Simple ravioli soup with handfuls of herbs

Because you can't just make one thing with a big bunch of dill.

And since egg salad is not exactly the optimal thing to eat in winter (not to say that stopped us), I went on the lookout for more ways to use up my bountiful dill. The answer? Well, besides some very dilly schmears and a few simple salads, a soup seemed like a really good idea.

This soup takes very little time to make and produces a seriously warming and delicious meal. It's an excellent reason to keep ravioli (or any fresh filled pasta you like) in the freezer.

I happened to have a ravioli filled with havarti and dill on hand, so fresh dill was a perfect addition. However, it would be hard to go wrong using any filled pasta you like. Ravioli or tortellini with ricotta, spinach, chicken, beef, or even a delicate shrimp could all be delicious. So could pierogi or pelmeny filled with hearty potato, cottage cheese, or cabbage.

All you'd need to do is adjust the type of herb and the broth for optimal flavor combinations. Shrimp ravioli? Use chives and tarragon, plus fish stock. Beef? Use parsley and beef stock, with a splash of tomato juice for good measure. Tomato would be a great addition for nearly any pierogi as well -- and I'd wilt in some shredded cabbage right before turning off the heat. And a little dry vermouth or white wine would be an excellent addition to nearly any of these.

Simple ravioli soup with handfuls of herbs
Serves 2.

olive oil/butter
3-4 scallions
1-2 carrots
3+ cups vegetable or chicken broth
2 servings frozen ravioli or other filled pasta of your choice
salt, pepper
plenty of dill, parsley, or another fresh leafy herb

Start by heating your oil or butter in a 3-quart saucepan over medium-high heat. Trim and chop a handful of scallions, separating the whites from the greens. Add the whites to the pan and cook, stirring occasionally, for a few minutes. Set the greens aside.

Scrub or peel one big carrot or a couple of smaller ones. Slice into the bite-sized pieces of your choice. I made thin quarter-moons. Add your carrots to the pan, season with a little salt, and cook for another few minutes to soften. If you want to add any more chopped vegetables, like celery or mushrooms, now is the time to do so.

Add a good three cups of broth to your pan. You can make up the difference with water if you don't have quite enough broth. Season with salt and pepper and bring the pan to a boil.

Add your ravioli, stir, and bring the pan to a boil again. Reduce the heat to simmer; a full rolling boil will tend to split your ravioli.

Simmer for five to eight minutes, or until your ravioli are completely cooked through. They will float to the surface of the pan when they're ready. Your timing will depend on the size of your pasta.

While you're waiting, chop up a large handful or two of the herbs of your choice. I used dill, because we had lots of it and my ravioli were filled with havarti and dill anyway, but parsley, chervil, chives, tarragon, or a mix of whatever leafy green herbs you like can all work well. Think about your ravioli filling and decide accordingly.

When your ravioli are done, correct the seasonings and turn off the heat. Stir your chopped herbs and green onion greens into your finished soup. Serve with a few extra sprigs of herbs for garnish.

Eat and feel better.

Which hot and hearty soups are you cooking this winter?

Chicken and vegetables veloute

After a roof leak, a furnace replacement, a refrigerator breakdown, an influx of mold, and many bouts of sneezing, all within the past six weeks, I was more than ready to eat some serious comfort food last weekend.

We went to the store and got some basic ingredients: chicken, celery, carrots, onions. We put them all in a pot. We cooked them. We made a simple sauce. We mixed it all together and threw in some noodles. And then I ate an entire bowlful and trundled off blissfully to bed.

If you are currently buried in snow, you will definitely want some too.

This chicken and vegetable dish could not be easier, and yet it is the kind of food that completely satisfies. It's grandma cuisine: no-fuss, country-style, hearty, easy, tasty food, made of plentifully available ingredients, and offered in abundance. And yet you can absolutely make this for a big Sunday dinner and impress everyone at the table.

We adapted this from a Jacques Pepin & Julia Child recipe for chicken pot pie, which in itself is clearly a totally classic basic. Instead of making a pastry crust, we decided to toss the whole shebang with egg noodles, for a super-comforting and simple feast.

If you want to make an entire chicken, go for it. If there were any meat-eaters besides me in the house, we would have. Just double all the veg (or even triple them, for extra everything) and get going. Any leftover chicken, vegetables, and broth can be refrigerated and transformed into chicken soup (or sandwiches, or risotto, or an amazing variety of other things) the next day.

Chicken and vegetables veloute
Adapted from Comfort Food. Serves 4.

1/2 chicken (at least half bone-in dark meat)
1/2 head celery
2 carrots
1-2 leeks
2 medium yellow onions
salt, pepper, thyme, bay leaf
2 cups dry white wine or dry vermouth
plenty of water
10-12 button mushrooms
4 tbsp butter
4 tbsp flour
egg noodles or rice to serve
parsley to garnish

Put your chicken into a large pot -- 5.5 quarts or more. We used a bone-in leg and thigh piece, skin on, and a separate breast. This was more than ample to make four servings. If you're doubling the recipe and cooking a whole chicken, leave it whole.

Wash and trim your vegetables. Cut the head of celery in half vertically. Scrub or peel the carrots. Split the leeks and rinse them well under running water. Tie the celery, carrots, and leeks into a bundle with a loop or two of butcher's twine. This will make it easy to remove them later.

Peel your onions and cut them into eighths. The mushrooms can wait a few minutes.

Put all your vegetables into the pot with the chicken. Season the pot with salt, pepper, a good palmful of thyme, and a bay leaf or two. Add the wine or vermouth.

Now fill the pot with enough water to just cover all the contents. Make sure the chicken is submerged -- weigh it down under some of the vegetables if necessary.

