212. Pasta Primavera (p. 211)

The first day of Spring was last Saturday, and it was an amazingly beautiful day here in New England. We're talking sunny and in the 70s. To celebrate the return of the nice weather, my wife and I took our son for his first trip to the zoo, and for dinner, I made Pasta Primavera. (In true New England fashion, however, this Saturday, the temperatures had dropped back into the 30s. Oh, well, the warm weather was nice while it lasted.)

According to The Book, this recipe comes from Le Cirque, a paragon of the NYC dining scene. (If you've never seen the HBO documentary about the restaurant, Le Cirque: A Table in Heaven, it's worth checking out for an interesting insight into the high-end restaurant industry.) I've had several different versions of Pasta Primavera, and some of them have been pretty awful. If this recipe is really the original, as suggested by The Book, it proves that a copy is never quite the same as the masterpiece.

The first ingredient in this list is one ounce of dried morel mushrooms. Not surprisingly, dried morels is not a regular inventory item at your basic suburban supermarket. So, I used dried porcinis. I know that they're not even remotely the same as morels, but according to my research on the Cook's Thesaurus, they were close enough.

To get started, I began soaking the mushrooms in some boiling water to reconstitute. Next I prepped all of my vegetables: I cut some fresh asparagus and green beans into one-inch pieces, I chopped some fresh basil and parsley, I grated some lemon zest, and I halved and quartered some grape tomatoes. Last, I set out some frozen peas to thaw. (I'm totally with The Book on this one. I don't know why, but frozen peas are 100% better than either fresh or canned peas. I use them all the time.)

Then, I got to cooking. I boiled the asparagus, beans and peas in a large pot of salted, boiling water for just a few minutes. Then I scooped the vegetables out with a slotted spoon and transferred them to a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. (The Book says to save the vegetable cooking liquid to use to boil the pasta -- a nice unexpected bit of conservation.) Once the vegetables were cooled, I drained them, and sauteed them for just a couple of minutes with some olive oil, garlic and red pepper flakes.

Wile the pasta boiled (The Book calls for spaghettini), I made the tomato sauce. I cooked some garlic and red pepper flakes in oil, and added the quartered grape tomatoes, cooking them down into a sauce. Then I added some salt and pepper, balsamic vinegar, a bit of water and the halved grape tomatoes and cooked it a bit more.

When the pasta was al dente, I drained it into a colander. Then I added some butter, cream, lemon zest and the reconstituted mushrooms (which I had roughly chopped) to the pasta pot. I simmered it for a little bit and added a ton of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. I added the drained pasta back to the pot and tossed it with the sauce. I thinned out the sauce with a bit of the mushroom soaking liquid ... just enough so that the sauce would lightly coat the pasta without being too wet. Finally, I added the vegetables, the herbs and some toasted pine nuts. I served the pasta topped with some of the tomato sauce.

This dish was pretty labor-intensive, but it did come together pretty quickly once I got started. The effort was worth it, though. The flavors were excellent. The cream sauce was rich without being overwhelming. The mushrooms (even though I didn't use the prescribed morels) gave the dish a certain earthiness. The vegetables and herbs contributed freshness and gave the dish it's namesake "spring-ness." The real star, though, was the tomato sauce. It was rich and deeply flavorful. Very, very good.

Date Cooked: March 20, 2010
Degree of Difficulty: Medium, with a bit of prep work and a fast-paced cooking
Rating: A-

211. Orecchiette with Cauliflower and Lacinato Kale (p. 213)

I learned something surprising from making this recipe*: My fourteen-month-old son will eat cauliflower ... and kale ... and ANCHOVIES!

To cook this dish, I first made some fresh breadcrumbs by tearing up an Italian loaf and pulsing the pieces in the food processor until they were coarse crumbs. I toasted the crumbs in the oven for a few minutes, stirring occasionally, until they were nice and golden.

