Roasted Red Pepper Alfredo

Here is something we tried the other night when we were bereft of groceries and willpower, but not inspiration...no! Tyler wanted Fettucini Alfredo with roasted red pepper, and we thought, why not puree the pepper and fold it into the sauce? We were pleasantly surprised.

1 red pepper, roasted, skinned, seeded and pureed

1 cup heavy cream

2 Tbs. butter, unsalted

1/2 cup parmesan

1/2 pound fettucini

salt and pepper

variations

add fresh basil

try red chili flakes for a spicy dimension

add shrimp to the pasta

use fusilli instead of fettucini

or maybe cheese ravioli...

Under the broiler in the oven, roast the red pepper turning occassionally until the skin is burnt and blistered. Remove pepper from the oven and either place it in a sealed ziploc bag or simply in a bowl with a kitchen towel over top. This will trap the steam and encourage the skin to separate from the pepper. Leave it to steam for five minutes, then under running water (some would argue that this sacrifices flavour but I say, "boo!") slough off the skin, remove the stem and seeds. Puree the pepper in a Cuisinart with 1/2 Tbs. of butter. Begin boiling water for the pasta in a large pot, when at a boil add a generous amount of salt to the water. (Marcella Hazan says pasta should be cooked in water that tastes like the sea, she's right.) Add the pasta to the sea water. In a large saucepan warm the remaining butter and cream on medium heat. You are looking for the cream to lose a little moisture and thicken slightly. Fold in the red pepper puree, and parmesan cheese. Once your pasta is al dente add it to the saucepan as well and toss it to coat it in the sauce. Voila!

Seafood Linguini with a Curried Cream Sauce

Oh my goodness! We found this recipe online at epicurious.com, and it is amazing. It always illicits a second helping. It would be a good dinner to roll out at a party and impress your friends. And it has the added bonus of being easy enough to fix on a work night. The flavours, however, are a little unusual and they may not suit everbody's pallette.

Curried Seafood Linguini
2 Tbs. evoo
1/2 cup shallots, small dice (about 4)
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
8 large shrimp, peeled and deveined (20 count)
6 oz crabmeat
1/3 cup dry white wine
1 3/4 cup chicken stock
2 tsp. cornstarch
1 Tbs. curry powder
a pinch of saffron threads
1/2 cup of cream
1 pound linguini or fettucini
salt for the pasta water

Prepare your shrimp and chop your shallots and garlic. Warm your chicken broth and pour 1/2 cup of it into a bowl that contains the 2 tsp cornstarch. Stir well to combine and set aside. Put the pot of water on to boil for the pasta. When it is ready add a generous amount of salt 2 - 3 Tbs. and the pasta. Heat the evoo in a medium to large skillet on medium heat. Begin by sauteeing your shallots and garlic stirring often until they soften. Add the shrimp and cook for a minute. Add the crabmeat and stir to combine then add the white wine. Allow the wine to simmer and boil off until only a few tablespoons of moisture are left in the pan. Add your warm chicken stock and your chicken stock with cornstarch and stir to combine. Bring the sauce to a boil and lower the temperature to a simmer letting the sauce cook for a minute until you notice the cornstarch thickening the sauce. Add the Tbs. of curry powder, the pinch of saffron threads, and the 1/2 cup cream and allow the mixture to warm up. Hopefully, your pasta is ready or almost ready at this point. Drain the cooked pasta in a colander and return it to the large pasta pot off the heat. Add the sauce on top and stir to coat the pasta in the tasty goodness. Voila!

German Potato Salad

I'd like to think it's the best potato salad in the world, but Tyler disagrees. He hates it prefering a mayonnaise based dressing instead. But this is the kind of salad I remember my mother making - the salty crunch of the bacon, the pucker-inducing bite of the vinegar... all mellowed by the smooth creamy flesh of the potatoes. Let me know what you think

"The best potato salad in the world"...
3 pounds small/creamer potatoes (the itty bitty baby ones that sell for $3 a pound).
3 hard boiled eggs, peeled and chopped
2 stalks celery, rough chopped
2 onions, sliced thinly (if you want, but I can't stomach raw onions)
5 strips bacon
1 Tbs. sugar
1/3 cup evoo
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup white vinegar
2 tbs. water

