roasted tomato and onion pasta

You know I can't resist my spaghetti. If I don't know what to make for dinner, 75% of the time it'll wind up being up pasta. On this particular night I started out with a basket of plum tomatoes, and decided to roast them with some onions, olive oil and salt and pepper.

Of course, when they were in the oven and I was deciding what to serve with them, I fell back on that old stand by, spaghetti.

rosemary lemon garlic lamb chops grilled with tomatoes and onions/horseradish potato salad/grilled pineapple with vanilla ice cream

This past weekend Nathan's mom and stepmom came to New York to visit, and we spent Saturday battling the storm, only to eventually retreat back to Nathan's grandma's house to prepare an easy, rib sticking dinner to help us warm up from the sleet and snow.

This is not that meal. Instead, I am going to turn back the clock to the dinner that I prepared with Nathan's help the last time I saw Tenli and Marie, back in sunny California this summer. Just as I did when I stayed with Aunt Elise and Uncle Ed at their home, I wanted to prepare a nice meal as a thank you for their hospitality.

what I cooked for the holidays pt 2

Wow. I really have been putting off this particular blog entry. That's right, it's time to talk Christmas dinner. And I wonder why no one is interested in reading my blog.



I made a few things that I've discussed on here before. First, this amazing recipe for maple syrup lemon brussels sprouts with bacon, as first discussed here.





In the first picture, you'll also catch a glimpse of some carrots, which were simply steamed and dressed with lemon and olive oil. Standard.

I also made a variation on those olive oil glazed potatoes first written about way back in July.





Of course the main event was the prime rib, which we made using a Craig Claibourne recipe. It was predictably juicy meaty delicious, and the simple horseradish sour cream that went with it was tangy and delicious. Less successful was the yorkshire pudding.



Does that look like a god awful spongy mess or what? I don't know if I just didn't have the drippings hot enough when I poured in the batter or what, but this was just a weird greasy omelet. I won't rule out that the pudding wasn't just a victim of me trying to prepare one too many dishes, but I definitely would skip this next time around.

We also made Thomas Keller's creamed pearl onions, which were labor intensive but delicious, if a little over reduced. Luckily, even with a less than perfectly silky cream sauce, pearl onions with bacon and chives are still delicious.



Check out the close up for some nutmeg action.



For dessert I went super low key, in order to accommodate Matt's gluten free diet without pulling out too many bells and whistles. The Smitten Kitchen's wayyyyy-easier-than-pie
roasted pears were a rustic yet elegant, easy yet delicious end to the meal.



Of course, when it comes to Christmas, you're there for the roast. Here's the recipe.

Prime Rib
(adapted from Craig Claiborne's The New York Times Cookbook, 1981, p. 165)

Roast
1 prime rib rib roast, ribs removed
¼ cup cold water
salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Remove the roast from the refrigerator 2 ½ to 4 hours before cooking. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.
2. Place roast in an open shallow roasting pan, fat side up. Season with salt and pepper. Pour water around the meat. Place in the oven and bake for 15 minutes.
3. Reduce oven heat to 400 degrees and continue baking for 25 minutes. Reduce oven heat to 350 degrees and bake for 15 minutes for rare beef, 30 minutes for medium rare beef, longer for well done. Carefully transfer the roast to a serving dish and cover loosely with foil to keep warm.
4. Pour off all the fat from the roasting pan, but save about ½ cup for preparing Yorkshire pudding. Serve the beef sliced with Yorkshire pudding and grated horseradish or horseradish cream on the side, if desired.

Yorkshire Pudding
1 cup milk
⅛ teaspoon grated nutmeg
4 large eggs, about ¾ cup when measured
½ cup beef drippings

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
2. Combine the milk and nutmeg in a mixing bowl. Put the eggs in another bowl and beat until frothy. Ad this to the milk and stir.
3. Pour the beef drippings into a heat-proof baking dish and place on the stove over moderate heat. When quite hot and almost smoking, add the batter. Smooth it over with a rubber spatula. Place the pudding in the oven and bake for about 15 minutes. Turn the baking dish as the cooking proceeds for even cooking.

