Tag: pasta

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Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings The Book

157. Sicilian Meatballs p.222


I can’t find a recipe for these meatballs online, but I can’t stand to think that the internet will go without it for another day.

3/4 cup fine fresh bread crumbs from Italian bread (crusts discarded)
1/4 cup whole milk
1/2 cup (2 3/4 oz) whole almonds with skin, toasted
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 pound ground beef chuck
1/2 cup finely grated pecorino Romano or Parmigiano Reggiano
1/4 cup dried currants
1/4 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 large egg

Stir together bread crumbs and milk in a medium bowl.
Pulse almonds with sugar in a food processor until finely ground. Add to bread crumb mixture, along with remaining ingredients, and mix with your hands until just combined.
Roll mixture into 1-inch meatballs and transfer to a plate. Refrigerate if not cooking immediately.

These meatballs are a component of the Perciatelli with Sausage Ragù and Meatballs recipe I’ll be writing up next. In that preparation they’re browned in a pan, and then slowly simmered with a tomato sauce. I’m sure they would be excellent baked on their own, or as a component of any other recipe calling for meatballs. They are without a doubt the best meatballs I’ve ever had.

Everything about the recipe is spot on. The flavour was just perfect, there was something ethereal about the combination of the sweet cinnamon and currents with the beef and Parmigiano-Reggiano. The ground almonds grounded the flavour with an earthy body. They had a lovely fine grained texture, interspersed with chunks of pine nut and currant. They were delicate, but managed to hold together.

I’m going to Toronto with the boys this weekend, and I’m going head to head with one of them in a Sicilian meatball battle. He’ll be using the recipe from The Bon Appétit Cookbook, and I’ll go with this one. Whose cuisine will reign supreme? I like my chances, his recipe doesn’t call for almonds or cinnamon, which really made the dish for me.

I’ve you’ve ever loved a meatball, you owe it to yourself to try these. I barely noticed the rest of my dinner with these on the plate.

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Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings The Book

147. Butternut Squash, Sage, and Goat Cheese Ravioli with Hazlenut-Brown Butter Sauce p.236


The recipe

This dish was my contender in our ongoing series of food battles. They faced off against my dining companion’s lovely beet and ricotta stuffed ravioli, which turned a vibrant fuchsia as they cooked. As is always the case with these battles, we both think we’ve won, because we’ve chosen recipes that suit our moods that night. The only way to solve this is to get an outside expert to come eat with us. My sister loves the idea of judging my food, but she doesn’t eat red meat, which limits her judging potential. This battle was completely meat free, and we just forgot to invite her. She brings it up every time I see her, and I don’t think she’ll forgive me ’till I show up on her doorstep with a ravioli sampler platter.

The ravioli came together easily. You start by roasting a butternut squash, scooping it out, and mashing the flesh. You then brown onion in butter with sage salt and pepper, and mix it into the squash, along with some of the oldest, hardest, and stinkiest goat cheese you can get your hands on. The squash is then distributed among 60 wonton wrappers, and sealed up. You can do all of this ahead, and refrigerate the ravioli ’till dinner time. While the water for the ravioli is coming to a boil, you brown butter with chopped toasted hazelnuts. The ravioli are boiled for a few minutes, and served with the hazelnut-brown butter drizzled on top.

I cheated with this recipe. I decided to do about five times more work than The Book called for, and made my own pasta for the ravioli. Wonton wrappers are just fine, and work quite well for ravioli, but I really prefer fresh pasta for applications like this. The texture is just that much more appealing, and in theory you have much more control of the shape (in practice some of those shapes are a little wonky). Making pasta is a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, and the rolling is exceedingly satisfying. The ravioli were very good, and I think that’s in part due to the pasta. I imagine they’d be fairly similar with wonton wrappers though.

These ravioli were really hearty. They were absolutely delicious, and intensely flavourful. In fact they were so flavour packed that I’d only want to eat two or three of them. They would work best as one course in an elaborate dinner. Roasted butternut squash is high on my list of good things in this world, and it has a wonderful affinity for sage and goat cheese. The flavour pairings in this dish are absolutely right, everything is well proportioned, and it tastes rich and luxurious without being overwhelming.