Do all your chopping while you cook your eggs and your bacon. Wash you potatoes, put them in a generous amount of boiling water, and boil them until they are tender enough to pierce with a fork - about 15 to 20 minutes. Combine your eggs, bacon, celery, and onions (if using). To them add your sugar, salt, pepper, and evoo and stir gently to combine. When the potatoes are ready drain them and transfer them into a bowl large enough to accomodate the entire salad. In a small saucepan combine your vinegar and water and bring to a boil. (I have no idea what this step does except maybe take the bite out of the vinegar or perhaps the heat causes the potatoes to better absorb the acid...) Once the vinegar is warm pour it over the hot potatoes and toss them to coat. Now add your veg/egg/bacon/s&p mixture to the vinegary potatoes. The salad is ready to serve at this point and, I think, at its best with warm fluffy potatoes and contrasting cold crunchy celery, bacon, and eggs. Enjoy!

Tuscan Chickpea Soup

It really can't get any easier than this. This soup takes about 30 minutes from start to eating. It has relatively few ingredients so the focus is on buying the best you can afford.

Tuscan Chickpea Soup
1/4 oz. pancetta, medium dice
2 Tbs. evoo
1 onion, peeled, medium dice
4 cloves garlic, peeled, rough chopped
2 celery stalks, medium dice
6 sage leaves
1 quart chicken stock
1 14oz. can diced tomatoes
1 14oz. can chickpeas/garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
salt and pepper
really good olive oil (not meant for cooking but for eating raw)

*Notes on substitution: You can substitute bacon, but pancetta is the best option. It is unsmoked, and usually of a higher quality that most supermarket bacon. The pancetta will render lots of gorgeous fat into the soup that gives it a wonderful mouth feel.
Strangely, pancetta and sage seem to be seasonal - at least in Arizona. I made this soup last night and found it impossible to locate either item at the local shops. I did use bacon (shock, horror); and found that rosemary made a good change from the sage. However, because rosemary is stronger in flavour I only used three 3 inch clippings from our plant in the backyard.

On medium heat warm the evoo (extra virgin olive oil) add the pancetta and render the fat before adding the celery, garlic, sage and onion. Allow the veg to sweat and soften for about 15 minutes. They will color a little, but I found this is a lot of food for my stockpot and the crowding lowered the temperature and let the vegetables get steamy. This is okay.
Add the tomatoes, chickpeas, and chicken stock to the soup and allow everything to heat through - about 10 minutes. Viola! (I said it was easy.) Season to taste with kosher salt and please, freshy cracked pepper.
Eat the soup with crusty bread and a good drizzle of the olive oil overtop. We also sprinkled our bowls with strips of proscuitto we had languishing in our refrigerator.

Ibarra Chocolate Cookies

Finally a post to match the title of the blog...a "recovering pastry chef" recipe. This is my own recipe - a double chocolate cookie that we used to make in the bake shop at the Sheraton. It has Ibarra chocolate in it which is actually a Mexican hot drinking chocolate that you can find in most grocery stores. You will just need a good food processor - Cuisanart etc, - to help you pulverize it into dust.

Yield: about 5 dozen

4 1/3 cups All purpose flour

1 cup sifted cocoa powder

2 tsp. Baking powder

2 tsp. Baking soda

2 tsp. salt

2 cups softenend butter

2 cups sugar

2 cups brown sugar

4 eggs

3 tbs. vanilla

3 cups semi sweet choc chips

2 cups Ibarra chocolate, pulsed in a processor

Preheat oven to 300 F.

Sift together the dry ingredients - flour, cocoa, baking powder and soda, and salt.

