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May 21 2013

Whole Wheat Fusilli with Chive-Basil Pesto and Pecorino Romano

 

So um, yeah I don’t have any chocolate cake for you this week. Or for Jason for that matter. I feel like such an evil witch! Thing is, after coming back from Florida and eating like rabid pigs the entire 10 days I sorta felt like we needed to dial back a bit and treat our bodies to more healthful and nutritious things. I’ve also upped my workout game for this month and was excited to hear from Jason that he was going to start running after work. I’m kind of a fitness junkie (if you haven’t already noticed from all my obsessive Instagram photos) so the fact that he decided to do it on his own made me really happy.

When we got back from Florida, one of the first things I noticed was my overflowing herb garden. I was surprised to see that my cilantro had grown back. I thought that was an annual? My oregano and thyme were flowering, but my chives…oh my chives! I have to tell you, I’ve had this original plant since we were still living in the apartments about 9 years ago and back then it was a tiny little sucker in one of those brown plastic pots you buy them in. Since then, it’s grown (and over-grown and invaded) into huge, massive plantings in our raised garden bed. It’s even started to creep out and into the grass! I never realized how invasive this thing is. I’m not too bothered by it though because I’m just happy it continues to come back each year with little effort from me. Jason might have a different sentiment though since he’s the one that has to trim them back. Oops!

I really, really love this pasta dish. Whenever I make it for my clients I always tell myself, ‘This is really good. I should make it for myself sometime.’ It’s really rather comical– there will be times where I’ve made a refrigerator-full of delicious gourmet food for my client and then I come home and stuff my face with a lazily put together piece of peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It’s then that I wonder, ‘Well, how does that work?’

Oh well.

The chives in this pesto are really somethin’. And I like adding a little bit of lemon to this to perk it up. Walnuts always seem to be my first choice when making pesto, mainly because it’s what my grandma uses but also because I happen to think it tastes the best. Remember to keep a little bit of pasta water to add to the pesto later to make the sauce– it is your friend.

 

 

Whole wheat fusilli with chive-basil pesto and Pecorino Romano

Serves 4-6

 

1 cup chopped chives

1/2 cup chopped basil

1 large garlic clove

3/4 cup walnuts, toasted

Zest 1 lemon

Juice 1/2 lemon

1 tablespoon mayonnaise, preferably homemade

1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese

Pinch Aleppo chili flakes or red pepper chili flakes

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 cup olive oil

 

12 ounce box whole wheat fusilli

1/3 cup pasta water, reserved

1/3 – 1/2 cup walnuts (depending on how many nuts you want dispersed through the pasta), toasted and chopped roughly

Pecorino Romano cheese, for serving

 

Set a large pot of water to boil. Once it does, throw in a generous amount of salt and toss in the fusilli, stirring, and then letting cook until al dente. When it’s done cooking, ladle out 1/3 cup of the pasta water and put it into a large bowl where you’ll combine the pasta and pesto together. Drain the pasta and set aside.

In a food processor combine the chives, basil, garlic, walnuts, lemon zest and juice, mayo, Pecorino Romano, Aleppo/red pepper chili flakes, salt and pepper. While it processes, drizzle in the olive oil until completely incorporated. Taste for seasoning.

Add pesto into large bowl with pasta water and then add in the fusilli. Toss together gently with large spoons until the pesto sauce has coated all the noodles wonderfully. Add in the toasted chopped walnuts and toss again. Serve immediately or at room temperature with freshly shaved Pecorino Romano.

Note: If you have leftovers, eat them straight out of the fridge or at room temperature. I find that if you warm up pasta that already has pesto on it, the sauce dries out. Cold or room temperature pasta though is very delicious and makes for a light, spring lunch!

 

comment
May 21, 2013 - 1:18 pm

Eileen - Pesto pasta! It is truly the greatest dinner for hot days. :) I love the idea of adding chives for a pungent kick.

May 21, 2013 - 3:08 pm

Stephanie - Eileen, it really is! There’s nothing that I loathe more than eating something hot and greasy on a hot day. Yuck! This is really satisfying and I don’t feel so bad eating a bowl of it. :)

May 21, 2013 - 9:51 pm

Linda - Oh my gosh Stephanie, your workouts look so intense! I could never do them. I’ve had to acknowledge that I have absolutely no core strength whatsoever. I literally can’t do a crunch. Isn’t that sad?

Anyway, ramps and chives! Yum. It’s the sort of thing I wish I could open the fridge up to, you know, without having to go through the process of making the darn thing. After whipping up a batch of ramp pesto the other week, I couldn’t rid my immersion blender of the smell of the ramps! It was really gross, because I use the same blender to make smoothies, haha.

