Pasta salads are great summer food and perfect as a side for a cook out. I like to prepare pasta salads with lots of vegetables, as a cook out or BBQ as we call it here usually involves a lot of meat. For some variation from a Greek style pasta salad, I prepared this pasta salad with eggplant, mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, and balsamic vinegar. These flavors go together very well, also without pasta. Continue reading “Eggplant Caprese Pasta Salad”
This time of the year zucchini or other types of squash are abundant and so I decided to create a recipe for pasta with zucchini. To give the dish a nice flavor and a nice texture, I separated the seeds from the firmer flesh. I diced the firm part and sautéed the diced zucchini briefly over high heat. I chopped the soft part very fine and cooked it to a ‘sauce’ together with an onion and white wine. The resulting dish was very nice with a lovely flavor and texture just like I intended. Here’s what I did… Continue reading “Tagliatelle alle Zucchine”
Green Beans (also known as String Beans or French Beans) are in season right now, which means that beans from around here are abundant and we don’t have to make do with imported stuff from Northern Africa. Green beans and haricots verts are essentially the same thing, but the name “haricots verts” outside of France is usually reserved for the thinnest ones only.
Some months ago Richard of REMCooks.com posted a chicken recipe that used a herb called savory. I thought I had never heard of savory before, but that wasn’t entirely true because I did know it under the Dutch name “bonenkruid” even though I didn’t remember ever tasting it. The name “bonenkruid” suggests that it’s good with beans (it means “bean herb”) so when I saw a fresh savory plant at the produce department, I decided to try making pasta with green beans and savory pesto. The savory pesto has a punchy taste, very savory indeed, and did go great with the beans. The savory smells a bit like fresh oregano, but the taste is stronger. Thanks Richard for the inspiration. Here’s what I did…
Continue reading “Pasta with Green Beans and Savory Pesto (Pasta ai Fagioli e Pesto di Santoreggia)”
When I did a riff on a combination of Sugo alla Napoletana and Penne all’Arrabbiata to meet Richard’s Chilehead Challenge, I realised that I had not blogged about Penne all’Arrabbiata before. This is a classic dish from Lazio, the region around Rome, of pasta with a spicy tomato sauce. “Arrabbiata” means angry, referring to the spiciness of the sauce. Like all Italian classics, it is a simple dish with a limited number of ingredients, but a lot of flavor. It doesn’t take more time to prepare this than it takes to boil the pasta. Continue reading “Penne all’Arrabbiata”
I like the Italian way of having a primo piatto of pasta or rice first, followed by a secondo piatto of meat or fish. We often eat like this, and for this particular evening I had planned to serve first pasta with beetroot and then smoked duck leg with orange sauce. Because I thought the flavors would work together nicely, I decided to turn this into a piatto unico and serve everything together instead. I liked the result, but it was less ‘Italian’ than what I usually make because there were a lot of flavors on the plate. So pick for yourself whether you’d like to serve this all together or separately. Continue reading “Pasta with Smoked Duck, Beetroot, and Orange”
The typical pasta dish from the South-Italian region of Puglia is orecchiette with cime di rapa. Cime di rapa is a vegetable that is also known as broccoletti or rapini. It is not the same as broccoli, although the green buds in the center certainly resemble small heads of broccoli. If you can’t find cime di rapa, you can make orecchietti with broccoli instead using the same recipe. It’s not the same dish, but good all the same. This time I used dry orecchiette, but this is even better if you use home-made orecchiette instead. Orecchiette with Cime di rapa is another example of a very simple but delicious regional Italian dish. Continue reading “Orecchiette con le Cime di Rapa”
Snijbonen are a very common type of green beans in the Netherlands that are available year-round. I have not come across them abroad, but some googling has turned up that they are called “runner beans” in English and “fagiolino al corallo” in Italian. They have a nice fresh green flavor that is different from haricots verts and in the Netherlands they are usually served as a side to meat, cut up into narrow strips diagonally, with a bit of nutmeg. Served like that I don’t care much for them, but I’ve found that I like almost every vegetable if prepared in a nice way. Therefore I created this very simple but tasty pasta dish that is by no means authentically Italian. Continue reading “Fusilli with Runner Beans (Fusilli ai Fagiolini al Corallo)”
Chard is not generally available anymore in this country, but recently a new ‘organic’ store opened up near to my house that carries it. I remember my grandmother serving chard (called “snijbiet” in Dutch), but I had never prepared it myself. Now that I can get it, I made Chard Risotto and Pizzoccheri with chard. For both of them I only used the leaves, and so I had a nice bunch of chard stems in the crisper of my fridge, waiting for a purpose. I remember Emmy had posted a recipe for Baked Chard Stems with Tomato, Garlic, and Parmesan, and that was the inspiration for this pasta dish. We love pasta and eat it almost every day. I decided to try making something like ragù from the chard stems, and it worked out great. Continue reading “Pasta with Chard Stems (Penne alle Gambe di Coste)”
Pizzoccheri are a short and flat type of pasta from the Valtellina region in Northern Italy, made from buckwheat and flour. I already posted about preparing store-bought dried pizzoccheri with savoy cabbage. This time I decided to make the pizzoccheri myself, and use chard rather than cabbage. I already liked pizzoccheri the previous time I made them, but the fresh pasta and the chard make it even better.