In a large bowl with a hand mixer or in a stand mixer cream the butter and both sugars together at medium speed until combined (about 3 minutes). Crack the eggs into a small pitcher and whisk them quickly to break up the yolks to this add the 3 Tbs. vanilla. Reduce the mixer speed to low and slowly add the eggs onto the butter waiting for the two substances to combine before continuing to add the eggs. Halfway through the addition of your eggs it is a good idea to thoroughly scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl for even mixing. Next you will add your dry ingredients. If your bowl is smallish (most likely the case if you are using a stand mixer) turn the mixer off and add 1/3 of the dry ingredients. Quickly turn the beater of the mixer on and off three or four times to work in the flour then make your next addition. You simply don't want to throw the mixer on high and get covered in flour. You also don't want to let the mixer run with the flour in the batter and build the gluten - this will toughen your cookies. So mix the flour only enough to thoroughly combine it with the butter. Lastly, fold the the Ibarra dust and then the chocolate chips into the batter by hand. Form the cookies into balls about 1 inch in diameter. Place them on the sheetpan evenly spaced and press down on them lightly to flatten them just a little. Bake for about 20 minutes turning your pan halfway through the baking time.

Mushroom Risotto

I was speaking to Nina last night and she was somehow dubious that dried mushrooms and rice could approximate anything close to Italian food. So I told her I would send her the recipe. Before I post it a few words on risotto. Risotto is actually short grain Italian rice that is cooked by slowly adding liquid rather than the common drown and boil of most rices. There are three kinds of risotto - arborio, carnaroli, and vialone nano. If you are shopping at a regular grocery store you will most likely only encounter arborio rice which is fine. But if you really get into cooking and eating risottos like I have you will want to seek out the other grains at specialty food shops they differ from arborio and each other in firmness and creaminess.

Nigella Lawson's Mushroom Risotto

4 tbs. unsalted butter

2 Tbs. evoo

1/2 an onion, small dice

15 g dried porcini mushrooms (about 3/4 cup)

3/4 cup hot water for soaking mushrooms

1 cup arborio rice

3 cups chicken stock

2 to 3 Tbs. grated parmesan

a handful of Italian parsley rough chopped for garnishing

black pepper

Soak the mushrooms in water for 20 minutes or so. I have never actually sprung for porcinis because they are so expensive (and I am so cheap). I use dried shiitakes that I buy from the Asian grocer for a song. Make your stock and keep it warm on a neighboring burner to this add your leftover mushroom soaking water. Melt 2 Tbs. butter in a large skillet. Add the evoo and the onions and on medium heat saute until translucent. Add the rough chopped mushrooms and the uncooked rice. Stir the rice in the fat until the grains are glistening and become translucent at the tips. To this add a ladel or two of stock and allow the rice to absorb it before adding more. This is how the rice is cooked, slowly, adding moisture a bit at time. The whole process takes about twenty minutes. Be sure to occasionally stir the risotto so that it cooks evenly. When the stock is almost gone taste the risotto for doneness. It should be firm like al dente pasta. You will finish the risotto with the remaining 2 Tbs. of butter and the grated parmesan cheese. Add black pepper as needed for flavour and garnish with fresh Italian parsley.

This portion only serves Tyler and I, but we tend to eat A LOT of risotto and nothing else as a side dish.

Tomato and Cream sauce

I made this sauce last night to go with homemade spinach and ricotta gnocchi. They were awesome - an attempt to use up wilting spinach as well as containers of ricotta cheese lurking in our fridge from previous endeavours into baked ziti. The recipe is from Marcella Hazan's Classic Italian Cooking. It was easy, tasty, and the leftovers can be frozen for those nights when cooking dinner is a desperate task.

1/4 pound unsalted butter, that's one stick, typically 4 ounces. (I know, don't tell my husband.)

3 Tbs. finely chopped onion

1 stalk finely chopped celery

2 carrots, finely chopped

1 28oz can of diced or crushed tomatoes

1/2 cup heavy cream

Salt and pepper

Combine all the ingredients except the cream in a large skillet and cook at the slightest simmer for one hour. Remove from the heat and process in a Cuisanart. Be sure to turn off the machine before the sauce looses all of its texture. Return the sauce to the heat on low and add the cream, taste and adjust seasoning.

The gnocchi recipe was also from her book, and if anybody is interested, I will post that as well. Otherwise I would recommend a tubular pasta for this sauce like penne, or perhaps a broad, flat, noodle like fettucini; but I am sure I am breaking some solemn Italian custom of shape and sauce matching...