pasta palooza: assorted spaghetti

If you know anything about the way I cook, you know that I make a lot of pasta. Basically, if I don't know what to make for dinner, I will just throw whatever is in the fridge on top of spaghetti and call it a day. In addition to improvised dishes, I'm also always on the lookout for new pasta recipes. As I once said in my facebook status: "there is no such thing as too much pasta. am I right or am I right?"

Anyway, after my dearth of blog entries the past few months, I have quite a backlog of pasta dishes to tell you about. Rather than giving you a week's worth of spaghetti entries, I am going to lump a bunch of them together, linking you to the recipes that inspired me, or giving a basic description of my on the fly dishes.



First up, I have for you this recipe for spaghetti with anchovies and walnuts that ran in The New York Times last year. It appealed to me not only because it was described as a traditional part of the Italian Christmas Eve fish dinner, but also because it was actually part of their "Recipes for Health" feature. God knows we could all stand to eat healthier, and if that comes with in the form of spaghetti, chopped parsley, toasted walnuts and melted anchovies with garlic, sign me up! This was definitely yummy, undeniably easy and unexpectedly different dish. The crunchy nuts were a pleasant and very unusual touch for a pasta dish, and it was great to make since the ingredients were all things I always have on hand.



This dish was a recipe from a really trendy Brooklyn/LES restaurant called Frankie Sputino that I am kind of dying to go to. In the mean time, I've settled for a weak facsimile of their homemade cavatelli with brown butter fried sage and sausage coins.

As you can see, I did not get around to making my own cavatelli, but instead settled on small store bought shells. This made this a really easy dish. I simmered the sausage in a pan of water, and then sliced them into thin rounds which I cooked until golden brown and crispy on both sides. The sauce was really just butter, which I browned in the sausage pan to incorporate all those little brown bits that were left behind. As the pasta cooked, I fried up the sage leaves, which were ultimately tossed with the sausage, shells and brown butter sauce. Excellent, with lots of sagey goodness.



This dish was one of my own creation based, as you might guess, on what I had lying around. In this case that was onions, lemons, and fontina cheese. I slowly caramelized the onions. As the pasta was cooking, I added some of the pasta water to the onions, and squeezed in some lemon juice. Adding liquid to the pan not only created the basis for a pasta sauce, but also had the added benefit of speeding up the cooking time on my onions, which normally take a notoriously long time to caramelize. To finish the sauce, I stirred in some sliced fontina cheese, which melted nicely. With plenty of cracked black pepper, this was pretty tasty. I liked the lemony onions, and the melted fontina added a lot of flavor to the sauce.



All in all I thought that this came out pretty good. The caramelized onions were mild and delicious, and their sweetness was nicely countered by the lemon, pepper and salty cheese. A successful pasta experiment!



And here we have perhaps the best of them all: Pappardelle with Stewed Tomatoes and Pancetta. Nathan and Tenli made this last time she visited. I can take credit for finding the recipe, but not for how impressively delicious it turned out to be.

The pancetta was diced and pan fried with crushed red pepper in butter, and then a can of chopped tomatoes was added. You squeeze out all the tomato juice first though, so this turns into a nice thick sauce. From there, this dish is a total snap: add a little cream, cook a little longer, and then toss with your pappardelle, adding a little pasta water if you need to thin out the sauce.

This was incredibly rich tasting, probably from the fatty pancetta, but you know what that really means: extra delicious! Yeah, this is the kind of stick to your ribs rustic food that I just can't resist.



Here we have another kind of crazy fridge improv: basically just red cabbage + onions + grated cheese. Yeah, it was pretty straightforward, the product of a spare refrigerator.



I sliced up the onions and cabbage nice and thinly, and then cooked them in olive oil over low heat. When I mixed in the romano cheese, this made a pretty solid sauce. Though this wasn't exactly an innovation by any stretch of the imagination, it was way prettier than your average pasta dish. Purple pasta! Yay!