Bring your pot to a boil, cover, reduce the heat, and simmer for 20 minutes. While you're waiting, wash your mushrooms. You can cut them in half or leave them whole.

Next, add your mushrooms to the pan. Bring everything to a boil again, cover, and reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting. Leave the pot to simmer very gently for 45 minutes to an hour, or until your chicken is completely cooked through.

At this point you will have a lovely pot of chicken broth full of nicely poached delights. Taste the broth and correct the seasonings. Remove all the meat and veg from the pot and slice them into bite-sized pieces. (If you don't want to bother with the rest of the recipe, you can simply add the pieces back to the broth and serve it as soup right now.)

Make the veloute. In a separate pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the flour and whisk vigorously to create a roux. Let the roux cook for a minute or two, whisking occasionally. Then begin adding your poaching broth to the roux, whisking it in ladle by ladle. We used about 6 cups total, but you may want to use a bit more or less broth, depending on the amount and thickness of sauce you desire. Butter + flour + broth = sauce veloute.

Mix your chicken and vegetables into the sauce, taste and correct the seasonings one last time, and you are done.

Serve over egg noodles, rice, mashed potato, or your choice of other grain, and garnish with a handful of chopped parsley.

You can also get fancy (sort of fancy, anyway) by topping a casserole dish of chicken, veg, and sauce with a pastry crust or a recipe's worth of drop biscuit batter, and baking the whole thing until lovely and brown. Or just ladle everything into individual bowls and butter a pile of toast for dipping. It's all good.

Are you relying on huge vats of hot, simple food to beat the storm? What comfort food are you eating this week?

Emergency pasta with broccoli

And this weekend our fridge died.

We are having the best possible holiday season around here, let me tell you.

The repair guy is coming this afternoon. We'll see if we need a new fridge. In the meantime, our landlord brought us a couple of tiny dorm fridges.

Remember our freezer full of stuff? Yeah. Me too. It's not full of stuff anymore. At least we tend to keep a lot of nonperishables in there along with the serious frozen food. It means we didn't actually lose the entire contents, and we have plenty of rice and lentils and flour and yeast and what have you.

The other high point is that in a largely vegetarian household, the refrigerator isn't ever stuffed with a $400 standing rib roast or anything like that. Instead, we have lots of vegetables, tortillas, butter, cheese, and eggs, most of which are just fine in an ice-filled cooler overnight.

We'll also get to start over and build a new freezer & fridge in a more organized and less completely bonkers fashion. But that's about it for the good there.

So this weekend was just exhausting. Then we had to cook.

If you've ever thought you can't make dinner with a single pot of boiling water, think again, because we just did.

Emergency pasta with broccoli

1/2 lb chunky pasta
1 small or 1/2 large head broccoli
salt, pepper, red pepper flake
olive oil
fresh parsley
parmesan or another hard grating cheese

Salt a pot of water and put it on to boil. When your water boils, drop in your pasta.

While you're waiting, chop your broccoli into medium florets. Peel the stem and cut that up too.

When your pasta is about 2/3 of the way done, add your broccoli to the pot. Stir to mix and continue to cook for the remaining 1/3 time. Taste a piece of pasta and one of broccoli for doneness. Drain well.

In a mixing bowl, combine your drained pasta and broccoli with salt, pepper, red pepper flake, olive oil, chopped fresh parsley, and grated parmesan to taste. Toss well.

Serve immediately. If you have some extra parmesan or parsley, throw that on top. We had a few chopped almonds lying around, so I added those too.

Don't take any pictures because you are too tired. Go to bed and sleep the sleep of the person who still needs to work tomorrow even though it is officially holiday week.

Capellini with kale, artichoke hearts, and red pepper

Sometimes you just want a giant plate of pasta and vegetables.

This time, I happened to have a package of capellini in the cupboard. Why not make a pasta dish comprised of long, thin vegetables to match the long, thin pasta?

To pack this with lots of serious flavor, I went for some serious vegetables: garlic, green beans, artichoke hearts, kale, and red bell pepper. Together, they mixed together into a lovely, intense dish that only took about ten minutes from beginning to end. Perfect.

This pasta is conveniently vegan. However, it is not filled with protein by any means. I would certainly have tossed in a can of chickpeas had there been any on hand, and I suggest you do the same. A salad of white beans and herbs tossed with a nice vinegary vinaigrette would be a excellent supplement as well.

Capellini with kale, artichoke hearts, and red pepper
Serves 1.

2-3 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic
handful of green beans
6-8 artichoke heart quarters
1/2 bunch kale
1/2 red bell pepper
salt, pepper, basil, oregano
capellini or other long pasta of your choice

Put a pot of salted pasta water on to boil before starting anything else. That way, it'll be ready to go when it's time to drop your pasta.

Warm your olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat.

Smash your garlic cloves with the flat of a knife, peel, and slice. Add your garlic to the oil and cook, stirring occasionally, until they just start to turn a light golden color. Season with salt, basil, and oregano to taste. You can also add some red pepper flake if you want spice.

Wash your beans and slice them at an angle to produce long, narrow pieces. If your artichoke hearts are whole, quarter them. Wash your kale, destem, and shred finely. Core your red pepper and slice it into long, thin strips.

Add your beans to the pan and let them cook for a few minutes before adding the artichoke hearts. Give it another few minutes before you add the kale, and another before you add the red pepper.

Capellini cook in about three minutes, so you'll want to start cooking them at the same time as you add the red pepper. Put them in the water and simmer until done, stirring once or twice to guard against sticking.

When your pasta is done, drain it and add it to the fully cooked vegetables along with a tiny splash of the cooking water. Toss together and let stand over low heat while you wash the pasta pot.