I hope you eventually post your cake! (But I’m also a little relieved that you didn’t. I need to tone down this summer, and cyber-temptations don’t help, you know?)

May 22, 2013 - 7:40 am

Stephanie - Linda, the workouts are tough and most of the time I think I’m crazy for doing them but at the end of the day, I absolutely LOVE it! :-D

Oh no! Do you have a plastic blender? Sometimes with plastic blenders the aroma can really linger for quite some time. Yummy…garlicky smoothies! :-p

I know I know, I do feel bad for not making a cake. Maybe I will surprise him soon with a mini one. :-D Now I just need to figure out measurements and get a tiny cake pan. Grrr…I am SO not a baker at heart.

May 14 2013

New Mexico chile + cumin-spiced butternut squash tacos with cilantro-lime sauce

 

It was Jason’s birthday this past Saturday and we spent the entire day gallivanting around Ann Arbor, using this birthday deal Wiki page as a guide, and scored free cupcakes, cookies, and chocolates. He even got his lunch and dinner free! I’m sorta beating myself up for not discovering this goldmine sooner– we could have been milking this sucker dry for years! Oh well, I’m already planning out my birthday route and will have lots of goodies come August. Apologies if I sound like a greedy 12 year old.

I was initially planning on baking a chocolate yellow cake for Jason’s birthday (his favorite cake ever and probably would have been totally fine with a boxed mix but, eh…you feel me right?) and blogging about it today if it came out well. But since we have desserts galore in the fridge (did I mention all the free things we got?!) I thought to postpone until maybe next week.

So, instead I give you tacos. These are the kind I make for my clients all the time.  They’re super easy, fairly healthy (don’t mind all that mayo sauce…), and totally good. They’re sorta sweet and spicy from the brown sugar and New Mexico chile powder and the queso fresco and cilantro-lime sauce gives it a yummy savoriness. I’m going to insist you make New Mexico chile powder a staple in your spice repertoire because it’s seriously so dang good and makes everything taste that much better. It’s got a wonderful earthiness and spice to it which I love and I always reach for it as a dry substitute for aji colorado, a Peruvian chile base.

 

 

New Mexico chile + cumin-spiced butternut squash tacos with cilantro-lime sauce

Serves 4 people

 

2 3/4 pound butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cubed (about 7 cups total cubed squash)

 

// Preheat oven to 375 degrees and arrange grates so that they’re closest to the center.

Line 2 baking sheets with aluminum foil and divide cubed butternut squash onto them. Measurements for spices are per baking sheet. If you’d prefer, you can dump the butternut squash into a large bowl and mix the spices in there; just make sure to double the measurements I have specified below. I like to just do them straight on the baking sheet so I don’t have extra stuff to wash later.

 

[Measurement amounts are per baking sheet]

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black  pepper

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1/4 teaspoon coriander

3/4 teaspoon New Mexico chile powder

1/2 teaspoon brown sugar

2 tablespoons olive oil

 

// Toss butternut squash with spices until totally coated and spread out on baking sheets. Roast in the oven for 20 minutes, give the squash a toss with a spatula and move baking sheets to the other grate. Cook for another 25 minutes. Toss again and let cool slightly.

 

 

For the cilantro-lime sauce:

Makes 3/4 cup

 

3/4 cup mayonnaise, preferably homemade

1 tablespoon fresh lime  juice

1/3 cup packed cilantro leaves

1 garlic clove

1 1/2 teaspoons Cholula, or hot sauce of your choosing

1 tablespoon lukewarm water

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

 

// Put all ingredients into a mini food processor and give it a whir until everything is combined. Taste for seasonings. This keeps in the fridge, covered, for about a week.

 

Taco accompaniments:

Corn tortillas, softened and warmed through on a grill pan

Sliced red onions

Queso fresco, crumbled

Cholula sauce

Fresh lime wedges

Fresh cilantro leaves

 

// Serve tacos with warm corn tortillas, cilantro-lime sauce, red onions, queso fresco and cilantro. Squeeze extra lime juice and Cholula on top too if you’d like.

 

 

comment
May 14, 2013 - 7:14 pm

fatpiginthemarket - Dry substitute to Aji Colorado…you know I’m all over that! It’s officially on my hunting list.

p.s. I also like yellow cake with chocolate icing. It was my grandmother’s favorite and she made it as a sheet cake.