This last dish was probably my least favorite of all. The problem, to be honest, lay not with the pasta, which I dressed in a light lemony sauce that I will try to recreate in more detail for you later. Instead, what bothered me was the Whole Food sausage that I used, which had some appetite-killing bits of bone and cartilage hiding in there. Totally gross. Sausage should NOT be crunchy.

Basically, I used bow tie pasta, sauteed spinach and chopped up sausage, and made the sauce from lemon juice, olive oil and grated romano cheese. I did feel that it was kind of a bland sauce, but I think that I would have enjoyed it quite a bit more if it were not for the sausage. Very, very unappealing.

Overall though, I'd have to say that I've had some very successful pasta dishes as of late.

sunset sticky ribs

Well guess what I have for you today? An actual recipe! Are you excited? Well you should be– ribs make me think of summer and with the weather in New York finally heating up, I am ready to turn on the grill! Of course, since I live in a small 5th floor walk up, I don't actually own a grill, which is why I love these sweet and sticky oven roasted ribs.

This recipe comes from The Sunset Cookbook, which was published last fall. Sunset Magazine is a Western lifestyle magazine that has been published since 1898, and they've always published lots and lots of recipes featuring fresh, local, seasonal ingredients. As an East coast girl, I didn't grow up reading Sunset, but it seems like it would be right up my alley. I mean, they are responsible for the first known published recipe for pesto way back in 1946! Clearly, this is a publication that I should get to know.

Of course, Nathan is from California, and it was his mom, Tenli, who first brought Sunset to my attention when they published their first ever cookbook last year. Tenli bought the book for Nathan, and it's chock full of tempting recipes for dishes that typify California cuisine. Plenty of Mexican and Asian influences, and all the wonderful vegetables and produce that you would expect from this type of cookbook.

In paging through, I am really impressed with all the recipes. They are simple and straightforward, without any fussy ingredients or techniques. These are meals with big, bold flavors that can be prepared without exotic ingredients, specialized equipment or undue stress. Sure, sometimes it's fun to challenge yourself in the kitchen, but these dishes manage to be exciting, delicious, but also utterly approachable.

I am really excited to cook more with Sunset, especially when my CSA starts back up. But seriously, with recipes like Fennel-crusted Trout with Lemon-Ginger Vinaigrette, Gin and Spice Flank Steak, Roasted Kohlrabi and Eggs with Mustard and Honey, Baby Pumpkins with Garlic Custard and Salt-Crusted Beets with Avocado, Lavender and Thyme, who wouldn't want to put this book to work in their kitchen?

So far, the only thing we've tried are these Sweet and Sticky Ribs, but if the other recipes are as good as this, I am sure we'll be getting a lot of use out this book. The ribs are first rubbed with chili powder, salt and cumin seeds. For extra flavor, you can toast the seeds in a frying pan to bring out their fragrance. After roasting the ribs, you top them with a glaze of honey and lime juice. The lime, chili powder, honey and cumin flavors all go really well together, making a nice mix of sweet and spice and acidity. If you like cumin, this is definitely something you will enjoy.



Sticky Ribs
adapted from The Sunset Cookbook, p. 421

Brush a sweet, tangy glaze over ribs coated with a a mix of spices, then roast instead of grill to get crispness and good flavor without the risk of burning. The original recipe called for 8 lbs. of meat, so it can certainly be scaled back up to feed a crowd.

Serves 2 to 3 | Time: 1¼ hours

1 rack pork loin back (baby back) ribs or ½ rack pork spareribs (about 2 lbs. total)
¾ tbsp each chili powder and kosher salt
½ tbsp cumin speeds
¼ cup honey
1½ tbsp fresh lime juice
olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 425˚. Trim fat from ribs.
2. In small bowl, mix chili powder, salt and cumin seeds to make the spice rub. In another small bowl, mix honey and lime juice for the glaze.
3. Rub spice mixture over both sides of ribs.
4. Line a baking pan with foil. Set a flat rack in it and lightly coat with olive oil. Set ribs, meaty side up, on rack and roast until lightly browned on top, 20 to 30 minutes. Turn slabs over and switch pan positions. Roast until other side is browned, 20 to 30 minutes longer.
5. Brush generously with glaze. Continue to roast, basting occasionally, until glaze is browned and bubbly, 6 to 12 minutes. Turn ribs over and brush generously with more glaze. Roast, basting occasionally, until glaze is browned and meat between ribs is no longer pink in center (cut to test), 6 to 12 minutes longer.
6. Transfer ribs to a board. Let rest 5 minutes. Cut between ribs.