Did you know that buckwheat, despite its name, is not a wheat? It is also interesting that the word buckwheat has been derived from the Dutch word “boekweit”. In Italian it sounds more fancy though: grano saraceno. In any case, in homemade pizzoccheri you can taste the buckwheat better than in store-bought ones, and they are surprisingly easy to make as they do not need to be rolled out as thinly as for other types of fresh pasta. So even though I did use my pasta roller out of habit, you could easily and quickly make them with a rolling pin. The fresh pizzoccheri also have a nicer texture than the dried ones. Continue reading “Homemade Pizzoccheri alla Valtellinese”
The dish with sole and hazelnut emulsion with romanesco we recently had at a fancy restaurant in Amsterdam was not such a big success because the sole was overpowered by the hazelnut emulsion, but it did inspire me to make this pasta dish because it made me realize that hazelnut and romanesco work very well together. Romanesco is an Italian green variety of cauliflower. If you can’t find it, you could substitute with regular cauliflower. A hazelnut emulsion is basically a warm mayonnaise made with hazelnut oil. I was happy with the result, as also in this pasta dish the combination worked very well and it was a nice variety from other pasta dishes that I make. Because of the nuts it is not really needed to eat a secondo of meat afterwards. And it only takes about 20 minutes to make. Continue reading “Pasta with Romanesco and Hazelnut”
The pasta course of a recent dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant in Amsterdam, Bussia, was spaghettini (angel hair spaghetti) with a spicy ragù of venison and crunchy red bell pepper. I really liked the combination of flavors, and it inspired me to create this pasta dish as well as a venison stew about which I will post soon. It is not a classic Italian dish (at least not that I have ever heard of), but it is in Italian style. The use of paprika gives it a touch of Hungary as well. I started the ragù with cubed meat … Continue reading Spaghettini with Venison and Bell Pepper Ragù (Spaghettini al Cervo e Peperoni)
I made this lasagna for a dear friend whom we were visiting and who couldn’t cook herself because she was recovering from a slipped disc operation. Lasagna is a great dish for such an occasion, because it can be prepared in advance and can simply be heated up in the oven. This will even improve the flavor. My original plan was to make Lasagne alla Bolognese, but when ChgoJohn wrote that he used cream cheese instead of ricotta in his Lasagne dei Bartolini I was intrigued because I had never used either of those in lasagna before. I then learned … Continue reading Lasagne alla Napoletana (Lasagne di Carnevale)
I’m really happy with my new stand mixer. One of the things it does really well is making pasta dough. Of course you can also do this by hand, but especially when you’d like to make pasta dough from eggs and 100% semola di grano duro rimanicato (rather than 50% or 100% flour of type “00”) it is much more pleasant to use the stand mixer instead. Such dough can be very tough and difficult to knead, but the stand mixer does the trick as easily as with 00 flour. A stand mixer is also great if you’re lazy! Sometimes … Continue reading How to make Fresh Pasta Dough using a Stand Mixer
When you make Peking Duck, you only eat the crispy skin and just a bit of the meat right underneath. This means that you will have a lot of leftovers: the carcass as well as most of the meat. It is a shame to throw all of this away, especially since you can use this to make a classic Tuscan pasta dish: Pappardelle all’Anatra. The carcass is used to make a stock, and both meat and stock are used in the pasta sauce. The cooking time is quite long, but there is hardly any active time. Here’s how to do it. Ingredients … Continue reading What to do with leftover Peking Duck: Pappardelle all’Anatra
This simple but tasty pasta dish is great for a weekday meal, especially since all the ingredients can be purchased quite a long time in advance. Thanks to CampariGirl to remind me to make this again. The only important thing to remember here is to use good ham, preferably the kind that only has pork and salt as its ingredients. A good ham really makes this shine. Ingredients For 2 servings 150-200 grams (.33 – .44 lb) penne pasta 100-150 grams (5 oz) ham, in cubes 150 grams (1 cup) frozen peas 1 onion, thinly sliced 1 Tbsp butter 1 … Continue reading Pasta with Ham, Peas, and Cream (Penne con Prosciutto Cotto, Piselli e Panna)
