Bacon and Cheddar Macaroni & Cheese. Creamy Pasta with Kale. Thanks so much for the feedback on last week’s post! One of the requests y’all made was for more recipes with kale. Well, ask and you shall receive… here’s an easy pasta recipe that features, you guessed it, kale! It’s light (well, as light as pasta can be, of course) and lemony and feels kinda springlike to me, which is fitting because it’s 80 degrees today.
Along with the lemon, the yogurt-based sauce makes this pasta dish a little bit tangy. Creamy Pasta with Kale makes 4-6 servings total time: about 15 minutes total hands-on time: about 15 minutes What you’ll need: 1 box of pasta of your choice (I used whole wheat penne)1/2 a bunch of kale, stemmed and chopped into 1/2-1 inch pieces3/4 cup of plain yogurt1-2 tbsps of olive oiljuice of 1/2 of a lemonzest of 1/2 of a lemon2 tsps chopped garlic (or more, if you like it!)
What you’ll do: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Linguine with pea pesto. Even though I have a lot of book left to write (unless you’re my editor, in which case, just kidding, almost done!) And deadlines both before and after that one requiring my attention, endless paperwork, emails and all sorts of tiresome things on my real-life agenda, I’ve decided to focus my daydreaming on something more aspirational: what to cook on a lazy summer night. We rented a beach house for a week last year but were surprised to find that 11-month olds don’t always sleep in foreign locations. At all. We staggered through the week and ate out a lot. I’d like us all to do better this year. In an area full of farm stands and wineries, with a kitchen bigger than a shoebox, with a grill and a deck, it’s a shame not to be cooking at home as much as we can. Here’s my first offering in that category.
And this is a pea pesto. Linguine with Pea Pesto If you’re completely maniacal about your peas getting overcooked (I am!) Set aside 1/2 cup of your cooked peas. Cellophane noodle salad with roast pork. You know, it’s so easy to get in a rut. Invite some friends over, get what you need, hustle to have everything ready, as people arrive when they may either slightly over or undercooking certain things because it’s impossible to perfectly time, bring out a big platter or two of what-not, “ta-da!” It, dig in, eat and drink too much and well, then what? Is that all there is? It’s not the company but the routine threatens makes it less wild the eighth time around. And I confess that I was looking for yet another Spring pasta dish when I ran across this recipe that was anything but what I ever thought I’d make.
Thus last night, I both cooked and ate pork tenderloin for the very first time, but most certainly not the last. Guess what else? Cellophane Noodle Salad With Roast PorkGina Marie Miraglia Eriquez, Gourmet, June 2006 Updated notes, 1/10/14: I hadn’t made this in years, people, but did so tonight and have dozens of new notes to add about it. Makes 10 first-course servings, about 4 main. Spaghetti with lemon and olive oil. Look, it wasn’t my finest moment but my Happy Valentine’s Day gift to my husband was an epic meltdown over book deadlines and recipe flops and the near impossibility of getting anything done with a toddler underfoot in a kitchen that doesn’t actually fit the two of us. It wasn’t pretty. We ordered pizza and watched How I Met Your Mother. Now, just in case that story elicited even a wisp of pity, you should take it back right now because the week, it got better from there. First, I realized that my “hey, let’s not do gifts this year” conversation with my husband may have never left my own head when he busted out tulips and a spa certificate.
(Oops. I’m a real catch, aren’t I?) Then my very kind agent and editor talked me off the book ledge, they’re good at things like that though I suppose they have to be, taking on nuts like me. Here’s where the story could continue in any of the following ways: How hard it was to be away from our little baby for the weekend (so hard! But I say, “eh!” Asparagus, artichoke and shiitake risotto. Though it’s still and gusting the kind of evil, icy winds outside that make you grunt as they hit your face and sometimes (er like last night when I accidentally left the window open and spent most of the night under sixteen blankets cursing these landlords who were being cheap! With our heat! Ok, Einstein.) I swear, I will never get warm again, when I began to make a shopping list for yet another thick, hearty, rib-sticking meal on Sunday (Julia Child’s beef bourguignon, if you must know), I just couldn’t do it.