Season the finished dish with some pepper and a little more olive oil. Toss again to distribute. Eat.

If you want a garnish, fresh parsley or grated pecorino would be excellent. I just had some more black pepper.

This was such a good lunch for a grey day.

What are you tossing into your pastas of late?

Emergency tuna pasta salad

Sometimes -- like when you get home with approximately 35 minutes to make and eat lunch before the plumber is supposed to show up to fix your kitchen faucet -- emergency food has to happen. This tuna pasta salad is an excellent example.

This salad is 100% flexible, depending on what vegetables you happen to have kicking around your crisper or ready to eat in your garden. Use as much or as little as you like of practically every ingredient. Then nom it like a boss.

If you are in the no-meat camp, you obviously won't be using tuna here. I would probably go for some roughly mashed chickpeas or a couple diced hard-boiled eggs, but you should clearly feel free to experiment with whatever sounds good to you. And if you are in the no-pasta camp, rice or another grain of your choice would be an excellent substitute.

One standard can of tuna plus half a pound of pasta and as much veg as you like will make approximately two servings.

Emergency tuna pasta salad

chunky pasta of your choice
a can of tuna
cucumber
red pepper
green onion
fresh parsley
mesclun mix or other salad greens
olive oil
salt, pepper
dijon mustard

Put a pot of salted water on to boil. Cook your pasta while you're prepping the rest of your ingredients.

Drain your can of tuna and deposit it into a bowl.

Chop up your cucumber, red pepper, green onion, parsley, and salad greens. Add them to the bowl.

Season with olive oil, salt, pepper, and dijon mustard.

Check to see if your pasta is ready. When it's done, drain it and add it to the tuna and veg. Mix well. Taste and adjust the seasonings.

Wow! It's done!

Now sit down and have some instant dinner. Or lunch. Or breakfast, if tuna salad for breakfast floats your boat.

What are your emergency back-up lunches?

Serious catch-up catch-all

Where am I? What's going on?

Someone got a nice fancy tray of surprise breakfast in bed. I made migas and coffee for ultimate delight.

Note that the tray was too small to hold an actual plate. As such, that is a very full salad plate.

If you have both leftover rhubarb syrup and a garden bed full of mint, you will end up making a mojito or two. Definitely very refreshing on a hot hot afternoon.

I also drank a good pitcher of iced black tea with spoonfuls of rhubarb syrup in each glass. VERY good idea. Possibly an even better idea than the mojitos.

LUNCHTIME.

This kind of melange is so typical that I don't normally bother to take pictures. Seared chicken sausage, green beans, summer squash, parsley, and some red pepper flake, all mixed up with a handful of spaghetti.

The leftovers were good for pre-dinner I'm-way-too-hungry snacking.

On Sunday afternoon we had more green beans for feast spectacular, along with the first apricots and nectarine of the season and a wedge of very crumbly raw aged cheddar.

There was also a baguette and a lot of hummus (not pictured).

Speaking of the first of the season, how about some peas? Boiled, drained, buttered, and eaten.

The tilapia was super simple too. Toss in seasoned flour, sear in butter, cut a wedge of lemon for garnish. The end.

What delicious dishes have you been throwing together and forgetting to post about?

Spaghetti with all-the-veg sauce

AKA: "what to do with that eggplant you found in your crisper."

On the surface, this looks like a very ordinary plate of spaghetti--but when you get past the surface, you find all the vegetables in the land.

The real story is that I LOVE eggplant. Eggplant! And I love tomato sauces stuffed with not only eggplant, but nearly every other vegetable I can get my hands on. Onion and garlic are obvious choices; bell peppers of all colors are a natural match with tomato; carrots enhance the flavor while providing their own interesting little note of sweetness. So the other night I wanted to put all of these vegetables into a punchy, spicy, and still comforting tomato sauce, and to eat it over a giant plate of as much pasta as I could possibly eat.

There was only one problem: the pasta I wanted (and had lying around) was spaghetti. A chunky sauce really, really does not work with a long, thin pasta. What to do?

Obviously, the answer was the stick blender. A pureed sauce with all the veg in the land? Perfect for coating a massive pile of long, thin pasta. So I broke out half the crisper and got to work.

Spaghetti with all-the-veg sauce

onion
garlic
olive oil
carrot
eggplant
red bell pepper
tomato puree/sauce/etc
salt, pepper, red pepper flake, oregano, basil
fresh parsley to garnish
spaghetti, vermicelli, or other long pasta
immersion blender!

The amounts here are all variable depending on what vegetables you have on hand. Use what you love.

Start by warming some olive oil in a wide saute pan. Add a chopped yellow onion and let it soften while you mince a handful of garlic cloves and peel and cube an eggplant. Peeling is important since we want the eggplant to really meld in here. I used an entire long, thin eggplant, but you can use as much as you like.

Add your garlic and eggplant to your pan along with a pinch of salt. Stir together and cook for a good ten minutes, or until your eggplant has turned golden brown and begun to collapse. If things start to stick to the pan, shy away from adding extra oil; eggplant will drink it up as fast as it can, and you'll end up with super-greasy sauce. Instead, a splash of water can help loosen things up.

Scrub and chop a carrot or two and dice up a red pepper. Add these to the pan, season with red pepper flake, oregano, and basil to taste, and mix it all together. Give the carrot and red pepper about five minutes to soften before you add your tomato.

Season with a bit more salt, bring to a simmer, and let cook for another ten minutes or so, or until your eggplant is completely cooked through. If your sauce starts to get too thick, add a little water. Otherwise, just stir things up occasionally.

While you're waiting, cook your pasta. Try to time it so it'll be done at approximately the same time as your sauce.

