On our way to Cape Cod for the last weekend of the year, we stopped at Frank Pepe’s for dinner, natch. Our meal was not dissimilar to our first Cape-bound car-pie of the year, except with a bit of melancholy replacing the excitement.
Monthly Archives: October 2013
Lazy Thursday
By Nina Max in uncategorized
It’s Lazy Thursday, you know the drill, dinner at Espresso 77. Tonight’s meal was brought to you by our good pal Sean.
Penne with 5 cheeses
By Nina Max in quick 2 Comments
Five cheeses. Need I say more? I didn’t think so.
• Al Forno’s Penne with Tomato, Cream and Five Cheeses •
from Food52.com
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup chopped canned tomatoes in heavy puree
1/2 cup freshly grated pecorino Romano cheese, (1 1/2 ounces)
1/2 cup coarsely shredded (1 1/2 ounces) Fontina cheese
1/4 cup crumbled Gorgonzola cheese, (1 1/2 ounces)
2 tablespoons ricotta cheese
1/4 pound thinly sliced mozzarella cheese
3/4 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more for pasta water
6 fresh basil leaves, coarsely chopped
1 pound penne rigate or conchiglie rigate
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, sliced thinly
Notes:
1. I couldn’t find diced tomatoes in heavy puree, so I used San Marzano diced tomatoes, and added 2 tablespoons tomato paste to thicken the sauce.
2. For the mozzarella, I used the a quarter pound of fresh mozzarella, grated.
3. It might seem like 4 minutes is not enough time to parboil the pasta, that’s how I felt. I cooked my pasta for 5 minutes, 4 would have been fine but 5 works too.
4. This dish may take more than 10 minutes to cook, mine took about 15. Some ovens don’t quite go up to 500 degrees, or you might not be patient enough to let it pre-heat properly. When it’s bubbly all over, it’s ready.
Heat oven to 500 degrees.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
In a mixing bowl, combine all ingredients except the pasta and butter. Stir well to combine.
Drop the pasta into the boiling water and parboil for 4 minutes. Drain in a colander and add to the ingredients in the mixing bowl, tossing to combine.
Divide the pasta mixture among six to eight shallow ceramic gratin dishes (1 1/2 to 2 cups in capacity) or place in a shallow (1-inch*) layer in larger baking dishes. Dot with the butter, and bake until bubbly and brown on top, 7 to 10 minutes.
Serve with a simple salad.
*This is imperative if using a larger dish.
Tortilla pie
By Nina Max in uncategorized 2 Comments
A while back, I made tortilla pie, and froze half of it. At a loss for what to have for dinner tonight, I decided to dig past the compost and see what my freezer might have to offer. There in back, by the ice packs, was an ice-encrusted tortilla pie.
I had my doubts as to how good it would be after two and a half months in the freezer, but we were all pleasantly surprised. In fact, I think it might have been even better the second time around.
There’s a surplus of CSA lettuce in our fridge. A giant green salad with creamy cilantro-lime dressing made a dent in the lettuce, and went perfectly with the pie.
The recipe for tortilla pie (and another photo) can be found here. I think it would be equally great with corn tortillas, instead of whole wheat. Tune in soon for the results of that experiment.
Make-ahead chicken (or tofu) satay
By Nina Max in quick 3 Comments
Chicken (or tofu) Satay is a great make-ahead for a quick dinner dish, because it only needs to broil for 6-10 minutes, and because a broiler doesn’t generally take very long to heat.
Another plus is that the chicken or tofu needs to marinate, which it might as well do while you’re out of the house. I let ours marinate at room temperature so we wouldn’t have and fridge-chilledness adding to our cooking time.
I used this recipe from the food network. I was really happy with the results of the chicken. Rose and Shane loved it, even without the peanut sauce.
The recipe ratings warn that the peanut sauce is nothing to write home about. I pimped it out a bit, with some extra ingredients, and it was good, but not mind-blowing.
Peanut sauce should always be mind-blowing, don’t you think? If you’ve got a good recipe to share, please do. This meal could easily become a make-ahead favorite with the right sauce.
To prep this meal, start by soaking the wooden skewers in water. Make the marinade, slice up the chicken and/or tofu and put them in to soak. I recommend soaking the chicken and tofu separately. Make the peanut sauce and clean and chop your veggies. Skewer the chicken and tofu, lay out on a tray that will fit in your broiler, and cover with plastic wrap. Let sit at room temperature, until ready to cook.
If you don’t have time during the day, you could easily do everything the night before and leave the skewers out on the counter in the morning.
To get this meal on the table in 10-15 minutes, turn on the broiler the moment you get home. Remove sides and sauce from fridge and put out on dinner table. Uncover the skewers and broil for 3-5 minutes per side until cooked through. Check every three minutes to be safe. Serve as soon as they’re done.
Kale flashback
By Nina Max in quick 2 Comments
Remember kale, before it was a trendy superfood? You know, back in the late 90’s and early 00’s when you could sometimes, but not always, find it at Whole Foods. Back when Whole Foods was sometimes called Bread & Circus, and carbs were unfashionable.
Back then, I’d be in the mood for a hearty, dark green and I’d stop by Whole Foods (or Bread & Circus), hoping to find the lumpy kind of kale, rather than the curly kind. The lumpy kind was sometimes called Dinosaur kale, that was before it got all famous, and decided it preferred the superstar moniker, Lacinato.
I don’t mean to rail against kale, I actually do like the stuff, and I know how good it is for me. But I’m a little tired of it, we overindulged this summer. I’m over raw kale salad. I’ve had enough green smoothies (that’s approximately one, btw).
