Teaser

Teaser



This is farfalle and rotelli pasta with homemade lamb sausage and local sheeps milk cheese. No recipe worth mentioning, except the sausage.

But that recipe isn't quite perfect yet. Almost, but not quite. It needs more wine, a touch of heat, a soupcon more garlic, and the mustard seed is worthless.

When it is perfect I'll share it. In the meantime, with pasta olives, and sauteed onion and bell pepper it's pretty damned good. In fact, it's pretty damned good just fried in skillet.

Technorati: Food | photo | kevin d weeks | seriously good | pasta | lamb | sausage

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Baked Ziti with Chicken

Summer Eating: Stage II



Here in Knoxville we're at the height of the summer vegetable season. The farmers' market is packed with growers, crops, and customers. The heat (101F here yesterday) hasn't scared anyone off — although the heat is exactly why I dislike gardening. But I can stand it for the 30 or so minutes it takes me to make my selections.

When the first summer crops, tomatoes, corn, squash, and so on, begin arriving I tend to keep my preparations simple so I can fully enjoy the individual flavors. Tomatoes get a some basil, lemon juice, and olive oil, corn is eaten on the cob, and squash is sautéed with olive and perhaps a few herbs. Covering up or even mixing up those fresh flavors that I've been craving for months seems sinful.

You can't lie about cooking. You either do it well or you don't. ~ Molly O'Neill

But as the summer wears on the novelty wears off and I start making gazpacho, cucumber soup, and vichyssoise. I'll sauté tomatoes, squash, and corn together with a dose of chipotle powder. Or I'll make that Southern favorite, squash and cheese casserole. These are still simple preparations that leave the fresh flavors intact, but the flavors are more complex. I may add a couple of anchovy filets to sautéed vegetables, and the cucumber soup contains curry powder.

One of my favorite dishes at this time of year is baked pasta. It's tremendously flexible and, although it requires some work, the leftovers are good for a couple of days of not cooking at all — so I consider it well-justified. In this particular case I chopped up tomatoes, a small zucchini, a small onion, and some red bell pepper to which I added chicken. But I've also made it with tomato, green beans, eggplant, and Italian sausage and various other combinations depending on what was available. The main key is to cook all the ingredients in advance till they're just under-done and then mix them and place in a casserole. Here's what I did this time.

Baked Ziti
Serves 6.

1/2 lb ziti
2 tbsp olive oil
2 lg. chicken breasts — cut into 3/4" cubes
1 sm. zucchini — cut into 1/2" dice
1 sm. onion — cut into quarters vertically and then sliced crosswise into 1/2" strips
1 sm. red bell pepper — cut into 1/2" x 2" strips
2 - 3 med. tomatoes — chopped & seeded (reserving seeds and pulp)
pinch crushed red pepper
2 cloves garlic — minced
3 sprigs fresh basil — chiffonade
1/2 c white wine
1/4 lb fontina — shredded
1/4 lb provolone — shredded
1/4 lb asiago — shredded
salt and pepper

Heat oven to 400F. Prep all ingredients.

Cook ziti according to package directions. Mix cheeses together.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Generously season chicken with salt and pepper, then lightly brown. Set aside. Add zucchini, onion, and bell pepper to skillet and cook until veggies begin to soften (you may need to. Add tomato pulp, garlic, and a pinch of crushed red pepper and cook another couple of minutes until most of the quid has evaporated. Turn veggies out onto a plate, return the skillet to the heat and add the wine. Deglaze skillet and reduce wine by half. Remove from heat.

Drain pasta and return to pot. Add chicken, veggies, wine, basil, and 3/4 of cheese. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Turn out into a large casserole dish, sprinkle with remaining cheese, cover, and bake in center of oven for 15 minutes. Remove cover and bake another 15 minutes. Serve.

This may seem a bit complicated, but isn't. The complete prep only takes 35 - 40 minutes, the flavors are marvelously fresh with a nice subtle heat from the red pepper. And as I said, the leftovers are excellent. If you're cooking for a family, just double the quantities.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin weeks | seriously good | summer | veggies | pasta | main dish

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Shrimp Ravioli

Will Cook for Writing



I wrote my first article for publication in 1989. The topic was a computer program I'd written and I was astounded when it was accepted for publication. So I wrote another article and it too was promptly accepted. This was back in the hay-day of programming magazines and there were lots of them around.

During the next six years I published three to five articles a year and began speaking at conferences, which meant writing papers for them. Then I was offered a job as Senior Editor at Windows Tech Journal and began writing a bi-monthly, and then monthly, editorial in addition to a couple of articles a year. The amount of writing I've done since then has fluctuated, but writing became how I identified myself.

