Linguine alle Vongole (Linguine with Clams)

This is one of my favorites. And oh my goodness is it fast. Ideally, you'd make this with real, shelled clams. But the cans work well enough. I probably make this differently every time I do it. Here's how I did it this time. 3/4 lb linguine 1 large clove garlic, thinly sliced 1 large clove garlic, minced 1 can minced clams 1 can chopped clams Up to 1/4 cup olive oil (1 tbsp butter, optional) Splash of white wine (nice if you have it) Pinch of black pepper (optional) Pinch of salt (optional) Pinch of red pepper flakes (optional) Pinch of parsley This is so fast, you don't even need to start the sauce until you've started cooking the pasta. So, bring your water (lightly salted, drop of olive oil) to a boil, add your pasta, and start your sauce: Pour olive oil into a large saucepan. How much? Well, it makes up a decent portion of your sauce. A few pours; around a 1/4 cup, probably. Let that heat up over medium-high heat, then add the garlic and turn down the heat a little. Let the garlic flavor the oil a bit (don't let it burn), then add the juice from the two cans of clams. Let that cook together for a couple of minutes. Add the pinch of black and red pepper (Joef says, "Much more than a pinch!"), along with the parsley and the salt. You can turn the heat down and just let the flavors cook together a bit. When the pasta is about 2-3 minutes from done, add the clams with a splash of wine and cook them into the sauce on medium or medium-high heat, letting the alcohol cook off. Drain the pasta, add it directly to the pan and coat with sauce. Serve with parsley as garnish.

Walnut-Gorgonzola-Stuffed Portabellas

Yesterday, Joef had a walnut-gorgonzola-stuffed portabella in the "cafeteria" at work (I use quotation marks because it's really so much more than a cafeteria...amazing, fresh, local food - and all at cost. But I digress.), and today, he made them at home, using his own recipe! OK, so I gave him a really hard time at the grocery store ("You want to mix what...with what?"), and boy, was I proven wrong. This turned out wonderfully. Very rich, and very good. It was the kind of meal where after my first two bites, I worried that it wasn't going to be enough to satisfy my typically insatiable hunger, and two bites later, I was in a food coma. In a good way.

So, here is Joef's recipe:
Two portabella mushrooms
Olive oil
Onion salt
3 cloves garlic

STUFFING
3 oz crumbled gorgonzola cheese
3 oz walnuts, ground in a food processor

DRESSING/SALAD
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Stone-ground mustard
Baby spring green salad mix

Preheat the oven to 400. Clean the mushrooms by removing the gills, then hand wash and pat dry. Crush the garlic and mix it with olive oil and onion salt to taste, then brush the mushrooms with that mixture, both top and bottom. Set aside.

Combine the gorgonzola and the crushed walnuts together in a food processor, and blend, scraping down the sides as necessary until they're mixed together.

Put the walnut-gorgonzola blend into the hollowed-out sides of the portabellas, and place in the oven on a baking sheet. Cook until the mushrooms have softened, the cheese is melty, and, ideally, the cheese begins to brown on top. (This time, we added the cheese at the very end, and it melted, but didn't get browned. So we're recommending adding it earlier. Maybe you'd want to broil it?)

While the mushrooms are cooking, make a salad dressing from vinegar, olive oil, and a little stone-ground mustard (more oil, less vinegar). Drizzle to taste over salad greens in a bowl.

When the mushrooms are ready, take them out of the oven, place them on the greens, and serve!

And, there's a beer pairing: "I like that I paired a heavy meal with a heavy beer!", says Joef. This is Dragon's Milk, by New Holland Brewing, an oak-aged ale. 10% ABV, very dark with hints of vanilla.


And a final post-script: Joef gave me my birthday presents last night...oh, just about two and half weeks early. I'm so excited, I have to share them...yup, more cookbooks=more recipes, and that glove and the knife mean...oysters! So, a taste of things to come.

Golden Curry

Alright, I'm going to admit right up front that I'm cheating on this one. The title should probably read "S&B Golden Curry Sauce Mix"...because that's what it is. But this was a college favorite of ours, and, I mean, we added fresh vegetables and...and...well, just take it as another idea for a very easy, very yummy meal.