Then I cut up a head of cauliflower and cooked it in boiling water until it was very tender. I removed the cauliflower from the water with a slotted spoon, and scooped out about a cup of the cooking liquid and set it aside. Next I coarsely chopped a bunch of kale and boiled it in the remaining cauliflower cooking liquid. The Book says to use Lacinato kale. The sign at the mega mart just said "Kale," so I don't know whether what I bought was Lacinato kale or not, but The Book's Glossary says "Regular kale can be substituted," so I guess it doesn't really matter what kind of kale I ended up with. Once the kale was tender, I drained it and set it aside with the cooked cauliflower.

Then, I put the pasta in to boil. I couldn't find any orecchiette, so I used medium shells since they're the closest I could find in terms of size and shape. While the pasta cooked, I made the sauce. I heated a whole bunch of olive oil over medium-low heat in my largest skillet. I cooked some thinly sliced garlic and some anchovy fillets for just a couple of minutes until the anchovies broke apart. Then I added the cooked cauliflower and mashed it lightly, but leaving some chunks still intact. I stirred in the cooked kale, some chopped fresh parsley and some of reserved cooking liquid. After it just came to a boil, I seasoned the sauce with salt and pepper, and took it off the heat.

To finish off the dish, I stirred the drained pasta into the sauce and I added some more fresh parsley and some grated Parmigano-Reggiano. I scooped the pasta into bowls and topped each serving with a generous sprinkling of the toasted breadcrumbs.

This was the perfect Sunday night supper. It's an easy enough recipe that making it is not a big production, but it's still unusual enough that it's "something special." The mashed cauliflower gave the dish an almost creamy texture. The kale was just slightly, but pleasantly bitter. The breadcrumbs were an excellent, crunchy touch. And the anchovies were barely detectable in that there was no fishy flavor, but I'm sure that the dish's briny savoriness was all due to the little fishes. Like I said at the beginning of this post, my son loved this meal ... at it by the fistful! The Book calls for the addition of a Serrano chile, but I left it out since I was going to be serving this to my son, I didn't want it to be too spicy. The Book notes that cooks in Italy use red pepper flakes in this dish instead of the Serrano, so I sprinkled a little over my serving, and it gave it a nice spicy bite.

Date Cooked: March 7, 2010
Degree of Difficulty: Pretty Easy
Rating: A-

* This recipe isn't online.

191. Fresh Tomato Sauce (p. 207)

Tomatoes have been having a rough go of it over the past couple of years. Last year it was a salmonella scare, and this year, it's an attack of late blight. I had pretty much resigned myself to another summer without tomatoes. But for whatever reason, Farmer Dave (my CSA farmer) and Mann Orchard have been spared the blight, and I've been able to get plenty of beautiful, fresh ripe tomatoes. And I'm loving it.

So, when I got a load of tomatoes in my CSA box a few weeks ago, I decided to make this recipe* for Fresh Tomato Sauce. This sauce is a lot of things. It's easy to make, it's uncomplicated, and it's fresh and light tasting. But, there's one thing this sauce isn't. It's not your Nonna's Sunday Gravy. Now, I'm not Italian, and I don't have a Nonna. But my wife is part Italian, and her family's recipe for Sicilian tomato sauce is a big part of our culinary lives. When we were first married, we carried on her family tradition that "Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti day."



So, if I'm comparing this recipe for Fresh Tomato Sauce to Grandma Leone's recipe from the Old Country, this recipe loses. But, if I can separate the two and keep in mind that they're two completely different things, this sauce is very good, and a nice change of pace.

To make the sauce, I peeled six pounds of fresh, ripe tomatoes. Peeling tomatoes sounds like a pain, but it's really easy and worth the effort (despite what I've said before). All you need to do is bring a big pot of water to a boil. Meanwhile, cut a little X in the bottom of each tomato. Plunge the tomatoes into the boiling water for about 10 to 20 seconds (the more ripe the tomatoes are, the less time they'll need in the boiling water). Immediately plunge the tomatoes in a big bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Once the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, you should be able to pull the skins off without any problem. Next, I removed the seeds. This sounds like a pain, too, but it's really easy. Just set a sieve over a large bowl, cut the tomatoes in half and gently squeeze them to release all of the seeds and juice. The seeds get trapped in the sieve, and the juice collects in the bowl so that it can be added back to the sauce. Then I chopped the peeled, seeded tomatoes.

