House of Annie

I had already been making pasta dishes that I learned from Fine Cooking Magazine based on their “Cooking Without Recipes” article titled “How to Make a Light, Creamy Pasta Sauce” (Fine Cooking, Issue number 50). So I had the right building blocks to figure out how to make Penne Portobello myself.

For the pasta, I’ve used penne as well as farfalle. You are totally free to interchange them as you please or use any other shape of pasta.

Quick and Easy Pasta Recipe

This recipe is a quick and easy dish. From start to finish, I can normally whip up this meal in half an hour or less. Basically, while your pot of water is boiling for the pasta, you can be prepping all the ingredients and when you put the pasta in to boil, you can start to cook the sauce. Once the pasta is done, all you have to do is incorporate the pasta in the sauce and add a little cream and that's it, you're ready to eat! Easy huh?

And the ingredients that go in the sauce is really up to you. In this one, I am going to use mushrooms and (because I do like lots of veggies), I also add onions, bell peppers, asparagus, sundried tomatoes, and spinach. I find that any combination of these veggies (other vegetables I've used include zucchini, peas, cauliflower and fresh tomatoes) make a really yummy pasta.

You can also vary your protein. I normally try to go with two different types of meat to complement the rest of the ingredients. Sometimes, I will throw in some bulk Italian sausage (about 1/2 lb) and some kielbasa sausage or bacon. At other times, I've just used chicken and sausage or made it a seafood dish by adding shrimp. When I use shrimp though, I keep it more simple—just a veggie or two and let the shrimp be the star. Play around and find your favorites!

Linguine with Pancetta, Zucchini, Shallots, and Homegrown Cherry Tomatoes

The Trick to Tasty Pasta

The trick to making your pasta sauce taste really yummy is to give it a nice liquid ingredient. I always keep a bottle each of dry and sweet vermouth in my pantry (they last a lot longer than a bottle of opened wine as they are fortified) and they really add a delicious flavor component to the finished dish as well as in helping to scrape up all the nice brown bits while cooking. Other liquids you can choose to add include chicken stock, marsala wine, brandy, vodka, and clam juice. After adding your liquids, you do want to reduce it to really give it a punch.

Right at the end is when you add the cream (and not too much--about 1/2 cup is plenty) to enrich the sauce and give it some body. It won't make the sauce so thick and heavy the way a lot of cream sauces are in restaurants but it will give your pasta a more luxuriant mouth feel.

Finally, don't forget to toss all the ingredients together and add final touches like grated cheese or leafy herbs to add one more layer of flavor to your final pasta dish.

Penne with Sausage, Spinach and Mushrooms

How to Boil Pasta

One word on boiling pasta. Growing up, my mom used to boil pasta in a medium sized pot and add a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of oil. I didn't know any better for a long time and did the same. After watching Food TV and also reading cookbooks, I've come to realize that how you cook your pasta is KEY to how the whole dish will taste.

If you plan to cook the whole pound of pasta, you will need:

• a big pot of water (4 quarts).
• to salt liberally (at least 2 Tbsp--I never bother to measure, I just taste my water, if it tastes like the sea, you've salted it enough).
• to forget the oil. Oil does nothing for the pasta.
• to stir the pasta several times through the cooking time-this helps ensure the pasta doesn't clump together.

And when it's cooked through (follow cooking times on the package but also bite into it to make sure it's cooked through), save a cup of the water and drain. Do NOT rinse in cold water. The saved water can be added if the pasta starts to clump a little (I use this more when I'm making spaghetti or other noodle pasta, I don't need it as much with farfalle).

Save a Cup of Pasta Water

Brighten Up the Flavors

One final trick—soy sauce. Yes, soy sauce. Right at the end, I always add a bit of soy sauce to my sauce. You won’t notice it but it will brighten up all the other flavors because of its umami. If your sauce still doesn’t come alive after that, you can do my second trick and add a bit of lemon juice. That always works for me. But try the soy sauce trick first. You’ll be amazed.