You can say this for ready-mixes - the next generation isn't going to have any trouble making pies exactly like mother used to make. ~ Earl Wilson

In 2003 the last magazine I edited (and computer magazine I wrote for) closed down and left me bereft of a writing outlet — so I started Seriously Good (a reference to a search for great food and not a statement about either the food's or writing's excellence.)

At first I didn’t post a lot, partially because writing reminded me I was out of work and didn't have an inkling of what to do about it. But eventually I found a groove mostly creating new recipes and writing about it and SG became a cherished part of my day as I focused on efforts to build a professional life around food and cooking.

Then in January of this year things suddenly took off. I sold a few gift certificates for Christmas, I picked up a couple of new clients, cooking classes took off, and I picked up a weekly column, semi-monthly column, and sold three free-lance pieces. Whew!

But the work has come at the expense of this blog. This beloved and dependable friend. This past weekend I decided I needed to cook something specifically for it. Casting about for ideas I settled on homemade ravioli, but what to fill it with?

I had some shrimp and ricotta left over from a client's meal and with a little thought, came up with this. It's packed with shrimp flavor, nicely tweaked with an Italian herb mix and hot Hungarian paprika. It is Seriously Good.

Basic Pasta
Makes about 1/2 pound

1 1/3 c all-purpose flour
2 ea eggs

Place flour in a food processor. With motor running add eggs. Dough should quickly form a ball. If dough is too dry, add water a teaspoon at a time to running machine. If dough is too wet, add additional flour a tablespoon at a time and then process. Form dough into a ball, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate until ready to roll out – at least half an hour.

Set pasta rollers on widest setting and flatten dough enough to go through rollers. Fold dough in thirds, horizontally and roll again with a seamed edge first. Repeat four more times. This process kneads the dough and develops the glutin giving the pasta a toothiness.

Reduce roller setting by one and roll dough through. Repeat ruducing setting and rolling pasta through until desired setting is reached. Note 1: when the dough becomes too long to handle comnfortably, cut in half and finish rolling out each half. Note 2: If pasta begins to stick to rollers lightly dust with flour.

Shrimp Ravioli
Serves 4.

1/2 lb fresh pasta

1 lb shrimp — shelled
1/2 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp hot Hungarian paprika
1 tsp dried Italian herbs
3 tbsp minced fresh chives
2 tbsps olive oil
3 cloves garlic, large — peeled and minced
2 tsp unsalted butter
1/4 c ricotta cheese
1/4 c parmesan cheese — grated
1 ea egg — beaten
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 c shrimp stock
1/2 c white wine
1/2 c heavy cream
1/4 tsp ground white pepper

Coarsley chop shelled shrimp and season all shrimp with salt and cayenne to taste. In a 12" skillet, heat 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 clove garlic over medium heat, add shrimp, and saute until just cooked — about 1 minute per side. Add butter and toss to coat. Devide shrimp into two equal portions and allow to cool.

Filling:
Place 1/2 shrimp, ricotta, and parmesan in a food processor and process until finely chopped. Stir in egg.

Roll out pasta, but mot too thin — it has to be strong enough to hold the filling. Cut a strip in half lenthwise. Place heaping teaspoons of the filling in the center of one the strip, separated by about one inch. Brush edges of strip and between mounds of filling. Carefully lay the second strip over the top and press edges, and between mounds to seal. Note: try to include as little air in each sealed packet as possible. Trim the edges and but each mound into separate ravioli. Place on a lightly floured platter or baking sheet and refrigerate. Repeat for other strip of dough. Allow ravioli to chill for 30 minutes before cooking.

Sauce:
In a 12" skillet, heat garlic in 2 tbsp olive oil over low heat until fragrant and translucent. Add tomatoes, salt, and cayenne and increase heat to medium. Cook until reduced by half. Add wine and cook until reduced by half. Add shrimp stock and cook until reduced by half. Allow to cool.

Put remaining chopped shrimp and sauce base in a food processor and process until shrimp is finely minced. (For a smoother sauce, use a blender.) Return mixture to the skillet and add cream. Return to a vigourous simmer and reduce to desired consistency.

Cook pasta for about two minutes in vigorously boiling, salted water. Spoon sauce over the top and garnish with minced chives.

Technorati: Food | recipe | shrimp | pasta | ravioli

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Pastitsio

Food for Working



Jeez! "Food for Working" sounds like a white-collar pretension of blue-collar roots, doesn’t it? But I don’t mean it that way. We all have jobs. We all sometimes get up earlier than we wish. We have aspects of our jobs we hate (and, hopefully, aspects we love). We all feel we're worth more than we're paid. We all get tired and irritable. We all come home from our jobs to eat things that, in a more perfect world, we'd avoid but that are quick, easy, and require no thought. Food that satisfies nothing more than our need for enough nutrition to enable us to get up too early tomorrow and do it all over again.