With the heavy prep work done, I moved on to the cooking. I heated some olive oil in a stock pot and added five cloves of thinly sliced garlic. Once the garlic was golden, I added the chopped tomatoes, reserved juice, and a little bit of sugar and salt, and simmered it for about an hour. I stirred in a big handful of chopped fresh basil and I served it with some sauteed sliced Italian chicken sausage over rice pasta (my wife is back on dairy and some soy, but gluten is still off limits).

Like I said, this sauce doesn't hold a candle to my wife's family recipe. It doesn't have the substance, spice, and subtle flavors that you can only get from slow cooking and a few family secrets. But, when viewed for what it is -- a simple celebration of fresh, summer tomatoes -- this sauce is really very good.


Date Cooked: August 30, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: B+

* I couldn't find this recipe on epicurious.com.

135. Chicken Long Rice (p. 247)

Mike Myers used to do a bit called "Coffee Talk" on Saturday Night Live. The character's name was Linda Richmond, and every now and then, when she got a little verklemmt, she'd pose an imponderable for the viewers to ponder while she tried to collect herself. A couple of examples are: "The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, Roman nor an empire. Discuss." and "The peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. Discuss." Well this dish could be another Linda Richmond imponderable: "Chicken Long Rice is neither long nor is it rice. Discuss."

This recipe is a little like the Congee I made a while ago in that both start by making a simple stock and end with shredding the chicken you used to make the stock and adding to the finished dish. First, I simmered some chicken, ginger and salt in some water for about an hour to make the stock. The Book calls for whole chicken thighs, which would have been nice if I could have found some because thigh meat is really flavorful and the bones and skin would have added some depth to the quick broth. Unfortunately, my local mega-mart was totally out of chicken thighs. It was the day before Easter, and the store was a mad house. The meat department had all sorts of stuff that they don't usually carry: marrow bones, beef kidney, fowl, cornish hens and more hams than you could shake a stick at. But no chicken thighs. So, I used split chicken breasts. The result was that the broth wasn't as flavorful as I think it was supposed to be. But the tradeoff was that there was a lot more meat in the finished dish than there would have been otherwise.

After the broth was done cooking, I removed the chicken and set it aside to cool a bit before shredding it. I strained the stock and put it back into the rinsed-out pot. I added some more water, one and a half Knorr chicken bullion cubes, chopped onions, and four dried porcini mushrooms. (The Book calls for dried shitakes, but the mega-mart only had porcinis, and you make do with what you've got.) After I brought this to a boil I added some bean thread noodles broken up into pieces. I cooked it for a bit and then let it sit for a bit longer. Before serving, I added some chopped scallions and the shredded chicken.

So, as you can see, there is no rice to be found in this recipe, and since the bean threads are broken into pieces, there's nothing "long" about it. But even if it isn't really "long rice," it is good. The flavor is excellent. The bullion cubes and dried mushrooms have a lot to do with that. The chopped onions (which are not sauteed before they go into the pot) and the scallions give the dish a nice, fresh oniony flavor. If you've never had bean threads before, they do take a bit of getting used to. They're sometimes called cellophane noodles because when they're cooked, they're clear. They also have a squishy texture and an innate "worminess." If you can get past that (I have), you'll like this.

Date Cooked: April 11, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: B+

96. Baked Four-Cheese Farfalle (p. 224)

As I mentiond in my last post, I went on a cooking-and-freezing spree before my son was born so that we'd have plenty of food to eat during our first few weeks as new parents. I picked this recipe because it looked like a good candidate for freezing.

This rich, creamy cheesy casserole is all about the sauce. First I made a roux of butter and flour. Then I whisked in some whole milk and the juice from a can of tomatoes. I added the canned tomatoes (which I had finely chopped) and some salt and pepper, and whisked the sauce until it had thickened.

