Zucchini 'Pappardelle' with Asparagus and Cherry Tomatoes

This meal is basically ‘how to eat a meal of nothing but vegetables and still make it taste great.’ Spoiler alert: the answer is to add a good bit of extra virgin olive oil and parmesan cheese. This is also really quick to cook, since everything can be done in one pan at the same time.

For 1 serving:

~ 2 zucchinis, peeled

Handful of asparagus

Handful of cherry tomatoes

½ onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, diced

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper

Lemon Juice

Parmesan Cheese

Fresh Basil

Cut off the rounded ends of the zucchini and using a mandolin (or a knife if you want to be Mr./Mrs. Precision McKnifework) slice into 1/8” thick ribbons. Cut the ribbons in half down the middle. Lay out the slices of zucchini in one layer on a tray (or anything that will hold them) and sprinkle with salt. Let stand for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, trim the asparagus by removing the woody stem ends. Then, take a paring knife and peel off layers of the remaining stem, from the head on downward. Your asparagus stalks should look like shaved poodles when you’re finished.

Halve the cherry tomatoes, cut up the garlic and onions and your prep work is done.

Heat a large pan over medium heat. Add in a good lug of extra virgin olive oil and toss in the zucchini, asparagus, tomatoes, onion and garlic. Cook over medium for about 7 minutes, then sprinkle on some lemon juice. Season with a pepper and a little salt if you think you need it.

Chiffonade your basil by stacking a few leaves on top of each other, rolling them up like a cigarette and cutting into thin strips.  Serve the veggies with the basil, parmesan cheese, and an extra squirt of olive oil.

Butternut Squash Ravioli with Butter and Sage Sauce

The theme for this week is cheap meals, and this is a great way to save money but still cook a hoity-toity gourmet meal. I’m somewhat guestimating, but I think the recipe as written below costs about $5 to make, and that’s for 2 servings plus a bunch of leftover raviolis. I didn’t make enough dough, but I’ll write the recipe as if I actually knew what was doing and made enough pasta to go with the filling. Since butternut squashes are pretty hefty vegetables, you can’t really downsize, but you can have some great leftover. The sauce is enough for 2 servings, even though there’s extra ravioli.  Leftovers are dead simple when you already have the ravioli assembled and frozen – just add to boiling water (from frozen) and simmer for 4 minutes.

Pasta dough:

9 ounces all-purpose flour

3 large eggs (6 oz)

1 tbsp olive oil

Filling:

1 butternut squash

3 cloves garlic, unpeeled

¼ cup parmesan cheese (plus more for garnish)

Salt and pepper

Sauce:

4 tbsp butter

1 shallot, diced

Sage leaves

Heat your oven to 375°F. Cut the top off the squash, and split it in half. Scoop out the seeds and gloopy bit (just like carving a pumpkin, but with 10x less). Place the squash cut side down on a baking sheet. Bake for 1 hour. You can either roast the garlic (in its husk) along with the squash (should take 10 minutes or so) or in a dry pan over medium heat, flipping as blackened spots form.

Meanwhile, make a well out of the flour and crack the eggs into the center. Add the olive oil on top of the eggs. Whisk the eggs, slowly incorporating the flour bit by bit until a dough forms.

Knead the dough for approximately 8 minutes on a floured surface, until the dough is silky smooth. Take a piece of plastic wrap and spray with non-stick cooking spray. Place the dough on the plastic, and give it a spray as well. Wrap the dough in the plastic and refrigerate for half an hour.

Is the squash done roasting? Great, scoop out the flesh and add to the bowl of a food processor. Dice the roasted garlic from earlier, and add to the food processor, along with salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese. Process to a puree.

Back to the pasta. Roll out the dough in 3 batches. Start on the lowest (widest) setting, and pass the dough through 4 times, folding like a letter each time. This helps knead the dough. Then, pass the dough through the machine, increasing the setting each time until you reach the thinnest setting. You may want/need to flour the dough lightly during this process. Repeat with remaining dough. Split into 6 equal sized sheets.

Place a spoonful of filling  for each ravioli, giving yourself enough space between each spoonful. Add filling to 3 of the pasta sheets. Get some water in a small bowl, and using a brush, ‘paint’ around the filling. This will make them easier to close. Place one of the pasta sheets that doesn’t have filling on it directly on top of one that does. Seal up each ravioli, pressing out any excess air. Use a biscuit cutter or similar to separate each ravioli from the dough. 