I could have lived without the hazlenut-brown butter sauce. It was nice and all, but I didn’t find it all that necessary. Preparing the hazelnuts was a hassle, they had to be toasted, and then rolled in a cloth to get their skins off. Unfortunately the skins didn’t quite come all the way off, and flecks of skin ended up burning in my butter, adding unattractive black specks, and a bit of a charred flavour. The ravioli were certainly rich enough without adding nuts, and it was possibly one flavour too many. A little brown butter would have been a nice accompaniment, but the hazelnuts were overkill.

I was very well pleased with my entry to Battle: Ravioli. I’d absolutely make these again, and I’d probably make a double batch just to stash some in the freezer.

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Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings The Book

138. Macaroni and Cheese p.223


The recipe

I haven’t eaten all that much macaroni and cheese since I graduated to shoes with laces, but most of the kids I knew, and the stoners they grew up to be, loved the stuff from the box. As a child, macaroni and cheese was just the brand neutral way of saying your mom was making Kraft Dinner. I decided that KD was not for me around age 5, and looked for creative ways to avoid it, or mask its flavour. For reference, cut up hot dogs made it better, ketchup made it worse. Unfortunately kids in Montreal ate a lot of KD in the ’80s. My mom accepted my quirks and stopped serving it to me, but I still ate a lot of it at friends houses.

I was well pleased to leave mac and cheese behind me by the time I reached high school, and it stayed that way ’till a a nice Southern girl introduced me to the home made version in my early 20’s. Her macaroni and cheese was an entirely different animal, using real cheese, building flavour and texture with a roux, adding a touch of heat, and baking the whole thing with some extra cheese on top. I came around, and macaroni and cheese became something worth looking forward to.

I started experimenting with my own versions of mac and cheese, without much success. The problem I was trying to solve was that M&C is inherently rich, bland, and straightforward. Some people interpret that as a food surrogate for mother’s love, but I find it a bit dull. I tried adding herbs to the M&C, which fubared it, adding more chili flakes didn’t help either. One version with chipotles was actually pretty good, and worth revisiting sometime. Drawing on my childhood hot dog experience, I tried adding some slices of merguez, which worked quite well. These experiments brought me closer to what I was looking for, but they were still lacking. I was happy to discover that Gourmet has hit upon secret elixir that cuts the richness, and ties everything together, Dijon mustard. The Book’s version isn’t perfect, but I’m immensely grateful to it for bringing me closer to the ultimate macaroni and cheese recipe.

In this version, you make a three minute roux with butter, flour, and red pepper flakes, then whisk in milk and bring the sauce to a boil. After letting it boil for a few minutes, cream, extra-sharp Cheddar, and Dijon are added. The sauce is then added to cooked macaroni, and some of the water from the pot in a baking dish, then topped with mixture of butter, panko bread crumbs, and more cheese. The casserole goes into the oven for around half an hour, and then served.

The mustard and red pepper flakes make all the difference, and prevent this from being just too rich to be enjoyable. Getting the cheese right is important too. The recipe calls for extra-sharp Cheddar, which seems simple, but even an average grocery store will have about ten different versions, ranging from the plastic packaged stuff sold along with the milk, to fancy-pants imported stuff at the cheese counter. You can spend a fortune on truly wonderful Cheddar, but it’s probably a waste of money to go melting that into mac and cheese. The low end rubbery stuff will be OK, but not as good as it could be. The cheese really carries this dish so spending a bit more on a nice piece of aged local Cheddar is a worthwhile investment.

