Pasta Gorgonzola with Asparagus and Peas

The Secret Recipe Club is a relatively new fun way to meet new blogging friends.  Everyone is assigned a blog.  We're to choose a recipe from that blog, make it and post it at our assigned time along with a link to all the other Secret Recipe Club member's blogs.  Sounded like a lot of fun to me.  And, it was.  But, I had a heckuva time selecting a recipe.  The blog I  was assigned was CookwithSara@blogspot.com.  I kept reading and reading and reading and I wanted to make every other recipe. How to choose.  Sara's recipes have loads of great flavors and most of them are perfect for weeknights.  They're not too easy and not too tough.  Just perfect.  I finally narrowed my choices down to three.  Then, I realized I had a bunch of asparagus that really had to be used up.  The Pasta Gorgonzola with Asparagus and Peas it was. 

What did we think?  We absolutely loved this.  The only change I made was to thicken the sauce a bit more so it'd cling to the pasta a little better.  Typically, we'd eat this as a vegetarian meal with a salad and a glass of wine but as Sara says in her blog, if you're not into the vegetarian thing, just serve this as a side dish. 

Pasta Gorgonzola with Asparagus and Peas

Ingredients:

8 oz penne or gemeli
2 T butter (I increased this from 1 T)
2 T flour (I increased this from 1 T)
1 c chicken or vegetable broth
1 c frozen green peas
1/2 lb asparagus, trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces
1/2 c crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
1/3 c half and half


Directions:
Start your pasta water.  In a large skillet, melt the butter. 

When the butter is melted, stir in the flour. 

Start your pasta cooking. Allow the flour to cook for a few minutes

and slowly stir in the chicken stock. 

Cook until it's slightly thickened.   Add the cheese and stir until it melts in.  Add the half and half.  When the pasta has a minute to cook, add the asparagus and peas to the pasta water.  Drain the pasta vegetables and toss them into the skillet with the sauce. 

Toss to coat the pasta. 

Thank you Sara for a fantastic recipe!  I'm looking forward to finally  being able to follow your blog :-)

If you'd like to be a part of the Secret Recipe Club, here's the link:  Secret Recipe Club.

First Prize!

What a week!!!  I knew it was going to be a busy one when I counted appointments and found nineteen on the calendar.  As is usual, a couple rescheduled and a couple got added.  But, I was working my tookus off just to be prepared.  Then, in walks an auditor.  In my business, audits are regular.  As well they should be.  We're working with people's money.  Surprise audits are to be expected on a regular basis also.  The good news is that this fellow was experienced and we had zero deficiencies.  But, I was in the office or working from home fourteen hours a day.  I was totally exhausted.  Then, yesterday, I got an email that, shall we say, rather changed my energy level.  It was from the folks at Eggland's Best.  About a month ago I entered my Puttanesca Salad into their contest.  The email was telling me it won first prize!!!  Holy Cow!!!  I've entered a couple of contests before but have never won anything.  How much fun is this?

So, rather than share the Vietnamese Beef recipe I'd planned on sharing, I thought I'd do that later and share a link to the Puttanesca Salad recipe today.  Before I do, just a bit of history on the recipe.  Wikipedia says, "Spaghetti alla puttanesca (literally "whore's style spaghetti" in Italian) is a spicy, tangy, somewhat salty Italian pasta dish invented in the mid-20th century. The ingredients are typical of Southern Italian cuisine."

My first memory of spaghetti alla puttanesca was on a visit to Las Vegas twenty plus years ago to see my friends Steve and Terri.  Terri's mom had found the recipe in the Silver Palate cookbook and was raving about it.  It had all the ingredients I love:  olives, anchovies, garlic and yes, tomatoes.  It became one of my go-to pasta dishes.  When I met Connie I fixed it for him and he loved the dish as much as I did.  Fast forward to today and my love for poached eggs.  Once I figured out how to make them I knew I'd found my perfect egg.  Not that I was going to do without our go-to Sunday breakfast of a hard-cooked egg, halved and topped with an anchovy and capers and drizzled with olive oil.

