old episodes of "Lydia's Italy" on Tivo. Perhaps it's that last fact, though, that propels you--hours later--off the couch, into your kitchen, scratching your head. It's 7 PM and what are you going to make? You see a bag of flour. You see eggs in your refrigerator. You spy a can of tomatoes on the shelf. "Might I?" you ask yourself. "Noooo." But then you consider again and you settle on it: you are going to make fresh pasta--yes, pasta from scratch--and serve it with spicy tomato sauce.

Yes, this really happened to me this weekend. It all happened very fast. Granted, I had some practice learning how to make fresh pasta in this pasta video for food2.com, which I hope you've already watched 8 times:

The key, really, is confidence. If you believe you can make fresh pasta easily, you will make fresh pasta easily. Here's how I did it this time around:

I mounded 3 cups of flour on a cutting board and created a well, Mario Batali style. Into that well I cracked three eggs (effectively halving Chef Forgione's recipe). I poured in 1 Tbs of olive oil, 1 Tbs of water, and a sprinkle of salt. With a fork I beat the eggs together and slowly incorporated the flour. This process is not for the faint of heart: if you're nervous, use a bowl---it's very possible your flour well will fall apart and the eggs will drain on to the flour. But, again, this is all about confidence. Be confident! This will not happen to you!

Once it all comes together, lift up the mass of dough that's together and dump all the remaining shards and gunky stuff into the trash. Flour the board and knead your pasta dough for several minutes. It's fun! It should become smooth and glutinous and almost rubbery. Stick a finger in, as the chef shows you in the video: if the hole seals up relatively slow, your dough is ready.

Wrap it in plastic and let it rest 20 minutes.

While that's happening, bring a big pot of water to a boil and start on your sauce.

I sliced 6 cloves of garlic and placed them in a saute pan with 1/4 cup olive oil. I turned on the heat and here's the key to making the sauce spicy: I added a bunch of red pepper flakes. 1 Tbs, probably, which will make your sauce very spicy. Do this to taste, though. If you don't like spicy, use less. But this is a spicy tomato sauce, after all.

As those toast in the hot oil (make sure the garlic doesn't burn) add 1 Tbs of tomato paste, which should also heat in the oil. Stir everything around and then add one can of San Marzano whole tomatoes which you can cut up a bit in the can. Careful! The oil will sputter and spatter and then calm down. Add a big sprinkling of salt, stir everything around, and turn down your heat. You will let this simmer, probably for 20 or 30 minutes, while you go make the pasta.

To make the pasta, you need a pasta machine. I realize not everyone has one, but they're pretty cheap. Mine cost somewhere between $30 and $50 and it's excellent. I wish I had the more expensive kind that latches on to your KitchenAid mixer, but I don't. This will suffice.

Only thing is, the clamp is really bad. It doesn't clamp to my table so I had to call Craig in to hold it down while I passed the pasta through each of the settings.

Cut your pasta dough into 3rds. Stretch the first 3rd flat and crank it through the widest setting on your machine. Do that again. You may even fold it in half and do that again. It's all very casual.

Proceed to crank the dough through each setting, making the gap smaller and smaller each time, until you're in the thinnest setting. Make sure to flour your dough here, it's about to get stretched super thin. Once you got it through the last setting, flour again, fold up like in the video--in thirds--and cut into strips. I cut this pasta dough into wide strips creating what the Italians among you might call "pappardelle." I thought the wide noodles would match well with a chunky, spicy tomato sauce.

Ok, so do this with the rest of your dough and that's it! You've got fresh pasta and your sauce is almost ready.

Now everything happens very fast. Add salt to your boiling water. Check your sauce: is it ready to go? It should be chunky and flavorful (make sure to taste it). I had some fresh mint in the refrigerator, so I took it out and sliced up a few leaves which I added to the sauce to temper the spice. It worked nicely.

Drop your pasta into the boiling water. It'll cook really fast: 3 minutes or so.

You can check to see if it's done by lifting a noodle out and tasting it. If you're wimpy like me, run it under cold water first. If it's still chewy but cooked through, you're good to go.