spicy kale tomato sauce/baked tilapia with breadcrumbs

What happens when you defrost some of last summer's tomato sauce and toss it with cute little tennis racket pasta and leftover kale that you had stir fried with red pepper flakes and red wine vinegar? A nice little pasta dish with a spicy kick is what happens. Definitely nothing fancy, but also one of those cases where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.



And what can you serve that with, you ask? Well how about a little tilapia fillet, lightly seasoned and sprinkled with some scallions, breadcrumbs and a drizzle of olive oil? Just bake it for about ten minutes in a 350˚ oven, and you'll get a nice moist, flakey piece of fish. Not terribly exciting, but hey, it's an easy weeknight dinner and I happen to think it's a pretty tasty fish preparation.

cranberry ice cream (with wine poached pears)

OK, so I know that this photo really highlights those beautiful pears, blood red after being poached in red wine, but I have to admit, I didn't make them. My friend Marc did, and yes, they were delicious. But I brought some cranberry ice cream to go along with them, and if you take a look you can see a little scoop of that too, and that's what I want to talk about.

I actually had a fairly difficult time getting a recipe for cranberry ice cream that looked good. I wanted to use fresh cranberries, I wanted to leave out the eggs (I just can't get up the courage to try a custard-based ice cream again, and I also don't like that it wastes so many egg whites, although I guess I could just bake pavlovas or something), and I wanted to add some orange zest.

I did not find a single recipe that met those requirements, but I've discovered that it's pretty easy to bluff an ice cream recipe. If you've got some milk, cream, sugar and flavorings, you can probably just throw all of it in the ice cream maker and it'll do its thing.



In this instance, I cooked a bag of cranberries with a half a cup of sugar, some water and the zest of a small orange until the berries started to break down. After about ten minutes of cooking on medium high heat, I strained the berries out. I chilled the remaining liquid and mixed it with half a cup of orange juice, two cups of milk and a cup of cream. This went into the ice cream maker to churn for the standard half hour. Right at the end I mixed in the reserved cranberries, which added an extra shot of tart berry flavor, their bright red color studding the pale pink ice cream.

This was not a very sweet ice cream, but I really wanted to highlight the cranberry's natural tartness. I know that this isn't a real recipe, but if you want to keep things sweet I'd suggest adding a more substantial amount of sugar. Otherwise, you'll get a very refreshing ice cream with a nice citrus-y kick. This was definitely a very nice way to use cranberries, so keep it in mind next time they are back in stores.

potato latkes with apple confit and crispy sage

Can you still eat latkes at Passover, or are they just a Hanukkah thing? Because I made this kick ass latke recipe back in December, but I still think it would be awesomely delicious now.



These latkes are made with shredded potatoes and shallots, and are topped with a sweet apple "confit," and crispy sage leaves. Very delicious. Of course, if I am being honest, this dish is definitely a prime example of fancy language elevating a rather humble concept. OK, yes, crispy sage is an upscale addition to the recipe, but apple confit? Really? Come on, you made latkes with applesauce.

Applesauce or apple confit, the condiment was very easy to make. I didn't peel the apples like the recipe called for, just chopped them up and threw them in the pan with some melted butter, lemon juice and sugar. Five minutes later, you've got lovely soft apples perfect for serving with pork chops, or in this case, potato latkes.

The latkes were a little more involved. Shred the potatoes, and then let them sit in a bowl of cold water for a half hour. After the squeezing the potatoes dry with a paper towel, mix them with diced shallots, flour, eggs and salt and pepper. At this point, the recipe does something smart. What I was most worried about was the latkes falling apart in the pan, or being really soggy, but that wasn't an issue at all after you let them drain in a mesh strainer over a bowl for a half hour. This really helped to get rid of a lot of the excess moisture, ensuring nice crispy potato cakes. Brilliant. Then you fry them in oil over medium high heat for a couple of minutes on each side. Actually, I guess they aren't that involved either.