While the sauce was cooking, I cooked and drained some bow-tie pasta Then I mixed the pasta with the sauce, some grated mozzarella (that's one cheese), crumbled Gorgonzola (that's two cheeses), diced Fontina (that's three cheeses), and grated pecorino Romano (that's four ... four cheeses! Mwah-ha-ha-ha!). Finally, I added some choppd parsley.

The Book says to put the pasta mixture into a three- to four-quart gratin dish. I wanted to make at least two meals out of this, so I divided it into two eight-inch disposable foil baking dishes. I topped each with some more grated Romano before wrapping each dish tightly in heavy-duty foil and plastic wrap and putting them in the freezer.

A few days after we got home, I pulled one of the casseroles out of the frezer and put it into a 350-degree oven to cook. Even though I took it out of the freezer the morning that we were going to eat it, it was still pretty well frozen at dinner time. As a result, it took almost two hours to cook. For the next one, I'll take it out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator the night before.

This casserole was delicious. The sauce was rich and creamy and cheesy. The combintion of the four cheeses was excellent, and I could sense notes of each in every bite. The tang of the Gorgonzola and the salty bite of the Romano were nicely balanced by the mild creaminess of the mozzarella and Fontina. I always love baked pasta dishes because of the way the elements meld together and there's also that great crispy top!

The best part of this dish is that I still have another casserole in the freezer waiting to be enjoyed.

Date Cooked: December 27, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-

66. Butternut Squash, Sage, and Goat Cheese Ravioli with Hazelnut-Brown Butter Sauce (p. 236)

I've been wanting to make pasta for a long time, but I must admit that I'm a little intimidated by the whole process. This recipe, however, is an excellent baby step into the world of homemade pasta.

The trick here is that these raviolis are made with packaged wonton wrappers instead of homemade pasta dough. And while this is a bit of a cheat, it's got the Gourmet seal of approval (it's in The Book, after all), and when they were cooked, I couldn't tell the difference.

This recipe begins from the inside out ... you start by making the filling. First, cut a two-pound butternut squash in half lengthwise and seed it. Roast it, flesh-side down on a roasting pan until softened. While that's cooking, saute a finely chopped onion with some butter and sage (breathing deeply to enjoy that great sage-and-butter aroma). After the squash has cooled a bit, scoop out the flesh, and combine it with the onion mixture and some grated aged goat cheese.

Then you're ready to assemble the ravioli. Start by putting a single wonton wrapper on a lightly floured work surface. Put a teaspoon of the filling in the center of the wrapper. Then brush the edges of the wrapper with water, place another wonton wrapper on top of the filing and seal the edges with your fingers. I took the optional step of cutting away the excess dough with a cookie cutter. This resulted in perfectly shaped ravioli, and I think that it also helped to seal them. Place the finished ravioli on a kitchen towel to dry slightly. Repeat 29 times. Yeah, this is pretty time-consuming assembly-line stuff. After about an hour, I only had 15 ravioli to show for my efforts and a seemingly endless supply of filing and wonton wrappers remaining. With time running short and a hungry, pregnant wife grumbling in the next room, I decided to cook what I had and stash the rest of the filling and wrappers in the fridge for later assembly.

The ravioli get cooked in boiling water for a few minutes until the float. I'm not sure how or why that works, but that's how you know when ravioli are cooked, they float. Anyway, I was really impressed with how well these ravioli held up in the boiling water. I was careful to keep the water at a very gentle boil so that the ravioli wouldn't get jostled too much. And only one of the ravioli's seams split during cooking, emptying its contents into the cooking liquid.

While the ravioli cooked, I made the Hazlenut Brown Butter Sauce. I put an insane amount of butter into a pan with some hazlenuts that I had toasted in the oven and chopped. (The Book's tip about rubbing the toasted hazlenuts in a kitchen towel to get the skins off really works!). In just a few minutes, the butter was nicely browned and it gave off a very nice nutty, caramel scent. Keep a close eye on this, because once the butter starts to brown, it happens very quickly, and your brown butter can turn to burnt butter in no time. I took it off the heat and set it aside until the ravioli was ready.