When your sauce is ready, turn off the heat and puree it with your immersion blender. Taste and correct seasonings, being sure to add some black pepper. Drain your finished pasta, add it to the sauce, and mix well. Keep warm over the lowest heat setting while you wash the pasta pot; this will give your pasta a chance to absorb some of the flavors of the sauce. Stir in a handful of fresh parsley, and you are done.

Serve yourself a gigantic serving of pasta, garnish with even more parsley, and eat with gusto. I had a very simple salad of butter lettuce on the side, for even more vegetable goodness.

How are you eating your spaghetti lately? Does anyone else love eggplant enough to melt one in its entirety into a vat of pasta sauce? I obviously do.

Ravioli with super garlic butter greens

It's spring! I don't know about you, but I want as many vegetables as I can possibly get my hands on. So I went to the farmer's market and came home with two bunches of kale, one of chard, a big bag of spinach, and a bunch of beets with beautiful tops. All the greens in the land!

And what's the best way to make greens the star of the show? Keep them simple and abundant. So I chopped up some chard, spinach and beet greens, sauteed them quickly with garlic, and finished them with butter and parsley.

It's almost ridiculously easy to make a mess of greens into a full meal. A poached or fried egg on top would be classic, as would a sliced and browned sausage or a slab of seared marinated tempeh. But I wanted pasta, so I decided I would mix my greens with a bag of local ravioli that I'd stashed in the freezer for just such an occasion. Such a perfect combination with a huge pile of garlicky, butter-drenched greens.

This is a particularly quick and easy way to stuff your face with all the freshest and best spring vegetables. It took about fifteen minutes for me to go from zero to lunch. Perfect.

Ravioli with garlic-sauteed greens

frozen ravioli or other pasta
garlic
butter or olive oil
mixed spring greens (chard, beet, & spinach, or your choice of others)
salt, pepper, maybe a few red pepper flakes if you want them
fresh parsley

Start by putting a pot of water on to boil for your pasta. Let it heat while you start your veg, and cook your ravioli at an appropriate point in the proceedings. Obviously, although ravioli is great, you can also switch it out for any kind of pasta you like.

Smash and chop as many cloves of garlic as you like. I used five or six for about two servings of pasta, because that's how I roll.

Saute your garlic in butter or olive oil in a wide saute pan over medium to medium-low heat. While it's cooking, wash, trim, and chop up all your greens. Since I was using chard and beet greens, I cut off their stems and chopped them separately from the leaves. Use as many greens as you can possibly cram into your pan, because they will wilt and reduce in size dramatically. I probably used around four or five cups.

When your garlic has started to turn slightly golden, add your chopped stems to the pan, along with a pinch of salt. Turn the heat up slightly and saute for about five minutes, or until the stems have softened. Then add all your greens to the pan. You may need to do this in a couple batches, letting the first batch start to wilt before adding the second. Saute gently for about five more minutes, or until all your greens have wilted into a vivid green (and possibly also pink) mass.

By this point your pasta should be done, so drain it and add it to the greens. Season with salt and pepper and mix together gently. Then turn off the heat and add a pat of butter or a few drips of olive oil to the pan. Stir a few times to let the butter melt and distribute it evenly. Done!

Serve your ravioli in massive piles and garnish them with fresh parsley and a grind or two of pepper. If you want to add any more garnishes, go for it. Parmesan cheese, chopped toasted almonds, or even some crispy golden breadcrumbs would work well here, but resist the urge to go too far. The freshness of the greens will make them shine pretty beautifully on their own.

Springiest lunch ever!

How are you eating all your spring greens?

Clean-out-the-fridge pasta with super secret cream cheese

It's almost fall! Even here in CA the weather is beginning to actually turn. The high today was only 72F! I know this seems like nothing to those of you who live in, say, Wisconsin, but when it's ALL SUN 79F FOREVER, you get to appreciate even the smallest shifts in temperature. I can wear long sleeves! I can wear long sleeves AND a jacket! Oh man. It's the greatest.

But guess what? We aren't going to be spending October, jewel of fall, in California. We're going to Portland for the month.

You know what that means. ACTUAL WEATHER.

For once it's going to be actually cool and grey enough on my birthday. It's going to rain. I'm going to wear not only a jacket, but a waterproof one with a hood and sleeves. There will be real in-season pumpkin and apples and pears, and I'll go to the coffeeshop with my laptop (I am still working the whole month, of course) and do my writing or marketing or consulting with a cup of hot cider and a furled umbrella on the floor next to me.

But in the meantime, we've been trying to eat everything in the fridge. So the other day I grabbed some tomatoes from the pile still on the kitchen windowsill. A rifle through the crisper revealed some wilting hot red peppers, a scraggly handful of parsley, a lonely carrot, and half a zucchini. There's always pasta in the cabinet. And what did I spy in the drawer? A quarter of a package of cream cheese! Perfect.

Adding cream cheese to a basic tomato and veg pasta sauce is one of my favorite tricks ever for quick creamy goodness. So fast! So easy! No making a roux or hoarding half a pint of heavy cream! It's just a couple big spoonfuls of soft cheese, dissolving beautifully to turn the tomato sauce a glorious salmon pink. NOM.

Clean-out-the-fridge pasta with super secret cream cheese

pasta (we used rigatoni)
olive oil
onion
garlic
hot peppers, red or otherwise
carrot
tomato
zucchini
oregano, basil, marjoram
salt, pepper
cream cheese/neufchatel/sub of choice
parsley to garnish

Put a pot of water on to boil for the pasta and cook it at an appropriate moment.