To serve, top them off with your apple confit. Then, to gild the lily, simply lightly fry sage leaves in some butter and sprinkle them atop your latkes. It's a great touch, really. Light and crispy, and a nice mix of sweet and savory, these latkes were absolutely delicious.

butternut squash and apple soup/carmelized onion and blue cheese bruschetta

It's funny. I've been blogging so infrequently these past few months that everything is cycling back around. I've still never written up my Hanukkah latkes or my Christmas prime rib, and Easter and Passover are just around the corner. Similarly, this dinner was something I whipped up when my good friend Faye was in town back in December, and she'll back in New York late next week!

Faye was my roommate in college for two years, but after graduation she pulled a bit of a disappearing act when she joined the peace corp and ran off to Morocco for two and a half years. When she came for a visit in December, it was the first time I'd seen her since May of 2008!

In honor of Faye's return, I hosted a small dinner at my apartment with a couple of our friends. It was a light meal, just a nice butternut squash and apple soup with some crostini with caramelized onions and crumbled blue cheese. We also had some beets tossed in argan oil, which was a special gift Faye brought me from Morocco. I will try and tell you more about argan oil in a later post.

I used this Ina Garten recipe as a jumping off point for my soup, but I ended up adapting it quite a bit. I left out the curry powder and apple juice, subbing in my homemade chicken stock. I also roasted the butternut squash before adding it to the soup, in the hope that made the dish more flavorful.




To start, I cooked the onions in butter until nice and soft, and then added diced squash and apples, chicken stock and water. I let it all cook together for a half an hour or so, and then blended it to make it nice and creamy. This soup was a bit unusual just because it was so sweet, but it was definitely nice tasting.

As that was cooking, I slowly caramelized some onions in butter for my crostini. I toasted up a nice crusty loaf of whole wheat bread and while it was still warm I layered each slice with a large spoonful of onions and some crumbled blue cheese. This was easy and delicious, and went really well with the soup.

All in all, this was an easy and light dinner, but no one went home hungry and everyone was certainly happy to see Faye. However, I do think I'd like to try a more ambitious menu when she's back in town later this month!

florentine success... and failure

I can't believe it's been nearly four years since I was lucky enough to study abroad in Florence. It was a wonderful summer: I got a beautiful tan, saw just about everything covered in a Renaissance art text book, traveled to nearly 30 cities in about two months, and ate some goddamn amazing food.




As you probably know, my Italian American heritage informs most of my cooking. However, going home to the motherland, I found that there were many traditional Italian dishes that, while wonderful, were quite unfamiliar to me. Discovering new foods was definitely one of the best parts of the trip, and all those amazing meals were one of the things I missed most upon returning home.

There's nowhere in New York that makes the homely-yet-amazing lampredotto sandwich, which is basically the cow's lowest stomach boiled until tender and served on a roll dipped in the meaty juices. You can buy it with plastic cups of red wine from these little carts that are essentially the Florentine equivalent of a gyro truck. Street meat is a beautiful thing. I also loved the trippa alla fiorentina, melt in your mouth tripe cooked in tomato sauce. (Luckily that you can get as an appetizer at this amazing restaurant Peasant, but it is still a comparative rarity stateside.) I know we have steak houses all over the place, but a thick, crispy, rare bistecca alla fiorentina is a horse of a different color. Even a simple dish like ravioli with butter and sage is not something that I really come across here.

I may have plenty of opportunities to eat ragu, or eggplant parmesean, or polenta, or even pasta fagioli, but the food I ate in Florence remains sadly elusive nearly four years later. So, today I'm going to tell you m about my attempts to recreate Florentine cooking in my Harlem apartment.


ribolita bread soup

The first attempt was to make ribolita, a hearty bread soup with leafy greens and tomatoes. Unfortunately, this was a bit of a failure, though it was not for lack of trying. I scoured the interwebs, drawing from not one, not two, but THREE different recipes for ribolita. I spent a lot of time cooking up a big pot of deliciously wilted kale from the food co-op. I added lots of stewed tomatoes and delicious cannellini beans. I used homemade chicken stock. I was excited to relive some Florentine goodness!

