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.

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!

Another Simple Pasta Supper (and bonus brownies!!)

Ok, so I know my last post concerned pesto, but, especially in the summer, simple pasta dishes are just great. They're easy, relatively fast, and total comfort food. Plus, there are endless possibilities.

So for dinner a couple nights ago, I decided I wanted eggplant. This is mostly because I love eggplant and Iain's not a big fan, so since he's out of town I decided to capitalize on my chance to indulge as much as possible. I do not understand this dislike of eggplant, because eggplant is amazing, but, then, this is also the boy who doesn't like cheese. So sad....

A few notes on eggplant:

This is fairly common knowledge, but just in case-- it's a good idea to salt eggplant before you cook with it. Eggplants carry a lot of bitter juices, so about 20 minutes before you start cooking, cut the eggplant into slices and sprinkle salt onto them. This will cause the eggplant to release the juices. When there's liquid beading on the top of the eggplant slices, rinse them off and pat them dry with a paper towel. Well, at least that's how I do it. I know some people advocate sticking the pieces in a colander after you put the salt on. But just doing it on the counter works for me.

Personally, I don't much like to fry up eggplant. I mean, eggplant parm every once in a while is pretty awesome, but generally I find that broiling leaves in a lot more flavor and awesome texture. Plus it's super fast.

Also, I almost never peel eggplant. I really like the texture. And it's nutritious, I'm sure. But I know a lot of people who do like to peel their eggplant, so whatever works for you...


Anyway, I'll call this "Eggplant, Sun-Dried Tomato, and Basil Pasta" (creative, I know)



Ingredients

• half an eggplant, sliced thickly
  
• a few sun-dried tomatoes, packed in oil, cut into small pieces
  
• 1-3 cloves garlic, minced (as a rule, I tend to like lots of garlic, but if you like less, by all means stick to a clove)
  
• a handful of basil leaves, chopped into bite size bits
  
• olive oil. You'll need at least a tablespoon or two for the garlic. Use more at your discretion.
  
• a pinch of dried oregano
  
• salt and pepper to taste
• pasta of whatever variety you like. I found that about half a box of pasta was appropriate for the amount of sauce I made, but I'm sure everything could be easily doubled if you want to do a whole box.
  

Preparation

1. Brush a tray with olive oil and brush the top of each slice of eggplant with additional oil. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper, if desired. Broil five minutes a side, or until golden-brown and soft. Cut the pieces into strips.

2. Meanwhile, get some water boiling for the pasta. I used whole wheat penne, which in my opinion complemented the relatively light sauce well, adding more texture.

3. About five minutes before the pasta's done, heat the olive oil in a skillet and add the oregano, stirring. Add the garlic and turn down the heat so that it cooks relatively slowly, releasing flavor. You don't want the garlic to brown.

4. A couple of minutes before the pasta's done, add to the oil and garlic the pieces of sun-dried tomato and salt and pepper to taste and cook over low heat. Add the eggplant and basil just before draining the pasta, so it incorporates.

5. Serve with parmesan cheese, if you like. You may also need to add more oil to get the sauce to come together, but it's up to you really.

And....Bonus Brownies!

(adapted from a recipe I found online. I am so sorry that I didn't bookmark it so I can link you all directly, but I did mess with it slightly in 'baking adventure' fashion, so it wouldn't have been exactly the same anyway)

For the record, I do not believe in "the perfect brownie." I think that cakey and chewy both have their place, and although I generally prefer the latter, I do not think that it is inherently better. Generally, I go for recipes that have fewer than four eggs and use real chocolate (rather than cocoa powder exclusively). These, however, are awesome brownies. They're not so so sweet, so you really taste the chocolate, and the almond extract adds an awesome kick of extra flavor. My housemates seemed to like them too, as evidenced by the fact that this is the closest I have to a picture.

Ingredients

• 1 stick unsalted butter
  
• 4 oz unsweetened chocolate
  
• 1.5 cups of sugar
  
• 1/4 tsp. salt
  
• 1.5 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 a tsp almond extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup flour
• 2 TBS cocoa powder
• 1/3 bag chocolate chips-- I used semi-sweet, and the 1/3 bag is an estimate. Basically, throw some in if you got 'em.

Procedure

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F and butter a pan. I used a 9in round pan. Probably an 8x8 would work well too.

2. In a double boiler, if you're fortunate enough to have one (if not, use a pot in a pan or skillet), melt the chocolate and butter together. For those who've never done this before, basically you want hot (not boiling) water in the bottom of the two containers. In the top one you want just the things your melting. Let them melt and when the chocolate is shiny, stir them together.

3. Remove from heat and cool slightly, then add the sugar, salt, extracts, and eggs (one at a time). As a side note, feel free to experiment with the extracts. Almond is my new favorite, but I'm sure mint or orange or something could be excellent too.

4. Stir in the flour and cocoa powder. The batter should be stiff at this point, so don't worry if it's a bit difficult to stir. Then add the chocolate chips.

5. Dump the batter into the prepared pan. The batter should be seriously thick at this point. Do not think slightly-lumpy-but-still-liquidy cake mix brownie batter. If that's the consistency you've done something...well...I won't say wrong, but certainly different, and you'll need to have a baking adventure all your own!

6. Bake until a toothpick comes out with a few crumbs sticking to it and cook slightly. I highly recommend serving with milk. Also, these are super rich and clearly dessert brownies--- not "I just got home from work and want a snack" brownies. I learned this the hard way yesterday and wasn't hungry for dinner until a while after I'd planned to start cooking.