When the ravioli were done, I gently removed them from the boiling water with a large slotted spoon. I divided them into two bowls and poured a little bit of the brown butter sauce (this sauce is pure butter, folks, so a little goes a long way). The result? Absolutely delicious. The ravioli were tender and light. The filling sliky and creamy with the sweetness of the squash, the tang of the goat cheese and the earthiness of the sage. The hazlenut brown butter was rich, and had an excellent nutty flavor. A very sophisticated meal. This was a pretty labor intensive dish, but it was fun to make, and totally worth it.

So, a couple of days later, I took the rest of the filling and wonton wrappers out of the fridge and assembled the rest of the ravioli. After I let them dry out on a kitchen towel for a bit, I put them in a single layer on a baking sheet and then slipped it in the freezer. After a while, when they had frozen pretty well, I transferred them into a ziploc bag and stashed them back into the freezer. The next weekend, we didn't have any dinner plans, and we pulled a couple of handfuls of the frozen ravioli out of the freezer. Popped them into some boiling water until they floated, meanwhile cooking up some more brown butter. How did it taste? Just as good as the first time!

Date Cooked: October 19, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Not difficult, but time consuming
Rating: A-

52. Macaroni and Cheese (p. 223)

Maybe you've noticed it too. Recently, I've seen more and more dishes on restaurant menus that could be described as "comfort-food-on- crack." For instance, not that long ago, my wife and I had lunch at Finale in Natick, Massachusetts (at the mall, no less). When I saw "Truffled Macaroni and Cheese" on the menu, I couldn't resist.

This recipe easily falls into the comfort-food-on-crack category. It elevates that stuff in the blue box to something nearly sublime, but it's not so fussy that it couldn't become a family favorite. The unusual elements of the recipe are the addition of Dijon mustard and red paper flakes, and the use of panko, rather than ho-hum breadcrumbs, for the topping. Of course, there's just something about that homemade cheese sauce that just can't be put in a box.

Date Cooked: September 13, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-

33. Udon Noodle Salad with Grilled Chicken and Asian Dressing (p. 247)

This tasty noodle dish starts with the chicken. First, you marinate four skinless, boneless chicken breast halves in soy sauce, garlic, grated fresh ginger, and rice wine vinegar. I had to make the marinade twice, though, because I threw in the entire "1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon" of the vinegar before I realized that I was only supposed to put one tablespoon into the marinade. For a second, I thought about leaving it, but I was a little worried that I'd end up pickling the chicken (can you make chicken ceviche?). I figured that it would be better to do it over correctly, rather than risk it. After marinating for about an hour in the fridge, the chicken breasts go onto the grill. After that, you let them cool a bit, slice them into strips and set them aside for the final dish.

Then there were the noodles. The Book calls for 3/4 pound dried udon. I'd never heard of such a thing. I've only seen udon in shrink-wrapped shelf-stable packages like those pictured here. I suppose I could have found them at an Asian specialty market, but I decided to go with what was available at the mega-mart. The result was good, but as I'll explain later, I think that I needed more noodles. (I should have figured that dried udon weighs less than the "fresh" noodles that I got.)

The dressing consists of chicken stock (my own homemade stock from my freezer! hooray for me!) simmered together with an obscene amount of cilantro and parsley. This is transfered into the blender to be pureed until smooth. Now, I've heard all of the warnings about putting hot things in a blender. I read and followed The Book's instructions on the topic on page 97. But, nevertheless, once I flipped the switch on my Oster-izer, a geyser of hot, green soupy liquid shot into the air and sprayed all over my counter and cabinets. It didn't look as bad as this ...

... but it was shocking just the same, and a pain in the butt to clean up.

The Book says to "Toss noodles with dressing in a large bowl." At this point, I knew I had done something wrong. I had so much dressing and so little noodles, that it was more like broth than dressing. I really needed about twice as much noodles, but, oh well, I'm learning as I go, here.

The finished dish was really good. The huge amounts of cilantro and parsley gave the noodles a very fresh, almost grassy taste (I mean that in a good way). It was vinegary, but not too, vinegary. The chicken was very moist and tender with a very mild and enjoyable soy, ginger flavor.