Braciole (also spelled as Brasciole) are a typical dish from the province of Bari in Puglia. Braciole are bundles of beef, stuffed with a mixture of parsley, garlic, and cheese, and then cooked low and slow in a tomato sauce. As with many Italian recipes there are variations. According to the Italian wikipedia it is supposed to be made with horse meat rather than beef and with the addition of lard (probably because horse meat is very lean). You could also use red wine rather than wite, or basil rather than oregano. Even though this dish seems very similar to the version … Continue reading Braciole alla Barese (Stuffed Beef Bundles)
This is a very simple but amazingly delicious recipe that I discovered mostly by accident. If you make beef stock from scratch and allow it to cool, a layer of solid fat will form on the top. I always used to discard this fat, but not anymore! There is a lot of flavor in it, and together with the cauliflower, ground cumin and pecorino sardo the flavor is out of this world. So next time you make beef stock, keep the fat and make this dish. I promise you won’t regret it! This is a week night dish that is … Continue reading Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower and Fat from Beef Stock
Tortellini in brodo (tortellini in broth) is a classic Christmas dish from Bologna. The tortellini need to be so small that you can eat them in a single bite, together with the broth. It is quite a bit of work to make them as well as the broth from scratch, but certainly worth it. You can make the broth and the tortellini the day before, in fact my advice would be to do that. Officially you need a capon (neutered rooster) to make the broth, but a plump farm chicken will do. Tortelli and tortellini are the typical stuffed pasta shapes from … Continue reading Tortellini in Brodo
Ragù Napoletano is a traditional dish from Naples, Italy that is mostly eaten on Sundays. Large pieces of beef and pork are cooked low and slow in a tomato sauce, and then the meat-flavored tomato sauce is served over pasta as the primo piatto, followed by the meat with a bit of the sauce as the secondo piatto. I made this with a nicely marbled piece of Irish Angus chuck roast I had picked up, but you could also use other (tough) cuts of beef as well as pork. A mixture of different kinds of meat will give a fuller flavor. Fusilli … Continue reading Beef Ragù Napoletano (Primo + Secondo)
Right now porcini mushrooms (also known as cepes in Frech or eekhoorntjesbrood in Dutch) are abundant in Dutch forests. Since good quality fresh porcini mushrooms are usually next to impossible to find, I jumped at the chance to get some to make pappardelle ai funghi porcini. Fresh porcini mushrooms should be firm and the spores (underneath the cap) should be white as shown in the photo. Stay away from porcini that are soft or have yellow spores, since they will become mushy and smell badly when you sauté them. Even in Italy I noticed that such bad porcini mushrooms are … Continue reading Pappardelle ai Funghi Porcini (Pasta with Fresh Porcini Mushrooms)
This is not an authentic dish, but my own invention. It is a fish version of the well-known spaghetti alla carbonara that uses smoked salmon and red onion instead of pancetta or guanciale. Just like real carbonara, the ‘sauce’ is raw egg that is only cooked slightly by the heat from the pasta. It only takes as long as it takes to cook the spaghetti. This dish is quick, easy, tasty, and healthy thanks to the omega-3 fatty acids in the salmon. Ingredients For 2 servings 200 grams (7 oz) spaghetti 250 grams (9 oz) smoked salmon 1 red onion, chopped … Continue reading Spaghetti ‘Salmonara’
Before I started blogging, I used carrots mostly as supporting ingredients in stocks and stews, one of the few exceptions being hutspot sometimes in winter. Fellow bloggers have inspired me to give carrots a leading role as well. This is another primo piatto using carrots inspired by 35aweek.com with some adaptations. This one’s even easier to make than the carrot risotto. And if you prepare the carrots the night before like I did, it only takes as long to prepare this dish as it takes to boil the pasta. Fusilli (similar to the rotelle used by K. on $35 a week) are a good pasta … Continue reading Pasta with Carrot sauce (Fusilli alle Carote)
If you ask an Italian which food is the best in the world, he will say that of course that is Italian food. If you then ask further, he will tell you that the food from his own region is best. If again you ask further, it’s only food from his own city or even quarter that is superior. And in the end, it’s the food of his mamma or nonna that is really the best. I like the name of this pasta dish. “Puttana” means whore, so this is “whore’s spaghetti”. There are various theories why it’s called this … Continue reading Spaghetti alla Puttanesca
