Lasagna: Revamped for Summer

One normally thinks of lasagna as a warm, hearty winter meal. Usually made with a tomato sauce, loaded with meat, cheese, a good lasagna can warm you even on the coldest nights. I decided to throw this common expectation of lasagna on its head, and make a fresh summer lasagna, featuring veggies and herbs associated with the warm summertime.

Grilled Whole Trout with Orzo Salad and Spinach

As I always say, the best method of cooking in the summertime is grilling. In the summer, the produce is plentiful, the fish is fresh, and grilling is the best way to feature simple, delicious flavors in a beautiful way. I was on Martha's Vineyard for this meal, and we picked up some fresh whole trout, tomatoes, fennel, and spinach. All healthy, fresh ingredients that have bold flavors which don't need much else to shine.

Brussel Sprout Carbonara

 

Brussel sprouts and bacon... Are you lovers from opposite families, a la Romeo and Juliet? Are you unlikely partners like Starsky and Hutch, one straight laced, one a little wild, but both focused on getting the job done? Are you soul mates, destined to be together no matter the obstacle? Whatever you are, you work beautifully together! A simple Italian dish that relies heavily on the inclusion of bacon is pasta carbonara. I decided to bring in bacon's old friend brussel sprouts into this classic dish to make for a fun twist on a classic dish. The result was a colorful and flavorful pasta dish that was as fun to make as it was to eat.

Roasted Vegetable and Pesto Pasta with Seared Scallops

One of the more versatile and flavorful sauces that you can make is pesto. Pesto is an italian sauce used on pasta, sandwiches, meats, fish, hors d'oeuvres, and anything else you can think of. Classic pesto recipes use basil and pine nuts as the main components, but you can use any herbs or greens you like such as cilantro, parsley, arugula, or even kale along with any type of nut. I've made pistachio cilantro and arugula and almond pestos, and any variation you make will have a different personality depending on which components you use. For a healthy pasta dish, I decided to make a basil pine nut AND walnut pesto (I know, I'm a wild man...) with roasted vegetables and seared scallops.

Lend Me Your Ears... With Some Broccoli Rabe and Sausage

I always say that broccoli rabe is a very controversial vegetable. Many people don't like the bitterness of rabe and people are often scared away from cooking it because they don't know how to get the right flavor from it. The key to perfecting broccoli rabe, I learned from my girlfriend, is a little bit of sugar. For whatever reason, sugar creates the perfect sweet balance to the bitter green and makes it a lot friendlier and less intimidating. Other elements that will remove bitterness are sausage and ricotta. A classic Italian dish is orecchiette with sausage, broccoli, rabe, and ricotta. Orecchiette literally means small ear as it is a pasta that resembles the shape of an ear. What is nice about using this type of pasta in this dish is that the orecchiette act as little bowls that hold the ricotta and sausage, making each bite complete and full of all flavors of the dish. The result is a creamy, salty, rich dish that is surprisingly easy to make. The version I made was beautiful and satisfying with a nice balance of sweet and salt with a bit of spice and creaminess to top it off.

Pasta for a Crowd with Homemade Meatballs and Sauce

This New Years Eve, my friends and I rented a house for the weekend. I was in charge of cooking, and everyone was arriving at different times, so I wanted to make something that could be prepared ahead and be served whenever the group was ready. I decided on homemade meatballs and tomato sauce over spaghetti as it appeals to anyone and is easy enough to make in large quantities that increasing the amount you make doesn't create a hassle.  I added some garlic bread and a nice salad, and we had a great meal for a crowd.

The Sunday Night Dilemma: Pasta with Ham and Peas

Ah the weekly Sunday dilemma: Do I go food shopping for the week? Do I order Chinese food and feel gross afterwards? Do I rummage through the fridge to see what I can re purpose into some sort of dinner? Each has its pros and cons:

Shopping is very proactive and will be very satisfying once it's done and your fridge is full, but do you really want to face those crowds? And what if you miss the 4th quarter of the 4pm football games? And that sofa is just so comfortable!

Chinese food is delicious and satisfying at the time, but you know that you're going to immediately regret getting that order of General Gao's chicken, and the leftovers will tempt you for lunch or dinner the next day.

Your final option is the fridge scrounge. You know there has to be something in the fridge that can work for a meal, so you dive in. This past Sunday, I went for the fridge raid, and to my delight, I found leftover Thanksgiving ham, frozen peas, a shallot, garlic, and some angel hair pasta. Mix that with some wine, butter and flour, and we've got ourselves a dinner! Pasta with ham and peas in a white wine sauce is a really comforting, easy to make dish that will satisfy your Sunday dilemma and make for an excellent and reasonably healthy lunch the next day.

Two Broccolis and a "Whore"

Pasta a la puttanesca literally means pasta of the whore in Italian. This dish is a spicy, salty pasta dish that is easy to make and delicious to eat.

Ramps Are In Season!

Ramps! Oh, you wonderful gift of nature. You pop your heads out once a year for a short time, and you're the talk of the town. If only popularity was so easy for everyone else... Ramps are a really wonderful and short lived variety of onion. I was at the farmer's market this weekend in Union Square and picked of a bunch of ramps along with some chives and some quark, which is a cow's milk cheese that tastes a lot like creme fraiche.

They've got a really fresh and bright flavor that's part onion, part garlic, part shallot, and all delicious. Being that ramps are in season, I wanted to make a dish that featured them and made the most of their flavor. I had seen a recipe for gnocchi with ramps and speck, and I wanted to do a variation of this. My first thought was to make my own gnocchi, but it was a little late on a Sunday to start with such a labor intensive dish, so I decided to go with fresh sweet potato gnocchi from Whole Foods. WF generally has excellent homemade pastas, so I trusted them with my ode to ramps. I also picked up some prosciutto to give the dish a salty warmth.

To make the dish, I cleaned the ramps and cut the white bulbs from the green leaves. I chopped half of a vidalia onion and some garlic. I cooked the onion and ramp bulbs in butter and olive oil, and once they became translucent, I added the garlic and chopped ramp greens. Once the greens began to wilt, I added the prosciutto, cooked it for a few minutes, and added about a cup of white wine and some butter. While the sauce was cooking, I boiled a big pot of water. Once it was boiling, I added the gnocchi, stirring them to make sure they didn't stick together. In about 3-4 minutes, they began floating to the top, and I drained them in a strainer, reserving a bit of the water to mix with the sauce. I mixed the gnocchi in with the sauce, added parmesan and 2 spoonfuls of the quark, tossed so everything was mixed together. I served the dish with a little chopped chive, and it was a total success. The ramp flavor worked perfectly with the prosciutto and the nutty parm and sour quark, and the gnocchi were light and fluffy. Gnocchi dishes are normally heavy, but with this dish, they were very light and tasted great with the sauce. If you can get your hands on some ramps before the season is up, take advantage of it, they are really a rare treat.

I see that it's pasta, but where's the sauce??

In keeping with my health conscious eating, I wanted to make a healthy pasta dish that was not just wheat pasta with tomato sauce. I had some chicken sausage, a red pepper, onion, garlic, and a whole bunch of herbs. I made a simple dish that packed a lot of flavor, was very healthy (the only salt was a little from the sausage and some to taste), and was off the beaten path for a sausage pasta dish.
I started by thinly slicing the chicken sausage and sauteeing it in olive oil. Once all of the slices were browned, I set the sausage aside and added the chopped pepper and onion. Once they were cooked through, I added the sausage back in along with some garlic, chopped thyme and rosemary, and let that cook for a few minutes. While this was cooking, I boiled some whole wheat pasta. I added some chicken broth to the sausage mixture, tossed in the pasta, some parmesan and a bunch of whole basil leaves. I added a little black pepper for a little bit of spice and served. The outcome was an unexpected pasta dish that had the feeling of a puttanesca sauce without the anchovies and olives.

Family Style Dinner!

Sunday nights are generally pretty lazy, but on the night before President’s day, there’s nothing better than spending time with friends and sharing laughs and a good comforting meal. All of my friends are always busy, always all over the place, so it’s great when we can all get together and spend some quality time. I invited everyone over for dinner and wanted to make a delicious family style meal. I decided on tangy tomato crispy chicken legs and thighs with mac and cheese and red chard (my favorite green du jour). I spend much of the weekend browsing cookbooks, and came across a mouthwatering recipe for mac and cheese in an awesome cookbook my lovely girlfriend gave me for my birthday: The New Brooklyn Cookbook. I recommend this cookbook for anyone who loves Brooklyn restaurants (or delectable pictures of food and restaurants…) While I was cooking everything, my back started KILLING me. I wanted to make sure the meal turned out well, so I ended up cooking the whole thing half hunched over and in some pretty bad pain, but THE SHOW MUST GO ON!! It probably wasn’t the best idea because I spent all of Monday lying down, but in the end it was worth it for a delicious meal with great friends. The mac and cheese ended up being the best I ever made, and the chicken came out great. We had a lot of laughs and enjoyed spending time together.

Tangy Tomato Crispy Chicken with Mac and Cheese and Red Chard

Ingredients:
Chicken thighs and legs (I estimated 2-3 pieces per person)
1 can whole peeled tomatoes
onion
celery
carrot
jalapeno
5 garlic cloves (3 for the sauce and 2 for the chard)
3/4 cup of bourbon
1/2 cup molasses
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup sugar or agave
1 tbsp dijon
1 orange
4 cups whole milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 lb or cheddar and 1/2 lb of gruyere shredded
3 pieces of thick slab bacon
1 lb elbow pasta
1/2 cup flour
1 stick butter
bread crumbs
3 bunches of red chard
lemon
olive oil

To Cook!

Tangy Tomato Sauce (It was a cross between a tomato sauce and a bbq sauce):
Chop the onion, carrot, celery, jalapeno and garlic. Heat oil in a heavy bottom pot and sautee the first 4 veggies, once they start to become translucent, add the garlic. Zest the orange and add to the pot along with the bourbon and juice from the orange. let the bourbon boil for a minute so the alcohol burns off, then add the can of tomatoes, molasses, mustard and vinegar. Once the mixture is simmering, add the sugar, salt and pepper and stir through. Use a hand blender to puree the sauce and let simmer, covered, for about 20-30 minutes. Set aside and let cool.

Crispy Chicken:
Brine the chicken in a salt solution and pat dry with paper towel, cutting off any extra skin from the thighs. Using a spoon, put a spoonful of sauce under the skin of the chicken and pat down to spread around. Salt and pepper the outside of the chicken and heat oil or bacon fat in a cast iron skillet. In batched, sear the chicken skin side down (about 4 minutes) then flip for one minute and move to a pan. Once all of the chicken is browned, cook in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes to cook through.

Mac and Cheese:
Boil water in a pot and cook the elbows until al dente. Drain, toss with olive oil and set aside to cool. Slice the bacon into thin pieces and cook in a cast iron (I did this before cooking the chicken and used the fat to brown the chicken). Remove when the bacon is browned and move to a plate with paper towel. In a saucepan, bring the milk and cream to a simmer. In a heavy bottom pot, melt the butter and add the flour, stirring constantly to make a golden roux (about 4 minutes). Slowly add the milk.cream and stir constantly to incorporate while scraping the bottom to make sure the flour doesn’t burn. Once the mixture is smooth, add half of the cheese and stir frequently until cheese is melted. In a large glass dish, put the elbows and cover with the sauce, mixing so that the sauce gets on all of the elbows and throughout the dish. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of the pasta and then the bread crumb. Cook in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes, until bubbling and finish in a broiler for 3 minutes to brown the top.

Red Chard:
Coarsely chop the chard into 1 inch strips. Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in a large pan and sautée the remaining chopped garlic. Once garlic starts to brown add the chard and toss in the oil and garlic. Add ½ lemon juice and cook until chard is fully wilted.

Heath's Birthday Chicken Marsala

My friend Heath, was turning 26 and starting a new job the next day, and I wanted to throw together a nice meal to celebrate. I decided on chicken marsala over egg noodles with a nice salad on the side. I bought 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, a sliced mushroom mix, marsala wine, and egg noodles. Once I got home, I flattened the chicken and dredged the cutlets in flour mixed with oregano, thyme, crushed red pepper, salt, and pepper. I browned them in my cast iron and set them aside. While my water boiled, I sauteed the mushrooms and an a diced onion in the cast iron. Once they were browned, I added fresh thyme and the marsala. I let it cook down for a few minutes to burn off the alcohol, and then added the chicken cutlets. I let the entire dish cook for about 5 minutes to finish the chicken and thicken the sauce. Once the egg noodles were done, I tossed them in olive oil and served the chicken marsala on top with some parm to top it off.




The meal was delicious, and Heath appreciated it despite being extremely tired from a weekend of celebration. I had some leftovers as well, so when I reheated them, I tossed them in the cast iron with some olive oil, a little more marsala and a good handful of parmesan. The leftovers were delicious, a little richer than the original dish, but it ended up being a delicious 2 for 1 dish!