Use a spider and lift all the noodles into the sauce:

Let it cook in there for another 30 seconds so it absorbs some of that sauce. Now turn off the heat, drizzle on good olive oil (it brings out the flavor) and sprinkle on some cheese (we had Pecorino).

Voila! Fresh pasta with spicy tomato sauce in less than an hour. Does this post put me one step closer to losing the "amateur" in my title? I think so. I really think so.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.amateurgourmet.com/2009/07/fresh_pasta_wit.html

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Earth-friendly Options For Countertops

Sunset Magazine has a wonderful slideshow featuring 17 different and beautiful earth-friendly options for your countertops.  They write: ?High style meets sustainable living: find an eco option for every kitchen?.Shown above is a Squak Mountain Stone product, slabs that are a composite of crushed glass, cement, and ash.And this beauty is from BottleStone, and is [...]

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the best $1.50 we spent at the farmers' market
lately

There are plenty of great finds for approximately the same price but we recently came home with a voluminous bunch of lovage that deserved some sort of prize. It's a pungent herb with a celery-like scent and flavor and it's a brilliant addition to all sorts of familiar foods. I used every scrap of leaf on it and was sad to see it go.

I forgot to take a photo of the bundle itself in its glory.
It looks a lot like this 18th-century illustration of mountain lovage (Ligusticum mutellina)
from the NYPL digital image library.
Its appearance is celery-like too: flat leaves, with a shape familiar to those who seek out bundles of celery with as much foliage as possible still attached, for adding to salads and soups and anywhere parsley would go. (If you've never taken apart a tidy pile of celery bundles at the grocery store to get at the one with the most lush and perfect leaves, try it some day; they are worth searching for, and it's easy enough to neaten up after yourself after you get your secret goodies that no one else cares about). Lovage stalks, too, look very much like celery, although they're more slender, and too fibrous to chew happily. That shouldn't stop you from adding them to something you're braising or simmering, though, and fishing them out at the end of cooking along with all the other woody bits like bay leaves and thyme stems. Or you could throw them in your bath "to increase attractiveness and attract love."

I've mentioned lovage in the past ? remember the focaccia with strong herbs, for people with strong personalities? or the stuffed squash? ? but only in passing, and my recent experiences with it convinced me I need to grow it on my fire escape to be assured of having a steady supply of it.


My first use of it was to add a tablespoon or so (finely chopped) to a super-simple salad that would have been completely unremarkable without it: a can of white beans, a handful of sliced cherry tomatoes, a handful of the first local snap peas of the season (trimmed and halved), and a dressing of nothing more than olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. I threw this together one morning and took some of it to work, and voilà, my lunch outside at grey old 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza was a picnic. The lovage added a brightness that demanded to be noticed, but it wasn't overpowering. It gave the salad an intense celery flavor but in the nicest possible way, like celery might taste if you pulled it straight out of a garden still warm from the sun. If you try this make sure you rinse the beans well under plenty of cold water; they can taste like can otherwise.

The most memorable lovage-bedecked meal was a dinner of seared seitan with a wilted lovage sauce.


We ate this with some quinoa studded with braised radishes, steamed radish greens and flowering chives, and the rest of the snap peas, barely-steamed and tossed with a little butter and chopped lemon balm. An unlikely assortment of ingredients, but a very pleasant dinner. There's a lot of lovage in the sauce considering how intense it is compared to other herbs, but the seitan is flavorful and chewy enough to support it. Think of it as sort of an eccentric vegetarian take on steak with maître d'hotel butter. The quinoa will get its own post soon but how to give a recipe the lovage sauce when I didn't measure anything? I'll do my best at reconstructing it but use your judgment (i.e., if the sauce looks dry, add a splash more wine, and if you added too much wine, let it reduce a little longer).

