Tag

pasta

Farmer's Market Lunch Recipes Vegetarian

Pesto, Tomato, and Mozzarella Pasta Salad

written by Ali

I’m humming On the Road Again as I type. This week, I’ve only seen my desk for two days and next week will be the same. What I’ve seen instead are meeting rooms, the Capital Mall in Salem, and one of the most-overpriced hotel rooms I’ve stayed in in a long time. I’ve also seen a lot of my car, listened to four episodes of NPR’s Ask Me Another, one episode of This American Life, and one episode of Radio Lab. In short, I couldn’t wait to get home to see my husband, the dog, the cats, and my comfortable bed. I also couldn’t wait to get home to cook up some of the abundance that’s been developing in my little urban container garden.

I planted four tomato plants this year and three basil plants, two Sweet Basil plants (I’m guessing these are Genovese Basil plants – they are the ones that Trader Joe’s sells) and one Spicy Bush Basil plant. The basil took a while to warm up to the idea of growing, but now that it has, I have a plethora of basil on my hands. In past years, I’ve used my handy Cuisinart to create pesto cubes that I’ve frozen, but one of my Cuisinart parts didn’t survive the move to the new house, and I just haven’t gotten around to try to figure out if I can easily replace the part. So – lots of Basil, no food processor, and a serious longing for pesto. Fortunately, I ran across a recipe for How to Make Pesto Like an Italian Grandmother from 101 Cookbooks (one of my all-time favorite blogs – honestly, probably the first cooking blog I ever read regularly).

I decided last night to make two-days-worth of a simple pasta salad. After a long drive home from Bend, Oregon, I retreated to the garden, harvested several bunches of both the Spicy Bush Basil and the Genovese Basil and started chopping. Hand chopped pesto is a lot easier than I thought it would be. I don’t have a mezzaluna, so used our sharpest kitchen knife and just chopped, chopped, chopped. I skipped the garlic cloves (I had face-to-face meetings with people in the afternoon – didn’t want to offend anyone with raw garlic breath), used a little bit of parmesan cheese and a handful of pine nuts. I chopped and chopped some more. When I was finished, it wasn’t the prettiest pesto ever (basil oxidizes so quickly), but it was the best smelling and tasting basil I’ve ever made. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to creating a pesto that I ate on our honeymoon in Rome – and I have the fondest memories of that pesto: it came from a corner grocery store and we ate it with handmade ravioli in the kitchen of the weird little villa hotel room we were staying at in a tucked away corner of the city.

This is less recipe than more a few suggestions about how to make a very simple, but very delicious meal.

Pesto, Tomato, and Mozzarella Pasta Salad

Dried or fresh pasta
Several handfuls of basil
A handful of pine nuts
Several large pinches of freshly grated parmesan cheese
Tomatoes
Fresh mozzarella (in water, though you could also use regular mozzarella or even more parmesan or another cheese all together)
Olive oil

Boil a pasta of your choice using as much dried pasta as servings you are planning to prepare. I used bow tie pasta since it’s what I had on hand. Chop up a tomato or two. Make the pesto by chopping up basil leaves, adding pine nuts and chopping, adding parmesan and chopping (see Heidi Swanson’s lovely full recipe here). Add the pesto to your pasta. Add tomatoes and cheese. Drizzle with olive oil.

I heated this up for just a minute in the microwave at work, just to take the chill off the pasta and the pesto, but not so long to fully melt the mozzarella.

Enjoy!

July 14, 2016 2 comments

Lunch Recipes Vegetarian

Roasted Tomato and Burrata Pasta Salad

written by Ali

When life gives you half an hour to make your lunch for the week, along with the first of the summer tomatoes and an abundant crop of basil, make Roasted Tomato and Burrata Bow Tie Pasta Salad. So if you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed a number of beach-focused posts this past weekend. One of the greatest parts of living in this part of the PNW is that the beach is only two hours away, and I was fortunate to happen to have a meeting along the coast on Friday, which led to a night’s stay in Bandon, Oregon, a small tourist town along the southern Oregon coast. I ate seafood, picked up rocks and shells, and wandered along the beach. This meant, however, that Saturday was consumed with beach-time and driving, leaving just one day to run errands and cook on Sunday. I also realized, belatedly, that the Vancouver Marathon was happening on Sunday, which meant virtually no parking for the farmer’s market in Vancouver. This gave me a great excuse for going to a different market across the river in Portland – the Montavilla neighborhood market, where I found the first cherry tomatoes of the season. After having also crammed in shopping, a father’s day phone call, and a haircut, I was left with little time to be super kitchen creative.