The curry sauce mix comes in a box in different levels of heat (we buy hot), and the complete recipe is on the box. You can make it with any meat you want, but we always use chicken (about a pound - lots of leftovers). The veggies you pick are up to you. Tonight, we used shitake mushrooms, sugar snap peas, red and orange bell peppers, and broccoli florets in addition to the onion the recipe on the box calls for. Also, I always add garlic in with the chicken and onion at the beginning. Oh, and as you might've guessed, I threw in some habanero - just a tad with the chicken and onions, then the majority at the end with the sauce. Serve over rice and enjoy the curry goodness!

100 Visitors!

Sorry, no food today. I ate leftover carbonara for dinner last night, and am eating it again today for lunch. However - La Piccina Cucina reached over 100 unique visitors yesterday! Thanks for being hungry, everyone!

Spaghetti alla Carbonara

Ooh, this was a hit. If you haven't had this before, think of it as a breakfast pasta - except not gross, like that sounds.

This is my mom's favorite dish when we visit Rome. I gotta say, she's got good taste. This was my first stab at making this meal, and I'll definitely make it again. I made it up as I went - I added shallots, for one, which is probably a no-no in Rome - but hey, it tasted good, and that's really what this is about, right? Oh, and it's fast. It's about that, too.

Timing is somewhat important with this - you want the pasta to be hot when you add the egg to it, so the pancetta and shallots should be ready by the time the pasta is done.

So, here's what you need:
1 lb spaghetti
4 eggs
A few splashes half and half
1 tbsp olive oil (roughly)
1/2 or 1 whole shallot, minced
3 oz pancetta, diced
1/2 tbsp butter (roughly)
1/4 or 1/2 cup pasta water
3/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated (or romano, or a blend)
Ground black pepper, to taste
Red pepper flakes, if you're Joef

And here's how it goes together:
Start the water boiling for the pasta, add pasta when boiling. In the meantime, whisk the four eggs together in a separate bowl, and mix in a few pours of half and half. Set that aside. In a saucepan over medium-high heat, add the olive oil and butter and heat until the butter melts, then add the shallots and the pancetta and stir. Add a little black pepper, let it cook a bit, then turn to low so that the bacon can render its fat. When the spaghetti is done and drained, add it directly to the pancetta in the pan (it can still be on low heat, if you're paranoid about the egg like me), and immediately add the egg mixture, pouring it over the pasta in the pan. Now mix that all together, watching the egg cook as it coats the pasta. When that's all mixed, mix in the cheese and the pasta water to keep it from getting too dry, again coating all the pasta. Top with ground black pepper to taste.

Rigatoni with Prosciutto, Tomatoes, and Olives

Oh, this is decadent. I haven't made this one in months, and it's already a pretty squishy recipe since I made it up, so I probably would do a few things differently next time - less prosciutto, maybe more cherry tomatoes. In any case, it was a little salty this time, but it's delicious, so take it, mess around with it a little - I certainly do! It's that kind of meal.

(We also realized tonight, as we probably should have much earlier, that it's much cheaper to buy prosciutto custom-sliced at the deli than pre-packaged. Which is probably why I got a little over-excited about how cheap it was and added a tad too much. But hey, good news!)

3/4 lb rigatoni
2-3 tbsp (?) olive oil
1 or 1 1/2 tbsp butter, divided
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 package (maybe 1 1/2?) cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup or so thinly-sliced prosciutto, shredded (gosh...maybe even less. 3-4 slices?)
Pitted kalmata olives, however many you want
Red pepper flakes, to taste
1/4 cup pasta water

Start the water boiling for the rigatoni and cook until al dente. In the meantime, drizzle a little pool of olive oil in a pan and add half the butter, and heat over medium-high until butter melts. Add the garlic and stir it around for a bit, letting the flavors combine, and being careful not to burn the garlic. Turn the heat to medium. Next, add the halved tomatoes and do the same, letting them soften and soak up the butter. Sprinkle red pepper flakes to taste over the tomatoes (add earlier if you want it hotter, later if you don't). If the sauce starts to get a little dry, add the rest of the butter and let that melt and mix in, too. Add the prosciutto and turn down the heat a bit. Just before the pasta is done cooking, add however many kalmata olives you want. Again, if the sauce is dry, add 1/4 cup or so of pasta water before you drain it, and let that cook into the sauce.