Date Cooked: July 27, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: B

13. Pad Thai (p. 245)

This recipe sent me on my first, but I'm sure not my last, Project Field Trip. My local Stop and Shop didn't have two of the key ingredients: tamarind and baked tofu. (Boo, Stop and Shop.) So, it was off to the chichi Whole Foods in the chichi town across the river. They had the baked tofu (sort of, but more on that later), but not the tamarind. Whole Foods does get points, however, for having employees who actually know what tamarind is (I didn't even bother asking at S&S), and they promised that they could get me some in a couple of days. But, like Veruka Salt, I wanted it now! So, it was off to the local Indo-Pak grocery.




Not only did they have tamarind, but they had three kinds of tamarind: Indian, Thai and concentrate. I opted for the Thai variety (seemed like the right choice since I was making Pad Thai, after all). Now, I've never used tamarind before, and I wasn't even sure exactly what it was. According to Wikipedia, tamarind gets its name from Arab traders who called it tamar hindi, or Indian date. The pulp of the legume-like fruit of the tamarind tree is a common seasoning in Asian and Latin American foods. The Thai variety I bought comes in a pliable 10 ounce block of the dried pulp. It kind of looks like a brick of mashed dried dates, and it has the same stickiness. Following The Book's instructions, I broke off a two-tablespoon-sized chunk, soaked it in boiling water and strained it. That was the base of the sauce. Tamarind has a sweet and tart flavor that is a key element in Pad Thai. The Wikipedia article notes that many recipes try to fake the flavor with lime juice and/or white vinegar. But, as The Book says, "there are no American shortcuts here."

I will admit, however, that I did use one tiny shortcut. I used frozen shrimp instead of fresh, which is probably no big deal, but the editors of Gourmet would no doubt frown on the fact that they were still frozen when I put them in the wok. They did give off a bit more liquid than I expected as they cooked, and it probably slowed down the cooking a little, but I don't think that it affected the final product at all.

The Book says that if you can't find plain baked tofu (I couldn't), you can use the flavored kind if you rinse and pat it dry. So, as I alluded to above, Whole Foods didn't have plain baked tofu, but they did have a plethora of flavored varieties. I chose Thai Sesame Peanut flavor since it seemed to be the mildest of all the choices, and even if I couldn't rinse off all of the flavor, it would at least compliment the Pad Thai flavors. It wasn't an issue, though, because the goopy peanut sesame sauce rinsed off nicely, and I don't think that its flavor carried over to the dish. If you've never had baked tofu, it has an odd firm yet spongy texture, and it has a squeaky feel when you bite it.

As I studied this recipe before I got started, I realized that a lot needed to happen in a short amount of time. (Cook this for 1 minute, add that and cook for 2-3 minutes, toss in these and cook for another 2 minutes, etc.) So, the majority of my prep time was spent getting my mise ready. As an aside, The Book claims that the "Active Time" for this recipe is 1 1/2 hours. It took me closer to two hours for this one, but I'm not complaining. The Book suggests making the noodles in advance and putting them in a bowl covered tightly with plastic wrap and keeping them at room temperature until they're needed. I did this (and I also added a ladle full of the cooking liquid to the bowl), and it worked like a charm. I'll try this trick in the future with other Asian noodle dishes, since coordinating noodle-cooking time with the rest of the recipe is usually a challenge.

Once I was ready to get cooking, it was over in a flash. I was glad that I took the extra time to get all of the ingredients ready and lined up in little bowls on the counter.

The finished dish was excellent. I've had a few other Pad Thai recipes at home, mostly from Cooking Light, and while good, none of these recipes resembled the Pad Thai you get in restaurants. (One of the recipes even had tomato paste(!) in it.) This Pad Thai came very close to the real thing. My wife thought that it had too much heat (the recipe calls for 1 1/2 teaspoons of red pepper flakes), but I thought that it was just right.

I'll definitely make this again, especially if I can't find anything else to do with the huge block of tamarind that's now sitting in my cupboard.

Date Cooked: June 29, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Pretty Hard
Rating: A