Place any raviolis you don’t plan on immediately cooking on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and place in the freezer until frozen. Transfer to a Ziploc bag.

For the raviolis you are cooking, bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add the raviolis, cooking for 1 minute, then removing with a spider/slotted spoon to the pan with the sauce.

Sauce:

Melt butter and add diced shallots, allowing them to get some caramelization. Add the sage and cook for about 1 minute. Add in the cooked pasta, and toss to coat. Serve with additional parmesan cheese.

Ricotta Gnocchi with Tomato Sauce and Luganega Sausage

This is a recipe I learned in a cooking class at Philadelphia’s famous DiBruno Brothers. It’s surprisingly easy, much easier than regular gnocchi. It will take about 30 to 45 minutes to make a whole batch of gnocchi, and about 10 minutes more to have a finished dinner on the table (provided you made your sauce in advance). Each batch should be about 5 servings.

Ricotta Gnocchi:

1 lb. fresh ricotta

1 large egg

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons salt

4 oz. (scant cup) flour, plus extra for work surfaces

First and foremost: let’s talk ricotta. If you happen to live near a fancy-pants Italian cheese shop, see if they have ricotta del pastaio – it has a lower water content than the regular stuff from the grocery store, which makes it better for things like pasta and gnocchi. If all you have access to is the stuff in the grocery store that comes in the plastic tubs, place a strainer over a bowl and line with cheese cloth/paper towels. Place the ricotta on the cloth, cover, and let it sit in the fridge overnight. Now, I’ve used regular ricotta in the past and skipped this step with fine results, so if you’re crunched for time you can get away with not draining the excess moisture – just try not to add too much extra flour when making the gnocchi.

Ok, now that our ricotta situation is under control, let’s get to the recipe. Beat the egg with a whisk and add to a bowl along with the ricotta, olive oil and salt. Mix to integrate. Form a well in the center and add the flour, slowly integrating with the cheese mixture until a dough forms. You may need to add a little extra flour – the dough should be a little tacky, but not sticky.

Cut the dough into six equal sized pieces, covering the parts you’re not using with plastic wrap. On a lightly floured surface, work each piece into a cigar shape, rolling from the center outwards. Each rope shaped piece should be about ½ - ¾” thick. Cut each rope into 1” long pieces.

Once cut, pinch off the ends of each gnocchi, and place on a baking tray lined with parchment paper and lightly floured. If you’re not planning to cook the gnocchi the same day, place the baking sheet in the freezer. Once frozen, place the gnocchi into a large Ziploc bag.

To cook the gnocchi, bring a pot of salted water up to a light boil. Add in the gnocchi, give the water a stir (so they don’t stick to the bottom) and cook for 1 minute (if fresh) to 3 minutes (if frozen) until they float to the top of the pot. Remove from the pot.

Tomato sauce:

This is more a general guide to how I do it than a real recipe per se. Open up a 6 lb. can of whole peeled tomatoes (I use Cento Italian Peeled tomatoes. San Marzanos are a really good choice, but I think they’re just too expensive, personally.), and add half to a blender. Puree to a liquid, and add into a large pot. Add the other half to the blender, and pulse a few times until broken down, but not so much that they don’t have any texture. I don’t like my tomato sauce chunky, but if you do you can just add the tomatoes to the pot whole, and break them up with a wooden spoon/potato masher to desired consistency while they cook down.

Add a large onion, peeled and chopped in half into the tomatoes. Yes, two giant halves and not diced onions. This trick comes from Marcella Hazan, and allows you to have that great onion flavor in your sauce without having to pick out onion bits from your teeth. Add to that some crushed cloves of garlic (4 or 5), a tablespoon of sugar, some salt, some dried oregano, and a little dried basil (not too much, as we’ll be adding fresh basil when serving), and crushed red pepper (not too much, as it will intensify as the sauce cooks down.

The sauce will taste under-seasoned, and very tomato-like. This is fine, as all those flavors will be picked up once the sauce cooks. Bring the sauce up to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and allow to simmer, uncovered, for an hour. Taste, and add seasonings as you see fit. The sauce should start to taste a little more like the finished product, but we still have some reducing to do. Simmer for another hour, or until the consistency looks good to you. Remove the onion and adjust seasonings as needed.

