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!

Tuna Steaks with Country Toast and Aioli

This is a long-overdue post that Sarah has been haranguing me about for some time now. I got this recipe out of a great cookbook that my mom got me, Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food. It has a lot of delicious yet relatively easy recipes, which is great for me since I tend to do my cooking after work. Some people enjoy eating at 9:30 at night - I don't.


rare tuna steaks, homemade garlic aioli and grilled pullman bread

Most of this recipe is really easy, so I'll keep it short. To make the tuna steaks, just season them with whatever you want to. I think I used salt and pepper. Cook them on a griddle (I got mine at Good Will for $1.50. It's probably worth more than that just in scrap value and it's one of the best purchases I have ever made). A couple minutes on each wide will do - you just want to get a good sear on the outside while keeping the inside rare. For the toast, just brush some slices of a nice loaf with olive oil and then put them on the griddle, too.

What I found most satisfying about this dish was the aioli. I tried to make aioli once before, in an effort to ape the food at Five Napkin Burger, and it was a complete failure. This time, it was an unqualified success. First I mashed up some garlic, then put an egg yolk on top of that. After that, I slowly added one cup of olive oil, whisking vigorously the whole time. slooowwwllly. Seriously, it took like like ten minutes to whisk it because I was adding it so slowly. Eventually you can start adding more olive oil at a time, but initially it was the feeblest of dribbles. This effort paid off, because the aioli came together beautifully and was delicious. A surprising amount of aioli was produced.

To serve, just give everyone a piece of the tuna, some toast, some aioli and a lemon wedge. You can put the aioli on the toast and on the tuna, or put the tuna on the toast, etc. I guess there are 6 ways you could eat this dish, so go hog wild!

Note from Sarah: We also had a nice salad with our fish. I made a dressing from the aioli, thinning it with lemon juice and adding a healthy amount of salt and pepper. We had a nice mix of regular lettuce and radicchio. Simple, but refreshingly tasty.


lettuce and radicchio in a lemon aioli dressing

buttermilk carrot pancakes/cilantro ginger and lime marinaded chicken, and orrechiette with bacon, wilted radicchio and cabbage/pork fried rice

These three dinners are quick things I've whipped up in the last few weeks based on what I've had lying around in the fridge. The pancakes were only alright, but the other two meals were definitely winners.


carrot buttermilk pancakes with sour cream

These I made to try and use up some of the extra buttermilk I had after I made Irish Soda Bread. I was in a rush to get out the door, so I was just trying to do something simple and easy. Pancakes are the obvious use for buttermilk, but I wanted to make them a little more substantial for dinner, so I decided to grate in two carrots from the co-op to make them into a sort of latke. I also added two eggs, a tablespoon or so of vegetable oil, and enough flour to make it into a spoonable batter. Fried in butter and served with a hefty dollop of sour cream, these were palatable enough, but I'm sure I could make better pancakes if I gave it another shot.


cilantro ginger and lime marinaded chicken, pasta with cabbage, radicchio and bacon

This was my favorite of the three meals. Laura had cooked some chicken earlier in the week, but there was still one breast in the fridge, begging to be cooked rather than be left to spoil. I had a bunch of cilantro and some limes left over from making spinach dip for my birthday party, and we still have a huge ginger root in the fridge that we are only slowly chipping away at. A little fresh ginger goes a long way. I had an inkling that I could combine the three ingredients with some white wine, sesame oil, garlic, salt and pepper for a decent marinade, as it was similar to a preparation my mom uses. A quick peek in my Flavor Bible confirmed my suspicions. I let the chicken marinade for about 45 minutes, and then I just cooked it in the cast iron skillet. SUCH a good flavor combination. I only wish that I had had more than one measly chicken breast.

Meanwhile, I also had half a head of cabbage leftover, and small amount of radicchio from that bloggers' favorite pasta dish. I thinly diced three or four slices of hearty bacon, and fried that up til nice and crispy. I removed that from the pan and cooked half of my remaining cabbage, a fist-sized head of radicchio and some sliced garlic with salt and pepper in the drippings. I added some balsamic after it was starting to get soft, which reduced nicely. I also cooked some orecchiette, and just tossed that with the bacon, cabbage and radicchio. I think I added a little butter to make sure the pasta was all coated, and to make the dish even less healthy. I probably could have sprinkled on some romano cheese, but it didn't occur to me at the time and it was still pretty delicious. Oreccheiette is a pretty hefty pasta, so it stood up well to the hearty mix-ins. Even though I completely winged this and it seems like a strange dish, I would definitely make this again. More specifically, I would highly recommend cooking radicchio with balsamic, as it loses all its bitterness and becomes so sweet and delicious.

The pork fried rice I did not photograph, but it was very similar in spirit to the Mark Bittman recipe that I featured on the blog last month. Once again, I minced up garlic and ginger and fried them in vegetable oil. I used the sesame seeds once again, but I dry toasted them in the pan, in the hopes they'd be crunchier. I think this worked better than frying them with the ginger and garlic. Next I defrosted an old pork chop and and diced it up, sauteing it with scallions, salt and pepper. Then I scrambled an egg and chopped it up. Finally, I took some old rice from the fridge and cooked that until it dried up and got sticky. I still didn't have soy sauce or sesame oil, but I went out and bought some the next day, and they made a world of difference on the leftovers. Fried rice is a great, versatile dish, and I look forward to experimenting with it more in the future.

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!