(Note: it may be that the pasta takes longer to cook than the sauce, as it did for me tonight. If it seems like your sauce is going to overcook, you can just go through all the steps up to the pasta water, then turn the heat back on just to warm it up right as the pasta is finishing.)

Drain the pasta and add to the still-heated pan. Mix around so the sauce coats the rigatoni, and serve. Ignore the pug at your feet begging for prosciutto scraps.


LUNCH NOTE:
We planned ahead and bought a demi-baguette and some goat brie so that I could make a sandwich with the unused prosciutto the next day. Brie, prosciutto, bread - that's it. Perfect.

Devil's Food Layer Cake

(from "Comfort Food", by Rick Rodgers)

So Joef and I have an ongoing battle about whether or not I like (or rather, don't like) cake. You'd think he'd just take my word for it, except that there have been, on certain occasions, cakes that I've liked, which hurts my case a bit. Take, for example, the cake from McArthur's Bakery in St. Louis that we had at our wedding, which was unbelievably good. That was the first time I actually understood why people crave cake.

Tonight's cake (another cooking first for me) was not McArthur's. But I did like it very much. Now, I only had a small piece, and I'd still choose pie, or something with cheese or bacon, over it. As it stands, however, it looks like Joef can put another tally in his "Julia likes cake" count. Darn him. :)

CAKE
1 cup boiling water
3/4 cup unsweetened natural cocoa powder
1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick, gulp) unsalted butter, plus 2 tbsp (warmed to room temp)
3 eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups buttermilk

FROSTING
3 3/4 cups confectioner's sugar (same as powdered sugar, as it turns out)
1 cup unsweetened natural cocoa powder
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter (warmed to room temp)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup or so heavy cream

Preheat the over to 350. Lightly butter two 9-inch, round cake pans. Line the bottoms of the pans with a circle of parchment paper. Lightly dust the pans with flour and tap out the excess.

In a small bowl, whisk together the boiling water and cocoa until smooth. Put it in the fridge to let it cool completely. (Word of warning: this will smell delicious. It will taste, however, like burnt-rotten-awfulness. Do not taste it. Even a little bit. Seriously.) In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt. In yet another bowl, a large one, beat the sugar and butter together with a handheld mixer on medium-high. I recommend cutting the butter into chunks first. Once the sugar and butter are combined, beat in the eggs one at a time. Then beat in the vanilla and the cooled cocoa mixture. Reduce the speed on the mixer to low and add the flour mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the buttermilk in two parts. Start and end with the flour. (So - flour, buttermilk, flour, buttermilk, flour.)

Divide the batter evenly between the two cake pans and smooth the tops. Pop in the oven for about 35 minutes. You'll know you're close when the sides of the cake start to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Remove the cakes and let them cool in their pans for 15 minutes. Run a knife along the inside of each pan to release the cake. Then invert the pans onto a plate, lift away the pans, and peel off the parchment. Turn the cakes right side up and let them cool.

Now you can work on the frosting. In a bowl, combine the powdered sugar and the cocoa. Slice up the second stick (oh my God) of butter and add it to the sugar and cocoa, then mix it all together using the handheld mixer on low. Mix in the vanilla. Finally, mix in the cream gradually, until it makes a spreadable frosting (I ended up adding more than a cup of cream, but I'd start there).

Once the cake is cool, place one of the layers on a plate, then spread the frosting on top to your taste. Place the second layer (the recipe says top side down, which I forgot to do, but which probably would work better for slipping) on top of the other, frosted, layer. Frost the rest of the cake, starting with the top and finishing with the sides.

Shakshuka

(from smittenkitchen.com)

Oy, I'm blogging a recipe on my food blog that I found on another food blog...that's probably not necessary. However, we had friends over for brunch this morning, and I've been wanting to make this for awhile, so - here is is, again.

