Butternut Squash Ravioli with Hazelnut Cream Sauce and Crisped Sage

This idea came from my friend Angelia, who had this dish at a place in Canada she used to frequent. So we decided to try and recreate it during a pasta-making-fest we had. I will admit, I messed up the sauce the first time (cut me some slack, there was a lot going on…including wine!) but was quite successful the second time around. It’s also very easy, just don’t burn the hazelnuts and garlic like I initially did…

I posted once before about making pasta, spinach pasta. Making regular pasta is even easier, and much easier to handle (spinach pasta tends to be a little sticky due to the wetness of the spinach). The process is exactly the same as when I posted about spinach pasta starting with adding the eggs to the well of flour. For that reason, I will not rehash the whole pasta making/ravioli process here but will include photos and the approximate quantities of flour:eggs. Onward we go.

Butternut Squash Filling:
2 c butternut squash, cubed
~2 T brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Roast or boil squash until tender, mash and stir in other ingredients until desired taste reached. Make regular egg pasta dough for raviolis.

Pasta:

3 eggs

~2 ½ cups of flour (start with 2 cups for the well, then add as needed)

*Note, once you add the eggs to the well, beat just the eggs lightly with a fork until combined…then begin to add flour little by little.

As with the spinach ravioli, you can easily freeze the extras! Place flat on a baking sheet and stick in the freezer until frozen, then can put all into a plastic Ziploc bag.

Hazelnut sauce:

1 cup of hazelnuts, skins removed, chopped

1 T butter

1 large garlic clove, minced

~1 1/2 cups heavy cream

~10 sage leaves

Heat butter in pan over medium high heat, crisp sage leaves for about 5 minutes. Remove leaves and place hazelnuts in remaining butter until lightly browned then add garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Add cream and simmer. Stir frequently and continue to heat until desired consistency.

Put it all together and enjoy!

Nom away!

Koober Jr. 

Steak with Rosemary Red Wine Reduction

This was my first time cooking steak that didn’t involve steak tips on a grill. Experiment time! I chose a tri-tip steak, because ya know…it’s cheaper than some of the others. Still good though! The red wine sauce came about because I had a half a bottle of red wine that would’ve been less than appealing to drink. Next best thing, cook with it!

Ingredients:

1 lb steak

~1/2 bottle of wine

1 T unsalted butter

½ onion, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 T fresh rosemary, minced

2 tsp brown sugar

Olive oil

Salt

Preheat oven to 475, while the oven warms, heat a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat with ~1 T olive oil. Sear steak on each side until browned, about 5 minutes total. Put entire skillet in the oven and cook for 10-12 minutes. Remove and place foil over while making sauce, do not empty pan!

Place skillet with meat remnants back on stove over medium-high heat and add butter. Sauté onion until soft, then add most of the garlic and rosemary, set aside a small amount to add later.  Pour in wine and simmer for ~10 minutes. Add sugar and continue to simmer. Once liquid has halved, add the remaining rosemary and garlic. Continue to simmer until desired consistency is achieved.

Serve sauce with meat, and voila!

Veg suggestion: roast asparagus in oven at 350 for 15 minutes and top with crumbled goat cheese and aged balsamic (or balsamic reduction).

Until next time.

Koober Jr. 

Lobster Pizza

Had a few guests over this weekend to sample my first brew. I'm a non-hopsy beer person, so I tried a pretty mild "creamy" version for my initial batch. Turned out GREAT! Might try wheat beer, which is one of my favorites, next. At any rate: for appetizers with the beer I made fried calamari with homemade garlic aioli and mini- lobsta' pizzas. Here's what I did for the pizza.

Dough: just yeast (I used sourdough starter which I keep in fridge), water, flour. Pressed out into very thin rounds ala Italian pizza.

Sauce: Roasted fresh tomatoes with olive oil and Italian herbs sprinkled on top, put through food mill -- yum. [Hint: roast in oven in an easily cleanable pan on high temp (400-500) until well-browned on top; if you don't have a food mill, you can mush through a sieve.]

Lobsta: steamed Maine lobsta -- they're still reasonable this year, so find some and have fun!

Fresh basil leaves -- I have seven varieties in my herb garden: the one I used is for this is called -- pesto basil -- light green leaf with white edges, very fragrant and yummy. If you haven't tried lemon or lime basil --  they are REALLY yum!

Sprinkling of parmesan cheese (fresh from Italia, aged a long time!). Brought it back from my trip there.

Bake in hotish ovem (400-425) for a few minutes until crust is brown on bottom and begins to puff.