In a large saute pan, warm a slug of olive oil. Toss in some chopped onion, stir, and cook to soften while you smash and mince your garlic, finely chop as many hot peppers as you like and scrub and shred a carrot. When the onion has started to turn a bit glassy, toss your garlic, peppers, and carrot into the pan. Season with oregano, basil, marjoram if you want some, and a couple good pinches of salt. Then stir the whole shebang together and cook.

If you still have fresh summer tomatoes, now is the time to cook them and eat them. Core them, chop them up, and add them to the pan when your onions are fully softened. You can also use tomato puree or sauce if tomato season is over at your house; it's all good. Stir everything up, add a touch more salt, and cook those tomatoes down.

While you're waiting, slice up some zucchini. When your tomato has reduced sufficiently, add your zucchini. Cook for maybe another five minutes, or until your zucchini is tender and any extraneous juices have evaporated. Correct the seasonings and you're almost done.

Take the pan off the heat and add as much cream cheese or reasonable substitute as you like, cut into chunks. Bury the bits in the hot sauce and leave them for a minute, so they melt, before you stir to mix. If you happen to have some other creamy and easily meltable cheese around--goat cheese, for example--you can use that instead. Or use both! ALL DAIRY ALL THE TIME.

Drain your finished pasta and add it to the sauce. Stir everything together and serve, scattered with bits of parsley.

Eat it all with health and vigor, and a green salad on the side. Hooray! We have delicious food, and the refrigerator is that much closer to cleaned out!

Now the real question is: who wants to meet up in Portland?

Mushroom pelmeny saved my lunch

Here's a thing that can happen when you're feeling tired and down for no good reason, but you know you need to eat lunch. You look through the kitchen for a few minutes. Nothing looks good, even though you have enough food to feed an army consisting of far more than the two adults who actually live in the house. So you decide to go for emergency food and get out the backup package of mushroom pelmeny, exquisite and hand-shaped and local, and also a food only you will eat because you are the only person in the house who likes mushrooms. You drop the frozen pelmeny into a pot of boiling water with some salt.

What are you going to eat with them? Normally you'd have the energy to saute some onions in butter with salt and pepper and paprika, but not today, so you decide the plain yogurt in the fridge will make a good enough sauce. Still, you're really going to regret it if you don't eat some form of vegetable with your bowl of dumplings. There's cabbage in the crisper, so you get out a cutting board and shred a chunk. It can be a bed of raw crispy veg in the bottom of your bowl, and that will be okay. Wait, don't you have a container of shredded golden beet and carrot in the fridge for future salad applications? Why not use some of that? Those go into the bowl too.

By this time your pelmeny are boiling furiously and rising to the surface of the pan. You drain them and scoop a bunch of them into your bowl. A couple good spoonfuls of yogurt go on top. Good so far, but it needs one more thing, or else it'll be bland. So you grind a bunch of black pepper across the top of your bowl of pelmeny and yogurt and cabbage and beet and carrot. Wait, one more thing. You don't have any fresh dill, but you do have parsley. So you snip some parsley and scatter it across the top of your bowl.

By this time you are actually feeling like a human, even before you eat anything. You sit down to eat and discover that everything is totally delicious, and you eat it all, thinking that maybe next time you should add a little bit of spicy brown mustard too, and you go get a second helping of pelmeny and yogurt, at which point you realize that you're really going to need something to mop up all the delicious fragments of mushroom and carrot and beet and cabbage and sour cream and pepper off the side of the bowl. Then you remember that you also have a loaf of sourdough in the fridge, so you throw a piece in the toaster oven to get lovely and fragrant and golden brown and crisp. You mop up the side of the bowl with the bread and eat every last tiny bit, and you still want more.

I'm going to eat this so many times.

Have a nice lunch.

Baked pasta shells with basil ricotta cream

What happens when you're 2/3 of the way through making lasagna and you open the pasta box to discover you have only 5 lasagna noodles?

Well, if you're us, you make a lasagna anyway. You just don't use those noodles.

We had a bag of small shells just waiting around in the cabinet. So what was on the menu instead of lasagna? Baked pasta with ricotta cream. It's just like lasagna! Really! The noodles are a slightly different shape, but who cares? Everything else went exactly as planned.

This is a fairly standard vegetarian not-lasagna except for one thing: fresh basil.

You know how you can add a bunch of chopped spinach to the ricotta mixture when making lasagna? Okay. What if you replaced that spinach with basil? Huge handfuls of beautiful fragrant fresh summer basil?

It's pretty amazing. You should try it.

Baked pasta shells with basil ricotta cream

Sauce: Saute a handful of chopped garlic cloves and a diced onion in olive oil until soft and delicious. Season with salt oregano, basil, and red pepper flake. Add a chopped red pepper (and whatever other veg you like) and continue to saute for another five minutes, or until all the vegetables are tender. Add 2 cups of tomato puree or chopped tomatoes in juice and cook together, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is done to your liking. Taste and correct for seasoning and puree with a stick blender as needed.

Cheese: mix 16 oz ricotta (or the closest size container you can find) with 1 egg, a cup or so of grated mozzarella and parmesan, and the chopped leaves of half a bunch of fresh basil.

Pasta: Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook 3/4 lb of pasta until al dente. Drain.

To assemble: Preheat the oven to 375F. Mix the cooked pasta with the sauce. Spread a layer of saucy pasta over the bottom of a large casserole dish. Spoon on a layer of cheese, distributing it as well as possible with clean fingers. Repeat, layering pasta and cheese, until they are both used up, ending with a pasta layer. Top the whole business with a couple big handfuls of grated mozzarella and/or parmesan. Bake for 45 minutes, or until delicious and golden brown on top.

Eat as swiftly and enormously as possible. You'll probably want a salad or something else green on the side. We had spinach.