This veggie pasta dish may seem very similar to last week’s pasta with peas and tomato, but the flavor is much ‘greener’. I’ve used the same type of curly tagliatelle called mafaldine, but feel free to use regular tagliatelle if you can’t find those. Peas and pesto work together very well. I wanted to freshen up the dish by adding some celery, and it worked like a charm. I made the pesto à la minute, but I’d recommend to make it the day before instead and keep it in the fridge so the flavors can develop. Ingredients For 2 servings … Continue reading Pasta with Peas and Pesto (Mafaldine Piselli e Pesto)
This is a very simple light pasta dish with vegetables, and the nice thing is that you don’t have to go shopping for it if you sieved tomatoes and pasta in your pantry, peas in your freezer, parmigiano in your fridge, and parsley in your garden. In other words, all ingredients keep very well. If you can get good fresh tomatoes where you are, by all means use them instead! But with the ridiculously cold summer we’ve been having here, fresh tomatoes just aren’t good enough. The white wine is optional, it adds freshness and complexity to the dish. I … Continue reading Pasta with Peas and Tomato (Mafaldine Piselli e Pomodoro)
Pasta salad is great to bring to a BBQ or other ‘bring your own food’ event, since you can load it with veggies, it’s easy to keep (even outside of the fridge for a bit) and most people like it. I’m calling this ‘Greek’ since I’m not claiming this is in any way authentically Greek, but it has been inspired by using typical Greek ingredients such as oregano, olives, bell peppers and feta cheese. I brought this to a BBQ the other day and it vanished within a few minutes. With the general instructions for pasta salad given below, you … Continue reading ‘Greek’ Pasta Salad
This is an elegant seafood pasta that I like to prepare. As always, the quality of the ingredients means a great deal. I used fresh scampi, but you could also substitute with jumbo shrimp as long as they are ‘wild caught’ and have the heads and shells to make some wonderful shrimp stock. Frozen scampi or shrimp are also fine, but the scallops must be fresh (since frozen scallops release too much water when you try to sauté them). The delicate flavors of scallops and scampi or shrimp go well with fresh tomatoes, zucchini and basil and just a tiny … Continue reading Linguine with Scampi, Scallops, Zucchini and fresh Tomatoes
I was intrigued by this recipe by Pasta Princess since it involves flambéing the shrimp, and decided to make my own version with some alterations. As far as I’ve been able to find out by googling, Fra Diavolo is a recipe that is typical of the Italian kitchen in the United States. Nevertheless I tried to make this recipe like I believe it might be made in Italy. I like Pasta Princess’ suggestion to serve this over home-made pesto fettucine, but since I made this after work and didn’t have time to make fresh pasta, I used linguine as this type is … Continue reading Linguine ai gamberoni alla Fra Diavolo (Linguine with flambeed shrimp, garlic and chile pepper)
Emmy Cooks blogged recently about “an automatic bond among people who spend the day in serious contemplation of what to eat next”. When I read that, I realised that I am such a person, too. I also realised that I also feel this bond with my fellow food bloggers out there, even without ever having met them yet. I don’t think about food all day, but I do care a lot about what I eat and make an effort to eat well as often as is pratical. I think this is only logical as I believe that food is something to enjoy … Continue reading Penne with Asparagus and Goat cheese
I was at the supermarket deliberating what I was going to make for dinner and noticed a bunch of radishes. I don’t eat many radishes and when I do, I usually eat them raw. But I remembered reading somewhere on a blog (don’t remember which one, might have been Emmy’s) that you can also eat the leaves and so I decided to make pasta with radishes. I turned out quite nice and was definitely something different. Cooking takes the edge off the radishes sharp taste. I might add pancetta next time or something else to complete the taste profile, but … Continue reading Pasta with Radishes (Orecchiette ai Ravanelli)
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