Summer Salivations - Part II

Hello all!

So, it's been quite a while since Part I, but that is mostly because I've been very busy! This will, sadly, be my last post of something I cooked in Minneapolis, at least for quite a while, as I have officially made my move to Tacoma! I have spent much of my time lately in orientations and traveling and moving, so not so much with the posting.

However, I do hope to be creating/discovering and twisting some new recipes while I'm here (sadly without my access to the Seward Coop or the Midtown Farmers' Market, which will take some getting used to), and so I shall continue posting!

Pasta with Slow Cooked Peppers and Onions


This is a dish originally inspired by a Jamie Oliver recipe we found in a cook book from the library. That dish had a cool name, but I completely forget what it was, and this recipe is significantly different from it anyway, aside from the core method of preparation. If you prepare no other pasta recipe I have offered you, try this one! It is exquisitely delicious (if I do say so myself!).

Ingredients
2 bell peppers (I used one green and one purple; yellow and red are quite excellent)
10 crimini mushrooms
1 onion
four cloves garlic
salt and pepper
1 lb pasta (penne or rigatoni)
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
Parmesan cheese

Procedure

You may have noticed that the ingredients list here is not terribly different from a typical pasta recipe - the difference here is all in the preparation!

Step 1: The Mushrooms. Wash and slice your mushrooms and dice your garlic. Heat some olive oil in a skillet (cast iron if possible!) and saute the mushrooms with about half the garlic, plus a little salt and pepper. Set aside. This keeps them from getting soggy later on.

Step 2: The Peppers. Cut your peppers into longish strips. Get a few tablespoons of oil heating in the skillet over low heat. Add the peppers, some salt and pepper and cover. Cook the peppers over low heat for about 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add more oil if it seems to be in danger of getting dry, Do not rush this process! This is where all the flavor comes from!


Step 3: The Rest. Slice up your onions (also in strips) and add them to the peppers. Cook these together for 10-15 minutes. This is a good time to put up some water to boil and begin cooking the pasta. After those 10-15 minutes, add a good couple slugs of balsamic vinegar, the rest of the garlic, and a hearty pinch of salt and pepper. Keep it cooking for another couple minutes, then turn off the heat and stir in the mushrooms, as well as a couple tablespoons of the pasta water. Combine with the pasta and serve with Parmesan. If the flavor feels off, add a little more vinegar or salt and pepper.


Tada! That's really all there is to it - I figure I must have riffed off this a little bit, but not terribly much. It's not terribly complicated, it just takes a little more patience than your average pasta dish. Again, I hope you enjoy this - it truly is worth the wait!

Portabella Burgers

So what is super fun to grill, easier to cook than a hamburger, twice as juicy, and doesn't involve the death of several cows to prepare? This dish! You know, this recipe is so simple that it doesn't even really bear my usual recipe format, but it is delicious, so try to squeeze it in before grilling season is over!

Basically, before you go outside to start your fire, get a big Ziploc bag. Take your portabellas, trim the stems and wash them (if you want to preserve the flavor as much as possible, you can wash them by wiping them with a damp paper towel) and place them in the bag. Pour a few glugs of olive oil and a glug or two of balsamic vinegar, plus a good bit of salt and pepper, and coat the mushrooms with these things (shake to distribute). Push out as much extra air as possible and seal the bag, leaving the mushrooms to marinate for an hour or so as you ready your fire and wait for the perfect coals.


Once the coals are ready, grill face down for a few minutes, then flip them right side up, adding cheese if desired.


After another few minutes, serve on a lightly toasted bun.


And that's it! I hope you enjoyed all the recipes from Minneapolis this past year, and I hope you enjoy the recipes from Tacoma this new year! Let's also hope Emily sends some recipes from Heqing, eh?

Cheers!

Iain

Summer Salivations - Part I

I could not possibly have made that sound less appetizing. Okay, I could have titled the post "disgusting pukations from the planet Hurl," but I also don't go around philosophizing with an anthropomorphic tiger, and I think only six year old boys who do that are allowed to utter that sort of phrase.

I digress (as if any of my posts weren't digressions already). I'm here today to share with you, crammed into a two mondo posts, four dishes I've played around with this summer! Three are pastas. Are you surprised? I'm not - for some reason, summer is the time when I can't get enough pasta. It becomes all about the fresh ingredients, so why not?

Anyway, here we go!

Homemade Peppery Papardelle with Sauteed Zucchini and Mushrooms and Sundried Tomatoes


This dish here was fun to make, pretty much impromptu, when my brother Alexander came up to visit. I basically took inventory of the kitchen and made a sauce to accompany this papardelle out of whatever was around.

Ingredients
4 cups durum semolina
5 eggs
at least 2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
pinch of salt

2-3 zucchinis (and/or other summer squash), chopped into chunks
olive oil
5-10 crimini mushrooms
1/2 cup sundried tomatoes
salt and pepper
a hefty handful of fresh basil
a few cloves of garlic (duh)
shallot, diced

Procedure

1. Prepare the pasta. If you want a more detailed description of how to make pasta, see several of our earlier posts. Make the semolina into a mound, mixing in the salt and pepper. Make a well in the middle and crack the eggs into it. Carefully break the yolks with a fork and mix, slowly incorporating more and more of the flour as you go, reinforcing the walls as necessary. Once the liquid is gone, continue mixing by hand until the dough holds together. Form into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap (or if you're as much of a hippie as I am, in a used plastic bag), and store in the freezer for an hour. Go watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.



2. Roll out the pasta. If possible, conscript younger brother to do a lot of the rolling. Aim for about 1 mm thick. Once it's rolled out, cut into strips about 1/2 and inch (maybe even a little wider) wide. Set aside, and put up some water to boil.


3. Get the sauce ready. While younger brother is nearing the end of his pasta rolling, cut up your vegetables and, if necessary, rehydrate your sundried tomatoes. Heat some olive oil in a skillet and saute the zucchini and set aside. Then saute the mushrooms, and also set aside. Prevent younger brother from munching everything you just sauteed. Set about heating a good few tablespoons of oil, and saute your shallot. After it turns translucent, add most of the garlic and the sundried tomatoes. Now is a good time to put the pasta in to boil. Put the remaining parts of the sauce together once it's simmered for a few minutes, saving the remaining garlic and the basic for last. Turn off the head after giving it a few stirs. The pasta should only take a few minutes, so test it to see if it tastes done. Once it's al dente, drain it and combine pasta with sauce in a big bowl. Top servings with plenty of Parmesan.


Tada! This one is a good recipe for an evening where you have a good few hours to devote to the food, but believe me, it's worth it. The result is one of the most savory pasta dishes I've ever sampled!

Classic Tomato and Basil Pasta... with Three Colors of Tomato


Nothing says delectable summer meal like some pasta with olive oil, basil, garlic and tomatoes, right? Right. Except when you live by a co-op, and so you have access to locally grown heirloom tomatoes that come in a staggering variety of colors!

Ingredients
1 lb pasta of your choice
3 heirloom tomatoes (I went with green zebra, purple and classic red)
1 hearty handful of fresh basil
3 cloves garlic, minced
olive oil
salt and pepper
Parmesan

Procedure

1. Boil the pasta and chop the veggies.


2. Heat up some olive oil on low heat. Add about half the garlic and the salt and pepper. Let it simmer for a few minutes, then add the rest of the ingredients, stir and turn off the heat. Combine with the pasta and top with Parmesan.

Easy, right? :)

Okay, I'm blogged out. See you soon for Part II.

Red Wine Ravioli

Well, summer is here, the sun is shining, holy crap it's hot out even in Minnesota, and it's time to pluck fresh herbs from our garden, buy produce from the Midtown Farmer's Market (how we missed it) and make pasta from scratch. A lot.

After making quite a lot of linguine and farfalle, we decided to try an elusive shape we'd never tried before: the mysterious ravioli...

Red Wine Ravioli

Ingredients
about 2 cups durum semolina flour
about 1 cup bread flour
3 medium eggs
red wine as needed
15 mushrooms
1 red shallot
olive oil
1/8 cup grated Parmesan cheese
4 cloves garlic
salt and pepper to taste
hefty pinch oregano
small handful chopped basil

Music Listened To
chances are we put an iPod on shuffle and enjoyed whatever ridiculous thing came out

Procedure

Step 1: The Pasta. Pile a mixture of semolina and bread flour on a clean counter top and make a well in the middle. Crack your eggs into the well, taking care not to let it spill over the edge. Use a fork to break the yolks and mix them.


Very, very carefully, start to incorporate the flour from the edges of the well into the mixture, bolstering your walls as necessary. If it breaches (which it usually has when we do it) it's OK - just stop the egg from spilling all over the place and bring it back in its place (we did say this should be a clean counter top). Now, this will probably start to get pretty dry once everything gets mixed together, so this is where the wine comes in. Just give it a little glug every time it isn't holding together. I wouldn't go more than a quarter cup (if that), but do not fear the wine. If you're especially avid, you could even replace one or two of the eggs with an equivalent amount of wine.


Once it's mixed and the dough holds together in one big lump, wrap it up in plastic and throw it in the fridge for about an hour.

Step 2: The Rolling. This step really doesn't warrant much description, but it does take a heck of a lot of time. Divide the dough into two equal balls and roll it out (we went by hand with a rolling pin, but feel free to use a machine. If you're a wuss) until you have two 1 mm thick sheets of pasta. Don't just go by the thickness on one side - try to get it as even as possible.


Step 3: The Filling. Chop you shallot and mince your garlic. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat and add the shallot. Saute for about 3-5 minutes, then add the garlic and finely chopped mushrooms. Add several glugs of wine - the mushrooms will just drink it up. After the wine is almost soaked up, add the herbs, salt, pepper and Parmesan and mix. You can leave it on low for a while if you like, but it's effectively ready to go once the cheese melts and is thoroughly mixed in.


Step 5: The Assembly. Lay out one of your pasta sheets on a cutting board and trim into the shape of a rectangle. Place about a teaspoon of filling in one corner, leaving about half an inch border from the edges. Place the next dollop also half an inch from the edges, a whole inch away from the first dollop. Continue adding dollops until you fill the rectangle with dollops, each separated by an inch, each no closer than about half an inch to the edge. Use a brush or your fingers to brush water onto the pasta that isn't covered by filling. This will help glue the ravioli together. Lay the other sheet on top. Gently use your fingers to form it into mounds over the dollops of filling.


Once you have all your pillows of filling set up, trim away the edges and cut the pasta into squares. Press the edges of the squares together to form a good seal (or else you may let water into your scrumptious filling).


Step 6: The Yummies. Put some water up to boil and prepare a sauce (I might suggest using the red wine sauce from my earlier post, although we just did a basic tomato marinara sauce).


Once the water is gently boiling, turn down the heat to medium or medium-high and drop in as much of the ravioli as will comfortably fit. We did ours in about two batches. You will be able to tell they're done once they're puffy and float to the surface. Scoop them out and put in the next batch.


At last, at long last, place ravioli in a bowl, slather with delicious sauce, and top with some freshly grated Parmesan.


Sorry to follow up all that typing with such a lousy photo of such a delicious dish. This is probably the first homemade pasta we ever made completely forsaking a recipe. While this sounds like a lot of work (indeed, it is more work than most of our recipes), it's honestly not as difficult as it sounds. The trickiest part is honestly just managing your time. This dish is more fun with a partner to help, but an adventurous sort could handle it on their own.

Have an excellent evening, and enjoy!

Mushroom-Parsley-Thyme Risotto

Ok, so I hadn't planned on posting this, because I figured, "hey, it's hard to mess up risotto," but during dinner last night Bozzie told me this was special risotto and Iain said it was the best risotto he'd ever had. Take those comments with a grain of salt, if you will, but they were enough to get me to write up the recipe. However, since I wasn't planning on posting, I only have a picture of the finished product. Oh well.

Just as a note, risotto is a simple enough process, but it does involve a lot of hands-on cooking, so if you're having an evening where you need food you can stick on the stove and leave alone for awhile, don't make this. That being said, it's some of the best comfort food in the world.

Mushroom-Parsley-Thyme Risotto

Ingredients

• lots of mushrooms, sliced thinly. We used perhaps 1/2 a pound of baby chanterelles, but if you have other kinds or if you have wild mushrooms, so much the better. If you like, you can also rehydrate some dried mushrooms and use the mushroom water in addition to your broth.
• a generous glug of lemon juice
• a generous handful of parsley, chopped
  
• 1 onion, chopped small
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• about 6 TBS butter, plus 2 TBS olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups arborio rice (the kind used for risotto--you could try subbing another, cheaper kind but I don't think it'd work well).
• a few glugs of a white wine (about 1/2 cup. we used a Three Buck Chuck chardonnay to great success.)
• a generous pinch or two of dried thyme. I'm sure fresh would be lovely too, but we didn't have any.
  
• Lots of broth/water (broth is better). You're gonna want to plan on at least 3 cups, but it could be closer to 4. It all depends on the rice. Lots of recipes recommend heating the broth before using it, but I didn't, so take your pick.
  
• garlic powder to taste, probably a teaspoon or two.
  
• salt and pepper to taste
• parmesan cheese. Use at least a few TBS in the pot, and then add more to individual servings

Procedure

• Put the sliced mushrooms into a bowl with the lemon juice and toss a bit. Meanwhile, melt 2 TBS of the butter in a large pot. Cook the mushrooms over medium for a few minutes, until they release their liquids and brown somewhat. Stir in the parsley and half of the garlic and cook for a few seconds more--maybe a minute. Put the mushrooms et al. into a bowl and set aside.
• Melt another 2 TBS butter, as well as the olive oil, in the same pot. Cook the onion and the rest of the garlic over medium until it's soft and golden, then add the rice. Stir it around for a couple minutes, frying it. Add the mushrooms and mix them all around. You can also add the thyme at this point; I added little pinches a couple times throughout the recipe process.
  
• Pour in the wine. It'll smell awesome. Let it evaporate over medium heat.
  
• This is the labor-intensive part. Add a small ladleful of the broth--maybe 1/4-1/3 cup. Then start stirring. You want to keep the rice from sticking to the bottom of the pan, so it's necessary to stir a lot. Wait until the rice has absorbed the water, then add another ladleful. Continue to do this for awhile--probably at least 15 minutes. Then taste the rice to see how close it is to being soft. You can also start adding garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Depending on your rice, you might need from 20-40 minutes of overall broth adding/stirring time. I like my rice a tiny bit on the chewy side, so mine was done about on the 30 minute mark.
  
• Once the rice is done and seasoned to your satisfaction, remove it from the heat and stir in the remaining butter (optional-- but it tastes better) and some parmesan.
• Serve hot, topping with more cheese.

Aerarbran Stew

Hello denizens of the internet! My post of a na latha (of the day anns a Ghaidhlig, which I am speaking in for no good reason) is a little bit dorky. Today, I bring you the best in regional foods of regions that don't exist!

Perhaps I should explain myself. Here at Yummies Kitchen, we do more than just cook. All three of us are also writers of fiction, and all of our works deal with fictional cultures. The other day, a thought struck us: what do they eat in these places? And then we decided to answer that question by cooking their food!