Thus, bow tie pasta salad with roasted tomatoes, basil and Burrata cheese. Burrata cheese looks like a large round chunk of mozzarella. The difference is that the exterior is very mozzarella like, while the interior is filled with creamy curds that melt very nicely. It’s divine. Burrata was a rarity when we lived in rural Oregon, but here in the Portland area, it’s much easier to find. This recipe comes together very quickly and makes a great lunch dish. It would hold up well for a picnic, too.

Roasted Tomato and Burrata Bow Tie Pasta Salad
Serves 4

8 ounces dried bow tie pasta
15-20 cherry tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic chopped finely
2 balls of burrata
10-15 leaves of basil, torn into bite-size pieces
Salt to taste
Ground pepper to taste
Olive oil to taste

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Put the whole cherry tomatoes on a baking sheet or pie pan and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with the chopped garlic. Roast for 20 minutes or until the tomatoes are wrinkly and soft. Set aside and let cool.

Fill a saucepan about half way with water and bring to a boil. Add the pasta and cook according to package instructions. Drain the pasta.

Combine the drained pasta, the roasted tomatoes, and basil and toss. Tear the burrata into chunks and add to the pasta/tomato/basil combination. Add a pinch of salt and a few grinds of ground pepper and drizzle a little olive oil over the top.

This can be eaten as is, or left overnight in the fridge and reheated the next day – no more than a minute or two in the microwave.

June 21, 2016 0 comment

Farmer's Market Lunch Recipes Vegetarian

Roasted Cauliflower Pasta

written by Ali

In my current job, I drive, a lot. In addition to about a ninety minute a day commute, I’m also often on the road to go to meeting in other towns. I find, however, that I actually enjoy the time in the car, as it allows me to listen to books I might not otherwise get around to reading and listen to podcasts I almost never had time to listen to before. One of my favorite podcasts is Spilled Milk. Molly Wizenberg and Matthew Amster-Burton do a weekly podcast, eating and talking about all types of food. Last week, as I made the trek from one town to another, I listened as Molly and Matthew talked about cauliflower. The takeaway for me was that cauliflower tastes best when it is sliced thin, drizzled with olive oil and salt and roasted. And that I rarely ever eat cauliflower. I decided I needed to immediately get ahold of some cauliflower and try to roast it, since I’ve yet to meet a vegetable I didn’t like drizzled with olive oil and salt and roasted.

I decided to keep this pasta dish simple. It consists of little more than pasta, cauliflower, some toasted pine nuts, red pepper flakes, a few capers, and some parmesan cheese, all drizzled with more olive oil. I would imagine it would also be good with a bit of finely chopped red onion or some crispy garlic, but since these are intended for my lunch, I thought I’d avoid anything too garlicky. I think it is essential to use real parmesan here – we’ve fallen into a habit of buying parmesan in a tub, which is a slight step up from parmesan in a can, but not quite the real thing. The hardest part of this recipe was resisting the urge to eat all the cauliflower right off the pan.

Roasted Cauliflower Pasta
Serves Four

1 head cauliflower, sliced in thin pieces
Olive oil for drizzling
Pinch salt
4 cup cooked pasta
4 teaspoons capers
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 cup pine nuts
Parmesan cheese to taste

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and lay the slices of cauliflower in a single layer. Drizzle olive oil over the sliced cauliflower and sprinkle with salt. Bake for fifteen minutes.

Toast the pine nuts in a small, dry skillet over low heat. Stir several times. Take off the heat when the pine nuts are aromatic and light golden brown.

Combine the pasta, capers, red pepper flakes, toasted pine nuts, and cauliflower. Drizzle with a splash more olive oil and grate parmesan over the top.

May 23, 2016 0 comment

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