1/4 cup olive oil
5 Anaheim chiles (you could use a hotter pepper, too, or a blend)
1 small yellow onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, crushed then sliced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon paprika
1 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, undrained
Salt to taste
6 eggs (or enough for one of each of your guests, provided it fits in the pot)
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley
Warm naan or pita for dipping

Heat oil in a skillet or dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add chiles and onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and golden brown. Add garlic, cumin, and paprika, and cook, stirring frequently, until garlic is soft.

Put tomatoes and their liquid into a medium bowl and crush with your hands. Add crushed tomatoes and their liquid to the pot along with 1/2 cup water, lower heat to medium, and simmer, stirring as needed, until thickened a bit, about 15 minutes. Add salt to taste.

Crack eggs over sauce so that eggs are evenly distributed across sauce’s surface. Cover skillet and cook until yolks are just set, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle shakshuka with feta (I should've followed the recipe and actually used the 1/2 cup - it needed more) and parsley. To serve, scoop out an egg with some sauce and use the naan for dipping.


LUNCH NOTE:
I brought the shakshuka sauce, sans egg, along with some leftover feta and naan, to work the next day for lunch. Heated up the sauce and the naan in the microwave, sprinkled the feta onto the sauce, and used the naan for dipping. Pretty good!

Hot Hot Soup

This is how Joef refers to this soup (his own recipe, I might add): "If it doesn't hurt a little, you haven't done it right." Like most of what Joef makes, it is intensely, seriously, hot. As in, the first time he made this, I couldn't eat it without downing gobs of ice cream in between gulps. We've toned it down a little since then, and of course now it's much too mild for him (as he frowns at me). Luckily for you, you can adjust the heat to your preference.

Also, Joef bought me a rose tonight. :)

So:
1 lb chicken, cubed
Dash olive oil
5-6 heaping tbsps chili paste
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 onion, sliced
1/4 cup ground ginger
1-2 habanero peppers, sliced
48 oz chicken broth
Juice of a lime wedge
3/4 head bok choy
1/2 bag bean sprouts
1 zucchini (or yellow zucchini), sliced
6 sprigs mint

In a tall pot, combine chicken, onions, garlic, and chili paste with a dash of olive oil over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring, until the chicken is white on the outsides. Add the ginger and habanero, stir for 1-2 minutes. Add the remainder of the ingredients (bok choy, zucchini, bean sprouts, broth, mint), squeezing the lime over it, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium until chicken is cooked through and the vegetables have softened slightly. Enjoy the wonderful, fiery inferno in your mouth while your husband pouts about it not being hot enough.


Oh, and about the Capital Brewery Supper Club: "not bad" (as it says on the can) is probably an apt descriptor.

Gorgonzola Mac 'n Cheese

(Adapted...nah, just downright stolen from...Mark Bittman/The Minimalist)

And the secret ingredient is...you guessed it, arugula! Hey, I'm actually really proud because I was able to make this all from ingredients we already had in the house, left over from things we had already made! We are terrible grocery shoppers, so this almost never happens. While Joef is "melting" in the "blast furnace" of a lovely 75-degree evening, it's been a good night in that we worked out, Modern Family was on, and we were introduced to a new beer (Gouden Carolus - Cuvee Van De Keizer, 2008), a blond Belgian, which was absolutely fantastic. And we ate this.

So...right, the recipe! Extremely easy and quick:

3/4 lb pasta
1/2 package cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
A few handfuls of (here it is, folks) arugula
1 cup milk (I use skim)
1 cup crumbled gorgonzola cheese
Ground pepper to taste

Start boiling the water for the pasta. At the same time, in a small saucepan, combine the milk and the gorgonzola and slowly melt together (it's OK if it's a little chunky), at first over medium heat, but then turning to low while you wait for the pasta to cook.

Once the pasta is done and drained, simply add in the halved tomatoes, the arugula, and pour the still-hot melted cheese over all of it. Stir to mix it all together - the arugula will melt. Serve topped with a little ground pepper, to taste.

Salmon Salad

My friend Alexis would be so proud of me - a salad, AND no pork products! Of course, it does have arugula...again. But that's not a bad thing, right?