The culture I was exploring that created this dish is based in a forest with flora and fauna greatly resembling the North Woods. That means there were such things as edible roots, cherries, wild rice and mushrooms, which is exactly what I decided to make this dish out of. Exactly half of us were skeptical of combining these things (Emily and half of me) and the other half were really enthusiastic about it (Bozzie and the other half of me). It actually turned out better than I could have hoped, and the results caused Emily to say "I never would have thought it, but this turned out really well!"

Aerarbran Stew with Cherries and Wild Rice

Ingredients
3 cloves garlic
1 white onion
1 turnip
1 large potato
5 mushrooms
2/3 cup wild rice
1/2 cup rice
2/3 cup dried sour cherries
2 cups Veggie broth
1 tbs butter
salt and pepper

Materials
Knife and Cutting board
Medium-large skillet
Lid that fits over skillet
Wooden Spoon

Music Listened To
Amal and the Night Visitors was playing on MPR, I believe

1. Chop the onion and garlic. Peel the turnip and cube both the turnip and the potato. Slice the mushrooms.

2. Sautee the garlic and onions over low-med heat until translucent. They should taste generally sweet before proceeding.

3. Add turnip and potato. Add the broth, rice, wild rice, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer 5-10 minutes.

4. Add the cherries and mushrooms. Simmer 10-15 minutes, until the rice is soft enough to eat.


It's really quite a simple recipe, when it comes down to it, but it turned out delicious. It can work either as a main course, or you could have it alongside other dishes. Perhaps you may want to try it for your Christmas dinner, side by side with your favorite savories (or your fave saves as I have just decided I like to call them).

And, as is our philosophy at Yummies!, don't just do it by the book! Improvise a little! I was thinking that next time I'd try to get some wild mushrooms instead of button or crimini. Maybe you're more carnivorous than me, so try putting some white meat in it! Or maybe a splash or white wine? The choice is yours!

We now close with the prayer of thanks I came up with on the bus knowing one would be required:

We thank the forest
We thank the earth
for our food
and for our birth.

Spinach and Mushroom Alfredo

So, quick post this week. Is this week's recipe extremely inventive? Not so much. Is it delicious, warm, filling and easy to make? Why, yes! Glad you asked!
I (Iain) first prepared this dish on the fly when cooking for a large group and someone else had already procured the ingredients. I just followed my cooking instincts and put together the ingredients I thought sounded good, and the result was deemed "orgasmic" in the words of one of the eaters. After getting such a good reception for it that first time I've gone on to prepare it several more times since, and it never fails for a good dinner in not a lot of time.

Spinach and Mushroom Alfredo

Ingredients
1 lb fettuccine
1 cup heavy cream
1 stick of butter
1 cup Parmesan
salt and pepper
15-20 mushrooms
4 medium-large cloves garlic, minced
3 hefty handfuls of spinach
butter for sauteing

Materials
Knife and Cutting Board
Skillet
Large pot
Wooden spoon
Tongs

Music Listened To
"Dublin Lady" by Andy M Stewart

1. Bring the water to a boil and add the fettuccine. In the meantime, slice your mushrooms and mince your garlic. Heat the skillet with some butter (don't go too skimpy - if you're making this dish, throw your fat content worries to the wind). Saute the mushrooms with most of the garlic - I usually add some basil to this step.

2. Once the pasta is done, drain it (promptly!) and throw in the butter, cream and Parmesan. Add the remaining garlic, salt and pepper. Stir together over low heat and turn off once combined. In the meantime, add the spinach to the mushrooms and stir until the spinach is cooked down.

3. Dump the spinach and mushrooms into the pasta and suace. Stir together with tongs and serve!

Pretty simple, eh? Despite my previous comment, if you DO want to make the dish less heavy, saute the mushrooms in a little olive oil instead (it'll go farther than the butter) and sub milk in for the heavy cream. You can also cut down on the butter in the sauce. It won't be quite as delicious, but it should still taste good and it won't be quite so much of a heavyweight. I personally like the heaviness of it now that it's winter and it takes probably twice as much food to fill me up, but I also, as has been observed, am a black hole when it comes to food.