Winter has really just begun and I began to feel like I’m caving without even trying to cope. This hibernation, it must stop. So I threw seasonal eating to the wind and never-minded the ridiculousness of buying asparagus in January (which was perfect, eerily enough) last night, and cooked us the kind of risotto better associated with longer days. Asparagus, Artichoke and Shiitake RisottoAdapted from Gourmet, May 2003 Makes 4 main-course servings. Barley risotto with beans and greens. So here’s a little eating-out confession: When we go out to restaurants, no matter how old-school posh or hot-new-It-chef-on-a-grungy-block, I rarely find myself moved to exclamation points over a piece of steak or a pasta dish; instead, it most of my ooh-ing and aah-ing is formed over the earnest piles of beans and grains and greens that form a bed for the main attraction. I’m always applauding the way a chef managed to get such flavorful beans, grains and even unloved greens, cooked so perfectly that I clean them out long before I stick my fork into the duck breast.
I guess what I am trying to say is: A lot of people cook steak well. Making kale and wheat germ taste like nirvana itself is what really blows my mind. It’s also, sadly, the place where the gap between what I pay others to cook and what I whip up at home is the greatest. With this dish, I’m proud to say I’m getting there. Thank you. Barley Risotto with Beans and Greens Adapted generously from Food and Wine. Broccoli-Basil Mac and Cheese Recipe. Whenever I'm away from home I keep a list of what I want to cook when I get back. Well, it actually becomes more of a nest than a list, and there's a pocket in my suitcase dedicated to keeping it somewhat contained. Unzip the pocket and you'll find menus folded in two, notes scribble on the backs of receipts, pages ripped from far-flung magazines, that sort of thing.
Now that I'm home, the nest is sitting a few inches tall, smack in the middle of the dining room table. Top of the pile, a note to self to make this broccoli-basil crusted mac and cheese. It's from a new book my girl Anna Jones wrote in conjunction with innocent recently. She gave me a copy in London, and it's filled with sass, and laughs, and brilliant, nutritious, family-friendly recipes.
The recipe! Give this a go - in the meantime, I'm working on a London round-up with more pictures. I'd consider make this with delicate squash (skin on) next time, to cut the prep-time on the squash. Serves 8 - 10. Adapted from Hungry? Martha’s macaroni-and-cheese. I’m sorry. I know, this isn’t right. Not fair. Totally cruel. We’re just weeks from bathing suit season and this here is no friend to lycra. But I had to. You see, I gave you a recipe last year for something that was honest-to-goodness-ly the easiest macaroni-and-cheese recipe ever invented.
But when I made it for a second time in January, something wasn’t right. So I turned to the one recipe I had heard from ten thousand people (and their mothers) was the bee’s knees. I just melted into a puddle remembering how good it was. One year ago: Corniest Corn Muffins This week: We’re on vacation right now. Martha Stewart’s Creamy Mac-and-Cheese Adapted from Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The Original Classics Now, please be warned, this makes a ton-a mac-and-cheese.
This is particularly delicious with a big, crunchy salad and a steamed vegetable, like green beans or broccoli. Serves 12 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Spaetzle. A couple months ago, we went out with friends to a new Austrian restaurant in our neighborhood and over too much Grüner and Very Large Dark Beers, got in an animated discussion about spaetzle, and how it was the perfect food. It manages to be both dumplings and noodles at once, and as good tangled with cheese and herbs and bacon and vegetables and as it is alongside a hearty braise. It is never unwelcome. And then my friend turned to me, I guess presuming I’m a person who knows how to, like, make things and ask me how it was made. And I realized I had no idea. This never happens — not that I am clueless, as I am routinely clueless, especially in the realm of denim — but it’s rare that I haven’t a single inkling as to how a food is made. But homemade spaetzle, I hadn’t even considered before. Still, I made it as complicated as possible, but all so you won’t have to — that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
But really, it wasn’t so terrible. Prepare an ice bath. Baked rigatoni with tiny meatballs. Did you hear a resounding whine/sigh/moan the volume of the entire Eastern seaboard? Because there’s a fresh foot of snow outside for the 200th time this year and friends, I love snow. I get so excited when it is going to snow. But this? Lacks charm, likely because the first day of this anticipated four day storm was three to four inches of mucky slush. Anyway, I still maintain that complaining about the weather is dull, thus if any one good thing can come of this, it is that pasta, meatball and cream sauce season just got extended by at least another weekend. After the excitement over Marcella Hazan last month, I wanted to share a recipe from her on the opposite end of the spectrum, sort of the Italian version of Italian-American baked ziti. Except, the ziti is rigatoni, which she insists holds up better to being cooked twice (plus has large hollows that nicely slurp up their surroundings).
Baked Rigatoni with Tiny Meatballs Adapted, no doubt blasphemously, from Marcella Hazan.