Enjoy.

Best,

Joe Koob

Veggie Lasagna with Spinach Pasta

Self-explanatory. Make it, it's delicious.

Veggie/tomato sauce:

1-15 oz can of crushed tomatoes

1-8 oz can of diced tomatoes

1-8 oz can of tomato sauce

1-5 oz can of tomato paste

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp basil

1 tsp salt/pepper each

2 T crushed red peppers

1 carrot, minced

1 celery stalk, minced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 c Brussel sprouts, chopped

1 small onion, chopped

1 zucchini, chopped

½ red pepper, chopped

2 c spinach leaves

Olive oil

Add 2 T olive oil to a large saucepan with minced carrot, celery and garlic and sauté on medium heat for 3-4 minutes.  Add oregano, basil, salt and pepper and sauté a couple more minutes. Proceed by adding Brussel sprouts, onion, zucchini and red pepper and allowing to cook for 10-15 minutes. Add all tomato products except for paste and simmer for 20 minutes. Add tomato paste and crushed red peppers. Allow to simmer until ready to use, add spinach 5 minutes before use.

Ricotta cheese filling:

15-oz part-skim ricotta

1 c parmesan

1 T parsley

2 tsp ground pepper

1 egg

2 c shredded mozzarella

Mix all ingredients together EXCEPT mozzarella well and place in fridge covered until use.

Spinach pasta:

2 ½ c all-purpose flour

1 egg

10 oz fresh spinach

Blanch spinach for 2 minutes, drain and rinse with cold water. Squeeze out as much water from the spinach as possible and place in a food processor. Pulse spinach several times. Add egg and pulse several more times to mix together well.

Create a well of flour and place spinach mixture in the center. Slowly begin to incorporate the flour into the spinach-egg mixture by whisking with a fork. Continue to mix until a dough is formed. Slowly add more flour while kneading the dough, just enough for it to not stick to the surface…do NOT add too much flour. Once a soft, lightly sticky dough has formed, wrap in plastic wrap and let sit for 15 minutes.

Roll out dough using a rolling pin or pasta maker until thin (if using a pasta maker, notch 3 or until desired thickness). Cut dough into the length needed for the pan being used (likely 9in x 13in).

Coat bottom of pan with a layer of the vegetable tomato sauce and top with one layer of the spinach pasta. Add ricotta mixture to the top of the pasta and sprinkle some mozzarella on top and any left over Parmesan you have.  Repeat layers ending with tomato sauce. Top with layer of mozzarella.

Cover lasagna pan with a cookie sheet (aluminum foil will cave and stick to the cheese) and cook at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes. Cook uncovered for 10 minutes, broil for the final 3-5 minutes.

Nom nom nom!

~Koober Jr.

Real Men Do Eat Quiche

And occasionally make it. Quiche is actually a great standby dish if you have a yen for throwing some things together and having it come out yummy. For any number of starter recipes search the web or you can go to the classic source: Julia Childs. From there you have a wide, wide range of possibilities both for the crust (or not – crust-less quiche), filling, egg mixture, size baking vehicle, etc. Here are some ideas.

Crust:

Crust has become an interesting development since my younger days. Back when I first learned to cook it was Crisco (brand name for solid vegetable shortening if you’re really young!) that most people used. And before that it was lard. Both make great crusts and to this day I think using “Crisco” is a lot more foolproof than butter. However, there are the health issues, of course. I don’t make a lot of crusts and often when I do, I create, so for a Quiche I typically go back to my mother’s old standard of solid vegetable shortening: it yields a light, flaky, yummy vehicle for the other ingredients to rest in. The old Betty Crocker cookbook has the measures, but essentially you’re talking 1/3 to ½ cup Crisco, 1 ¼-1 ½ cups flour, a nice dash of salt, and water. Mix well, roll out, place in pie plate, ramikins (individual), Quiche dish, whatever you are going to use.  Bake in hot-ish oven (375-425) until partially baked (5-8 minutes) Julia recommends a partially baked crust before adding the rest of the ingredients and she also recommends weighing the crust down with pie weights or, as I did in this case, I placed another, same-size, pie plate on top of the crust, pushed it down until it contacted the crust uniformly, and baked it this way.

If you want to go with butter, the key is COLD! Everything should be cold until you pop it in oven to bake.