Enjoy!

Italian Thin-crust Pizza

So there's this pizza place in the Twin Cities called "Punch." There are a lot of lovely pizza places here-- "Pizza Lucé" and a few others are awesome places to grab a slice. In my opinion, Punch blows them out of the water. The three of us went first went to Punch on a gorgeous Saturday last June, where we sat outside on the patio and devoured exquisitely-prepared pizzas with buffalo mozzarella and sun-dried tomatoes. If you're in the cities and haven't been, GO. It's a bit pricey as far as pizzas go (maybe $10-$12 for an average pizza, which will feed one hungry guy or provide a meal and a snack for a girl like me), but it's so worth it.

Anyway, we decided after our experience there that we really wanted to try our hand at making our own pizza like that. We'd made pizza before--both regular crust and deep dish--but this would be new and exciting. We didn't have the advantages of san marino tomatoes, top-notch olive oil, imported mozzarella, and a wood-burning pizza oven kept at 800°F, but we did our best, beginning with the crust.

Ingredients (for two pizzas)

• 1 1/3 c. wrist-temperature water
• 2 1/4 tsp. yeast (or 1 package, if you buy it that way).
• 3 1/2-3/4 cups flour (can use part whole wheat, I'd imagine, although we kept it all white this time)
• 2 TBS olive oil
• 1 TBS salt
• about 1 1/2 TBS sugar
• a sprinkling of corn meal
• Toppings! (all suggestions-- amounts and ingredients are totally open, so make it as you like)
• a few handfuls of canned diced tomatoes (fresh, soaked in a little olive oil and salt, would work great too-- we just happened to have the canned stuff)
• a solid handful of basil, ripped or chopped into little pieces.
• lots of shredded mozzarella. We didn't use the fresh stuff, but if you have it all the more power to you
• several TBS of pesto
• a sprinkling of coarse salt--kosher, sea, rock, etc.
• a few handfuls of sauteed mushrooms
• a handful of chopped sun-dried tomatoes
• a clove or two of fresh garlic, minced
• Generous drizzlings of olive oil

Part One: The Crust

• In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast into the water and wait 5 minutes or so until it bubbles. If it doesn't bubble, make sure it smells like yeast before you keep going. If it doesn't, it might be dead yeast. Start over.
• Add the flour, olive oil, sugar, and salt and mix slowly for a bit.
• Turn onto a floured surface and knead for about 10 minutes until the dough is stretchy and smooth. Rub some olive oil into the bowl where you mixed the dough and dump the dough back in, flipping it around so it gets nicely coated with the oil. Cover the dough and let it rise until it doubles in bulk. It'll take an hour or two.
• Punch down the dough and divide it into two balls. Let them rest for 10-15 minutes. Then roll them out. You want them pretty thin-- see how much of the cookie pan the dough takes up and try to do something similar. The ridge on the thin-crust shouldn't be as pronounced as that found on most regular crusts.
Note: Don't roll out both crusts at the same time unless you're baking them together. Just leave the other half in its ball until needed. Before you transfer the crust to the sheet, sprinkle it with corn meal or flour.

Part Two: The Topping

We started by tossing the salt and garlic over the crust, then followed with little spoonfuls of pesto, the tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, and basil. The cheese coated all of that, and we drizzled olive oil on top.


Part Three: Baking

So this is the bit that separates this pizza from its thicker-crusted counterparts. You want the oven as hot as it'll go. For us, that was 450 or 500°F. If yours gets any hotter, great. Also, if you have a pizza stone, great-- although I suppose you'd need to either have a large pizza stone or make smaller pizzas to get a crust thin enough.

Bake for about 8 minutes. The crust should get really crispy and everything should bubble. If it gets a little brown that's even better. It won't be as good as the stuff made in a proper oven, but for us it worked well. Also, your oven could be quite different from ours, so just watch it and see if it needs more or less time. Serve quickly, because it's awesome hot, but don't burn the roof of your mouth!