seared seitan with wilted lovage sauce
serves 2 to 3 people

8 ounces seitan (this one is perfect), sliced 1/2" thick and patted dry
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter, plus a bit more near the end of cooking
1/3 cup white wine or dry vermouth (Noilly Prat is good)
1/2 cup loosely-packed lovage leaves, finely chopped
sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Sear the seitan in the olive oil over medium-high heat in a non-stick pan. When it is evenly browned on both sides, remove it from the pan and set it aside. (Don't cover it tightly, though, or you'll lose the nice crispness around the edges). Wipe out the pan with a paper towel and melt the butter over low heat. Add the wine or vermouth, turn up the heat to medium-high, and let it simmer until it is reduced by half (or by a third, if you are hungry and impatient). Stir in the lovage and cook for another two minutes or so. (It should be thoroughly wilted and softened). Take the pan off the heat, season the sauce with a pinch of salt and some pepper, and add a bit more butter (an additional 1/2 a tablespoon will help the flavors come together; a full tablespoon is better). Stir gently just until the butter is melted. Spoon the sauce over the seitan and serve right away.

Later in the week the lovage did something interesting for prosaic stuffed mushrooms, which I might never have even bothered to make without it.


I had large white mushrooms and an annoyingly close-to-finished bag of panko bread crumbs taking up space in the cabinet, so I sautéed a finely minced shallot with some of the mushroom stems (maybe 1/2 of the stems) in 2 tablespoons or so of olive oil until both were softened, turned the heat off, let them cool, then stirred in a tablespoon of finely chopped lovage, two tablespoons or so of cubed sheeps' milk feta cheese, and enough panko bread crumbs to stuff all my mushroom caps. I baked the stuffed mushroom caps for maybe 15 or 20 minutes in a 375°F oven and they were just the right crisp thing to have with a dinner salad in place of bread. Stuffed mushrooms are an old-fashioned cocktail party-type of food and whenever people do make them now they tend to get self-conscious and make them too rich. Preparing them simply this way and not weighing down the stuffing with cream or too much gooey cheese reminded me that they can be fun to eat. If they look dry on top before you put them in the oven, drizzle some olive oil or white wine or dry vermouth over them, or even a tiny splash of water flicked from your fingers. The stuffing should be light and crisp, but not so crisp that diabolical shards of breadcrumbs shred the roof of your mouth.

There's more: we were not out of lovage just yet. I had a craving for cornbread so that's where it went. If you hold fervent beliefs about traditional cornbread ingredients, rest assured that I didn't screw with much else about it. It's still very basic, very spot-on (for me, at least) in terms of flavor and texture; it's just that the lovage added a deep green garden note to it.


I have been using this Food & Wine recipe for corn bread for years. Although there's no text accompanying the recipe, I believe they may have taken it from the Dean & Deluca Cookbook, since that's what I have it attributed to in my recipe collection. (The recipe section of their website used to be a lot fuller in the early days of the internet, although there's still a lot there).

lovage cornbread

Makes one 9" round cornbread.

Adapted from this recipe, which makes double the quantity. I have always reduced the amount of sugar when I make it because I can't abide sweet cornbread, but of course you may prefer it that way.

A cast iron skillet (see below) is recommended but not absolutely essential. You can follow the same process with any baking pan that's the same size.

1 1/2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
3/4 cup all purpose flour (I used white whole wheat this time and it didn't really behave differently than AP)
1 1/4 cups stone-ground cornmeal
2 scant tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 cup finely chopped lovage leaves
1 cup buttermilk (I used low-fat cultured buttermilk this time but I have used the powdered stuff many times and that's fine too, as is regular milk)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3 tablespoons butter, melted

Heat the oven to 425° F.

Stir together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, salt and lovage. Add the buttermilk, lightly beaten eggs, and melted butter and stir just until the ingredients are thoroughly combined. (If you are using white whole wheat flour in place of all purpose, as I did, the batter will look a little shaggy; that's perfectly fine).

Swirl the oil around to coat the interior of a 9" cast iron skillet and heat it over medium-high heat until it is hot but not smoking. (Alternatively, if you're using a baking pan, heat it in the oven). Pour the batter into the skillet or pan (it may bubble and hiss, so be careful) and bake for approximately 20 minutes, or until the top is springy when pressed and lightly browned. The bread is at its best while still warm but leftovers reheat well.