The leftovers are pretty amazing, especially when rewarmed. Personally, I am ok with eating cold leftover pasta. I think it's pretty good in any form. However, this was miles and miles better when reheated than when left cold. The basil in the ricotta just glows. It's so good.

So I ate the leftovers for two more meals in a row, once with garlic-sauteed green beans and zucchini and once with another salad, and I was well satisfied.

How are you using your fresh summer herbs? Plentifully, I hope.

Typical weeknight dinners

I seem to have been making and eating the same things over and over. Don't we all do that sometimes? I propose that the answer is yes.

Hey, it's another plate of fried rice! Guess what this one is made with? That's right--leftover Chinese takeout, in this case the chef's special chicken and leeks. No eggs, but I added a handful of supplemental garlic and bell pepper. It was so good.

Hey, it's another bowl of noodles! This one is almost exactly the same as my previous ramen with oyster mushrooms. The only different bit is some lemongrass in the broth. Delightful.

Hey, it's another plate of migas, finished off with half an avocado and a liberal sprinkling of hot sauce! Oh man, migas are good. OM NOM NOM.

What foods do you cook and eat over and over and over?

New year's ramen noodles with oyster mushrooms and cabbage

John and I really like noodles. Our pantry has prominently featured an assortment of noodles, from somen to rice sticks to soba, for years on end. We also live in an area with a preponderance of ethnic foods available. Why, then, are we just now starting to cook with fresh Asian noodles?

An excellent question.

So we went to our closest big Asian market and stared at all the fresh noodles in the case, wondering what to try first. It turned out that we wanted ramen. So we bought a pack of four wodges of fresh ramen noodles and brought them home, where they disappeared in short order. Several days later, I went back and got a pack of eight wodges of fresh ramen. Half have vanished so far. If this trend continues, we're going to be buried in fresh Asian noodles for months on end. Are you ready?

You may be familiar with dried ramen in instant soup form; fresh ramen is not even vaguely similar. Instead of being overly salty, either too crunchy or too mushy, and awkward to eat, it's perfectly chewy and silky and amazing for slurping up. You want some of this ramen.

I went simple to start, with ramen and vegetables in broth. This soup is perfect for January--clear and hot and spicy, with fragrant herbs and onions and pepper assailing your sinuses. It's an amazing (not to mention vegan) alternative to the traditional flu season chicken noodle.

This is exceptionally easy to make. All you really need is twenty minutes and a pantry stocked with the right seasonings. And if you do have the flu, it also helps to have someone else cook it for you. I'm just saying.

Fresh ramen noodles in broth with oyster mushrooms and cabbage

peanut oil/veg oil of your choice
garlic
green onion
ginger
hot pepper
oyster mushrooms
green cabbage (standard, Chinese, savoy, or sub bok choy et al)
optional soft tofu
fresh ramen
vegetable broth
soy sauce, mirin, sriracha sauce or sambal oelek, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil
black pepper & cilantro to finish

If you need to make vegetable broth, start with that. Also, put a separate pan of water on to boil for your noodles. It can sit on the back burner until you're ready to cook them.

In a soup pot of your choice, warm a slug of peanut oil. Add minced garlic, sliced white of green onion (keep the greens for garnish), and minced ginger.

Slice or mince a hot pepper and add it to the pan, including the seeds or not at your discretion. I used a red fresno pepper--conveniently also available for next to nothing at the Asian market--but jalapeno, serrano, or whatever other hot pepper you have on hand would also work well.

Stir it all up and let cook for about five minutes, or until everything is amazing and fragrant and you essentially just want to dive into the pan.

Cube some oyster mushrooms and shred a wedge of cabbage. The sizes and shapes don't really matter that much here; just cut them however you like. It's also fine to use button or other mushrooms if you have them on hand.

Add the mushrooms to the pan, stir, and cook for several minutes before adding your cabbage. Give the cabbage five minutes or so to wilt.

Next, add vegetable broth, bring the whole business to a boil, and reduce the heat to simmer. If you want tofu in your soup, cube some up and add it to the hot broth. Since soft tofu is fragile, try not to whack it around too much. Now is also a good time to cook your ramen. Mine took about four minutes, but timing will depend on the brand.

When your ramen is cooked, add it to the soup, turn off the heat, and start seasoning. I tend to add small amounts of soy sauce, mirin, and rice wine vinegar, a larger amount of sriracha or other hot pepper sauce, and just a few drops of sesame oil. Taste and adjust the seasoning to your liking. Start small and add more gradually, being especially careful not to oversalt via an overabundance of soy sauce.

Serve your soup with chopped green onion greens and cilantro scattered over the top. You can always switch out the cilantro for basil or just eliminate it if you think it tastes like soap. You can also grind some black pepper over your bowl if hot pepper plus sriracha sauce is not enough of a spice kick for you. I have definitely been known to do this on occasion, but I also have a fairly high spice tolerance.

Now drink up your bowl of hot soup and eat your ramen and veg. You might need both spoon and chopsticks for this one.

Pass the kleenex. Feel better, whether you have the flu or not.

What new ingredients have you discovered lately?

Pasta in December

Hey. It's December. How are you guys holding up?

I am doing okay. I am seriously done with my launch except for one single item which is in someone else's control. So now we wait. I mean, we do work too, but we wait.

Also we eat.

I made some pasta. It is perhaps not what one thinks of as an appropriate dinner for December, but that's okay.

This is exactly the kind of food I intend not to write about, because I make it over and over and over again. Then I get busy and I end up writing about it anyway.

It's really good. Pungent and swift and easy.

