Winter Veggie Pasta

This is something I had kicking around for years in an earlier version somewhere in my notes. As it has been foggy and cold for the last few days, I thought I’d revisit it as it is rather too substantial for a summer dish. Needless to say, I didn’t have all the same ingredients as for the original recipe, so think minus cauliflower and carrots and with seabuckthorn instead of agave syrup if you want to try that version out. It is quite quick (apart from the time it may take to do all the chopping) as the sauce takes about as long to make as getting the pasta water to boil and the pasta to cook. By the way, I love pasta that retain the sauce hence my tendency to use conchiglie and fusilli for something like this.

What you need:

• 4 tblsp olive oil
• 300 g of broccoli, cauliflower and carrot, finely chopped
• 1 spoonful Madras curry masala
• 1 large onion also finely chopped
• 100 ml bubbly (Clairette or Moscato)
• 100 ml double cream
• 100 ml crème fraiche
• 1 tblsp agave syrup
• 2 cloves garlic (not pictured)
• salt or vegetable broth to taste
• 50 ml dry or medium dry sherry
• 400 g conchiglie

What you do:

1. Sauté the onions in olive oil, add the Madras curry and allow the latter to brown a bit.
2. Add the veggies and stir for about 2 to 3 minutes.
3. Add the bubbly and allow it to reduce until the veggies are nearly dry.
4. Add the two creams and leave it to simmer for about 5 minutes or until the sauce is quite creamy (the veggies will still have plenty of bite; if you want them soft, cook for longer and replenish with liquid, more bubbly, white wine or pasta water)
5. In the meantime cook the conchiglie in salted water – about as salty as the med, an Italian told me – until they are al dente.
6. Before serving add the garlic, squashed, the salt or veggie broth (instant or cube), bring to the boil briefly then add the sherry.
7. Serve with some freshly grated parmesan or – my preference – pecorino romano.
   

Crostini Toppings: Olive Paste and Smoked Trout with Pernod Topping

Summer is not always the time for cooking. I mostly enjoy an insalata Caprese (slices of tomatoes, mozzarella, basil and a balsamico/olive oil dressing, a perfect combination) or a Greek Salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, feta and olives with oregano or rigani if I can get it), and, mostly, what really goes well with a salad of this kind is fetunta (roasted slices of bread rubbed with garlic and douses with a generous shot of olive oil. And fetunta is just a small step away from crostini.

Last summer I provided a recipe for my sundried tomato topping (fam-food.blogspot.com/2011/07/sun-dried-tomato-paste.html). Here are two more:

What you need: Olive Paste

• 300 g olives (for instance 200 g black Calamata, 100 g green)
• 3-5 cloves of garlic
• 1 chilli, chopped (minus the seeds if you want it less spicy)
• a bit of olive oil

What you do

1. De-pip the olives, chop the garlic and the chilli.
2. Chop the mixture up in the blender, adding a bit of olive oil for smoothness.
3. If you add some anchovies before you put the mixture in the blender, you have a Provencal tapenade.
4. This costs considerably less than all commercially available olive pastes and you can do it exactly to the taste.

This paste is a jam jar with a lid can be kept in the fridge for some time.

What you need: Smoked Trout topping

• 2 smoked trout fillets
• 1 dl crème fraîche
• 4 tbsps Pernod (or pastis)
• 1 tsp (or less) dried chilli
• 1 tbsp soya sauce (mild)
• Cajun spice (see earlier postings)
• 1 sprig of tarragon chopped
• 1 clove of garlic, pressed
• ½ pepper, peeled and diced for decoration

What you do

1. Mash the trout fillets, mix with the crème fraîche, the pernod (you may not put all of it in just yet) and the soya sauce.
2. Season with chillies and Cajun spice.
3. Add the chopped tarragon and the garlic.
4. Blend until the mixture is quite smooth. If it is too spicy, add a bit more cream.
5. Season to taste and perfume with more Pernod if needed.
6. For colour sprinkle peppers over the top.

This topping, which has a lovely blend of aniseed and smoked fish, should be eaten relatively quickly.

Final remark

Both toppings taste great on roasted slices of bread with a bit of garlic rubbed on before the pastes are spread generously.

Walnut Sauce with Strozzapreti

This is another quick-fix meal: making the sauce takes no longer than for the water to boil and the pasta to cook. Leftovers can be frozen and warmed up in the oven or a steamer.

I came across strozzapreti in a specialist Italian shop. Like orechietti or the thick fusilli, they are somewhere between fresh and dried pasta, packed with a sell by date like the dried variety but softer and chewier like the fresh stuff. The name is intriguing as it means “priests stranglers”.(and of course, as all the smarta***s will point out, in the picture we have fusilli.)