Horseradish Cream
½ cup freshly grated horseradish
¾ cup sour cream
salt to taste

Blend all the ingredients and serve.

skillet mac and cheese with bacon/fried goat cheese salad

Nathan got really mad at me for this one. He's always suggesting we make mac and cheese, and I'm never in the mood and then he gets cranky and accuses me of cruelly withholding his favorite thing that I cook. And then a couple of weeks ago, I made mac and cheese without him. Oops. When he gets back to the states I'm going to have to welcome him with a big cheesy American style pasta dish to make up for it. Maybe I'll go uber traditional and use elbows. Or maybe I'll make it Italian style and add pepperoni and sundried tomatoes. We shall see.

This mac had five cheeses plus bacon and onions. I didn't deviate much from my previously described method. (If you are looking for more mac ideas, Mark Bittman unsurprisingly has some great ones, or you could make Gordon Ramsay's.) I made a cheesy bechamel sauce with butter, flour, a spash of hot sauce, a dash of worcestershire sauce, some salt and pepper, shredded parmesan and grated romano. I fried a couple of slices of bacon and some sliced onions. I cooked up a pound of orecchiette until tender and then mixed that into the sauce with the bacon and onions. I think I also added some little slices of garlic scape. I layered the pasta mixture with grated cheddar, monteray jack and gouda cheeses, and topped with breadcrumbs and extra of all five cheeses. Then I baked it in Laura's cast iron skillet. When we inevitably part ways as roommates, I will miss that the most. Like, aside from her, obviously.


macaroni and cheese

It was pretty good. Orecchiette is one of my favorite pastas, but I think it might be a little too thick and chewy for macaroni and cheese. I'm afraid that the pasta on top got a bit dried out and tough. Otherwise, it was delicious. Obviously a little smokey bacon and sweet onion take things up a notch,and the bacon and gouda really complimented one another well.


skillet baked mac and cheese

I also tried to pair it with a fried goat cheese salad. This didn't end up working out so well, so the horribly out of focus photo is somewhat appropriate. That isn't to say it wasn't tasty, just that I didn't wind up with the beautiful and neat little crisp golden goat cheese cakes that the recipe's author promised...


fried goat cheese in a lemon mayo dressing

As you can see, the breading burned and kept sticking to the pan, and I had to kind of stick it back onto the cheese... And it looked so good, too! In retrospect, it's probably my fault though. I didn't feel like breaking out the eggs, so I just rolled my freezer-firmed goat cheese rounds in bread crumbs and tried to fry them up in a hot pan of melted butter. I bet the egg would have helped everything stick together better. Obviously goat cheese + butter + bread crumbs still = TASTY, but it was a good deal messier and far less attractive looking than I would have hoped.

What was just a perfect as I imagined it would be was the dressing: olive oil, lemon zest, lemon juice, homemade mayonnaise, white vinegar and dijon mustard. Salt and pepper to taste. If I had had poppy seeds, I certainly would have added them, but this dressing was delicious even without them. Very bright and fresh, it tasted delicious over food co-op greens and some of my never ending $1 radishes.

a simple supper

tortellini in tomato sauce, sauteed spinach and a fresh mozzarella garlic crostini

This is the kind of meal I love best: delicious cheesy pasta and a nice fresh vegetable. Normally, I try to get my protein in there with some meat, but sometimes it's nice to have a lighter meal, and one without meat can be just as filling.

This meal was pretty much the offspring of my previously featured pizza party. I had initially planned to make spinach ricotta pizza, but didn't have time to saute the pizza before my guests arrived, and it just would have been too much to handle with five other people in the kitchen. However, the spinach went to good use in this meal. As you can see in the picture, it is just barely cooked. I rinsed off the leaves and then cooked them on medium heat with garlic and oil until just wilted. If there is a lot of spinach, it make take some conscientious stirring to ensure that it all cooks evenly, but even then this shouldn't take more than five minutes.