I've eaten my share of such meals, and I would be the last to argue there's something inherently wrong with a TV dinner or stopping by a KFC (I don't know what a KFC is, but it tastes a little bit like chicken) on your way home or even ordering a pizza from Pap John's. I eat all those things, but not often. For me, they're almost treats (and it's definitely a treat when I get a pizza delivered) and I like it that way.

If we're not willing to settle for junk living, we certainly shouldn't settle for junk food. ~ Sally Edwards

But when I come home from work (or, these days, knock off from work at home) I want something packed with flavor and goodness. Something that can make up for a bad day or celebrate a good day equally well — and in my years of eating and cooking I've found that nothing serves so well as peasant food.

What is peasant food? It's the native food of a culture. It's what the poor people, the working class, ate. In this country it's what the immigrants ate before they got hooked on Kraft Mac-n-Cheese and Burger King and frozen dinners and forgot how to cook. And I guess, to that degree, the idea of peasant food is pretentious — even condescending. But, again, that's not my intent.

Although I don’t come from a blue-collar background, I did grow up on a farm and have hauled more hay, dug more post-holes, and weeded more corn than I like to remember. I've also made a living refinishing furniture, making pizza, checking stock, playing music, and a few other things. My life as a well-paid white-collar worker was relatively brief — and even then my preference was for lamb daube from Provencal, masallah from India, Cornish pasties from England, and fried chicken from the South. It's not food well-suited to our sedentary life-styles, but it's food that makes you glad you were born with a set of functioning taste buds.

Some of these peasant foods are now regarded as haute cuisine. Fondue? Invented by Swiss herders. Bouillabaisse? Whatever the fishermen in Marseilles couldn’t sell. Cassoulet? Beans used to make a bit of leftover meat go further. Pâte? It's just meatloaf with the added advantage of making liver more palatable.

Then there are the wonderful things like stew, chile, homemade pizza, and barbeque that remain un-apologetically low-brow. And they are foods that take cheap ingredients and make them deeply satisfying. For instance two 12-inch pizzas from Papa John's cost about $25, but I can make two superior pizzas for $8.

Whatever their origins, such foods are simple to make, packed with flavor, and a satisfying end to a long day whether you were pruning grape vines, managing a shop, or debating an ordinance at city hall. They just aren't "fast." But many such foods are better the second or third day anyway — so make them when you have time and regard the leftovers as a bonus. Something to be looked forward to, not avoided. Something to make a really good dinner completely painless, at least half the time. Something for those nights when you get home tired and hungry. Something to replenish your body and your soul.

And if tonight is such a night, Pastitsio, a Greek meat and pasta pie, is a perfect example. It's best with lamb, but beef also works. Pastitsio is rich and savory — a genuine "rib-sticker" as we say in the South — and is at least as good as leftovers as it is the day you make it. Don't let the nutmeg and cinnamon scare you off — you'll never know they're there, but the dish is poorer without them. Enjoy it with a hearty Zinfandel or Malbec.

Pastitsio
Serves 8.

1/2 pound penne pasta
1/2 pound shredded mozarella

Lamb mixture:
1 pound ground lamb (or beef)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion — diced
2 large cloves garlic — minced
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1 tablespoon minced fresh oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup red wine
1 can finely diced tomatoes (15 oz)
4 ounces feta cheese — crumbled

Sauce:
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups milk
2 egg yolks — lightly beaten
4 ounces kefalotiri (or parmegiano) cheese — grated or shredded
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Cook penne according to package directions. Drain, rinse with cold water to eliminate sticking, and set aside.

Lamb mixture:
Heat olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium high heat. Brown lamb in two batches, seasoning with salt and pepper. Set lamb aside and pour off excess grease.

Reduce heat to medium and add onion. Cook until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic, rosemary, oregano, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Cook another minute. Add wine and deglaze pan. Reduce wine to about 1 tablespoon. Stir in tomatoes, including liquid, and lamb. Season with additional salt and pepper. Simmer for about 15 minutes. Stir in feta cheese and cook another 5 minutes.

Heat oven to 400F.

Sauce:
Heat milk in the microwave on high for 1 1/2 minutes. Melt butter in a sauce pan over low heat. Whisk in flour and cook, stirring constantly, for four minutes. Slowly pour in hot milk, whisking steadily, and cook until thickened. Slowly whisk in egg yolks. Whisk in kefalotiri (or parmegiano) cheese, cooking until melted and thick. Stir in salt and pepper.

Assemble:
Toss pasta with shredded mozzarella. Layer 3/4 of pasta in the bottom of 9 x 13 casserole dish. Layer meat mixture on top of pasta. Distribute remaining pasta over meat. Pour sauce evenly over pasta.

Place casserole in middle of oven and cook for 25 - 30 minutes until top browns.

Technorati: Food | recipe | lamb | pasta | greece | greek | pastitsio

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