Or, for that matter, egg salad, deviled eggs, frittata,

quiche, scrambled eggs, like Heartland Scramble

or any of the other wonderful ways to fix eggs.  But, a poached egg gives me a cooked white AND a runny yolk. Nirvana.  And, I've found that adding a poached egg to a dish finishes it in a way nothing else can do. 

Here are some of my favorite dishes with poached eggs:

Crabcakes Benedict

Poached Eggs on Feta Cheese

English Muffins with Spinach and Eggs

Last, but not least, here's the link to Eggland's Best Puttanesca Salad.  It combines two of my favorite things in one dish - puttanesca sauce and a poached egg.  And, it tastes really, really good!

Buttered Noodles with Toasted Sage

When I was a kid, one of my favorite side dishes was very fine egg noodles with butter, parmesan and parsley.  Mom made it regularly.  And, I'd have been happy with weekly.  I didn't make it for Connie for several years after we met.  It was one of those forgotten treasures.  Finally, one evening I didn't have a second side and the noodles popped into my mind.  He loved them as much as I did.  So, we've had them a couple of times a year since. 

I read this recipe and thought it looked like a complicated version of Mom's.  Not too certain I wanted to put the effort into that.  But, Connie and I both love toasted sage so what the heck. 

What did we think?  It was worth the extra effort.  Kind of like homemade salad dressing versus store-bought.  I'll stick with my Mom's recipe for most of the time.  But, this will be a couple of times a year treat.

Buttered Noodles with Toasted Sage

Ingredients:

1 stick unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons, at room temperature
1/2 c sage leaves, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 t chopped rosemary
2 1/2 c chicken stock
1 lb wide egg noodles
1/2 c plus 2 T freshly grated Parmesan or Romano

Directions:

Start a large pot of water on high heat.  Melt 4 T of butter in a large sauce pan.  Once the butter is melted and sizzling, put the sage in. 

Stir frequently and cook until it's crispy.  Remove it with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain.  Add another tablespoon of the butter to the same skilled and add the garlic and rosemary. 

Once they're fragrant, add the chicken stock. 

Let the mixture come to a boil.  Once it reduces to a cup of liquid, remove the saucepan from the heat.  Cover it to retain most of the heat.  Cook the noodles until they're al dente.  Drain the cooking liquid and pour the noodles into the large saucepan.  Toss them with the chicken broth, the remaining three tablespoons of butter and 1/2 c of the grated cheese.  Serve topped with the toasted sage and the balance of the grated cheese. 

adapted from Food and Wine

Vietnamese Beef

One of the most popular items at our annual client appreciation holiday party is the beef tenderloin - go figure.  We buy the big untrimmed tenderloins at Sam's.  Not only is it FAR more cost effective, but we've got the chain left over.  Now, it takes a good bit of time to clean and trim but the chain is worth every minute. 

Typically, we clean the chain and have it in a dish the night before the party.  It's a fabulous tenderloin bite.  Well, in 2010, that didn't happen.  So, there was a freezer bag with chain in the freezer.  And, I'm on a kick to get the freezer a bit cleaned out. Please, don't ask how much progress I'm making :-(  I keep finding great recipes that don't apply.  Need I say more...  "Something with chain" would go on the menu then I'd find other recipes that sounded great.  Finally, Fine Cooking had a perfect way to use up that chain.  I'd go take a photo of the empty spot in the freezer but it's about 90 degrees in the garage and I've had enough of the heat.  In fact, on the way home from my south office today - the exterior thermometer said it was 101 degrees.  Needless to say, when I got home I pretty much cooked in the dark.  Anything to cool this place down! 

As I've been typing this, my mind has wandered back to Le Colonial in Chicago.  Many years ago, we were in Chicago for a couple of days and one of the fellows at the hotel recommended that we go there.  I'd never had Vietnamese food and I fell in love with it that evening.  I'm not a fan of hot.  But, I'm a major fan of flavor.  Vietnamese food has flavor combinations that just plain make your mouth dance.  This dish was no different.  I added a bit of komatsu that I found at the farmers market.  The stems are kind of like oriental celery.  And, I used brown rice instead of white like they showed in the magazine photo.  Can't wait for lunch leftovers!!