The recipe calls for panko, or other dried bread crumbs. I couldn’t get my hands on any panko, so I went with bread crumbs from the bakery down the street. Panko are known for their lightness and texture, while my bread crumbs were quite finely ground and dense. The 2 cups of panko the recipe called for might have been a nice topping, but 2 cups of my bread crumbs probably weighed twice as much as panko did. The macaroni was just too heavy on the topping, and the very dry bread crumbs sucked up a huge amount of moisture, so that within about 20 minutes of taking the dish out of the oven, the macaroni had set up, and lost the saucy-runny aspect you’re looking for in macaroni and cheese. You can see from the photo that it was next to impossible to find any of the macaroni under all the topping.

I think this recipe did a very nice job with the macaroni and sauce aspects, but fell short with the topping. I can’t comment on how it would have been with panko, but while they gave regular bread crumbs as an acceptable alternative, it obviously wasn’t. Beyond the topping, it was probably the best macaroni and cheese I’ve ever had. I’m sure that just a little tweaking could result in a truly great macaroni and cheese dinner, for the adults as well as the kids.

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Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings The Book

130. Pasta with Tomato and Basil p.206


Unfortunately there’s no recipe for this one.

This is a recipe for September. It has only a few ingredients, and they’re available year round, but the rest of the year it’ll be a pale imitation of itself. This incredibly simple pasta sauce starts with browning garlic slices in olive oil, then adding chopped tomatoes and basil branches and simmering for 20 minutes. You then stir in basil leaves, season with salt and pepper, and toss it with fettuccine.

It could not possibly be simpler, so it comes down to the quality of your ingredients. I’m sure making this with canned tomatoes, Chinese garlic, and greenhouse basil would taste pretty good, but you’ll miss the whole point. My favourite part about this recipe is its sense of time and place. In late August and September the tomatoes are abundant and deliriously flavourful, basil is growing like a weed, and freshly dug garlic is just turning up at the markets. During this perishable moment all the ingredients for this recipe are at their peak, and they’re practically being given away. I feel it’s my duty to try to use up as many of them as I can, and ideally to do as little to them as possible.

I thought this dish was just wonderful. It managed to capture the essence of late summer on a plate. The tomatoes broke down, but kept their just-picked flavour. My garlic was so fresh it was next to impossible to peel, and the pungent basil left me reeling. The fettuccini drank up the sauce, and took on its flavours. Finished with a bit of Parmigiano-Reggiano, and a grind of pepper I just couldn’t have asked for a better meal.

My dining companion thought it was good, but nowhere near as earth-shattering as I did. Whether it was the recipe, or my state of mind that day, it struck me as a near perfect dinner. It might deserve a full five mushrooms, but I’m going to deduct a half-a-mushroom for instructing me to peel the tomatoes, which seems like a total waste of time for a rustic casual pasta dish like this. Also, since it didn’t move my dining companion, I can’t in good conscience give it full marks.

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Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings The Book

102. Spaghetti with Handfuls of Herbs p.204

I couldn’t find a recipe for this online, but this is more a concept than a specific set of instructions anyway. The idea is to toss spaghetti with extra virgin olive oil, butter, minced shallots, and any and all herbs growing in the garden. The pasta is then sprinkled with bread crumbs which you’ve toasted in olive oil. The heat of the pasta releases the flavours of the herbs, without wilting them too much, and the uncooked shallots are warmed but retain their sharpness.

There are no specific instructions for which herbs to use, or in what proportions. It’s totally dependent on what you have on hand. I had a grand old time out on the balcony with a pair of scissors. I ended up with basil, thyme, rosemary, oregano, parsley, chives, sage, lavender, and lemon balm. Those last two were unexpected flavours, but they absolutely made the dish for me. I got really lucky and randomly combined my herbs into a near perfect flavour medley. I couldn’t repeat the process, I just snipped a bit of this and a bit of that, and I ended up with a completely delicious and intensely fragrant plate of pasta. My dining companion thought it was good, but not transcendent, but for me it was exactly the right dish at exactly the right time. It was perfectly suited to a warm night out on the balcony.

The bread crumb topping adds a textural counterpoint to the pasta, but not one I thought was really necessary. The Book says that the bread crumbs don’t weigh the dish down the way cheese would, but I just found them oily. Admittedly my bread crumbs weren’t coarse, and they might have worked better if they’d been more like tiny croûtons. Mine were more of a sandy coating on my pasta. It didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the dish, but I think they ruined it for my dining companion.

You may also notice that I didn’t use spaghetti in this spaghetti dish. I can’t bring myself to care about the different shapes of pasta, and I resent having to remember all of their names. They’re all exactly the same, shells, spirals, round strands, flat strands, big tubes, and small tubes all interchangeable in my mind. Sure, some shapes hold on to some sauces better, and finding things hidden in little shells can be cute. But, the idea that we all need to keep fifteen different shapes of pasta on hand to do justice to the traditions of some particular Italian hamlet is just annoying. They all taste exactly the same, and I’m going to use them as such. The only downside is that the different shapes really do differ in surface area. The amount of sauce needed to coat is proportional to area, which has little to do with mass or volume, so it does take some guesswork to avoid over or under saucing.

The concept of this dish is great, it’s simple and summery. It uses herbs at their peak, and allows for creativity around a central theme. It also has the advantage of not heating the kitchen up too too much. I was thrilled with the flavours at work in my version, and I can only hope you get as lucky as I did if you try this for yourself.

Categories
Poultry The Book

98. Chicken Fricassee p.372


No recipe this time.

This was a fairly successful and simple recipe. It’s real comfort food, chicken in a creamy mushroom sauce served with noodles. Like most comfort food it’s fatty and a bit bland. The preparation was as simple as you could wish for. Break a chicken down into serving size pieces, and brown them in a skillet. Remove the chicken and make a sauce of onion, celery, garlic, thyme, mushrooms, and chicken stock. The chicken is added back in and simmered ’till it’s cooked through. Then the remaining sauce is bolstered with heavy cream and an egg yolk.

I often complain about chicken skin and wet cooking methods. The skin tends to turn into a gross mush. In my opinion there’s no point in eating the added fat of chicken skin unless it’s crispy. This is a wet cooking method, but the skin managed to retain at least a bit of texture, and loads of flavour. The chicken parts are simmered in the sauce, but only the bottom halves are covered. The skin gets steamed, but not bathed in liquid, so the caramelization you built stays in one place.

The sauce worked really well on the pasta. The sauce actually had more chicken flavour than the chicken did, and the cream and egg yolk gave it a really silken texture which coated the noodles perfectly. I ate some of the chicken, but the dish was really all about the pasta and sauce for me. The thyme and mushroom flavours were prominent, fortunately that’s a great flavour combination. I found the first few bites bland, but the addition of a good dose of fresh ground black pepper picked things up quite a bit. I sprinkled Parmesan on some leftover noodles the next day and they were even better.

This dish had very straightforward flavours, it hit all the marks of a crowd pleaser. It has the added advantage of not containing anything people really object to (except celery, but that’s just me). It tasted good, but it wasn’t really inspired, or particularly interesting. I guess you can’t have it both ways. I would have preferred something a little more novel. Combining loads of carbs, a healthy dose of fat, the unobjectionable flavour of chicken, and some pantry staple spices is a no brainer. This dish would fit in well on a family restaurant’s menu. This kind of comfort food isn’t actually the stuff I crave after a bad day, but TV tells me this is what people want when they’re upset. It tasted good, but it wasn’t really memorable.

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Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings The Book

59. Fresh Fettuccine p.210


Sorry, no recipe

I made this fettuccine using the Basic Pasta Dough recipe. It’s kind of a silly recipe as it could be replaced with the words “follow the instructions that came with your pasta machine”. Basically it involves dividing the dough into 8, and working each piece through the widest setting of the rollers a few times, then progressively narrowing the rollers until the pasta is pretty much translucent. Then the pasta is allowed to dry for half an hour, before being run through the fettuccine slicing attachment.

This process worked fairly well. I was using a roller that attaches to the drive shaft of my mixer, and it took a bit of playing around to get the mixer speed vs resistance to offer it right. I had pasta bunching up on one side, or getting too thick in sections, for the first few pieces I put through. Once I got the hang of it it was easy and fun though.

As I mentioned before the taste of the pasta wasn’t that different from dried packaged stuff. In an application like this I would probably stick with the dried unless I was having foodie friends over. It’s nicer to say that you made your own pasta, but I honestly don’t taste that much of a difference. I’ve read that the difference comes in the way the past interacts with a sauce, but I’m not clear on which way it’s different. I couldn’t tell you which one is superior either. I’d say in it’s basic form this fettuccine is probably more effort than it’s worth (which is in no way a comment on the worth of making your own pasta, just fettuccine). However, getting the technique down is certainly worth it. I can imagine all sorts of fun additions you could make to the dough and integrate into the pasta. Maybe some flavourings? perhaps substituting some fancy flour for standard AP? how about some colouring agents? a little beet juice and you’d have a delightfully purple dish.

This was a good launching pad, and fun to make. I’d suggest everyone get around to making fettuccine at least once in their lives, but it’s absolutely not worth the effort for a Tuesday night supper.

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Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings The Book

58. Pasta Dough p.209

Sorry, no recipe.

This is a standalone recipe, but its result is an inedible dough. There’s really not much to it, mix together flour eggs salt and a bit of water in a food processor, then add water by drops until a dough just forms. Kneed for 15 seconds, and leave it alone covered for a hour. A good recipe to have on hand, and a lead in to many other recipes, but on it’s own it’s just dough.

I’d never made pasta before, and the eventual rolling and cutting it into shapes part was really fun. I went a bit hog wild with the pasta roller and made streams of fettuccine, ravioli, and dumplings after I learned how much I enjoyed it. The recipe worked reliably and produced some fine tasting pasta. The only trick was to cover it well while it rests. It’s a very dry dough, and if it’s left in the air for too long it drys and cracks when you try to roll it.

I don’t eat a lot of pasta, and when I do it’s usually because I want something simple and fast. There’s something very appealing about forcing yourself to slow down and appreciate the steps that go into pasta. The textural differences between fresh and dried pasta are fairly subtle, at least to me, but as it’s a good time I say why not make it yourself? The real advantage of homemade is in stuffed pastas. Making your own ravioli is worth every second of effort.

This dough was a gateway to all kinds of good dinners, it’s easy, and it’s reliable. It’s not exciting, but it doesn’t need to be.

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Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings The Book

51. Spaghetti Alla Carbonara p.221


The recipe

This was delicious, but then anything with this much cheese and pancetta had better be. I didn’t have the heart to go out and find guaniciale (unsmoked cured hog jowl), maybe that makes me less hard core that I should be, but the pancetta worked wonderfully. This was very easy to prepare. The fat from the pancetta is rendered, and used to brown the onions. The white wine is then added and reduced to make a sauce, the cooked spaghetti is tossed in, and a mixture of eggs, parmigiano-reggiano and pecorino romano, salt, and pepper is stirred in after the pasta is off the heat. The spaghetti partially cooks the eggs, which gives the sauce the half-thickened super smooth texture that makes Carbonara what it is.

There were two main problems with the recipe as written: water, and salt. The only liquid in here is a 1/8 cup white wine (after reducing) and the eggs. The pasta was wonderfully saucy for the first minute after it was tossed, then it got thirsty and all my sauce was gone. Adding some of the pasta water would have solved this problem, and tossing my plate with a bit of it rescued my dinner. The other issue is salt. The dish has got 5 Oz pancetta, and more than a cup of parmagiano and pecorino. The pasta is cooked in salted water, and a bit of salt is thrown in at the end for good measure. The saltiness of the meat and cheeses can vary wildly, and top producers seem to have less salt than the cheaper brands. Either the folks at Gourmet keep salt licks in their desks, or they had access to less salty ingredients than I did. It wasn’t inedible, but I woke up parched in the middle of the night.

