avocado anchovy toast

Sometimes, a perfectly good meal can also be incredibly, ridiculously easy. Like if you smash up half an avocado and a couple of anchovies on some toasted whole wheat bread, drizzle it with olive oil. All you need is a little cracked black pepper and maybe, MAYBE a little extra salt, although the anchovy may have things covered. Avocados have a great creamy sweetness to them, and the saltiness of the anchovy compliments that really nicely. If you are worried about the anchovy being too fishy, try just a small amount. Just make sure to use a really ripe avocado that's nice and soft.

red pepper salad with hard boiled eggs and anchovies

So my last two posts have both involved roasted red peppers, something that I really enjoy, both eating and preparing. Today, I have one more idea of what you can do with them: a big old salad with anchovies, hard-boiled eggs, garlic, parsley and a nice vinaigrette with olive oil.

linguine with heirloom tomato, capers, anchovies, and chile/roasted broccoli and garlic with lemon juice and grated cheese

OK, I am officially getting repetitive, but you know what? I am just going to power through and go with it. This is how I cook: with an admittedly nearly bottomless appetite for pasta! And you know what? I don't get tired of it, so hopefully you all can get through one more tomato sauce and spaghetti recipe. Just hang in there, and I'll reward you with a nice broccoli dish. You can do it!

salad nicoise

Salade Niçoise is pretty complicated, as far as salads go. I mean, most salads do not involve cooking multiple components in what is ultimately a cold dish, lightly dressed in vineagrette. Not that I'm complaining, because a Niçoise salad is really good, and while it is filling enough to be a meal on its own, it isn't totally gluttonous to the point that it negates all the healthy connotations that go along with eating a salad for dinner. It's got potatoes and hard boiled egg, and some salty anchovies and capers, but all in all it is light and fresh. Laura suggested we make it one day when we had green beans and lettuce and tomato and potato from the food co-op, and it turned out delicious.

brown butter cauliflower with capers, anchovies and breadcrumbs/hasselback potatoes

breadcrumb topped cauliflower

Today I have two things to talk about: cauliflower and potatoes. The first turned out quite delicious. The second just didn't cook all the way through and was as such, quite a disappointment. Anyway.

Cauliflower. A great way to make it is by browning lots of butter and then cooking lots of cauliflower, anchovies and capers in that nutty toasty liquid. Once it's starting to get soft, sprinkle on a bunch of breadcrumbs and then pop it in the oven til it gets nice and crispy. Salt, crunchy, crispy delicious. The anchovies and capers really gave it a nice bite, and the breadcrumbs gave it a great texture.


cauliflower, potatoes and salad

I served it with a leafy green salad and a basked hasselback potato. I was really excited about making that when I read about it. Unfortunately, even sliced super thin and laced with butter and herbs, it just refused to cook, and I ended up eating slightly raw potato. Nasty. I will just have to try this again, with more patience. I definitely cooked it for over an hour though, so I don't know what went wrong.

Luckily, the cauliflower was especially delicious– Even Nathan thought it was good!


undercooked potato

anchovy and spinach pasta with tomato

spaghetti, spinach and tomato in anchovy sauce

This was easy and delicious: angel hair pasta, tossed with spinach and tomatoes that had been sauteed in olive oil that I loaded up with garlic and lots and lots of anchovies. The spinach cooks quickly in the pan, and the tomatoes only break down the tiniest amount. In this dish, they aren't a sauce but a vegetable, just briefly cooked over high heat. The spaghetti is coated in savory olive oil, and the tomatoes are only one more component of the dish, rather than its defining element.


not fishy

In general, I love pasta, and the simple combo of garlic, oil and anchovy makes a surprisingly rich and delicious sauce. I know it may seem unexpected but, as long as you don't use too too many anchovies that you use, this is surprisingly unfishy. Those little buggers just melt way into the hot oil. I used probably close to ten anchovies, but the garlic and spinach were still the predominant flavors somehow. When you cook the anchovy, it dissolves into the oil, leaving behind a nice savory umami flavor, but little of the pungent fishiness that so many people take issue with. Adding the tomatoes and spinach makes for a nice hearty dish with plenty of veggies. Sprinkle with a hefty amount of grated cheese and some fresh black pepper, and you are totally good to go.

photos of pasta with anchovy sauce, wilted radicchio and an olive oil fried egg

Remember when we blogged about Nancy Silverton's pasta with anchovy sauce, wilted radicchio and an olive oil fried egg? No? Well take a look back, because we made it again and now there are pictures!

creamy polenta with sausage and parmesan

There's the pasta. It was awesome. And here is me eating it, even though I always get annoyed when Nathan photographs me during dinner. It's never flattering, and this is no exception.

I didn't realize what a lovely (read: unfortunate) view into the bathroom there is from my dinner table.

Anyway, you guys should make this. You will love it!

pasta with anchovy sauce, wilted radicchio and an olive oil fried egg

So since we've entered the world of food blogging, Nathan and I have noticed that certain recipes seem to make the rounds, and are basically blogged to death. Today's entry is an example of that. Back in 2007, the New York Times Magazine published an article about a new Nancy Silverton cookbook, including her recipe for "Egg Pappardelle With Bagna Cauda, Wilted Radicchio and an Olive-Oil-Fried Egg." Googling the phrase comes up with over 300 hits, including blog posts that are still being published as recently as last month.

Despite its being super delicious, Nathan would have us neglect to mention this recipe entirely, as it is so thoroughly covered elsewhere. Luckily for you, I, on the other hand, am far too much of a completest to fail to mention it.

A couple of weeks ago, I was feeling really down about the loud bar beneath our apartment and the prospect of moving up to a 5th floor unit with fake wood floors and smaller bedrooms. Since then, Laura and I have moved and it's actually not that bad, the extra stairs, fake floors, small closets and ridiculous light switch placement aside. The larger living room more than makes up for the smaller bedrooms, and the high ceilings mean that we can fit a lot more in the kitchen cabinets. However, on that particular day, I was pretty inconsolable about the whole state of affairs— until Nathan made me this for dinner.

This dish has a fair number of components, but everything comes together delightfully. You start out by sauteing anchovies and garlic over low heat. Since I wasn't cooking, I didn't personally witness this, but supposedly the hairy little buggers completely melt away into the olive oil. I can however attest to the fact that this bagna cauda is a surprisingly un-fishy sauce. Nathan boiled some linguini and then cooked it a minute or two longer in the oil with chopped radicchio and parsley, lemon juice and lemon zest. Then he fried two eggs in super hot olive oil and put them on top of each serving of pasta. They cooked super fast and were really crispy on the bottom, with awesomely runny yolks that melded with the pasta to make an even better sauce. Served with plenty of parmesan cheese and seasoned with salt and pepper, this was a really delicious meal, and totally deserving of its great reputation among the food blogging set. It also adapts really well to a gluten free diet if you have the right kind of pasta!

The recipe says this serves four, but that's probably only if you're serving this as one of multiple courses. As the sole dish, this was just enough to feed Nathan and me, without any leftovers. We thoroughly enjoyed every bite, and it really lifted my spirits on a particularly bad day.

UPDATE 6/5: Now we've got photos!