Angel hair pasta with eggplant, olive, tomato, artichoke heart

Toss some chopped garlic and onion in a pan with olive oil. Cube some eggplant and sear it up with the garlic and onion. It'll take five minutes or so. Add chopped olives left over from Thanksgiving, chopped artichoke hearts, chopped tomato. Season with salt, pepper, oregano, basil, and red pepper flake. Deglaze with vermouth. Toss with angel hair and sprinkle parsley over the top. Done.

Now you can get back to work.

I am in fact planning on some more interesting cooking soon, guys. I just need some time to recover. We'll get there.

How's it going with you?

Angel hair pasta with chicken sausage, red bell pepper, and broccoli

Yeah, things are still pretty busy. We're getting there, though. SOON.

In the meantime, have some pasta.

Emergency pasta
AKA Angel hair pasta with chicken sausage, red bell pepper, and broccoli

chicken sausage
olive oil
garlic/onion
broccoli
green cabbage
red bell pepper
salt, pepper, red pepper flake
angel hair or your choice of pasta

Boil water and cook your pasta at an appropriate time in the cooking process.

Slice up your chicken sausage and sear on both sides in a hot saute pan of your choice. Most sausages will have plenty of fat, but you may want to add a bit of olive oil to the pan anyway.

When your sausage bits are beginning to turn golden brown, reduce the heat to medium and add in some chopped onion or garlic. I honestly have no idea which I used here; either will be fine. Stir it up and let cook while you prep the other veg.

Chop the head of your broccoli into little florets. Peel the stem and dice it up. Finely shred some green cabbage if you happen to have a quarter of a cabbage lying around. Seed and dice a red bell pepper.

When your onion is soft, add your broccoli and cabbage to the pan. Salt, pepper, and red pepper flake it up. Cook, stirring occasionally. until the veg is just barely tender.

Add your red pepper to the pan for the last minute or two of cooking. When it's done, you're done.

Drain your pasta and toss it into the pan of veg and sausage. Stir everything together and serve.

Do you want parmesan cheese? You can have some. Or you cn have some parsley. Whatever you like will be good.

Now collapse on the couch and go to sleep.

Fooding, swift and sure

Whose week is not going to be completely crazy? Raise your hand.

Yeah, not me.

I'm going to release my product in T minus one week. Tomorrow I have to go vote. (Note: go vote, everybody in the US!) Wednesday I have to go into San Francisco. It's going to be this busy for a while, let's just say. So here is what I've been eating.

We made tacos with refried black beans and corn tortillas toasted over the gas jet. Shredded cabbage on top. Maybe some lime. Tacos are always a good emergency dinner.

Then I made migas and ate them with the leftover black beans. MORE MIGAS, PLEASE.

Pasta is a default food at our house. Baked pasta takes a little more effort, but it's worth it. This one is baked penne with marinara, red pepper, and spinach. There was also a lasagna that somehow escaped without a single picture.

On an even easier note, we bought a package of lavash and used it to make pizza with all the onions and peppers in the house. Lavash pizza is the ultimate emergency food if you like thin crust. I'm just saying.

And of course there is always toast. This time I had toast with labneh and the last of my first batch of pickled peppers--tangy and amazing. Fortunately, pickled peppers are one of the most instant pickles on the planet, so I threw together a new jar after I hit up the farmer's market yesterday. I'm going to have some delicious sandwiches, is what I'm saying.

What do you guys eat when you're too busy to do, um, anything?

Angel hair pasta with tomatoes, eggplant, and artichoke hearts

In current garden news, tomatoes! Tomatoes for all!

It took until October for our Purple Cherokees to really ripen, but now that they have, they're pretty amazing. The plants are huge, productive, and still going strong. It helps that it's 78F outside right now, of course.  I suspect that we have about two to three good weeks left.

This guy was growing around a branch of the plant--look at the gouge it made when I picked it!--so I needed to get it inside and into my mouth as soon as possible. Okay! How about a batch of pasta?

I found a head of garlic, a jar of artichoke hearts, and an eggplant on its last legs, and got to work.

Angel hair pasta with tomatoes, eggplant, and artichoke hearts

garlic
olive oil
eggplant
artichoke hearts
tomatoes
angel hair pasta
oregano, basil, red pepper flake, salt, pepper

Before you make the sauce, put on a pan of water for the pasta. Heat it to boiling, covered, and turn it off (if you need more time for the sauce to cook). That way it'll be hot & waiting whenever you're ready to put the pasta on.

Start by warming olive oil in a wide saute pan. Smash a bunch of cloves of garlic with the flat of your knife, peel them, and mince them up. Then throw them in the pan, stir it up, and let cook over medium heat. Add some sprinklings of basil, oregano, and red pepper flake, so the oil gets all infused with their flavors.

Peel and dice as much eggplant as you want to eat. I had a long, skinny Asian eggplant, so I only ended up with maybe 2/3 cup of half-inch-square eggplant bits. That was all good. Toss your eggplant in with the garlic, mix it up, and keep cooking.

Drain and roughly chop as many artichoke hearts as you want to eat. I love artichoke hearts, so I used six or eight quarters just for me. After the eggplant has had about 5 minutes to cook, add your artichoke hearts and stir everything up again.

Next, core and dice your tomato. I used just the one tomato, which worked admirably, since it was pretty gigantic. If your tomato season is over, you can use canned tomatoes, puree, or whatever works for you. It's all good. Add your tomato to the pan, salt and pepper, stir, and let cook. Here's what my pan looked like at this point:

So that's what one tomato can look like in a 10-inch frying pan. Hooray!

At this point, you just want to cook the tomato and veg down to a sauce consistency that you like. It'll probably take about ten minutes if you're starting from fresh tomato, and a bit less time if you're using canned. Put your pasta on to cook whenever it's most appropriate. I used angel hair, obviously, but pretty much any pasta shape should work with a mildly chunky tomato sauce like this one.