May 14, 2013 - 7:44 pm

Eileen - I could so go for a plateful of these tacos right now! Never mind that I had tacos for lunch…and tostadas for dinner last night. All tacos all the time! :)

May 14, 2013 - 8:29 pm

Linda - What a wonderful treatment for butternut squash! I’m not a huge fan of squash ni general because it tends to be bland and, I dunno, mealy? Mushy? What do you call that consistency? But I know it’s super healthy, and anything covered in ample spice, particularly chile powder, gets me really excited. And the cilantro lime sauce is totally something I would use as a general, all-purpose dip.

Also, happy belated birthday to your husband! A birthday deals Wiki page?! You guys must’ve had a blast. I’m usually too bashful to redeem offers, but on my birthday, anything goes, haha.

May 14, 2013 - 8:35 pm

Stephanie - Jorie,

Yes! I’ve been using New Mexico chile powder A LOT lately. I’m sure you’d find all sorts of creative new ways to use it in recipes too. :)

I don’t know if I’ve ever had an amazing yellow cake before but dang, now that it’s on the docket for next week I better make it amaze-balls right? Crap…the pressure is on.

May 14, 2013 - 8:36 pm

Stephanie - Eileen,

I could totally live off tacos every day for life. It’s really all the sustenance we have when we go to our timeshare in Cabo every year (besides alcohol…duh… :-p). I just lounge and sit by the beach eating fish tacos all day. Oh woe is me. :-p

May 14, 2013 - 8:39 pm

Stephanie - Linda,

Yeah sometimes squash can feel a bit mealy but that’s usually an indication that it’s not cooked thoroughly. They should yield quite a bit and mostly melt in your mouth. :) And can you tell I love to put sauces on EVERYTHING? I’m tempted to make a spin-off blog on just that. Or just bread pudding because I love that too.

I did feel sort of awkward asking people (I did all the asking at every stop b/c it was HIS birthday after all) if they did anything “special” for birthdays but after the 10th time, you got the hang of it. *wink*

May 15, 2013 - 12:19 am

Sarah - YUM, this sounds so delicious. I love vegetarian tacos, and brown sugar spiced butternut squash sounds amazing! And the sauce too. Nailed it! I’m starving right now.

May 15, 2013 - 7:28 am

Stephanie - Sarah, thanks! I always find that adding just a touch of sugar to roasting vegetables helps it caramelize a bit faster. Super yummy. :)

May 16, 2013 - 12:57 am

Kankana - This is my first time in your blog and I SO LOVE the name :) Of course your photos and recipes are stunning too and that cilantro lime sauce sounds like a aioli. Absolutely delicious it sounds. So glad to find your blog :)

May 16, 2013 - 7:31 am

Stephanie - Kankana, hello there and welcome! Yeah the cilantro lime sauce is pretty much an aioli– I can’t not make some sort of mayo-based sauce for every dish, I love them!

May 19, 2013 - 12:37 am

Island Vittles - Well if those aren’t some of the prettiest tacos I’ve ever seen! Theresa

May 19, 2013 - 3:19 pm

Stephanie - Theresa, aw shucks! I think fish tacos in particular are really easy to gussy up and make pretty.

Apr 23 2013

Cod potato cakes + creamy tarragon lemon sauce

I’m sorta kinda obsessed with tarragon lately. Last week I treated myself to at-home smoked salmon and bagels with a lovely tarragon-shallot cream cheese– the latter of which I’m still happily finding things to slather it on as a means for quick delivery to mouth (it’s seriously so good guys, especially mixed in with scrambled eggs!), and since I loved it so much and am a huge tarragon fan, and let’s be real here…since I still had a mess of it still chilling in my fridge, I wanted to come up with another way of  using it before we leave for Florida on Saturday.

I love potatoes. But I mean, who doesn’t right? And I’ve always had an affinity for them all smashed up and fried into patties. It’s got that creamy inside, crunchy outside thing going on and then when you top it with a super yummy sauce, it’s just like…whoa, close your eyes good. So, while I started playing around with a recipe in my head I knew for sure that it had to include these potatoes since I was already getting way excited about the prospect of eating it, but I also wanted to toss in something else that would play nice texture-wise and at the same time help tie in the tarragon bit, and it was then that the idea of adding cod struck me. Cod, relatively speaking, is a fairly mild fish with good flakiness to it and thought it would pair well with the potatoes and especially the tarragon, since that herb seems to go hand-in-hand with seafood most of the time.

Guys, this ish was bananas. Sometimes when I eat something really yummy I take super small bites just to prolong the goodness. This was one of those times. I never wanted to get to the end! And when I did (unfortunate but expected), I pretty much wiped off any last remnant of sauce from my plate with my finger.