Even with one pan of cornbread rather than the two the original recipe produces, we still had quite a bit for two people to eat. Thus the last 1/4 of the bread (and some of the buttermilk I'd bought to make it) ended up in an improbable but very tasty preparation of stuffed zucchini.


I added some fresh sage since I had some on hand, but thyme would be great too.

improbable stuffed zucchini

2 medium zucchini
4 large mushrooms (120 g/4.25 ounces), sliced
1/2 of a small sweet onion, finely chopped (approximately 1/3 cup)
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon finely sliced fresh sage (or finely chopped thyme)
fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 of a 9" round cornbread (a little stale is fine), cut into 1/2" cubes
3/4 cup cultured low-fat buttermilk (or whatever type of buttermilk you have; vegetable stock would probably work too)
a tiny bit of oil for whatever you're going to bake the zucchini in

Halve the zucchini the long way and scrape out the seeds. A grapefruit spoon is perfect for this. I sprinkled the interiors with salt and left them upside-down to drain some of the water out, but I'm not certain it's necessary.


Sautée the mushrooms and onions in 2 tbsp butter until soft. The mushrooms will have given off some liquid and although you would normally cook it off, it's fine to leave a bit in the pan here, since you don't want the stuffing to be too dry.


Heat the oven to 375° F.

Stir the sage or thyme into the mushroom and onion mixture and season it generously with salt and pepper. Gently stir in the cubed cornbread and the buttermilk. Stir just until the bread is thoroughly integrated with the other stuffing ingredients, taking care not to mash it into a mush.

Use the bread mixture to stuff the zucchini and bake them in a lightly oiled pan for approximately 25 minutes, or until well browned.

Read The Full Article:
http://tinybanquet.blogspot.com/2009/07/best-150-we-spent-at-farmers-market.html

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Its Tangy Tortellini Salad Time!

July is here! Happy Fourth of July!!! Yes, the outdoor grill has been used and it?s time for outdoor picnics!

My recipe for Tangy Tortellini Salad has been retrieved. Later this afternoon the necessary ingredients to make this easy, delicious, colorful salad to enjoy on the Fourth of July will be purchased!

Tangy Tortellini Salad is prepared with a 12-ounce package of frozen Tri-colored Cheese Tortellini and Italian Salad Dressing. I also add in 1/8 tsp. Garlic Powder, 1 TBS. Chopped Parsley and ¼ Cup Black Olives (sliced in half). These ingredients are optional, but my family likes them. This salad is definitely a family favorite!

Easy Directions:

1. Prepare the Tortellini according to the directions on the package.
2. Drain and rinse with cold water and drain again.
3. Place the Tortellini in a bowl.
4. Add about ½ cup of Italian Salad Dressing and stir.
5. Add any optional ingredients.
6. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, stirring once or twice.
7. Before serving add extra Italian Salad Dressing, if needed.
8. Cover and refrigerate any leftovers.

Enjoy!
Yummy!
Happy Fourth of July!!!

Read The Full Article:
http://atastythought.blogspot.com/2009/07/its-tangy-tortellini-salad-time.html

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Red, White and Blue

Pledge allegiance to this month's banner, designed by our brilliantly patriotic illustrator, Lindy. Thanks to her and thanks to Justin for installing it. Now for a very important question: what's Blue Nun??

Read The Full Article:
http://www.amateurgourmet.com/2009/07/red_white_and_b.html

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Burger Skills: Hamburgers that pay you!

Bur-Geek writes in:

Took a fancy-shmancy cruise up to Alaska with the wifey recently, and guess what I found on the ship? Well, some REALLY TERRIBLE BURGERS! I mean, they were disgusting! Pre-cooked patties just heated up for about 30 seconds after you ordered them. A big disappointment! But... wandering though the ship's casino, what else did we find? A BURGER-THEMED SLOT! I about laughed my butt off and ran back to our stateroom to grab the camera. I had to document this! And NO, I didn't play it. It looked way too complicated!

