Friday, October 27, 2006

Restaurant Quality Pasta


This is to be part daily journal, part vegetarian cookbook, part connection to all those people I became so close to last year when you invited me into your homes and onto your couches and i invited you to come along on the road with laurengoescrosscountry. I miss this daily reflection and feedback so I thought I’d start another blog. With this one, rather than invite you to follow me on the road, I’m inviting you to come over for dinner.

I never measure, let alone write anything down so I thought it would be fun just to try and capture how I think about food and cooking. I also just did a seven day fast a few weeks ago so I have become hyper aware and incredibly appreciative of everything I’ve been eating.

So...what's for dinner?

Well today was Friday and tonight I left work just before 5pm. Nona had a play date all afternoon so I had plenty of time to actually cook this evening. Last weekend, I got the largest head of the most beautiful broccoli I had ever seen at Sorgels Farm Market out in the north hills where we went pumpkin picking. All of my meals have been based on this broccoli and the equally large head of cauliflower I got at the same time. Tonight I wanted to finish it up.

As a side note...I’ve been making this great salad with cauliflower for lunch everyday. It’s incredibly flavorful and really doesn’t have any fat, unless you add walnuts. The lettuce I had laying around was some variety of green from my Gpa’s garden.

Naked Salad

Red Leaf Lettuce - tore up
Any Other Lettuce or Greens - tore up
Cauliflower - lightly steamed and separated into mini florets
Sun Dried Tomatoes - sliced thin
Walnuts - toasted and chopped
Chickpeas - drained and rinsed
Braggs (liquid amino acids) - a few squirts
Black Pepper - cracked fresh

Toss the chick peas with few squirts of Braggs and cranks of the pepper mill. Let marinade over night. Bring to work with the salad in a separate container so it doesn’t get soggy. Toss at lunchtime, it doesn't need any other dressing. Delicious! For those of you who have never tried it, Braggs is the best! Use it instead of soy sauce for a healthy low sodium alternative.

So...back to dinner.

Tonight I made as Sam would say, “restaurant quality pasta.” Working backwards from my head of broccoli, I cut it up in to good sized florets. I try to break the smaller florets out of the larger heads individually rather than just cutting them. When I do use a knife (when the florets are really tightly packed) I only follow the branches. There is no reason for this other that I think it makes the finished product look prettier and as far as I can tell pretty just tastes better. It won’t make up for bad taste, but it can make a good dish great.

Restaurant Quality Pasta

Broccoli - separated into hearty florets
Orecchiette - "little ears", Donatellis has them
(Any chunky pasta shape like rigatoni or farfale would work too)
Olive Oil
Soy Margarine
(or any kind of margarine or butter or even extra olive oil if that’s all you have. You could also use flax oil or some other supplement oil here to as you won’t have to cook any more after this point.)
Sun Dried Tomoatoes - sliced thin
(these came from Sorgels too dried but still moist and not packed in anything.)
Salt
Garlic - minced
Lemon - one half squeezed

Put water on to boil in a big pot.

Chop the garlic finely with a good sharp chef’s knife. Do as I say and not as I do; mine is truthfully painfully dull. My kitchen is also painfully cold. I kept taking an extra long time to wash my hands to keep them under the hot water. Slice the sun dried tomatoes. (If your knife is sharp you won’t need the following information.) A trick I use to keep the tomatoes from squishing and making a mess and just being kind of annoying to cut is to stack one on top of another middles touching. I then use a serated kniw to slice thin strips. Put a couple tablespoons of oil in the bottom of a big hot chefs pan. When you see the oil start to look thinner and move quicker around the pan when you tilt it, it’s hot. Toss in the chopped garlic. Let cook for just a few seconds. Then toss in the tomato slices. Toss for another few seconds. Then grind in pepper and a hefty pinch of salt.

When your water boils, dump in pasta. I used half a pound. Add a tablespoon or so of salt. It really adds flavor to your pasta.

Meanwhile…rinse your broccoli and dump into your garlic. The kitchen should smell amazing at this point. Sautee for a few minutes until the broccoli turns bright green. You can add a little bit more salt at this point if you like too, I’d taste a bite here anyways just because I love broccoli so much. At this point you can also take a few tablespoons of the pasta water out and sprinkle them on your broccoli to sort of steam it as you sautee it. I found this helps it cook faster and stay crunchier. Sometime when I’m trying to be really speedy I just dump the broccoli in the water and boil it for a couple minutes and them scoop it out into my pan before I put the pasta in.

This could probably feed three normal people, two of my friends or as it were tonight…just me.