Archive for the ‘Trip the Food Fantastic’ Category
Trip the Food Fantastic: Pasta w/ herbed brown butter
-by Whitney Rearick
If you’ve never had brown butter, you’re probably saying “uh, butter and pasta is for picky 8-year-olds.” Ah, but we’re talking about brown butter here, friends. Butter, of course, is your Best Friend in the kitchen.
Melt, then brown butter over medium heat, with constant stirring, taking care not to make black butter. Be sure to include your favorite herb (fresh if possible)–tarragon, rosemary or thyme will work great, as will garlic. For my recent effort, I used the supernatural sage, which for some reason doesn’t seem to freeze…ever. If you use unsalted butter (always highly recommended – it makes it easier to control the amount of salt), make sure to add enough salt. If you have nuts around, toast, and toss them with the pasta, too (in this case, we used walnuts). Grated Parmesan is a great addition too. Once your pasta is done, the butter nicely browned and your nuts nicely toasted, toss it all together and eat. Any kind of pasta will work fine.
Whitney Rearick eats.
Trip the Food Fantastic: Quick kitchen sink pizza from scratch
One of my New Years resolutions was to cook less. Cooking had taken over my life. A growing fascination with seasonal cooking, snazzy new cookbooks and lusciously-photographed cooking blogs had caused me to become nearly obsessed with trying new dishes. I’d come home from work with the intention of throwing something simple together, and before you know it, I’d be running to the Co-Op to pick up some Aleppo pepper, putting together a multi-step stew with garbanzos and winter squash, or getting out the hand-crank pasta machine. Between prepping, cooking, eating, and cleaning up, I’d be in the kitchen until 10 PM. Like other hobbies (or addictions!), it had gotten overwhelming. I resolved to get my life back, and the way to do that was to cook less.
Now, I don’t mean less frequently, I mean less intensively. I still cook, by most definitions, nightly. It’s just that instead of chile rellenos with two kinds of salsas and Spanish rice, I’ll make quesadillas and salad.
The effort to cook less, I discovered, is every bit as creative as cooking elaborately was, if not more. For my next few posts, I’d like to share some of my quick-and-easy favorite weeknight meals with you.
We had no red sauce or mozzarella, but I knew we had some capers, a delicious raw milk cheddar, a bunch of fresh parsley, green onions, and some stick salami. This would make an amazing pie, I hoped.
Some ideas for kitchen sink home-cooked pizza:
Sauce ideas: spaghetti sauce (spice it up first), pesto, BBQ sauce (a bit sweet), oven-roasted canned tomatoes. Additional topping ideas: artichoke hearts, olives, sauteed onions, arugula, spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, jarred roasted red peppers, herbs aplenty, leftover pasta, defrosted frozen corn, leftover meat (of any kind).
We like to sprinkle corn meal or wheat germ on the cookie sheet to ensure the pizza doesn’t stick. Make sure your oven is hot enough before putting the pie in. 450 degrees is ideal. Bake for 12 or so minutes, with an additional 2 minutes under the broiler (take care to not let it broil too long) to crispen everything up. Pizza stone is a plus, but not required.
Variation: If you have a little more time to gather the ingredients (and to bake dinner), try making a calzone. Mix ricotta and mozzarella, some toppings and a sauce in a folded-over pizza dough. Be sure to vent the top, bake 30 or so minutes, and you have a giant, cheesy filled dumpling. Heaven.
Trip the Food Fantastic: ‘Tis fall, time for chili
–by Whitney Rearick
If Facebook is any guide, half my friends spent the dreary weekend canning tomatoes or making chili. Who am I to argue? We had a couple of pounds of stew meat from Wilsey Ranch to use up, along with the last of the season’s garden romas and hot peppers, so chili sounded like just the ticket. After cutting the beef into small cubes, the BF browned it with three onions, and plenty of garlic. We tossed in some canned and fresh tomatoes, a cup or so of beef broth from the freezer, and we were cooking. For some quick and easy smokey flavor, we added some chipotles in adobo and smoked salt (find it at the Boise Co-op).
One of the pleasures of a long-simmering pot of chili is the aroma it sends throughout the house — and into the neighborhood, delighting (or possibly causing pangs of envy in) the neighbors. We like to use a cast iron dutch oven to slowly simmer such dishes — it helps reduce the risk of burning, which is a good thing for ADD chefs like us.
But chili isn’t chili without cornbread, is it?
I find a lot of cornbread recipes (the one without bacon grease, anyway) come out dry, crumbly and bland, so when I saw a recipe on Epicurious with extra flour and some creative seasonings, I hit “print.” We didn’t have cranberries or golden raisins, but our regular plain Jane raisins worked just fine. The result: lovely, light and airy cornbread with just a hint of fennel — a perfect foil for the spicy chili.
Whitney Rearick is a chili eating locavore and is on the steering committee of the Treasure Valley Food Coalition.
