Pasta Pietro for Friends

I am taking an oil painting class, something I have always wanted to do. My homework this week was to make this pasta recipe, created by my instructor, and paint from the experience of cooking it. I made it last night for hubs and some friends. It was delicious! I was a little worried about the amount of garlic, but the taste was delightful and it is an easy dish to put together. I am missing class this week for a much needed vaca, but will post the results of my painting later next week...

 Pasta Pietro, directly from PietroDesigns.com

• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 8 cloves garlic
• 35-oz can peeled tomatoes
• 1 small dried hot pepper
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
• 2 tbsp. capers
• large bunch Italian parsley, chopped
• 1 lb. imported Italian pasta (e.g. DeCecco)
• 10 sun-dried tomatoes

Heat oil in saucepan over medium heat. Chop garlic and saute for 2 minutes. Drain juice from tomatoes. Chop tomatoes and hot pepper and add to pan. Add salt, capers and black pepper. Cut each sun-dried tomato into 8 pieces and add to pan. Simmer for 20 minutes. Cook and drain pasta, preferably a short shape such as penne or fusilli. Remove half of sauce from pan. Toss pasta in pan and mix well with sauce and chopped parsley. Move pasta to 4 plates and ladle remaining sauce on top of each serving. Serves 4. Mangia!

Week 9: Chile Rellenos Frittata

Last week after posting on Facebook, a friend asked if I would be willing to make a Chile Rellenos frittata. Sure, why not—I've never made chile rellenos before, so it might be fun, right? Ugh. I decided there were two routes I could take with this frittata: the first route would be straight on, make rellenos and throw them on top of a frit; the second route could potentially be great, or boring...incorporate the common ingredients of chile rellenos into the frittata, giving a generalized experience—like you commonly get with themed omelets. I took the first route, deciding it would be more educational and adventurous to make the rellenos. I called my sister last night on my way home from work asking for help with this endeavor. She scanned over a recipe and gave me a general shopping list. I ended up running a slew of errands and didn't get home until 8 pm, only to find that the Woodhull housemother just dropped off copious amounts of Mexican food for the boys as a late dinner (they get spoiled during finals week). I was starving and couldn't resist the option of not cooking, and boy am I glad I chose not to tackle these last night.

It's not that they are hard to make, there are just a lot of steps. So many steps that I am attaching the scan instead of typing out the ingredients and instructions (if you click on the image it will get bigger)!

Things started out pretty roughly. I failed to blister the peppers enough, so after sitting in plastic bags for 20 minutes they were still unpeelable. Hubs, who is out on dorm duty tonight, checked in at this point as I was angrily not peeling poblano peppers. He had a great idea of putting the peppers directly over the gas flame on the stove. It didn't really work to well or maybe I wasn't patient enough. I decided that skins were perfectly fine staying put on the peppers and probably even good for you, like the crusts of bread...

I also failed to read ahead on this recipe, I sort of quickly glanced over the steps and figured it would be a good time to test a new whoopie pie recipe. My peppers were sitting in bags and the boiled potatoes were already mixed with the cheeses. But then it came time to fry...and oh dear, I have to separate my eggs and whip two whites to stiff peaks and then fold them into the well beaten light and creamy yolks? Crap. Typically, I would throw the whites in my Kitchen Aid and skip the whisk, however my kitchen was a mess and my mixer bowl was dirty, so I whisked my heart out and worked up a nice sweat. No biggie, just an unexpected little step.

I kept the frittata part very simple: 5 eggs, 1/8 cup of skim milk, s + p, and red pepper flakes. I cut the chile rellenos down a bit so they would fit in my pan and added them while the top was still very moist and then threw the pan in the broiler for a minute or two. I paired this guy with a light salad, a gob of fayeh greek yogurt sprinkled with chipolte tobasco + cilantro, and a Stella.

It was yummy. Hubbity loved it and came back for more. I'm a little bummed about the prep time, although now that I've done it, I'm sure I could stream line the process with a little old fashioned mise en place. I'm also bummed about the deep frier smell lingering in the kitchen.

Week 8: Chorizo & Shitake Frittata, Olé!

Hub's parents came to visit this weekend. Although they were unable to stay for frit night, they were able to turn us onto a great Korean grocery store, H-Mart. It's a chain, look for one near you. They have great produce and seafood—we were even able to find Chorizo there! It is a visual and olfactory feast for those who love interesting ingredients—and they have more kimchi that you can throw an enormous stick at.