Egg mixture:

Julia recommends only three eggs to a quantity of cream (1 ½ to 2 cups). Personally, I tend to go for a few more eggs and a bit less cream. It just changes the texture a bit. Experiment. You can vary this mixture quite a bit – cream, half-and half, even milk (2% or whatever). Depends on how ‘classic’ you want to be. I used five large eggs, and about half cream and half milk. Make enough to fill your dish to about a half inch from top of crust after the other ingredients are added.

What’s inside:

Cheese is not essential, and in some cases not even recommended. Classic Quiche Lorraine doesn’t have it according to Julia. I like adding cheese, and you can use any good melting cheese, though Swiss and its ilk are quite nice.

Veggies: I put in green and yellow zucchini squash, broccoli, shallots AND green onions, a bit of red bell pepper, and some ham, a bit of salt and pepper to taste, and Jarlsberg. Again, classically the quiche should focus on the eggs, but put in what you like in the quantities you like and adjust the amount of the egg mixture accordingly. For this quiche the emphasis was on flavor, I didn’t overwhelm it with veggies, etc.

Bake in hot-ish oven for about 45-50 minutes (350-375). Or, as I did in this case, because I had other things to do while it was baking, I cooked it slower and longer (300 for over an hour).

You may note that this whole dissertation goes back to my roots of being the Irreverent Gourmet. Nothing is sacred unless you make it so. Have some fun.

Joe

Pork Tenderloin with Cherry Rhubarb Sauce

I had an abundance of rhubarb I took from my mom's overly-zealous rhubarb plant in the backyard and what better way to use a bunch of rhubarb than to make a sauce! It just so happened I had just bought cherries, so I threw those into the mix as well. This whole meal was insanely easy and didn't take too long either! Win win. I forgot to take photos of mostly everything, so I apologize for the lack of visual aids.

1 c cherries; halved and pitted

2 c rhubarb, chopped

½ c onion, chopped

1 T balsamic vinegar

4 T sugar

¼ c water

Pork tenderloin

Olive oil

Soak cherries in balsamic vinegar and water for 15 minutes. In a saucepan, sauté onion in 2 T olive oil over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes. Add the cherry mixture, rhubarb, and sugar to the saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the rhubarb is tender and begins to fall apart; 5-10 minutes. Set aside for use.

Preheat oven to 425. Put ~2 T an ovenproof skillet and heat on medium-high; sear tenderloin on all sides until lightly browned. Place entire skillet into the oven and cook tenderloin for 15-20 minutes. Serve with sauce, veggies, etc.

~Koober Jr. 

Gnocchi Experiment

I am posting about this with the knowledge that I need to figure out the recipe a little bit more, at least for the sweet potato. The regular potato gnocchi came out pretty well!

Regular Gnocchi

3 medium Idaho potatoes

1 egg

~2 c all-purpose flour

¼ c grated parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

2 medium-large sweet potatoes

1 egg

~2c all-purpose flour

½ c grated parmesan cheese

¼ tsp grated nutmeg

Salt and pepper

Preparation that follows is the same for both the recipes, the problem with the sweet potato recipe is that the dough was still pretty sticky. Sweet potatoes are naturally ‘wetter’ and just may require more flour. I added more cheese for this reason, but I’ll update once I try making them again. Too much flour will make them heavy and chewy.

Peel and cut potatoes, place in a large pot and boil potatoes until tender. Drain and allow to cool. 

Mash potatoes with egg. Mix salt, pepper, nutmeg, cheese and flour together in a separate bowl. Slowly begin to mix in flour mixture until all incorporated then knead dough for 5-10 minutes.

Roll out small bits of the dough into long rope-like pieces about ½ inch in diameter. Cut 1 inch sections of dough. If desired, gently press the back of a fork into the 1 inch pieces then reshape into nuggets.

To cook: place into salted boiling water for about 5 minutes. Note: sweet potato gnocchi were taking longer to cook (probably the added flour) so if you make the two kinds together, I do not advise cooking them together. Drain and serve with sauce.

Here I made them with a Parmesan-Romano cream sauce.

Cream Sauce

2 Tbs butter

1/2 Tbs minced garlic

1/2 c heavy cream

1/2 c grated Romano cheese

1/4 c grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 tsp pepper

Melt butter in small sauce pan and add garlic. Saute for 3 minutes, then slowly add cream stirring continuously. Add cheeses and pepper and stir until melted.

You can also sautéed in a little butter and mixed in crumbled blue cheese (or something else). Quite tasty!

To freeze: lay gnocchi in one layer on parchment paper and a cooking sheet and place in freezer. Allow to become completely frozen before placing in Ziploc or Tupperware, if you are too eager they will stick together…

Happy eating.

Koober Jr.