I was ultimately brought down by an unfamiliar loaf of bread. I knew even as I purchased the off-brand supermarket whole wheat loaf that this was not what they would use in Italy, but I could never of imagined just how bad it would taste. I normally like Arnold's Stoneground Whole Wheat, but I got some random other brand instead. Once I tore up that loaf, the whole stew tasted like awful too-sweet whole wheat bread. It was a mess. This was definitely an instance of a bad ingredient bringing down what probably would have been a great dish! I definitely have to try this again with good Italian bread!

Needless to say I was crushed, but we all have our disappointments in the kitchen. I would not accept culinary defeat at the hands of my ancestral homeland!

Another dish that I adored in Florence was tonno e fagioli, or tuna and cannellini beans. I found the above recipe in Saveur, and it takes about 5 minutes to prepare and is fantastically delicious!




Smash up a garlic clove, and then mix it in to a can of tuna packed in oil, a rinsed can of cannellini beans, and a tablespoon or two of red wine vinegar. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with chopped parsley, and you have a beautiful antipasti!

A taste of Florence that anyone can recreate with a few cheap canned goods, tonno e fagioli is wonderful in everyway– except for what that raw garlic does to your breath!

snow ice cream

Random fun thing that I "cooked" this winter that I should tell you about while there is still a chance of further winter weather this year: snow ice cream! Freshly fallen snow + maple syrup = natural winter deliciousness.


snow and syrup, premixing

Mix it up and scoop it into a bowl for a fun wintertime treat! Of course, here's hoping to no more winter. I say, bring on the sunshine and spring leaves!

kabocha squash with ricotta cheese/maple lemon brussels sprouts with bacon

Today I have some delicious kabocha squash and ricotta cheese toasts and brussels sprouts with bacon, lemon, maple syrup. These two dishes have "famous chef" pedigrees, and they do not disappoint. I highly recommend both of them.




First is Jean-Georges Vongerichten's kabocha squash and ricotta cheese toasts. New York Magazine will use any excuse to include this little number in a list of must eat restaurant menu items. Seriously, they've probably mentioned this dish like three or four times in recent months. (OK, maybe just twice...) They have never given the actual recipe, but I had a big old kabocha squash that only made so much bread pudding, so I decided to try my hand at recreating the described dish.

Simply put, I roasted the kabocha squash until it was nice and soft. Then I pureed the squash flesh, poured in a little apple cider vinegar, a healthy grind of pepper and sprinkling of salt, and mixed it all around. To put it together, I toasted some bread and then topped it with a layer of ricotta cheese and my vinegared squash.

It was a very nice combination, which I will definitely try to make again. You could tell that the squash and ricotta really complemented one another, and the apple cider vinegar added an unusual depth of flavor. Next time I'll spring for some better ricotta, (I got some cheap off brand that was on sale– probably since it was not very good!), and use some nice thin slices of Italian bread. The basil garnish would also probably be great, but I didn't have any of that at the time.




The other dish pictured is this amazing recipe for maple syrup lemon brussels sprouts with bacon. Also featured in New York magazine, this recipe comes from chef Zak Pelaccio. I don't actually know who that is, but since the recipe was included in feature on famous chef's holiday meals, I think he must be a fairly big deal. Also, if this dish is any indication, he's a culinary genius. I never would have thought that bacon, brussels sprouts, lemon, cream and maple syrup would be a good combination, but somehow they come together beautifully. If I had had chestnuts, I'm sure they would have fit in perfectly, but this dish is so orgasmically good even without them, that I feel that they are unnecessary.