 

 

Creamy tarragon lemon sauce

Makes 1 cup

 

1 small shallot, chopped roughly

3/4 cup mayonnaise, preferably homemade

1 1/2 tablespoons packed fresh tarragon leaves

Zest from 1 lemon

Juice from 1/2 lemon

S + P

 

// Put all ingredients into a small food processor and whir together for a few seconds until everything is chopped finely and combined. Season to taste. Stash in the fridge. This keeps for about a week.

 

Cod potato cakes

Makes 10 cakes (kind of a weird number but plan on serving 2 cakes per person)

 

1 pound cod, cut into 4 filets and seasoned with s + p

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

 

// In a medium-sized fry pan heat up the butter and olive oil over medium heat. Put the cod in the pan and cook until golden on both sides and mostly cooked through, about 7 minutes total. Set aside on a plate. Clean out pan with a paper towel.

 

3/4 pound Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed clean and diced small

S + P

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 leek, cut in half lengthwise, cleaned thoroughly, and sliced thin

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon fresh tarragon leaves

 

// In the same fry pan, add butter and olive oil and let it sizzle over medium heat. Toss in the potatoes and get them well coated with the fats. Season with salt and pepper and cook until golden and cooked through. Add in the sliced leeks, garlic, and tarragon and saute with the potatoes, using a fork to slightly smash everything together. Cook until fragrant. Put all of this into a large bowl.

 

2 teaspoons grated Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons mayonnaise, preferably homemade

1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs

1/4 teaspoon dry mustard

Pinch cayenne pepper

S + P

1 egg

 

Olive oil, for frying

 

// Grab your cod and break it up into pieces into the bowl with the potatoes and leeks. Then, add the Parmesan cheese, mayonnaise, panko, dry mustard, cayenne pepper, and s + p. Taste for seasonings, adding more spice to suit. Then, add the egg and mix everything together until combined.

Using an ice cream scoop, portion out mixture and form into cakes. Put on a plate and stash in fridge to chill for about 30 minutes.

When ready to fry them up, grab a pan and drizzle with olive oil. Turn up the heat to medium-high and place the cakes onto the pan in batches, and cooking until both sides are golden brown, about 5-7 minutes total. Set them onto a paper towel-lined plate to drain.

Serve warm with a generous dollop of tarragon lemon sauce.

 

comment
April 23, 2013 - 12:26 pm

Denise - Seriously? I just read your salmon post earlier this morning (after a failed attempt of hitting the gym), and now I refresh my feed and you are back with cod. We LOVE cod, salted and unsalted. I blame the love affair to our family backgrounds, Lenny is Portuguese (100 %) and I am about a quarter Basque. I hate salmon cakes, so I am going to have to try these cod cakes, would make a great light dinner. I bet it would also be good with salted cod. Have you tried making your own salt cod? It is so easy – I become a convert after the first try.

April 23, 2013 - 1:17 pm

Michelle - This sounds so, so good. Sauces like that are totally meant to be licked off the plate!

April 23, 2013 - 1:42 pm

Stephanie - Hi Denise! You know, I actually thought about including salted cod whilst making the recipe but since I’ve never actually tasted it before, decided against. I bet it’s delicious though. How do you use it? And do you have a recipe??

April 23, 2013 - 1:44 pm

Stephanie - Hey Michelle! Gosh yes, I don’t think I make anything that does not have a sauce to go with. I think it’s what makes a dish, to be honest. And it gives me license to lick my plate clean every time. :)

April 23, 2013 - 2:19 pm

Eileen - Fishcakes! SO good. These do sound like a tarragon explosion, especially with that amazing tangy sauce. I want some! :)

April 24, 2013 - 2:02 pm

Stephanie - Hey Eileen! It’s a definite tarragon explosion. And I’m so incredibly sad because we just polished off the last of it two days ago, along with the sauce.

April 24, 2013 - 6:41 pm

Linda - I’ve never tried tarragon (kind of embarrassing, eh?) but I’ve always heard such lovely things about it. Although, to be honest, I’m pretty sure anything would taste good alongside potato/fish cakes. You just happened to find the best-tasting thing, haha.

April 24, 2013 - 9:28 pm

Stephanie - Hi Linda! You know, it’s only been about what…a couple years since I really started cooking with tarragon. I always add it to my compound butters now. Another herb I’d like to experiment with is chervil. I don’t think I’ve had it enough on its own to truly know what it tastes like. Have you fiddled with that much?

May 19, 2013 - 12:42 am

Island Vittles - You posted these for my birthday, but I just saw them now! These look fantastic. Cod is a favourite and a budget-saver in this house!

May 19, 2013 - 3:20 pm

Stephanie - Theresa, well happy belated birthday! Yes it’s true, cod is such a bargain! And it’s really one of my favorite fish– you can do so much with it.

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