So what to do with the two big bunches of Dinosaur (Lacinato, Tuscan etc.) kale from my CSA box? What we did at the turn of the century, of course, cook it! That’s right, I said cook, over heat, until it’s chewably soft… and delicious!
With our kale—which Rose and I devoured and Shane graciously declined—we had some nice dairy-filled gluten, with a quick sauce, made from fresh CSA plum tomatoes.
• Basic Sautéed Kale •
1 bunch kale
a few glugs of olive oil
a couple of cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
a pinch of red pepper flakes
salt
Wash the kale well, cut out the tough stems and cut the leaves into 1″ strips. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add smashed garlic cloves and cook until fragrant but not too brown, a minute or two, add red pepper flakes and kale. Cook, stirring frequently, until kale leaves are wilted and soft enough to chew without overexerting yourself, and bright green. Season with salt, to taste and serve.
Last Cape dinner of 2013
By Nina Max in cape meals
We will have one more Cape dinner this year, but at a restaurant (tune in next weekend). So, tonight really was the last dinner we cooked on Cape Cod in 2013. It makes me sad to write that.
It was a great meal, as all last suppers should be. We had steak (or bean) tacos with as many sides and condiments as we could come up with, without going food shopping.
In the evening, Rose, Shane and I took the beautiful walk that we’d been waiting all summer to be well enough to take. When we got home, dinner prep was under way. The table was set with space and activities for baby Cal. I think the shorter days tricked us into thinking it was later, and we ate before Cal’s bedtime, for a change.
Wayne grilled the steak. I made my favorite black beans and Anna and I made a green salad with the CSA veggies I’d brought from home. Jenya made her delicious cooked salsa, with pureed tomatoes, garlic, onion and dried chiles. André found an assortment of tortillas—we used corn—and a bag of delicious roasted green chiles in the freezer. Anna scrounged up enough cheddar to grate for topping, and salvaged some sour cream.
It goes without saying, that there were ice cream novelties and flying paper lanterns after dinner.
The whole undertaking was uncharacteristically thrifty, and characteristically merry, of us. We done good.
Frank Pepe’s!
By Nina Max in dining out
Lazy Thursday
By Nina Max in uncategorized 3 Comments
We had a couple of really nice surprises this Lazy Thursday. The first was that Shane joined us for dinner at Espresso 77, for the first time ever!
The other surprise was that our good friend Sean bought us a really generous gift certificate, which should cover our Lazy Thursday dinners for many weeks to come, even if Shane decides to join us again.
Thanks Sean!
Quick, sausagey (or not), baked pasta
For the latest in our make-ahead series, I give you Sausagey (or not Sausagey) Baked Rigatoni. I used this recipe as a starting point, and then changed it a lot.
My adapted recipe (below) makes it easy to put aside a non-sausage portion of the dish, uses homemade sauce instead of jarred, and, of course, increases the amount of cheese.
This recipe calls for Marcella Hazan’s famous (and easy!) tomato sauce. Marcella died this week, at the age of 89. She was a really interesting and amazing person, and a household name in my family. If you don’t know about Marcella, go to this link where you can read and/or listen to learn more about her. Or, you know, use Google.
• Sausagey (or not) Baked Rigatoni •
adapted from this recipe from epicurious
20-30 minutes prep, 15-20 minutes to bake*
1/2 lb rigatoni or mezze rigatoni
1/2 lb fresh mozzarella
1/2 cup grated Pecorino or Parmesan cheese
2 sweet Italian sausages
1 1/2 – 2 cups Marcella’s Famous Sauce*
olive oil
Bring a pot of salted water to boil and cook your rigatoni until al dente, drain, rinse under cold water to stop cooking, and set aside.
While the pasta is cooking, cut the sausages into pieces and cook over medium-low heat, poking and stirring with a wooden spoon, until crumbled and cooked through. Take half of the fresh mozzarella (1/4 lb) and cut it into cubes, about 1/2″ size. Grate the remaining mozzarella and set aside.
Return the cooked pasta to the pot. Stir in 1 1/2 cup of tomato sauce, if it looks not saucy enough for you, add another 1/2 cup. Stir in Pecorino or Parmesan and the mozzarella cubes. Season with pepper and a little salt (the sausage will add salt as well, so you can skip the salt if you want).**
Oil one or two shallow baking dishes with olive oil. You’ll want to use a shallow dish to keep the cooking time short. A 9 or 10″ pie dish works fine. If you are also making a vegetarian portion, oil a second dish. I just made a single vegetarian portion, so a small oven-proof dish plus a 9″ pie plate worked perfectly. If you are doing half-veg and half meat, use two, smaller, equally-sized dishes.
If making a vegetarian portion, scoop some of the pasta, sauce and cheese mixture into a prepared baking dish and set aside. Add the crumbled sausage to the remaining pasta mixture and put that in another prepared dish. Sprinkle grated mozzarella evenly over the top of the pasta.
If you plan to bake this another day, cover with greased foil and freeze or refrigerate until ready to cook. Bring to room temperature before baking. Otherwise, heat your oven to 350 degrees. Bake, uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes until it’s bubbling and the cheese on top is melted. Let cool for a couple of minutes and serve.
*I like to make a batch of Marcella’s sauce, divide it into smaller portions and keep it in the freezer. If you are making the sauce fresh, add 45 minutes for sauce prep time. You can also use a favorite jarred sauce, though I can’t vouch for the results.
**You might find that the vegetarian version needs a little salt added at the table.