The main dish of the evening was the tortellini, which I served with the same sauce I had made for the pizzas. Normally, I make my sauce by sauteing garlic and olive oil, and then adding chopped canned tomatoes, cracked black pepper, and parsley and basil, if I have them. I deviated from the usual routine when I found this recipe, a darling of the food blog world, just days before hosting the event. The sauce is incredibly simple: half a stick of butter, and half an onion, unchopped, simmer with a can of whole tomatoes. That's all there is to it, no chopping involved! It was really quite tasty, and the butter certainly gave it an added richness. Of course, I tossed in a clove or two of garlic, because I felt wrong making tomato sauce without it. When it came to the end, I felt bad discarding the garlic and onion before serving, so I tried mashing it up with the tomatoes. If I made this again, I'd probably take it out and smear it onto some Italian bread. My only complaint with the recipe was that I felt that it wasn't as good the second day. I probably will continue to stick to my usual sauce in the future, but if tomato sauce intimidates you, this is a great one to try making, as I can't imagine screwing this one up!

tomato sauce a simmerin'

The Italian bread was also leftover from the earlier gathering, as pretty much no one had eaten it the night before. I roasted a couple of garlic cloves in olive oil with salt, pepper and a little grated cheese. This is absolutely a divine way to eat garlic or onions, as it makes them much mellower and sweeter, without totally eradicating the strong flavors that make them so delicious in the first place. I melted some bocconcini on top of the bread, and smeared the garlic clove on top. With some cracked black pepper on top, this was really simple and tasty and the perfect final component to a completely satisfying meal.

julia's roast chicken

So tonight's blog entry is coming to you sans photographs, because our dinner took so long to cook that I lost all hope of it being any good. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Last night, during "Snotorious" or whatever, Nathan came over to cook dinner. I had off courtesy of the storm so I decided to defrost the half a chicken Laura and I had gotten from the food co-op back in December.

Nathan is not exactly the world's biggest chicken fan, so he was pretty unhappy when I told him what I had in mind for our meal. However, I stood my ground and decided to roast it and serve with some plain white rice and food co-op cabbage. Nathan acquiesced, on the condition that we try to do SOMETHING to make a plain roast chicken more interesting. I had gotten an email from Cook's Illustrated with this recipe that prescribed coating the skin with baking powder so as to make it extra crispy, but required it sitting for 12 to 24 hours before cooking, so I went back to the drawing board. One basic search provided the obvious solution: Julia Child's famous roasted chicken. It didn't require any special ingredients or complicated techniques, and is one of those classic recipes that's been garnering rave reviews for decades. Also, Julia Child is my girl. I grew up watching her and the Frugal Gourmet (who turned out to be a perv, but that's beside the point).

The recipe basically calls for washing and drying the chicken in hot water, which I did, and rubbing it with salt, pepper and butter. Throw a halved lemon and onion inside the cavity, and throw it in the oven for 15 minutes at 425 degrees. After that, turn it down to 350 degrees, and baste. Julia's instructions included plenty of basting, but I didn't see much liquid to baste with. I definitely wanted to keep things nice and moist, so I just drizzled on some olive oil. After another 15 minutes you were supposed to toss in a chopped onion and some chopped carrots, but I was out of carrots so the onion had to suffice. I also added more olive oil.

At this point, it should have been done after another 15 to 30 minutes, but this chicken took FOREVER. I was starving and we tried the thermometer, and no dice. Ten minutes later, I was ravenous, but the thing was still legitimately raw when we cut it open. In desperation we cranked up the heat and let it sit, and finally the thing cooked all the way through. At this point I was cranky and Nathan's chicken skepticism was severely lowering my expectations. However, this was a fucking beautiful organic chicken, and I was cooking with Julia's instructions, and I should have known to keep faith.

Big surprise: Julia Child knew what she was doing when it came to roasting chickens. I know, I know, this is something she's universally renowned for. However, that doesn't mean that the results aren't extraordinary. Juicy, moist, bursting with flavor with amazing crispy onions.... This may have been the best chicken I had ever eaten. So amazing. I was thrilled with the results, and even Nathan concurred that this would be worth making again if we could get our hands on a nice chicken.

I just wish I had a photo of this deceptively simple masterpiece!