In all fairness this machine should be rigged so a Hamburgler always wins!

Read The Full Article:
http://portlandhamburgers.blogspot.com/2009/07/burger-skills-hamburgers-that-pay-
you.html

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Hobnob Grille

Burger Commander writes in with a new PDX patty:

My friend ?The Baconess? and I have been trying to get together for a burger for a couple weeks now, and when we finally had an evening off to chase one down, we decided to try this new spot near her house, Hobnob Grille. We wasted little time getting to a window booth and quickly decided against the happy hour ?mini burger?.

We each ordered the Hobnob Burger ($10). The bartender suggested we pair it with gruyere. ?The Baconess? insisted on adding bacon to hers ($1.50 for each add-on). Though the burger came with fries, but just reading the name of the ?Buttermilk Onion Rings? our appetites wouldn't let that one slip by and we added those as well.

We each dressed our burgers with the provided baby greens and tomato, in addition to the chipotle cream cheese and tomato jam that were already spread on the bun. The mild heat from the spicy chipotle cream cheese was the first thing I noticed, but after a few bites, it was the flavor of the meat that came through. You could tell they spent some time getting the right mix of spices to grind into the burger meat at Hobnob.

The Hobnob burger came with a small handful of fries, just enough to snack on, but its obvious that the chef wants the burger to be the star of this plate. They were nice enough, with just enough salt and seasoning.

The onion rings came with the burgers, arranged in a sort of ?Great Wall of Onion Rings? and served with a chipotle barbecue sauce.

To prove her status as a true burger maniac, also attached is a picture of The Baconess giving daps to the most bitchin? headstone in the Lone Fir Cemetery.

Hobnob Grille
3350 SE Morrison St
Portland, OR 97214
503.445.3665



Read The Full Article:
http://portlandhamburgers.blogspot.com/2009/07/burger-commander-writes-in-with-ne
w-pdx.html

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Antique-look appliances

Do you own a period home?  We’ve got a Victorian, and no matter how much I want that authentic look, I am simply NOT going to cook on an authentic Victorian stove…if I could even find one.  But how about a new stove that pays homage to period styling?  Try Elmira Stove Works’s custom range [...]

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http://feeds.b5media.com/~r/b5media/CookingGadgets/~3/tJ6rp94Shuw/

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Recipe: Watermelon Cupcakes by Tami Rose

Watermelon Cupcakes
Photo and recipe by
Tami Rose of FamilyCorner.com

These cute summertime cupcakes are perfect for the upcoming July 4th weekend. They're easy to make and the kids can have fun by helping to "bake" them. You can use your own from scratch cupcakes or use ready made and even boxed cupcake mix with this recipe.

Ingredients:

1 box white cake mix or your own white cupcake recipe
1 cup boiling water
1 small box of watermelon flavored Jell-O or any red colored Jell-O
1 8oz container of Cool Whip, thawed
red & green liquid food coloring
mini chocolate chips

Instructions:

Make your own by scratch or cupcake mix. Use cupcake liners. Cool cupcakes.

Stir boiling water into powdered Jell-O until dissolved. Pierce tops of cupcakes several times with a meat fork or straw. Spoon Jell-O over cupcakes, making sure that the liquid is going down into the holes. Refrigerate 30 min. Remove from pans.

Tint Cool Whip with red and green food coloring.

Using plastic baggies to hold the whipped topping, pipe a green circle around the outside rim of each cupcake.

Fill in the middle with pink whipped topping.

Add mini chocolate chips to represent watermelon seeds.

Store in refrigerator. Best if eaten the same day.

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ZenCupcake/~3/T8iAPhoNd3o/recipe-watermelon-cupcak
es-by-tami-rose.html

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Interesting Presidential Food Trivia and Facts to
Celebrate the 4th of July

As we move closer to the 4th of July and look forward to all the delicious food that will be served throughout the holiday weekend, it’s good to remember the important part that food has played in our nation’s history; from the Boston Tea Party to the coalition building ice cream socials held at the [...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HuggingTheCoast/~3/Gp-jhGqttSo/

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