My Food Geek

A monthly event dedicated to food photography.

CLICK is theme-based. Each month, entries will be invited based on a culinary ingredient or concept. This month’s theme is noodles. I tried my best to come up with something original yet photogenic as well. While I think the pasta came out much better than expected, my photos came out just average. The dish was good enough to talk bout so here’s the story.

A few weeks ago at the local farmer’s market I picked up a butternut squash, just because. I really had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I knew it would keep for at least a month while I decided its fate. While I was thinking about what I could do for this month’s CLICK I came up with the idea to make a twist on butternut squash ravioli.

The raviolis are usually filled with cooked squash puree that is mixed with a light cheese like ricotta and some select spices. They’re quickly cooked in some salted boiling water and then served with a light sage butter sauce. This is usually a good dish but I didn’t want to go through all the troubles of making the raviolis and a filling to go along with them. I decided to deconstruct the dish into the parts I liked best and make a few changes. First I started off with some freshly made, extra thick noodles.

Fresh pasta is something that everyone should know how to make. There’s only a few ingredients to knead together, a little bit of rolling (by hand or by machine), and then you cut the pasta into any shape you want. I skipped using the pasta maker for these noodles and just rolled them out on the counter top with a rolling pin. I left these noodles quite thick and cut them in wide strips to keep with the ravioli inspired dish. The recipe is a quick one and very easy to remember:

Fresh Pasta

3 cups flour
4 eggs
pinch of salt

If you choose to make the pasta by hand, pile the flour on the counter top, make a well in the center, and crack the eggs into the well. Slowly incorporate the eggs into the flour until you can bring the dough together for kneading. You may need a little more flour, you may not use all the flour, it all depends on the day usually. Once the dough is smooth, let it rest for about 20 minutes and then roll out and shape as desired.

If you choose to make the pasta by machine, throw all the ingredients in a food processor and process on high. It should turn to a course meal. You may need to add either an additional egg or some olive oil to the food processor while it is running to get the dough to come together. Dump the pasta meal on the counter and knead for a minute or so. Let dough rest for about 20 minutes and then roll out and shape as desired.

I use both of these methods regularly depending on my mood and they both are fairly easy and always reliable. There’s only a few things that can go wrong and they’re easily fixed. If your dough is too dry, add more liquid: water, oil, eggs — they all work. If your dough is too wet, add a little more flour. If your dough is too lumpy, knead more. That’s it.

While my pasta was resting I worked on turning the filling of the ravioli into a sauce. I started working on the squash first. It was peeled, diced, tossed with olive oil, and baked in the oven until it was just browning on top. I set it aside to cool and contemplated a sauce. I knew I wanted something buttery but I also wanted to have something a bit creamy. Butter was the first ingredient, nearly a whole stick, cooked slowly until browned and fragrant. I finely sliced a large shallot and softened it in the browned butter sauce until nearly transparent. For the coup de grace, I finished the sauce off with a good shot of heavy cream which helped to emulsify the sauce somewhat. I added a bit of pasta water to the sauce to bring it all together and tossed the squash in to heat it through. The pasta made it into the sauce shortly after and the sauce coated everything nicely. I sprinkled the whole thing with some freshly dried sage and plated it up.

How did it come out? The eater loved it. As usual I was unhappy with some aspect of the dish. I thought the noodles were a little too thick and the dish wasn’t as pretty as I hoped. While the sauce did have a good deal of butter and cream in it, it didn’t come off as being too heavy or oily. The squash matched well with the sauce and the wide noodles were a very good vehicle for the rich, creamy sauce. Did it capture the spirit of butternut squash ravioli? I’d say so.

Lately, we’ve been a little behind eating our vegetables. Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming having vegetables delivered to your house every Wednesday, whether you need them or not.
Here’s a little something I dug out of The Greens Cookbook that uses many of the vegetables that we’ve been stockpiling these days.

My main goal was to find a recipe that would use up the large bunch of chard I had sitting in the refrigerator from last week. I grabbed this veggie-centric cookbook and hoped for the best. Apparently some eater already got to this book and marked several recipes with post-it notes, this recipe being one of them. I think the note read something like, “Yummy! I want to eat this!” or something like that.