This is adapted from my dad's recipe. It's great when you've been, er, cooking a lot of delicious things with butter and pork products and are getting a little, er, soft around the edges.

You'll need:
Arugula (a few handfuls)
1 handful cherry or grape tomatoes
Pink salmon (1 package or 1 can)
One avocado, chopped
1/2 can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
1 light squeeze of fresh lemon
3 tsp-ish olive oil
1.5 tsp-ish balsamic vinegar
Fresh dill to taste (optional - we couldn't find any tonight, but we prefer when we do)

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl, mix, and serve!

"Nicoise" Sandwiches

More tuna tonight. And, somewhat predictably, more arugula and more goat brie. This is another recipe you can really play around with according to taste. For example, Joef always put olives (another theme!) - usually kalmata - on his. Tonight, I added hard-boiled egg. I also used the Hawkwind Heat mustard (see "Cheeseburgers!") - but usually I mix some stone ground mustard together with balsamic vinegar and use that on the sandwich. I like the Hawkwind mustard, but for this meal, I'm going to go back to the balsamic-mustard mix.

Anyway, that's a lot of preamble for a simple recipe:
French bread
Sliced tomato
Arugula
Goat cheese brie
Tuna in olive oil
Balsamic vinegar + stone-ground mustard
Kalmata olives, optional
Hard-boiled egg, sliced, optional

Sandwich it up and enjoy!

Rigatoni with Tuna and Green Olives

This is my own recipe, and a good weeknight meal since it takes very little time and pretty simple, around-the-house ingredients.

Specifically:
3/4 lb pasta
4 tbsp (? I don't measure this - just for drizzling in the pan) olive oil
1 small can tomato sauce
2-3 large cloves of garlic, minced
2 cans tuna fish in olive oil
1 jar green olives (unstuffed), rinsed to ease the saltiness and halved (pitted, too)
1/4 cup olive juice from olives
2-3 medium tomatoes, chopped

Start boiling the water for the pasta and cook the pasta as you work on the sauce. In a large saucepan over medium heat, drizzle olive oil, then add the oil from the tuna. Let it heat a little, then add the garlic and let it simmer (as a rule, never let garlic burn or brown). Add the tomato sauce, tomatoes, olive juice, and stir. Give it some time to start bubbling lightly and to soak up the flavor of the olive oil and garlic, then turn it to low. When the pasta is about five minutes from done, add the olives and the tuna and mix into the sauce. Combine with pasta and serve.

Joef's Spicy Green Beans

This is Joef's own creation. And it's delicious. And hot. Really, really hot. Like, walk around the room waving your hands at your mouth/cursing at Joef hot. Mmmm.

Here's his recipe:

Fresh green beans, washed and stemmed
Three "heaping" tbsp red chili paste (we like Sambal Oelek)
Three cloves of garlic, pressed in a garlic press
1 whole habanero, pressed in a garlic press
1/3 cup (or so) soy sauce

Mix all ingredients besides the green beans together in a small bowl to make the sauce. Sautee the green beans together with the sauce over medium heat, until beans are cooked, but still slightly crisp. Serve!

Cheeseburgers!

Well, it's April 1 and in the 70s in Madison - definitely time for the first grill of the season.

I have to say, Joef and I make a pretty mean burger. I mean, these things are really good. I think the onion salt is the key. Maybe it's just the joy of being able to be outside for sustained periods of time at 9pm at night without catching frostbite. Maybe it's listening to Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings on record as we prep the meat. Heck, maybe it's just the beer.

In any case, it's definitely:

PATTIES:
1 lb ground beef, lean
Onion salt to taste
Minced garlic to taste
Minced jalapeno to taste

TOPPINGS, in this particular case:
Prosciutto
Goat brie (me), or cheddar (Joef)
Arugula
Sliced tomato
Hawkwind HEAT mustard (made locally, in Baraboo!)

And, of course, the bun.

We mix the onion salt, minced garlic, and jalapeno together in the patty. Then throw it on the grill. Best if you can melt the cheese on the burger while it's still on the grill, at the same time as you're lightly grilling the buns. Joef gets full credit for all the grilling.

What a wonderful way to start the spring.