06.19.12_Giada's Campanelle with Spicy Mint Sauce

Phillip has been getting a lot more alone time now that I have to stay at work until a normal time while he continues to get off at 4:00pm. One day while I was stuck at work, he watched the Food Network without me (I found this somewhat surprising) and he saw Giada making this Campanelle with Spicy Mint Sauce. He found the recipe and sent it to me. It looked super simple (per usual) and sounded really good. I'm always intrigued by savory dishes that use mint since we typically associate mint with dessert. Anyway we added it to the list and decided to make it one weekday when I didn't get off right at 5:00 since it seemed so simple to make.  Basically you boil pasta and then make a sauce similar to pesto, but instead of using basil and pine nuts, you use mint and a Serrano pepper. Delicious. We'd recommend adding a little salt and pepper to help season the pasta as well. A little S&P never hurts!

As a side I decided to make some homemade garlic bread since we had leftover bread from when we made the White Bean Kale and Pesto soup. I took a few slices of crusty bread, and lathered both sides with a mixture of melted butter and garlic powder. I sprinkled some dried parsley onto both sides and then baked them in a 400º oven for about 8-10 minutes.

Giada's Campanelle with Spicy Mint Sauce

• Salt
• 1 pound campanelle pasta
• 1 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese
• 1 ¼ cups chopped fresh mint
• ½ cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese
• ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 large serrano chile, stemmed, seeded and coarsely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and smashed

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, 8 to 10 minutes.

2. Combine the mint, cheese, oil, chile and garlic in a food processor. Blend until smooth.

3. Drain pasta and transfer to a serving bowl. Add the cheese and toss until coated.

4. Add the sauce to the pasta and toss until coated.

12.11.11_Spinach Stuffed Shells

A few months ago I made Giada's stuffed shells with arrabbiata sauce. The recipe was in one of the first cookbooks I ever received as a gift. They were super delicious but had pancetta in them. We were trying to figure out what we could make for dinner without having to buy a ton of ingredients and I noticed that we still had half of the jumbo shells left from the last time we made these. I decided we could make it vegetarian by leaving out the pancetta but I added spinach to make it a little more than just noodles, cheese and sauce.

After bringing water to a boil and dumping the remaining half of the box of jumbo shells, I sauteed a bag of spinach. I went ahead and used the entire bag because it wilts so much. I added some fresh grated nutmeg ("That little something that makes you go, hmm what is that?" - Rachael Ray), salt and pepper. I then let the spinach cool a bit while I mixed together the cheese mixture which consisted of:

15oz of ricotta cheese
1/2 cup of shredded mozzarella
1/2 cup of parmesan
2 egg yolks
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp red pepper flakes
Black pepper to taste
1 tsp of dried parsley 
1 tsp of dried basil
1 clove of garlic

Once the spinach had cooled, I added it to the mixture. I then drained the noodles and sprayed a baking dish with nonstick spray. I stuffed each shell with about a tablespoon of the cheese mixture then put them into the baking dish. After the shells were all stuffed, I poured some marinara sauce I had in the fridge over top of the shells. I used about 2 cups. The shells baked for 30 minutes in a 350°. The shells were super yummy and I even had leftovers to take for lunch the next day!

08.22.11_Gnocchi with Thyme Butter Sauce

Gnocchi is one of those things I've always wanted to try and make from scratch but have been to afraid to after watching years of Food Network and seeing how easily it can go from light fluffy pillows to dense pasty muck. I decided it was time to bite the bullet and since Phillip had only had it once before he probably wouldn't know the difference. I figured Giada would be the go to person on gnocchi and found her recipe for gnocchi with thyme butter sauce. I read through the recipe and was confused when I read, "Roll each piece of dough over a wooden paddle with ridges." I decided to Google "wooden paddle with ridges" and a gnocchi paddle came up. Of course there is such thing as a paddle specifically for scoring gnocchi. What was I thinking? The best part was if you clicked on Amazon's link for wooden paddle with ridges, Giada's cookbook comes up as another search result. Convenient.