I quickly read the recipe and found that I had just about everything on hand except for the buckwheat linguine that the recipe suggested. I made the decision to make homemade egg pasta with white flour as a substitute; in the end it all worked out. If you do happen to have some fresh pasta on hand, this recipe would make for a nice quick and light dinner.

Linguine with french lentils carrots and chard
(Adapted from The Greens Cookbook)
2-3 carrots finely diced
6 leeks finely diced
1 bunch of chard chiffonard
3 cloves garlic

1 cup lentils picked over
2 bay leaves

1 lb fresh pasta
Shaved pecorino Romano cheese
Salt, pepper, olive oil

Place lentils, bay leaves, and 4 cups of water in a small pot and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes or until lentils are tender but not falling apart. Drain immediately and toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Remove bay leaves.

Bring a large 6qt pot of water to a boil. (for the pasta)

In a large skillet saute leeks, carrots, and garlic until softened. Add the lentils, chard, and about one cup of water and lower heat to a simmer. Cook for about five minutes or until the chard is just wilted.

When the vegetables are almost done, cook pasta. Fresh pasta only takes about two to three minutes to fully cook. Drain pasta and add it to the vegetables along with several tablespoons of olive oil. Adjust seasoning and simmer for one minute to blend flavors.

Immediately turn out onto a serving dish and top with freshly shaved Romano cheese.

I haven’t quite gotten the hang of this whole blogging regularly thing, and have not been keeping up on my part of the writing! I have, however, continued to get to eat a variety of wonderful creations that the foodie has made. One of these a few weeks ago was Goat Cheese and Beet Tortelloni.

We had gotten beets in our CSA delivery, so the foodie was looking for something to do with them. Being the continuously creative chef that he is, he saw goat cheese in the fridge and decided that goat cheese and beets would pair well together in a pasta dish. I wish I had his knack for thinking of delicious food combinations, but I think that’s why he is the foodie and I am the eater!
Beets tend to make wonderfully colorful dishes, and this one was no exception. The beets in this recipe hide inside the pasta, so a pureed beet sauce added the beautiful deep red color.

Goat Cheese and Beet Tortelloni

Filling:

2 medium sized beets
4 ounces goat cheese
2 tbls bread crumbs
zest of 1/2 a lemon

Bake beets, wrapped in foil, in 400F oven for about 45min or under soft
After beets have cooled, slide skins off and finely grate beets
Place grated beets, goat cheese, bread crumbs, and lemon zest in the workbowl of a food processor fitted with metal blade.
Pulse mixture until it is fully combined

Assembly:

Beet and cheese filling
1.5lbs fresh pasta sheets
(round dumpling wrappers found in Asian markets work, too)

Cut prepared pasta sheets with a 2.5in circular cutter. You should get about 48 rounds
Place 1 tsp of filling on pasta round
Dip fingertip into water and dampen edge of round
Fold in half while trying to push as much air out as possible
Overlap both pointy ends and press together
Repeat until all wrappers are used up
Cook in salted boiling water for 2-3 minutes or until they float to the top of the water

Tortelloni can be made up to 1 week ahead and kept refrigerated

Last night my friend Marcelo and I made orecchiette for Christmas Eve dinner. I roped Marcelo into making the pasta with me since individually crafting each piece of pasta is a bit time consuming if done alone. I made a simple pasta dough from semolina, high-gluten flour, and water; nothing else. After working the dough on the counter, we rolled it out, sliced it up, and pressed out a whole bunch of orecchiettes.

The recipe I came up with used radish tops, sauteed radishes, and Italian sausage. “Cooked radishes?” you say? I thought the exact same thing when I made this in the past using penne pasta and omitting the sausage. The radishes take on an almost turnip flavor, much more mellow than their raw counterparts. The greens aren’t anything new and taste very much like spinach. A little bit of olive oil and red wine holds the whole dish together.

Orecchiette, sausage, and radishes

1lb orecchiette
3 Italian sausages, casings removed
2 bunches of radish greens
1 bunch of radishes
1 cup red wine
6tbls olive oil

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.

While the water is coming to a boil, cook sausage in 3 tablespoons of olive oil until lightly browned.

Add radishes and greens and stir into sausage. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes to blend flavors.

Cook orecchiette according to directions (if using fresh made, cook until they begin to float)

Add cooked pasta to sausage and radish mixture and add red wine. Simmer for a few more minutes to combine flavors. Add the remaining olive oil and correct seasonings.