Pasta - - Page 9

by BS

Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

– Thanks for all the homemade pasta tips. Sounds like The Pioneer Woman is our go-to source. Other ideas? Keep ’em coming.

– You keep submitting those funky-ass cottage cheese recipes, we’ll keep publishing them. Jay:

A little late to the game, but I’ve got a weird one…I eat A LOT of it.

1 cup Cottage Cheese
1-2 tbsp Sweet Relish
Mix.

Want to be really gross, er, fancy? Mix in some finely diced beef jerky. I kid you not, it’s awesome, but I can only vouch for my brand of cottage cheese: Friendship. It’s like the Fage of cottage cheese, very thick and doesn’t need to be strained so it’s a little more “recipe ready”. Though I’d like to try this with those Rachel’s flavors if I could find them.

– Finally, Sara coins a healthy new food philosophy.

Thanks to this post, I’m now a poutinatarian.

(Photo: imipolexG)

in Cheese 0 comments

by BS

Two Tastes for Every Bite

One of the best things I’ve eaten anywhere lately is the sweet potato gnocchi at Tulio, an Italian restaurant in Seattle. It is one of those dishes that was just a total surprise — sounds simple, looks simple, then you put one in your mouth and realize it’s a million miles from simple. Every bite of these little pillows had two distinct, equally beautiful tastes and textures: crisp and buttery on the outside, but with a sweet, melt-in-your-mouth middle.

Firmly on my homemade pasta kick, when I got back to New York I emailed Chef Walter Pisano’s press folks to ask if he’d be willing to share the recipe. Apparently he gets this request all the time and was more than happy to oblige.

“I’m surprised he would share his most popular recipe,” remarked the veggie gf. “Why would anyone go to the restaurant if they can just get the recipe for free?”

Well I figured that one out soon enough. Remember that “sounds simple, looks simple” thing? Yeah, turns out they’re not so simple to make. Chef Pisano only has one sous chef who he’ll trust to take charge of these babies, which take, oh, about a full day to make. Of course, being the slacker chef that I am, I glanced at the minimalist ingredient list (sweet potatoes, parm, nutmeg, eggs and flour), ran out to pick up a few SPs and got to work. Or so I thought.

by BS

Open Thread: The Pasta-bilities

Pasta is pretty much my favorite food group. Fettuccine, vermicelli, angel hair, rice noodles, udon, pasta-stuffed breadbowls — I love it all. I don’t write about it so much here because I usually just eat the pre-packaged dried stuff. Boring. But there’s nothing better than going out to a great Italian place and remembering how much more amazing the fresh stuff is.

For Christmas this year I got something I’ve been wishing for several years running now: a shiny new pasta machine. I tore out the directions that came with the box and whipped up some fresh raviolis. And by whipped up I mean spent three freaking hours cooking. Damn, this is time-consuming. Also, I just didn’t love ’em. I mean, they were fine. But not a hundred times better than regular old, out-of-the-box pasta. Clearly, I’m not expecting the first attempt to be Batali quality, but I am a little bit at a loss as to where I go from here. That’s where you come in.

I know tons of you guys have homemade pasta tips, right? What recipes do you use? Do I need a special flour? A new unitasker? Kneeding advice? Ancient family secrets? Bring it all.

Feed me!

in Personal / Recipe 9 comments

by gansie

A Half Stick of Butter Makes the Pasta Go Down

DC has been pummeled with snow this season and it’s not stopping. In fact, we’re supposed to get hit this Friday and again on Tuesday. Like the good weather tracker that he is, 80 went to the store days before casual weather watchers panic for milk and bread and eggs.

Unlike me, he came home with hardly any fresh produce (although to his credit, they didn’t have my requests: brussels sprouts and winter squash and he’s not known to go off script). When I got home from the DC Food Blogger Happy Hour (DC is so dorky!) he showed off his new items, especially his Ken’s Lite Caesar dressing. But I scanned for our pending dinner, particularly noting the four sticks of butter.

And even though I dined on noodles for lunch with Tim, I couldn’t resist the ease of a quick pasta dish for dinner.

in Cheese / Recipe / Veggie 3 comments

by tvff

That Spätzle Feeling

It goes without saying that cooking should be fun. I know what you’re thinking: I have LOTS of fun! Eating, maybe. But the truth is preparing a meal can be a stressful act, especially when trying to impress someone with that big ambitious dish. Which makes it that much more rewarding when you find a dish where the process is just as much fun as the outcome. If you’re looking to bring a little more enjoyment into the kitchen, spätzle is the thing for you.

A recent trip to Reading Terminal Market (i.e. Foodie Paradise) here in Philly got me in a German/Eastern Europe mood and I picked up some kielbasa and sauerkraut from AJ Pickle Patch. Needing a suitable starch to go along with this meat & cabbage feast, I decided to have a go at homemade spätzle.

The ingredients are simple, but it’s all about technique for this one…

in Recipe 7 comments

by gansie

The Thyming Is Never Right

I tried. I really tried. I even got 80P into the mix. I pulled out a few cookbooks and was willing to follow a recipe. And I hate following recipes. I even *encouraged* 80 to flip through two cookbooks. But I found nothing. 80 found nothing.

I appreciate the idea of cookbooks, the look of printed recipes and accompanying photos and the feel of turning pages. But they just don’t have that search engine capability. Sure, I can look up brussels sprouts in the index but the act of searching doesn’t force an answer. And how many cookbooks can I scan before I turn to google?

Cookbooks become useful in the pre-meditation stage, not in the I have coconut milk, frozen spinach and black beans in my kitchen – what to do after stage. So I abandoned my full shelf of cook books and headed into the kitchen with a scant plan.

in Cheese / Recipe / Veggie 2 comments

by gansie

Boiling Away Hate

I totally get why little kids would think spinach is gross. Most probably share my first vision of spinach: Popeye drinking dark green goo, out of a can, and then beating the shit out of people. It was totally weird and random. Did spinach bring out rage in sailors?

Eating vegetables, let alone drinking them, was just not on my things to do list (which included making my oma judge my many productions of a My Little Pony beauty pageant. Moondancer always won.)

But I still don’t get what gives veggies a bad rap in general. And some more than others. Carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, there’s really not that much angst against them. But brussels sprouts? It’s like they’re so hateful that they’d rather stop helping the homeless than let two consenting adults build a life together.

Why are brussels sprouts so hated?

They’re pretty cute, actually. Adorable little bulbs with pretty, pale green petals. They’re not scary, weapon-like spears like asparagus. They’re not slimy with a clinical and unappetizing sounding name—fungus—like mushrooms. They don’t splooge juice like a tomato. Brussels sprouts are small and neatly compact.

Why all the hate?

in Recipe / Veggie 2 comments

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