Putting it all together (for 1 serving):

1/3 lb. luganega, or other Italian sausage

½  tablespoon olive oil

½ cup prepared tomato sauce

1 tablespoon reserved pasta water

Parmesan cheese

Fresh basil

Extra-Virgin Olive Oil (the good stuff!)

Cut your sausage into ¾” thick pieces. Pre-heat a 10” frying pan over medium heat. Add in about ½ tablespoon of olive oil and the sausages, cooking on each side. If there is too much excess grease in the pan once the sausages are cooked, remove the sausages and drain the grease. Add the sausages back into the pan along with the ½ cup of prepared tomato sauce. Make sure the heat isn’t too high, as the sauce will heat quickly and possibly splatter.

Add the cooked gnocchi to the sauce along with 1 tablespoon of the water they were cooked in. Toss, and transfer to a bowl, topping with parmesan, fresh basil, and a little extra virgin olive oil.

Pizza Margherita

I thought I would tackle a recipe from Peter Reinhardt’s Crust and Crumb this week. I kept the toppings simple, since I was primarily concerned with the crust. This dough takes 3 days to make, but fear not because there’s about 20 minutes (if that) of active work for you to do; everything else is waiting for dough to rise, or letting your mixer do the work for you, or baking. I’m pretty pleased with the results; when I initially tasted the dough before baking, it had a very sweet (too sweet) characteristic from the honey. However, this was not present in the final pizza.

Poolish (makes enough for 2 batches):

2 cups (9 oz.) Bread Flour

2 cups (16 oz.) Water at 65 – 70 °F

1/8 teaspoon (0.35 grams, if you have a really precise scale) instant yeast

Add all ingredients into a bowl and whisk for 1 minute, until all lumps are removed. Cover with plastic wrap and leave out for 3 to 5 hours, until bubbly. Refrigerate overnight.

Sauce (makes enough for 2 12” pies):

6 oz. tomato paste

6 oz. water

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp black pepper

¼ tsp garlic powder

½ tsp onion powder

1 tsp fish sauce

¼ tsp dried basil

½ tsp dried oregano

Add everything to a bowl and stir. Seriously, that’s it. Refrigerate, covered, until ready for use.

Dough (makes 3 12” pizzas)

10 oz. poolish (freeze extra for future use)

16 oz. (3.5 cups) bread flour

2 teaspoons (0.5 oz) salt

¼ teaspoon (0.03 oz) instant yeast

2 tablespoons (1.5 oz) honey

½ cup (4 ounces) olive oil (any grade)

¾ cup plus 1 tbsp cool water (65 to 70°F)

Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the dough hook attachment, start the machine on low until a dough forms, then increase the speed to medium and knead for 12 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to rise for 3 to 5 hours (depending on how warm it is in your kitchen) until bubbly. Refrigerate overnight.

Turn the dough out on a floured surface and divide into 3 equal sized portions. Unused portions can be kept in the fridge for 2 days or frozen.

Pre-rising

Finished dough

Assembly:

Once you’ve taken the dough out of the fridge and portioned it, let it sit out at room temperature in a bowl covered with plastic wrap for 30 minutes.  Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 450°F.

On a well-floured surface, roll out the dough using a rolling pin (you’ll want to sprinkle some flour on the rolling pin as well), rotating a quarter turn each time to maintain an even circle.  You will probably want to rest the dough for 5 minutes in the middle of this process, so it can relax. Definitely do this if you find the dough snapping back too much. Roll your dough out to a diameter of a little over 12” and place in a cast iron skillet. Fold any overhand over itself to create the crust.

Ladle on about ¾ cup of pizza sauce, and top with slices of mozzarella. Place the skillet on a large burner on the stove, and turn the heat on high. Cook for 3 minutes (this gives the bottom a head start so you get a nice crust going), then transfer to the oven for 13 to 15 minutes. Remove from oven and place fresh basil leaves overtop. You should let the pizza cool a few minutes before eating, but if you’re like me you’ll just end up chowing down and burning the roof of your mouth. 

 

Well, it's almost a circle

 

My skillet's one hot spot

Roasted Cornish Game Hens with Pomegranate and Sage

This recipe comes from one of Mario Batali’s cookbooks that I was paging through over the summer . I can’t recall the name of it, but I did manage to take a picture of this recipe to work off of.  The original recipe calls for orange zest instead of lemon zest, but I couldn’t find any decent oranges. Also it calls for 6 game hens, which seems like quite a lot. I made it with two, though you could probably add a third without any hassle. I had to cook the birds for about ten minutes longer than the recipe calls for, probably due to the hens not being 100% defrosted when I started. The recipe below contains the cooking times as written.