Farfalle with Mushrooms and Sausage in a Light Cream Sauce

adapted from Fine Cooking Magazine

Ingredients
1 lb farfalle (bowtie) pasta (I’m partial to Barilla brand pasta)
4 qts water
2 Tbsp salt

2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 lb bulk sweet Italian sausage or 1/3 lb bacon, sliced to cubes
1/2 lb polska kielbasa, large diced
1 onion, diced
1 cup asparagus, sliced on a diagonal (about 8 spears)
2 cups sliced mushrooms (I used baby bellas this time but you can use white button or portobellos or even shiitakes if you want)
1 bell pepper (any color you like), diced
2 large handfuls of spinach (about 1 bunch or 2 cups baby spinach)
1/4 cup chopped sundried tomatoes (the ones packed in olive oil), make sure to get some of that oil into the pasta too (it adds a lot of flavor)
1 tsp Italian seasoning (or combination of your choice of dried herbs)
1/2 cup dry vermouth (sweet vermouth will work too)
1/2 cup low-salt chicken broth
1/2 cup heavy cream
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste and don’t forget the dash of soy sauce (about 1 Tbsp)
Garnish: grated Parmesan and chopped parsley

Method:
1. Bring water to boil in large pot. Add salt and throw in pasta. Give it a stir every so often while cooking. Follow timing on your pasta box. Check to make sure pasta is done. Drain pasta and do not rinse in cold water.
2. While water is boiling, prep ingredients and start cooking. Add pasta to cook as you continue to make your sauce.
3. In a large stainless steel pan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add bacon or Italian sausage and sauté till bacon is slightly crisp or sausage is halfway done. Add kielbasa sausages and continue to cook till lightly browned.
4. Throw in diced onion and sauté till onions are soft. Add Italian seasoning and salt and pepper to taste.
5. Toss in the asparagus, mushrooms and peppers. Sauté for 1-2 minutes till mushrooms start to wilt.
6. Add sundried tomatoes.
7. Add vermouth and chicken broth. Bring to boil and then simmer till reduced by about half.
8. Throw in the spinach now and let it wilt in the sauce.
9. Add cooked pasta to sauce and toss around to coat pasta. Add in heavy cream and additional flavorings (like soy sauce or lemon juice) and toss. Taste and adjust seasonings.

Farfalle with Asparagus, Spinach, Mushrooms and Sausage

Plate up and garnish with parmesan cheese and parsley. Sometimes, the pasta is so flavorful already that I omit this step.

If you want to spice up your pasta, feel free to add some dried red chili flakes or Tabasco to your sauce.

Enjoy!

Cheers, Annie

This article was entered into the Presto Pasta Nights roundup, hosted this week by Ben of What's Cooking

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I had made a New York Times No Knead Bread a while back, but hadn't attempted one recently. If memory serves, the crust was perfect but the crumb (inside of the bread) was chewier than I preferred. I just hadn't gotten around to doing another one.

Seeing as we had the Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24 Chinese New Year Cioppino post coming up, I got the crazy idea to make my own bread to go along with the cioppino. When I watched Chef John from Foodwishes.com make a No Knead Ciabatta Bread recipe a couple of weeks back , I thought this would make the perfect occasion to try doing No Knead Bread again. The whole appeal of this type of recipe is, it's simple enough for a non-baker like me to make at home without a lot of effort.

No Knead Bread Recipe

Adapted from Foodwishes.com

Ingredients

375 grams bread flour
120 grams whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
1-1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups warm water

Mixing Flour, Salt, Yeast and Water for No Knead Bread

Covered it with foil and let it sit in the oven (at room temperature) for 18 hours. The dough was very bubbly, soft, wet, sticky, and "gluten strand-ified".  So far, so good.