When everything is done, drain your pasta and add it to your pan of sauce. Give it a minute over low heat, so the pasta can absorb a bit of the sauce. I usually wash the pasta pot and then serve.

Eat your delicious pasta with some fresh parsley scattered over the top. Grate some cheese over it if you want to. It's your pasta; do what you want!

NOM WITH IMPUNITY.

Kale and olive aglio e olio

Lately, even though it's still mostly summer here in CA, my brain has been making a beeline for the fall produce. This time, I had a big bunch of excellent sturdy kale hanging out in the crisper. Why not make it the centerpiece of a fast and easy pasta?

In a standard aglio e olio, pasta gets drenched in a beautiful spicy garlicky olive oil and garnished with grated parmesan. I took this a step or two further, adding green olives and slivered red pepper along with my kale. The result was a perfect quick lunch--full of hearty greens and pungent with olives and garlic.

Kale and olive aglio e olio

olive oil
garlic
olives
lots o' kale
red pepper
salt, pepper
pasta of your choice
parmesan/etc for garnish

First, get out a wide saute pan and warm several good glugs of olive oil over medium heat. Since the oil will be your sauce base, use a little more oil than you'd normally add to a marinara.

At the same time, heat your pasta water. I bring mine to a boil, covered, turn off the heat, and leave the hot pot on the back burner until it's time to cook the pasta. That way, when you turn the heat back on, the pot will come back to a boil almost instantly. Cooking tricks for the win!

So. Smash, peel, and mince several cloves of garlic, and add them to the warmed olive oil. Adjust the heat down a touch, so the garlic sizzles gently and slowly in the oil. This will infuse the oil with delicious garlic flavor.

After giving the garlic and oil about five minutes to infuse, grab a handful of olives, chop them up, and add them to your pan. I used standard small green olives stuffed with pimiento from the big martini-making jar in our fridge door. However, you can use whatever kind of olives you like. I think black nicoise olives would be really good with the kale, for instance.

Let your olives and garlic cook slowly in the olive oil while you wash, destem, and roughly chop your kale. I used about 2/3 of a bunch for just me, but more greens are always better. GREENS!

Add your kale to the pan along with a sprinkle of salt. Turn up the heat a bit, stir, and cook for about five minutes. This is also a good time to start boiling any kind of chunky or thick pasta you may be using.

Core and slice a red (or orange, or yellow) pepper. When your kale is tender, add your chopped pepper to the pan. Stir and cook for another two to three minutes, or until your peppers are cooked through. Season the pan to taste.

When your pasta is done, drain it and add it to the pan of vegetables. Toss everything together and let it sit over the lowest heat for a minute while you wash the pasta pan. This will let the oil absorb into the pasta a bit.

Serve, adding grated parmesan if you so desire.

Now eat your lunch in good health and good conscience.

What are some of your favorite fall lunches?

Soupe au pistou at Eating Appalachia

Today, gentle reader, I have the honor of sharing my recipe for soupe au pistou in a guest post over at Jes's beautiful blog, Eating Appalachia.

Do you have zucchini, tomatoes, basil, or green beans bursting out of your kitchen? This is the perfect way to use them. Hop on over!

Summertime and the cooking is practically nonexistent

Well, it hit 90F. We are officially mired in the depths of summer.

What do you guys want to eat when it's hot outside? I tend to do a lot of quick pastas, sandwiches, cold salads, and, of course, ice-laden beverages.

For starters, I've been eating pot upon pot of Israeli couscous with chickpeas and veg. This is especially great because I don't get sick of it (yet--cross your fingers), so I can make one big batch and eat it for five lunches in a row.

I like it cold out of the fridge, which is clearly optimal for summer. It can also take raw vegetable additions, so I can mix it up a little if I need to forcibly shovel more vegetables into my system, or if I do start to get sick of it at any time. Perfect.

Gin is always the top liquor for me in summer, so I mixed up a batch of simple syrup and started making Fitzgerald cocktails. The Fitzgerald is essentially a gin sour with bitters--and lots of bitters, if you share my tastes. If you're on the vodka train instead of the gin train, you could probably achieve excellent results by subbing vodka for the gin. I should try this, but we just aren't vodka people. Besides, I transformed most of my vodka into various schnappses months ago.

Simple syrup

Take equal amounts of sugar and water, put them in a pot, and gently heat, swirling occasionally, until the sugar is all melted. Cool the finished syrup before you make cocktails with it. I tend to use brown or muscovado sugar, because that's how we roll. Store finished syrup in the fridge.

The Fitzgerald cocktail

2 oz gin
3/4 oz fresh lemon juice
3/4 oz simple syrup
a few large dashes of bitters

Combine everything in a cocktail shaker over ice. Shake and strain into a short glass. Or, if you're me, don't strain out the ice; just pour everything into a short glass together.

Sandwiches are the easiest meal when it's hot out. They require no cooking, can be stuffed with practically anything your heart desires, and take only a few minutes from idea to completion.

This sandwich is turkey, mushroom, mozzarella, chard, and honey mustard on rye: perfect. Fresh summer apricot on the side is a clear bonus. I had a variation for lunch yesterday: turkey, spinach, shredded carrot salad, and honey mustard wrapped in a slightly warmed tortilla, with several handfuls of grape tomatoes on the side.

I'm definitely going to start going for more wraps--although I think I'll have to find some lavash first. Something like this black lentil and carrot salad would be great stuffed into a wrap. A lentil-yogurt salad would be perfect with the addition of some extra greens. Or maybe an all-veg version with yogurt dressing. The possibilities are clearly endless.

So that's what been happening in my neck of the land of it's-hot-I-don't-wanna-cook. What have you guys been up to in your summer kitchens?