Ingredients:

2 or 3 cornish game hens

Seeds of 1 large pomegranate

1 cup sweet marsala

1 tablespoon fresh mint

6 cornish game hens

8 tablespoons butter (divided)

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

8 fresh sage leaves

Zest of ½ lemon

Method:

In a bowl, cover the pomegranate seeds with the marsala. Mix in the chopped mint. Cover, and let sit for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Remove the wishbone from each of the hens (optional, but it makes it easier to split them in half when serving), and season with salt and pepper, including inside the cavity. Drain the pomegranate seeds, reserving the marsala for later. Stuff the cavities with half the pomegranate seeds, reserving the rest. Truss the birds with kitchen twine.

Heat a large oven-proof skillet over medium high. Add 2 tablespoons of butter, and the 2 tablespoons of olive oil, then toss in 2 of the sage leaves for about 30 seconds. Place the birds in the pan, browning on all sides (should take about 7 minutes altogether). Add the remaining pomegranate seeds and sage leaves to the pan.

Transfer the skillet to the oven, and roast for 7 minutes. Remove the pan, and drizzle on ¼ cup of the reserved marsala, dot the birds with 2 tbsp butter, and baste on some of the pan juices. Return the pan to the oven for another 10 minutes, or until the juices in the bird’s thigh run clear.

While the birds are cooking, slice the lemon zest into ¼” strips. Heat a small saucepan with 2 tablespoons of water in it, and whisk in the remaining butter 1 tablespoon at a time to emulsify. Add the lemon zest. Keep the mixture warm until ready to serve.

To serve the birds, split them in half down the middle, spoon on some of the pan juices and pomegranate seeds over top. Serve with roasted potatoes and vegetables, and spoon some of the butter sauce over everything.

Crespelle Bolognese

This recipe comes from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, with some tweaks.  This is basically lasagna Bolognese, but with crespelle (aka crepes) in place of pasta. Or if you prefer, Italian enchiladas.

Bolognese

¾ pound ground beef

1 large carrot, diced

½ onion, diced

1 medium leek, cleaned and chopped

1 cup milk

1 cup dry white wine

1 28 oz can tomatoes (3 cups)

Salt

Pepper

1/8 teaspoon Nutmeg

In a dutch oven over medium heat, cook the carrot for 2 minutes, add the onion, cook for 2 minutes more, add the leek, and cook for 5 minutes or so, until the onions are translucent and the carrots softened. Add the beef, and cook until the meat is no longer pink, stirring to incorporate everything. Season with salt and pepper.

Add the cup of milk, and grate the nutmeg into the sauce. Cook until the milk is fully evaporated. Add the wine, cooking until all the liquid evaporates again. Add the tomatoes, and cook the sauce on a light simmer for 2.5 to 3 hours.

Crespelle:

1 cup milk

¾ cup flour

2 eggs

1/8 teaspoon of salt

Put the milk in a bowl, and sift in the flour, whisking to remove any lumps in the mixture. Beat the 2 eggs in a separate bowl, then whisk to incorporate. Season with salt. Place the bowl in the fridge for an hour. When you’re ready to cook the crespelle, put a non-stick pan over medium heat, and coat with non-stick spray (or use butter). Ladle between 1/8 and ¼ cup of the batter into the center of the pan, swirling to spread the batter in a circle. Cook for about 45 seconds/side, until they start to get some color on them.

Bechamel:

1.5 cups milk

2 tbsp butter

1.5 tbsp flour

Salt

Pepper

Nutmeg

Heat the milk to almost boiling in a saucepan. In a different pan, melt the butter and add the flour, whisking constantly. Cook for 2 minutes, until the roux gets some color on it. Add the hot milk, 2 tbsp at a time, whisking to incorporate. When about ½ cup of the milk had been added, go ahead and add the rest. Keep whisking. Cook for a few minutes until the béchamel reaches the desired consistency – in this case, about as thick as sour cream.

Assembly:

Place a spoon full of Bolognese in a crepe, and roll it up like a burrito. Spoon the béchamel over the crespelle, then top with grated parmesan. Position your oven rack on the upper third of the oven, and cook at 350°F for 10 to 15 minutes (to warm through – mine was in the fridge beforehand, so it took closer to 15 minutes), then turn on the broiler and cook for about 2 minutes, until the top starts to brown.