Vietnamese Beef

Ingredients:

2 T soy sauce
2 T lime juice
1 1/2 T brown sugar
1 t fish sauce
5 cloves garlic, finely minced
3 T oil (canola or olive)
1 1/2 beef tenderloin cut in 3/4" pieces
1 medium onion, cut in 1/4" wedges
3 T salted peanuts, toasted and salted
2 scallions, both green and white parts, thinly sliced

Directions:

Combine the soy sauce, lime juice, fish sauce and brown sugar in a small bowl.  Combine the garlic and 1 1/2 t of oil in another small bowl.  Season the beef with salt and pepper.  Put 1 1/2 t of oil in a 12" skillet.  Heat it until it's shimmering.  Add half of the beef. 

Cook 1-2 minutes a side until it's browned.  Turn and cook the 2nd side for 1-2 minutes.  Do NOT overcook your meat here. 

Remove the beef to a plate and add the 2nd batch.  Once you've cooked that, remove it to the bowl.  Add about another tablespoon of oil to the skillet and heat it to shimmering.  Add the onions. 

Now, here's where I made a bit of a change.  After the onions had cooked for a couple of minutes, I added some komatsu - primarily the stems cut in 1/4" dice. 

Once the onions are softened and a bit browned, add the garlic and stir until the garlic is fragrant.  Now, its time to add the meat and accumulated juices back into the pan along with the soy sauce and lime juice mixture.  Stir on high heat until the sauce has cooked down a bit.  Serve over brown rice and top with the chopped peanuts and scallions.

Grilled Halloumi Cheese with Grape Salsa

OPA!  Don't you love going to a Greek restaurant and watching them light the halloumi cheese on fire then yell OPA?  We do too.  Last time we were at Jungle Jim's, we bought a package of halloumi cheese.  The expiration date was October of 2011, so I was in no rush to find an excuse to grill it.  Then, along came the June/July issue of Fine Cooking.  A grilling issue.  With an article about 13 Things You Didn't Know You Could Grill.  Except, we'd already grilled 10 of the 13.  Not a bad record. 

Here are the 13 things:  nuts, fruit, pizza, shellfish, quesadillas, salad, olives, avocados, bacon, flatbread, cake, herbs and cheese.  Some of our favorite grilled goodies from that list include Caesar Pizza,

Grilled Lettuce,

Smoked Goat Cheese,

Grilled Rosemary Old Fashioneds,

Grilled Fruit a

and Cat Cora's Grilled Guacamole. 

I read the page to Connie and we had a good laugh over how many of the items we'd actually tried - most of them more than once.  Then, I turned the page and there was a homerun recipe.  It sounded like it'd make a perfect appetizer for Saturday evening.  Not that we typically have appetizers when it's just the two of us.  But, what a fun idea. 

What did we think?  The recipe says you can actually make a dinner out of this.  Had I not had my version of bangers and mash already underway, this would have been dinner.  Fabulous.  Fantastic.  Absolute five.  Grilling the grapes concentrated their flavor.  I made a couple of small changes.  The recipe didn't call for grilling either the garlic or the rosemary.  I grilled both.  The garlic was perfect.  The rosemary got a bit lost but I'm not sure that was a bad thing.  It easily could have overpowered other flavors. 

Grilled Halloumi with Grape Relish

Ingredients:

1 medium red onion, cut into 3-4 slices
4 t olive oil
12 oz halloumi cheese, cut in 3/8" thick slabs
2 T olive oil
2 large garlic cloves
1 small loaf ciabatti or foccacia, sliced
1/2 c walnuts
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 large bunch seedless red or black grapes
2 T balsamic vinegar - I omitted this

Directions:

This is one of those recipes where it's imperative to have everything ready to go before you start cooking anything.  Heat your grill.  Put the walnuts in a foil "basket."  Put the sliced onions, garlic, walnuts, rosemary and bunch of grapes in a grill basket. 

Drizzle the onions and garlic with olive oil.  Cook them on the grill over direct heat.  Watch them carefully because the walnuts will get toasty pretty quickly.  Ditto the rosemary.  Turn the onions, garlic and grapes once.  Pull the basket off the heat when the grapes are cooked to bursting.  Take everything out of the grill basket and put the halloumi in it if it's cracking like mine did. 