Our good friends joined us for dinner last night. They are both from Spain and because of this, my husband insisted that the frittata have Chorizo in it. Apparently, Spain=Chorizo. We also picked up some gambas, baby Shanghai greens and vegetable pancakes to round out this hearty meal. Pictured below: Onions and shallots (a little over browned), Chorizo (naturally crumbled while sauteing), and my pre-sliced Shit ake mushrooms—got to love the packaging...

2 links chorizo, sliced and sauteed (casings removed)
1 small onion & 1 medium shallot (browned in canola)
5 large shitake mushroom heads, sliced and lightly sauteed
8 eggs
2 tbl agua
1 tbl heavy cream
1/4 cup shredded cheese + a bit more to sprinkle on top (we finally used the last of the Gruyere—typically I would use a different cheese in this particular frit, but part of the beauty of these are that you can empty out the fridge)
s + p to taste

After sauteeing the chorizo, onion, shallot and mushrooms (separately) incorporate them into the 8 eggs that have been beaten with the water, heavy cream, cheese and s+p. Go lightly on the salt—chorizo and cheese have plenty. It was a good frittata. You really can't go wrong with eggs, chorizo and mushrooms.

My sous (sous) chef was busy looking cute elsewhere in the house...

Chocolate Cake with Rich Chocolate Cream Frosting and Raspberry Filling

This cake was made for a friend's birthday, a chocolate-chocolate-raspberry request! I used my usual go to chocolate cake recipe, substituting 3/4 cup fresh coffee+ 3/4 warm water, instead of just 1 and 1/2 cups warm water. This cake is great, but you have to keep an eye on it because I've had it go dry on me very quickly and I loathe dry cake, who doesn't? I baked my three 8" pans for 15 minutes, rotated them and baked another 10 minutes and then toothpick checked them—not even close to being ready. I baked and checked for two 5 minute intervals until the toothpick was clean.

I set aside the cakes to cool and went about my other errands for the day. Later in the afternoon I made the raspberry filling and chocolate cream frosting. I halved the raspberry recipe which still yielded more than enough, but I could have been more generous with it in between the layers.

The chocolate cream frosting...the taste was delicious, the consistency, eh. The description describes it as soft and rich, mine started to set so quickly as I was frosting the cake—it resembled a ganache, it's consistency was like the inside of a truffle. Maybe I chilled it to long, maybe I over stirred? Sous chef hubs had to keep whisking to "warm" it as I was frosting the cake. This recipe is from Cook's Illustrated's New Best Recipe's. I took the below recipe and added another half of the ingredients for my extra cake layer.

Rich Chocolate Cream Frosting
(yields 3 cups, enought to ice one 8 or 9" two layer cake)

16 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chopped fine
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/3 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Place choc in heatproof bowl. Bring the cream to a simmer in a small saucepan over med-high heat, pour over choc. Add the corn syrup and let stand for three minutes. Whisk gently until smooth, Stir in vanilla. Refrigerate 1 to 1 1/2 hours, stirring every 15 minutes, until the mixture reaches a spreadable consistency. This frosting does not keep well, use within a day.

Assembly of the cake:
The bottom two layers, I cut off the top, about 1/4" to level off the surface. I was skimpy with the leveling because I wanted good height. I ended up having plenty of height and some pesky round edges in the layers that were a pain to cover with frosting. I added a layer of chocolate cream, then raspberry filling, then another layer of chocolate cream to the clean underside of the next layer. Same on the second layer and then finished off the whole cake with the choc. cream. It was good, but not great. I will likely not make the frosting again, it needed to be creamier. I loved the raspberry filling, but need to add double what I did.

Week 7: Heart Beets, Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day friends! Last night we were lucky to share our love frittata with friends. I wanted to incorporate V-day into the frittata and of course the rich beautiful red of beets came to mind. I upped the egg count for our guests and incorporated last week's techniques for a fluffy rich frittata. My mother-in-law gave us a wonderful pancake mold last Valentine's day in the shape of a heart and I was able to use the smaller part to shape the beets.