Anyhow, I had also never made brown butter before and was nervous to try this because it can quickly go from brown to burnt. Luckily my obsessive checking on the butter paid off and I did not burn it. I was in for a surprise, however, when I added the thyme to the butter. I removed the melted butter from the heat like the recipe says to, added the thyme, and then what sounded like firecrackers erupted in my kitchen. I'm not sure if it was the water inside the thyme or what but it scared the crap out of me. I looked this up later to see if this was common and couldn't find anything so who knows. If you do decide to make this recipe, just be prepared for loud crackling when you add the thyme just in case!

The dough.

The dough after being scored.

Gnocchi prior to being cooked.

The finished product!

The dough was was easy to make and fun to play with. I couldn't believe how exact the recipe was (3 tablespoons of beaten egg, discard the rest). After rolling it out into the long, thin tubes, I scored the dough with a fork (since I didn't own a Gnocchi Paddle...shoot) and cut the dough into inch-long pieces. Cooking the pasta was easy enough as well, just drop into the water, wait for them to rise to the surface and then wait another four minutes. I put the gnocchi directly into the thyme butter sauce and this is where I had a bit of a problem. I wanted to toss the gnocchi in the sauce to make sure all sides had been coated with the sauce. They began to fall apart a little when tossing which frustrated me because they had looked so good before hand. Some reviews online seem to have had a similar problem and one reviewer claims that the recipe did not call for enough flour.

Besides the tossing of the gnocchi that did not go so well, I was very impressed with how easy the recipe was. The gnocchi tasted great and I enjoyed having a different sauce for them. One other side note is that this did not make very much. I'm not sure who Giada is feeding but there is no way that this is 4-6 servings. Phillip and I finished the entire pot of gnocchi in one seating on top of the salad and garlic bread I served it with, and I don't eat that much! So you may want to double this if you want leftovers or are making this for more than two people. Maybe that's why Giada is so tiny because she only eats six pieces of gnocchi for dinner.

08.16.11_Avocado and Arugula Pesto

As many of you know I finally caved and joined Twitter earlier this year after avoiding it for years. I just did not feel a need to constantly be telling people via multiple platforms what I was doing at this very second. Then Britney Spears started releasing information about her unreleased album via her Twitter account so I gave in and joined so I could get the newest info the minute it happened like a true fan. After realizing its potential I have come to really enjoy Twitter as a means to connect with people you would otherwise never be able to communicate with (aka celebrities). At the beginning of the month when I was scouring the internet for vegetarian recipes, Giada DeLaurentiis, one of the people I follow on Twitter, tweeted a recipe for Avocado and Arugula Pesto with Linguine. Since avocado is in my top 5 favorite foods and I love Giada this instantly intrigued me and I added it to the recipe list.

I loved that all this recipe required was a pot for boiling the water, a food processor, and an oven (for toasting almonds). There was no chopping or prep so it took minutes to prepare. After getting a pot on the stove for the pasta I preheated my toaster oven to 350 degrees. Since the recipe only calls for toasting 1/2 cup of almonds (personally I would have like a few more almonds) I did this in the toaster oven because it preheats so much faster than my oven. Once I put the pasta in I started the pesto. If you have a normal sized Cuisinart this will be much easier for you than it was for me using my baby Cuisinart. I had to put things in in batches to make it all fit: first the avocado, lime juice, garlic, and S&P. After that was all smooth I was able to add the arugula in small batches. In the end it somehow all fit!
I really liked this pasta. It was something different rather than the typical marinara or pesto like we made for our Eastern Market pasta nights. I thought the avocado taste was much more subtle than the arugula, though Phillip disagrees, so maybe it just depends on your palate. I think this pesto sauce would also be great for cold pasta salads or even just as a spread onto of crostinis. I ended up serving the pasta with a baguette we got from Panera (so good!) and mixed olive oil, red pepper flakes, cracked black pepper and a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese for dipping. Too bad I don't have any left over pesto sauce so I could try that crostini idea out with the leftover baguette.