There’s a little note at the bottom of the recipe about eating eggs that aren’t fully cooked. I suppose there is a real risk of contamination, and I’m certain that the people at The Book have lawyers to make sure notes like that get in there, but where’s the joy? As a young healthy person I get to feel invulnerable and poo poo warnings like that. I’m certainly willing to take the one in several thousand odds of food poisoning to eat less than fully cooked eggs, meats, and fish. It’s a risk I understand and am willing to take. Unfortunately it’s not a risk I’m allowed to take in a restaurant anymore. No more medium rare burgers, and maybe I’ll never get to try sous-vide. How long before hollandaise is gone (not that I’d mourn it’s passing actually)? What about a runny yolk for my toast? I worry that these things I love will just become unavailable, or I’ll have to sign a waiver to order off the “irresponsible” section of the menu. What is the world coming to? Why in my day…. grumble, grumble… snore.

Other than those little complaints, it really was a delicious dish. Despite all the cheese and pancetta, it wasn’t nearly as heavy as the Carbonara you’d get from the local Italian joint. In fact there’s no cream in here at all. The texture was also much lighter. Once I’d added a bit of water the strands of pasta were flavorful, and well coated enough not to stick, but not swaddled in the overwhelming amounts of sauce you sometimes find. With the salt and water caveats in mind this can be a great dish, the recipe as written gets slightly lower marks than what it can easily be changed to become.

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Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings The Book

39. Penne with Broccoli Rabe p.206

I can’t find an Epicurious recipe for this one. If I had this might have been a 4.5 mushroom dish, but I can’t bear not to share this simple flavourful Tuesday night supper with the world. Here it is.

2 pounds broccoli rabe
1 pound penne
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 garlic cloves, sliced
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste
Salt

Accompaniment: finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Trim and discard any yellow or coarse leaves and tough stem ends from broccoli rabe. Cut off florets and reserve. Cut stems and leaves crosswise into 1-inch-wide pieces. Wash stems, leaves, and florets and drain in a colander. Cook Broccoli rabe in a 6-quart pot of boiling salted water (1 tablespoon salt per every 4 quarts water) until stems are tender, about 5 minutes; drain.

Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until al dente.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderately low heat. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring until garlic is golden, about 1 minute. Add broccoli rabe and salt to taste, increase heat to moderately high, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 3 to 5 minutes.

Drain pasta and toss with broccoli rabe until well combined. Transfer to a bowl and serve with cheese.

Broccoli rabe is usually sold as rapini here. I don’t think I’d ever tried it before I met my dining companion. She adores all bitter greens, but rapini is her special favourite. It looks quite a bit like leafy broccoli, and has a similar taste, but with a serious bite. Apparently it’s a member of the turnip family, and some of that sharp flavour comes through. Rapini was definitely the vegetable find of 2006 for me. We eat it quite regularly, and I hope that I’m getting the touch. It’s a bit tricky because it has tough fibrous stalks, and relatively more delicate leaves. The idea is to get the stalks tender, without overdoing the leaves. More than once I’ve stopped early (inedible stalks), or gone too far (nasty yellowish leaves, and a bit of a sulfurous funk). I think I’ve got the hang of it now, and the 5 minute mark set in this recipe is right on the money. The photo is proof that it came out a vibrant green, and I assure you that it was toothsome and not a bit mushy.

For a recipe I’m giving a 5 mushroom rating to, it’s horribly written. It wasn’t at all clear to me what I was supposed to do with the florrets that I’d reserved. Were they meant to go in to boil with the stalks? possibly. Perhaps then they are the broccoli rabe that goes into the pan with the garlic and oil? Would have been nice to specify it. Does that mean that the boiled stalks go into the pan as well as florets? Perhaps reserve the florets, meant reserve for another purpose. Who knows. Anyway, I boiled the stalks, cooked the garlic and red pepper flakes, then added the stalks to the garlic, cooked for a bit and tossed with the pasta. I forgot my little bowl of florets on the counter and they never made it into the dish at all.

I guess the recipe is pretty tolerant, and it is delicious. Do what you will with the florets, but do make this dish.