8 eggs
2 tbsp heavy cream
1 tbsp water
1/8 cup shredded Gruyere
1 small onion
1 medium shallot
sprinkle of cayenne
s+p to taste
beets (I used about 3/4 of a small can of sliced unsalted beets)
goat cheese

Saute the beets in a bit of oil and s+p for a couple minutes on each side, set aside on a paper towel. Finely slice the onion and shallot and saute for about 10 minutes, until nicely browned. Beat eggs, cream, water, Gruyere, cayenne, and s+p and pour into frittata pan. Cook on the oven top until the bottom and sides set. Throw the pan under the broiler for a minute or two, look for the top to set and become fluffy. Take out and add goat cheese medallions followed by your beets, place back under the broiler for a minute or two.

Delicious! Beets and goat cheese are a great love match, another keeper frittata. We served this with roasted white sweet potatoes, arugula salad and bubbly!

On another beet note, I used some of the leftover beet juice to dye frosting for my chocolate whoopie pies with rosewater-vanilla butter/cream cheese frosting. The cakes/pies were delicious, they had a great texture on the outside, although they were slightly dry and crumbly inside—maybe I cooked them a minute too long? The frosting was great, next time I will add more beet juice to get a richer pink (hard to see the color below). I was nervous about the frosting picking up the earthy fragrance of beets, but it didn't at all.

What a lovely way to end a lovely day.

Week 6: Mushroom, Gruyere, & Onions

Once again, our frittata was pushed to Monday night. A frit did not have a place in our Superbowl junk food menu. After last week's somewhat lackluster performance I wanted a little decadence. Gruyere and heavy cream in this week's frittata delivered the decadence and the calories.

6 eggs (2 of my had double yolks! sort of ew, but sort of cool!)
1 tbsp water
2 tbsp heavy cream
1/2 cup grated Gruyere
2 tbsp butter
1 small yellow onion (finely sliced)
1 small shallot (finely sliced)
4 ounces of mushrooms (I used a blend of bella, shitake and oyster)
s+p to taste

I sauteed the onion and shallot in a tbsp of butter for about 10 minutes, until they were nicely browned. In a separate pan I cooked the mushrooms in a tbsp of butter. Meanwhile the eggs were beat with the cream and water and I added the cheese and eventually the onion/shallot mixture and mushrooms. After cooking on the stove top for a few minutes I popped it into the broiler a little earlier then I usually do. This fluffed up and browned beautifully. The mushroom flavor was subtle, woodsy—the egg fluffy and rich. This is a keeper.

Week 5: The Target Frittata

Instead of making our weekly frittata on Sunday evening, we got to spend some quality time with good friends in our old neighborhood in Brooklyn. A fab friend turned 30 and her hubs & sister threw a surprise party at Sheepstation on 4th and Douglass. Sheepstation has yummy food and wonderful drinks—their dark n' stormy is top notch, a perfect balance of ginger and rum without being overly bitter or sweet.

So...this evening after work I drove to Wegman's only to find myself parking the car closer to Target. I had not been there in over a month and decided it was high time. I wandered around longer than expected and ending up getting very, very tired—I'm still a gal on the mend, so the idea of a trip to Wegman's after Target was daunting. Crossing my fingers, I made my way over to the 'grocery' section of the store and devised a plan for our week 5 frittata. I picked up eggs, tomatoes, basil and mozzarella and threw it in the cart with some pajama pants, mascara and a cute cable knit cardigan (couldn't get those at Wegman's). By the time I got home I was pooped—hubs to the rescue!

6 eggs
1 tomato
6 slices of mozzerela
basil leaves
1/2 shallot
1/2 clove of garlic
s & p to taste

Hubs chopped the shallots and garlic and sauteed them briefly before adding them to the 6 eggs. He placed the slices of tomato, basil and mozzarella on top and then placed the pan in the 350° heated oven. Despite my advice shouted from the couch, hubs did not use the broiler, so the cheese was not as melted as much as it could have been. It was tasty, but pretty basic—which makes sense for a Target frittata.

Advice for next time: Add 2 tbsp of water and/or milk, beat the eggs a little more, this frittata was lacking fluff (I shouted this advice too, but I guess he didn't hear...). Slice the tomatoes & cheese smaller and scatter more basil, so each bite has a mixture of the delicious flavors. And Broil!

P.S. the place mats and napkins are from Target too!
P.S.S. and don't worry, I know that my hubs was really sweet to make the frittata tonight and put up with my micro-managing shenanigans from afar.