No Knead Dough After First Rise

Here's Where I Think it Went Wrong

According to the recipe, you're supposed to drizzle a little olive oil in a sheet pan and then sprinkle on lots of corn meal. I think I drizzled too much olive oil, and dumped on even more corn meal. Also, I think I didn't use the right kind of corn meal. This one was more like flour instead of the coarse, grainy type you see used for pizza dough recipes

No Knead Ciabatta Dough on Sheet Pan

I covered it with a clean towel and let it rest, forgetting that I was supposed to flour the top of the dough first. Two hours later, the towel was sticking to the dough and I had to carefully separate it like gauze from an oozing burn wound (ick!) Not pretty.

I put it in a 425*F oven for 35 minutes, with another pan of water on the bottom rack to create steam. Here's what it looked like when I pulled it out. I had high hopes.

No Knead Ciabatta Bread

After letting it cool down, I cut into it. Then I took a bite.  Hmm...

Sliced No Knead Ciabatta Bread

Like the other no knead bread that I did, the crust was very nice, but the inside was kinda tough and chewy. In fact, the bottom of the bread seemed to be undercooked. I was not happy with the way the bread turned out, so I decided to not serve it for the cioppino dinner and went with bread done by professionals.

At dinner, Michael of Cooking for Engineers confirmed that he, too, was not impressed by the No Knead Bread recipe. He had made a dozen loaves as research for an article, but he ended up not writing it because he was not happy with his results. Carolyn the Food Gal encouraged him to write about his results anyway. We'll see.

I am not saying that the No Knead Bread recipe is bad. I'm certainly not blaming Chef John's recipe for my poor results. People all over seem to have success with the recipe. But going 0 for 2 makes it hard for me to consider another attempt.

Have you had success with the No Knead Bread recipe? I'd love to hear your experiences. Leave a comment and tell us about it!

Aloha, Nate

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Fast forward several years later to when Annie and I had been living here in the Bay Area a few years. I've always had that cioppino on my mind. One evening, Annie made a huge pot of cioppino for us and a group of friends, using the Tadich Grill Cioppino recipe from Saveur Magazine. Everyone loved it.

Covering the Cost

In fact, our guests loved the cioppino so much, they said that they would gladly pay us to make it again. All that wonderful but expensive seafood made doing this dish at home cost-prohibitive. But if we had some help getting the ingredients, we could do it. What could be better than having someone else cover the cost of the meal?

Enter the Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24 program. Each month, Foodbuzz features 24 blogs doing 24 meals in a single 24 hour period. If you are selected as one of the 24 bloggers to present a meal that month, you receive a stipend that will help cover the cost of the meal. Cool beans!

Build a Better Cioppino

When Annie and I were developing our proposal for the meal, we were thinking of incorporating a Chinese New Year theme. Hot pot is a really popular dish among Chinese, especially around Chinese New Year. (In fact, Kian Kho of the excellent Red Cook food blog also did an amazing hot pot dinner for his Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24 meal. I guess great minds think alike!)

But I didn't want to do just a regular hot pot. I wanted to give it a San Francisco Bay twist to it. I thought, what's a seafood soup dish that's popular in the San Francisco Bay Area. *ding!* (lightbulb flashes on) Cioppino! Of course!

We could totally do this! It would be great, because we wouldn't have to worry about how much all the seafood was going to cost. In fact, it would be better and healthier to do a cioppino hot pot-style. Why?

Higher in Flavor, Lower in Fat

The original Tadich Grill cioppino recipe calls for all the fish, shrimp and scallops to be dredged in flour and fried in butter and oil. A cup of olive oil and 16 tablespoons of butter, to be exact. Sure, that cioppino would have tons of flavor. But that's an awful lot of fat. And remember, Annie hates frying fish.

Doing this cioppino hot pot-style, there would be no fish frying. Everything gets cooked in the broth, right at the table. The meal would be high in flavor yet lower in fat. Me likes!

Procuring and Preparing the Ingredients

We knew exactly where to go to get our seafood: our favorite fishmonger, Pat from Mission Fresh Fish. Pat has supplied us with fish for several of our recipes, including Pan-Fried Sanddabs, Wild Salmon Cakes, and Ikan Pepes. And he always gives us a good deal.