If it's in nice slabs, you can put it directly on the grill grates.  Smash the garlic and mix it with 2T of olive oil.  Brush the bread slices with the olive oil.  Schmear on the leftover garlic pieces.

Now, it's time to grill the cheese and bread.  Put the bread on a couple of minutes after the cheese because it will take a lot less time to grill.  You want the cheese to be bubbly with lovely grill marks.  Because mine was cracking, I have lovely grill basket bubbles :-)   While the cheese is grilling, take all the grapes off and put them in a bowl. 

Reach in and smoosh them with your hands. 

Chop the walnuts and rosemary and add them to the grapes. 

Then, chop the onions and add them. 

Remove the cheese and bread from the grill.  Now, the cheese and bread go on a platter and the grape relish (more a salsa in my opinion!) goes in a bowl. 

I found that drizzling the bread with a bit of the juice in the relish before putting on a piece of cheese was a great idea. 

Adapted from Fine Cooking

Weekend Wrap Up

I'd imagine most of you are a bit like me when it comes to cleaning out the refrigerator.  Sometimes those clean up the kitchen meals have some rather odd combinations.  Well, that might just be an understatement in my case.  Last week, though, I got lucky.  All the pieces and parts fit together very nicely, thank you.  We were celebrating our seventh anniversary of our first date and talked about going out to dinner at the lovely restaurant where we first met.  Then, fiscal responsibility took over and we decided to stay home.  I'd lost my weekly menu and had no great ideas but did have a bunch of stuff in the fridge and out on the counter.  So, what did I have that needed to be used up?  Watermelon chunks from one of my staff, half a jar of mango slices, a peach, an avocado, the last handful of raspberries from our bushes, a handful of nicoise olives, Casa d'Angelo salad dressing, half a red bell pepper and three English muffins.  I'm sure you've already guessed fruit salad.  You were right!  I had a head of romaine lettuce that I could use to make more Casa d'Angelo salad.  And, the English muffins would make fine mini-pizzas.  It wound up being an absolutely wonderful meal.  The best part though was the split of Prosecco we had tucked in the back of the fridge.  That went over the raspberries in the beautiful glasses my sister-in-law, Pam and my brother, John gave me many years ago.  Pam is the BEST present chooser ever.  I have about 10% of her creativity when it comes to gifts.  So, here's to Pam - thank you again and I love you!  Here are a few photos of our fantastic meal:

On to the yard.  The daylilies are in magnificent bloom.  If you're a long-time reader, you know that I dug about 500 starts from my old yard to bring to this one.  And, I carefully separated the fire colors - orange and red - from the pastels - pink and purple - so I'd have the fire colors in the new back yard and the pastels in the front.  The guys did a lousy job of loading the trucks.  They got one from here and one from there and who cared.  Now, that's what my daylily beds look like.  Guess what?  I'ved grown to love the color chaos.  Kinda matches the rest of my life!  In addition to the daylilies, we now have some cannas - first year they've bloomed.  And, we have hopefully as many persimmons or more than last year.  Last but not least is the lace cap hydrangea.  I'd love to be able to grow the Penny Mac since it's named after Penny McHenry who was a wonderful friend of my mother's and started the Hydrangea Society.  But, since I don't live down south, I've got to stick with the northern varieties!

We made patriotic drinks for the 4th.  They were ummm, ewww.  Way too much Blue Curacao.  A few sips and down the drain they went.

Last, but not least, here's a glimpse of the family party.  The La Brea Tar Pit Chicken Wings were a huge hit at the family party.  I think everyone there requested the recipe.  And, quite frankly, I was ready for an encore by about Tuesday...

Here's part of the crew digging in:

The two kids - Brooke who's my niece's stepdaughter and Alyssa who is my sister-in-law's cousins daughter, provided much entertainment.  (Even though I couldn't get Alyssa to smile while she was in the pool, she did PLENTY of smiling later!)

Gabby did not appreciate John's new pool shooter.

But, John and my niece Samantha certainly had a bit of fun with the shooters.

And, who wouldn't laugh at the pair of Royal Highnies that brother Matthew sent brother John.  Not quite as good as the time I sewed the elder brother John's towels together at the bottom but still humorous.  I can't get the daggone thing to load up and down so here you go: