Pasta alla What's in the Fridge

This week I happened upon some assorted heirloom eggplant varieties at the local farmer's market. They were from two separate farms in New York and Connecticut. After having some unfortunate eggplant experiences in my early days of cooking I was leery of tiny eggplant, however, recent eggplant that I have sampled has been fantastic, most recently with these fairy tale eggplant from a local farmer's market.



Another thing that happened this weekend is that my parents got me a new lens for my camera (for my birthday). So tonight was my inaugural run with the new close up lens. Someone with my photography skills in no way deserves a second lens. But I have one, so there you have it.





Last night Jen carved a pumpkin while we watched the Back to the Future Trilogy. It may have been one of the best Halloweens ever for that very reason.



I also spent the entire day making turkey stock out of the bones leftover from Canadian Thanksgiving.



One of Jen's favorite pasta dishes of all time is Pasta alla Norma, her favorite being from Plum Pomidor in our old neighborhood. Seeing that it is her favorite I decided to use these eggplant to make a bastardized version of Pasta alla Norma.

What I did was roast them in the oven with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, until they were tender. Then I added some tomato sauce and stewed them down. I finished it all off over penne with a dollop of ricotta cheese.

I cooked the penne then tossed it with olive oil, pepper, and some roasted garlic.



For wine I opened an extremely cheap bottle of French red to discover it was corked. This happens fairly frequently. After that I moved onto some Big Woop! from Australia. This was a screw top bottle and was very tasty.

I think I may just stop buying wine with corks in it. Even for cheap bottles it's a gamble and when you purchase anything over the $20 mark (which is unusual for us) you are playing with fire. Screw tops may not give you wine cred but I've also never had a screw top go bad on me.

That's a trade off I'm happy to make.

Thanksgiving Leftovers (Round 1)

There is something galvanizing about the intense rush to utilize leftovers. It's a race against time and the consequences are life or death. It's like that movie where Jason Statham has to keep using up Thanksgiving leftovers or else his heart with explode and then he fights some guys in an oil slick while wearing bike pedals on his feet.

What can I say? I've always been an adrenaline junkie.



Sunday afternoon I used up some of Jen's popular rolls and made these turkey sliders. The rolls were the biggest hit of Thanksgiving this year. I had a great idea to hook up my ipod in the bathroom and play Thelonious Monk albums on shuffle so people could mellow out to some his 50's and 60's jazz stylings. Surprisingly, that was the second biggest hit of this year's Canadian Thanksgiving. Go figure.

I filled the rolls with turkey, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and a slices of Manchego. They were divine.



By Monday night we were ready for something a little lighter so we made Jen's turkey chinois salad. This consists of nappa cabbage, shredded carrot, scallion, chopped almonds, and julienned mini bell peppers that Jen picked up last week at the farmer's market with the express purpose of putting in a horn of plenty then forgot.

Jen loves few things in this world more than a horn of plenty.





On Tuesday we made a triumphant return to unhealthy foods with hot turkey sandwiches. Jen and I have an annual open-faced/closed sandwich duel. The winner? Everyone!



By Wednesday we were fortunate enough to be able to convince some friends to come over and give us a hand. I think this is the first time we were ever able to do this successfully. I made turkey pot pie with the leftover turkey, gravy, and roasted vegetables (shallots, rutabaga, turnip, carrot, butternut, and sweet potato).



Wednesday I thickened up the creamy polenta leftover and cooled them so that on Thursday I could grill it. I tossed some kale in lemon and olive oil and served this over the top. With the remaining brussel sprouts I made a mustard and apple cider vinaigrette with the remaining bacon, onion, and apple and tossed it all together.

I topped the polenta with cherry habanero jelly that Jen had brought home with her form Cherry Country on her recent trip to Portland.

By Thursday I had frozen everything that I could in hopes for some future use. This usually means waiting for several months then throwing it all away. Hopefully I'll be more diligent this year.



Last night I came home to Jen who was in full Halloween attire as a 40's military woman and ready to go to the Halloween party we were to attend. She'd been ready for some time as I was three hours late returning to work after 95 was shut down to capture some really bad carjackers. This is my second favorite shutting-down-95 story trailing after the time this summer when I was two hours late to work because a man claiming to be Jesus Christ was running naked across all lanes.

Ah, the adventures of route 95 in Connecticut.

The result was, sadly, not going to the party. It was also me being famished after not eating for 8 hours.



As we wound down on our leftovers all I could really put together was this salad with kale, Danish blue cheese, toasted pumpkin seeds, sliced red pears, cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.



After a commute like that and an unfortunate cancellation of plans the only remedy is to drink some wine. And what better wine to have than this petite sirah from Vinum Cellars? This is definitely my favorite wine that features a photograph of a dog on the label.

Since we missed out on the Halloween party we made up for it by wrapping up the last couple of episodes of True Blood that we hadn't seen.

Oh, and then we did the Monster Mash.

The End . . . Or is it?

Belated Thanksgiving, Canadian Style

During this year's Canadian Thanksgiving we were soaking up the sun in Jamaica. Therefore, we were forced to celebrate this year. Since most of the other Canadians we know (well, one of the other Canadians we know) were also in Jamaica at the time this worked out perfectly.

I won't bore you too much with the details but I will bore you with the menu. That's kind of what I do.



For starters we had:

A Trio of pates including duck liver and cognac, Mousse Imperial, and Rustique. Also we had a cheese slate with the names hastily written in chalk: Grafton cheddar, cranberry cheddar, Metropolitan brie, Danish blue, Port Salut, and Manchego.

Also there was a giant bowl of green, red, and black grapes (not pictured).

The sleeper hit of this year's thanksgiving were the rolls that Jen made. Had I known how big a hit they were going to be I wouldn't have bothered making as much other food as I did. Instead I would have simply put a bunch of butter in ramekins to serve alongside them.



For the main course we enjoyed two types of cranberry sauce, one made in a mold with gelatin, the other made from the skins with a little orange and ginger; roasted shallot, rutabaga, turnip, sweet potato, carrot, and butternut squash; traditional stuffing, sausage and sage cornbread stuffed roast pumpkin based on the recipe that I created last year; a vegetarian version of the same recipe with no sausage; roasted brussel sprouts with bacon, apples, and caramelized onions; creamy polenta with ricotta and Parmigiano-Reggiano; mashed potatoes; and a gigantic 30 pound roast turkey which I brined overnight.



For dessert we had all the favorites including Jen's Canadian-themed pumpkin pie, Jennie's famous apple pie with cheddar cheese, a delicious pecan chocolate pie, a strawberry rhubarb pie (which friends from Rhode Island brought with them from The Big Apple in Wrentham, MA), and a number of macaroons, and cookies of various makes and models.

This year may possibly be the most obscene showing of excess we've pulled off to date. Now, like most years, we just need to find friends brave enough and try to help us eat a path to our fridge so that we can carry on about our normal routine.

Coincidentally our normal routine is also one of excess and obscenity. I'm okay with that. I have embraced it.

Drunken Pasta

If you read this blog with any regularity then you know of my deep rooted hatred of following recipes. However, every so often, there comes a recipe so enticing that I feel compelled to actually follow it without variation. Of course this does not mean I go through any of the trouble of measuring anything out. That would be a fool's game. Eyeballin' it is still where it's at.

I saw this recipe for Zinfandel Spaghetti and was, for some reason, fascinated by it. The recipe is from Michael Chiarello's Bottega cookbook. After having it pulled up on my browser for two weeks I decided to give it a whirl.



For a start I sliced up some Paesano bread and topped it with fresh mozzzarella and a sun dried tomato concoction. Some might call it a sun dried tomato pesto. However, there are people who become incensed when anyone calls anything a "pesto" that is not the traditional basil spread with pine nuts, garlic, and Parmigiano. Some might call it a tapenade. Then there are more people

Both sets of people can be referred to as uptight jerks if they ever need to be referenced.



The main course came out pretty well. I blanched the rabe, par-cooked the spaghetti and set both aside. I reduced some zinfandel by half with a little sugar then tossed the pasta in with the zinfandel to coat it and complete its cooking. Then I browned some red pepper flakes and garlic and cooked the rabe and combined it all together. I topped it with some Parmigiano-Reggiano before serving.

This was a fun dish to make but I don't think I'd make it again. It was good but I think it was more novel than it was delicious.



For wine we enjoyed the other half bottle of this Italian zinfandel that I used to make the pasta dish.

So, if you're looking do do something novel for dinner you should give this recipe a shot. However, there are far more delicious ways to enjoy pasta even if they are less colorful.

Let Them Eat Cauliflower

The other day I found a giant head of cauliflower from a farm in upstate New York (whose name escapes me). Instead of roasting it as I have the last few I've purchased I decided to use it for soup instead. Being a cold rainy night last night it seemed perfect for soup.



I rendered a little bacon, removed the strips, added some butter, and cooked half an onion and some crushed garlic cloves until they were all lightly browned. Then I roughly chopped the head of cauliflower, tossed it into the pot, sweated it all down, and added some chicken stock to cook it until it was tender.

After that I put in a little milk and cream and pureed it all with my immersion blender. Once it was completely pureed I crumbled about a third of a pound of Stilton from Neal's Yard Dairy. I also chopped some green onion which I used for a garnish along with some crumbled bacon, additional Stilton, and some tiny cauliflower florets.



This soup is my take on a traditional cream of cauliflower soup. In culinary school I learned how to make this soup for the first time. At least I learned the traditional way of making this soup which is called Crème du Barry. Now you may be saying, Nate, 'Barry' is not the french word for cauliflower! At least you'll be saying this if you are my wife and you know how to speak French. Having only taken five years of French in high school and growing up in a French-speaking family this did not occur to me in culinary school.

The Barry in Crème du Barry refers to Comtesse du Barry. Comtesse du Barry was a woman who had a great love for cauliflower, so much so that it almost interfered with her other great love of having an affair with the king of France. The latter love eventually lead to her being beheaded in a guillotine during the Reign of Terror.

The thing I love about Comtesse du Barry is that she covered her bases. If she wasn't going to be remembered for having sex with Louis XV then at least she had the whole cauliflower soup thing to fall back on. She was a woman with a plan.

And that, my friends, is smart aristocratic thinking.