The walnut sauce was inspired by an Italian recipe but only to the point of two ingredients, walnuts and cream. There is no real intention to make this a traditional Italian sauce, but as the cold spell persists, so does the need for comfort food…

What you need

• 400 g of pasta (ideally fresh, but in any case, high quality stuff!)
• 50 g butter
• 100 g ground walnuts (or pecan for a slightly different but equally palatable flavour)
• 1 medium sized onion finely chopped
• 1-2 pressed cloves of garlic
• 100 ml Marsala
• 100 ml cream
• 200 ml crème fraîche
• seasoning with vegetable stock (powder, possibly dissolved in the Marsala), Cajun spice mix and paprika

What you do

1. Fry the onions in the butter (add the garlic as well unless you want the flavour to be more prominent, in which case add it right at the end) until they are glassy, perhaps slightly golden.
2. Add the ground up walnuts and allow to develop their flavour while stirring.
3. Pour in the marsala and simmer until it seems to have been absorbed by the nuts.
4. Add the cream before stirring in the crème fraîche.
5. Season to taste with vegetable stock, Cajun spice and paprika.

Serve with freshly ground parmesan cheese.

Chanterelle-Cream Sauce with Fresh Pasta

Normally I would make my own pasta, which makes this a much less fast meal. If you can get good fresh pasta, this takes no longer than for the pasta water to boil and the pasta becoming al dente. 

Homemade Pasta

Making your own pasta sounds a lot more daunting than it is. You usually reckon a multiple of about

• 1 egg,
• 100 g of flour or semolina,
• a pinch of salt and
• a teaspoon of olive oil optionally to keep the dough smooth

(Three times this amount makes about enough for four resonable eaters.)

Mix all the ingredients and knead until you get a dry dough. If you have time, allow it to sit for about 30 minutes, perhaps overnight in the fridge, making sure it does not dry out. This allows the flour and the egg to mix and create the best texture (I’m told it’s got something to do with the gluten in the flour and the protein molecules in the egg but I’m not really au fait with the science behind all this). Roll out the dough, as thinly as you can with a rolling pin; a pasta machine setting of about 5 out of 6 is great, cut into strips of the desired width, noodles to the uninitiated, dust with flour to prevent sticking and form nests. These can be left to dry, frozen or used straight away. I have a pasta tree to dry them on, but that is more than a casual pasta maker will want to bother with.

Chanterelle and Cream Sauce

You can make this will the pasta water is coming to the boil.

What you need

 

• 150 g chanterelles, cut into slices with the tougher stems finely chopped
• 2 tblsp Olive oil or butter, perhaps half and half
• 12 medium onion, finely chopped
• 2 or more cloves of garlic
• 100 to 150  ml white Port, Madeira or Marsala (I prefer the first even though in the pictures madeira is used)
• 2 vegetable stock cubes
• 100 ml crème fraîche
• 150 ml of fresh cream
• 1 tablespoon dried Italian herbs
• Cajun Spice (see here), and if needed salt and pepper to taste

What you do

Clean the chanterelles, ideally with a brush as washing them under the tap makes them soggy

Cut the tougher stems and chop them finely.

Heat the olive oil and/or butter.

When it is hot, add the chanterelle stems, the onions and last the garlic and stir fry. Make sure neither onions nor garlic colour.

Add the sliced chanterelles and fry until the onions are golden.

Sprinkle a goodly pinch of Cajun Spice over the mixture.

Add the Madeira and the vegetable stock cubes and reduce to about half the volume.

Now stir in the crème fraîche, again allow to bubble vigorously.

Add the fresh cream and the herbs and reduce until the sauce has thickened. (No flour needed! See earlier postings.)

Finally season to taste with more Cajun spice salt and pepper.

Pour over the fresh pasta cooked al dente (which with fresh pasta is a matter of a couple of minutes!)

Remarks

Serve immediately: the eaters wait for the dish, not the other way round! If this is a problem, prepare the sauce to the point before you add the liquids and the water is boiling (to reheat it if you don't have to wait too long is no big deal).

Crème fraîche can be quite acidic, which is part of the appeal of this sauce. This is counterbalanced by the sweetness of the white Port (apparently in Asian and molecular cooking the idea is to combine as many tastes as the tongue is capable of detecting; what is missing here is a bitter flavour…). If the sauce tastes too sour, which should not be the case if you get a good crème fraîche, you can add a bit of Madeira at the end, making sure the sauce only simmers to preserve the taste.