We gave him a call, told him what we were doing and what we wanted and placed our order. The day of the dinner, we went over to the Saratoga Farmer's Market to pick up our seafood. As soon as we got home, we started prepping.

First, we peeled the large shrimp, leaving the shells on just the last tail section. We took the peeled shrimp shells and boiled them in some water to make a shrimp stock, which we then strained.

Large Shrimp and Cooked Bay Shrimp for Cioppino

Next, we sliced up the halibut fillets into thin slices. We also cleaned the scallops, removing any of the harder muscle. The scallops gave off a lot of liquid, so we had to drain them on paper towels for a while.

Sliced Halibut and Large Scallops for Cioppino

Then, we cleaned the clams and mussels. We tried our best to pick out the dead ones (they don't close tight when you squeeze them). We pulled off the mussel "beards" as well.

Clams and Mussels for Cioppino

Finally, we removed the cooked Dungeness crab bodies from their shells and cleaned off the gills and guts. Then we cut each body section into quarters.

Dungeness Crab Sections for Cioppino

The ingredient list for the cioppino broth is:

1 medium yellow onion, peeled and chopped
1 thumb of ginger, peeled and finely minced
2 medium carrots, peeled, trimmed, and chopped
1 rib celery, chopped
1 green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped
1 leek, white part only, trimmed, cleaned, and chopped
1⁄2 small fennel bulb, trimmed and chopped
2 28-oz. cans crushed Italian tomatoes
2 tbsp. tomato paste
4 bay leaves
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 tsp. dried basil
2 pinches cayenne
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

First, the veggies were sauteed in a large stock pot with 8 Tablespoons of butter and 1/2 cup olive oil.

Sauteeing Vegetables for Cioppino Broth

Then Annie added the crushed tomatoes and tomato paste, followed by 6 cups of shrimp broth. Next came the herbs and spices. For an added Asian twist, we put in a stalk of lemongrass that had been lightly crushed. We brought the cioppino broth to a boil, then lowered the heat and simmered, stirring occasionally and adjusting the seasonings to taste.

Adding Crushed Tomatoes to Cioppino Broth

(Oh, one more thing. Remember the crab shells from the Dungeness crab? There's a lot of lovely crab fat and tomalley left in the shell. We scraped all that into the cioppino broth as well. Mmmmm-MM!)

As the dinner hour got closer, Annie heated up a large skillet with a couple Tablespoons of oil and 2 cloves of garlic (minced). She then poured in 2 cups of Sauvignon Blanc and brought that to a boil. Working in batches, she tossed in the clams and mussels, covered the skillet, and let them steam for a few minutes. The clams and mussels that popped open were transferred to a bowl and set aside. (We discarded any that didn't open.)

Steamed Clams for Cioppino

Dinner Time - Let's Eat!

I had set up a portable butane stove in the middle of our dining table. After our Thai-inspired Caesar salad course was cleared, we started cooking the cioppino hot pot. We transferred some of the broth from the large stock pot into a shallower pot, and brought that to a boil over the butane stove. Then we lay down some of the shrimp, fish, scallops, clams, mussels, and finally Dungeness crab sections into the broth. Covered the pot and let it come to a boil again.

Cioppino Hot Pot Boiling

Within a few minutes, the cioppino broth came to a boil. We ladled out all the seafood into individual bowls (one of our guests, Michael from Cooking for Engineers, has a good picture of his bowl of cioppino.) Then, it was time to chow down.

Ladle Full of Cioppino

I could tell that there wasn't as much butter in this version of cioppino compared to the previous versions. But that didn't matter, because the stew was bursting with so many other flavors. From the sweet shrimp, scallops and crab to the firm halibut flesh to the briny clams and mussels, it was perfect.

After everyone finished their first portion, we refilled with more cioppino broth from the stock pot, and started a second batch of seafood boiling. After that second helping, we were feeling pretty full, but pretty good!

Aloha, Nate

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