In addition to being super awesomely yummy, these sprout are also really easy. Basically, you fry up bacon, and then you cook the brussels sprouts in the bacon grease with garlic for like five minutes. The recipe also called for fresh thyme, but it was plenty flavorful without it. Then you pour in the cream, and after that's reduced by half, you mix the bacon back in, and add the maple syrup and lemon, letting it cook a little bit longer to let it all meld together. The cream cooks off more than you would expect, and the dish is remarkably light tasting considering the rich and hearty ingredients. The maple syrup is muted by the sprouts themselves, and the lemon gives it a nice brightness and acidity. Quite a remarkable and unexpectedly successful combination of ingredients. It is, in a word, amazing. Seriously. If you don't like brussels sprouts, this is the dish to convert you.

If that wasn't enough to convince you, I'll leave with another shot of this delicious meal:

ricotta cheese pasta sauce/butter baked salmon

Hi boys and girls. I know it's been awhile, but I'm hoping that with the start of a new month, I can get back to posting regularly. I've got lots of interesting dishes to cover, so hopefully you all haven't forgotten about little old garlicus maximus.


creamy ricotta cheese pasta

Today I'd like to talk about two dishes that are classic Cascone family recipes. First is my Nona's pasta in creamy ricotta cheese sauce, and the second is my parents' easy baked salmon.


butter baked salmon

When I first started cooking for myself, I usually had to call up my family members and make them walk me through my favorite recipes. These two dishes were among the first I ever tried to make for myself. I remember calling my Nona from Florence in the summer of 2007 so that I could get the proper ratio of ricotta to pasta water. A few months later, in the kitchen of my last Fordham dorm room, it was my mother who got the call when I needed to know exactly what she put on her salmon. In both cases, the answers were simpler than expected. Either one of these dishes would be quite at home in a Minimalist column, or a segment on 30 minute meals. Both feature just a few ingredients and taste amazing; it's no wonder my family keeps them in regular rotation for a fast and satisfying weeknight dinner.

The pasta dish is something my dad's mom used to make for us on the fly when we arrived in San Diego jetlagged and starving. It is so good and cheesy and creamy and yummy, and it also happens to be incredibly easy. Totally craveable. The salmon is something that my parents have been making for years and years and it is probably the reason that salmon is my favorite fish. I like it because it keeps the fish nice and moist, and doesn't mask the delicious taste of fresh salmon.


Nona's pasta with ricotta sauce

To be honest, these two dishes were not actually part of the same meal. However, I did serve one of them with each of the cauliflower dishes I covered in my last entry, and both are tested family recipes that never fail to satisfy and would certainly complement one another should you decide to eat them together.

Neither recipe is something that I have down to exact science. For instance, salmon fillets vary widely in thickness, so cooking time is dependent on the size of the fillet in question, so I don't really have real specific guidelines for you. Hopefully some basic guidelines will suffice instead.

Pasta in Creamy Ricotta Sauce
Cook your pasta as you would normally, perhaps with slightly less salt than you might otherwise use. Before you drain the pasta, reserve a couple of cups of the pasta water and set aside.

To make the ricotta sauce, mix equal parts pasta water and ricotta cheese and stir in the pasta. (I used awesome tennis racket shaped noodles, as you may have noticed.) The amount of water and cheese that you use is going to vary based on how much pasta you've made obviously, but I generally just stir it all together and add more as it is needed. Then I like to add a couple of tablespoons of romano cheese and a healthy grind of black pepper. If you're my dad, then you can also add some chopped parsley for color. (I may have done that myself in the hopes of creating a better photo.) Mix it all up and serve right away.


Butter Baked Salmon
Preheat the oven to 350˚. Season your fillet lightly with salt and pepper, and dot it with a couple of slices of butter. Bake until just cooked through, which will take longer or shorter based on the thickness of the piece of fish. I prefer thinner pieces myself, which cook up in a flash, but a real thick slab can take over 20 minutes. If the fish starts out really thick and then tapers down, then sometimes you need to cut it in half and bake the thick part longer. Otherwise, this is a really simple and delicious way to really enjoy the flavor of salmon. Despite its apparent lack of pizazz, this is really one of my favorite things to eat.