Category Archives: Noodles

Broccoli Salad with Ravioli, Feta, and Lemony Harissa Dressing

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I have this little food-related fantasy right around lunchtime some days.  I thought for about two seconds about whether I should share it with you all, but then I realized, YOU’RE the one reading a food blog, you must be at least as obsessed with food as I am.  So I figure you must have plenty of food fantasies of your own.  Here’s mine, which may be most recognizable to stay-at-home parents of very small children who end up eating PB&Js for lunch with one hand while holding a baby in the other arm: a drive-through (or delivery!) deli counter, featuring healthy, hearty, fresh, delectable salads.  Or, since it’s make-believe anyway, let’s just go ahead and say great salads that magically appear in my refrigerator as soon as I get hungry.

There are a few places near me that feature impressive arrays of pre-made salads, but they’re not always as good as they look.  And I want good.  So when I can manage to plan in advance, I like to make a great salad for dinner and then stock my fridge with the leftovers for weekday lunches.  This is just such a salad.  Whether you eat it at your desk or during your baby’s 10-minute nap, I recommend following it with one of those pixie tangerines that are sadly about to disappear until next year.  Almost like magic.This salad is adapted from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Every Day.  You can play with the proportions, using more ravioli for more of a pasta salad or less for more of a broccoli salad (which I prefer).  As for the dressing, we have tried many prepared harissa pastes and currently use the Tunisian brand Les Moulins Mahjoub (it looks like this and I buy mine at The Spanish Table), but if you have another favorite I’d love to hear about it! Continue reading Broccoli Salad with Ravioli, Feta, and Lemony Harissa Dressing (click for recipe)

Pasta with Garlic, Anchovies, Chili and Breadcrumbs

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Sometimes things don’t go according to plan.  I am going to have to update my tagline: “daily recipes…except when I have two sick kids.”  I am also revising my Valentines Day plans for the same reason.  Out with the heart-shaped foods and chocolate desserts.  In with a dinner that takes 25 minutes to make but still says “I love you.”

This recipe is one of J’s favorites.  It comes from one of our favorite Seattle restaurants, Anchovies and Olives, where it is “Bigoli with Garlic, Chili, and Anchovy.”  If you want to make bigoli, more power to you.  If you want a similar-shaped dry pasta, you can use bucatini.  If you want the texture of a fresh pasta, which I do like with the crispy breadcrumbs, you could use any long noodle.  If you just have a box of spaghetti in your cabinet, get it out, it will be great.

Pasta with Garlic, Anchovies, Chili and Breadcrumbs: Put a big pot of water on high heat, and add salt and 1 lb. pasta when it boils.  In a separate small pan, make garlic-infused breadcrumbs by gently heating a couple Tbsp. olive oil with a few smashed cloves of garlic.  Meanwhile, pulse and then grind a few slices of bread to crumbs in your food processor.  Remove the golden cloves of garlic from the oil and enjoy them on chunk of bread while you continue cooking (you have a glass of wine, too, maybe?)–or share them with your Valentine.  Toss the fresh breadcrumbs into the garlic oil and stir occasionally over low heat until they are golden and crisp.  Season with salt and set aside.  Once the breadcrumbs get started in the garlic oil, get another pan (this one big enough to hold the finished dish) on the stove.  Heat 1/4 c. olive oil over medium-low heat with three sliced cloves of garlic, 1 tsp. chili flakes and 12 drained and chopped oil-packed anchovies.  Stir occasionally until the garlic softens and the anchovies melt into the oil.  When your pasta is nearly cooked to your liking, drain and add it to the anchovy sauce pan with 1/4 c. chopped parsley. Toss and continue cooking until pasta is perfectly cooked, tasting and adjusting with more oil or chili flakes if you like.  Serve each bowl topped with a generous spoonful of breadcrumbs.

If you want to gild the lily, you can serve this dish (or your reheated leftovers) topped with a fried egg.

Eat Your Greens: Easy Handmade Spinach Pasta

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Sometimes, as a threat, I tell my children that there were times, like maybe in the 1950s, when children weren’t even allowed INTO the kitchen.  They had to PLAY OUTSIDE until dinner was ready.  They did not ever get to help cook, and they CERTAINLY were not allowed to gambol about the cook’s feet or play frisbee with the tupperware lids to entertain the baby.  My children stare at me, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.  Being banned from the kitchen is as bad a fate as they can imagine.

In fact, many evenings when I head into the kitchen to start thinking about dinner, they beat me there, pulling their stepladders up to the counter.  “How can we help?”  They measure as we bake, pile cut veggies onto the tray to roast, push the buttons on the machines.  They find the pots, help set the table, and enthusiastically stir clouds of flour and glops of sauces right onto the floor.

So when my little chefs make a dinner request, I like to indulge them.  The other night my five year old requested stracci di pasta.  Actually, what she said, with a bordering-on-maniacal gleam in her eye, was “Mama, can we make that pasta where we get to cut it up by ourselves WITH A SHARP KNIFE?”  (Sharp knives–even not VERY sharp knives–are exciting to the preschool set.)  Indeed we could.

Homemade egg pasta is actually very easy if you have a pasta roller.  If you don’t, forget it, borrow a friend’s and then come back for the recipe.  We made ours with spinach both for the emerald color and because I want my kids to cook with and eat vegetables on purpose (as opposed to only hidden-in-their foods veggies, which seems to be a trend).  This recipe, like many of my favorites, started its life in Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

Fresh Spinach Pasta starts with two c. lightly packed spinach leaves blended with two eggs until liquid.  Mix 2 c. flour with 1/4 tsp. salt in a mixer/food processor/bowl then add the liquid while stirring or mixing on low speed.  The dough will be quite crumbly but if it is unworkably dry or sticky you can adjust with a spoonful of water or flour.  Turn out onto a cutting board and knead until smooth.  Cover and let rest 15 minutes.  Cut dough into 4-6 pieces and flatten each into a rough rectangle.  Set your pasta roller to the widest setting and roll the dough through, then fold in half or thirds and roll again to continue kneading the dough.  Do this a few times, then stop folding and start thinning out the dough by running it through the machine on progressively thinner settings.  When your pasta is suitably thin, repeat with remaining dough.  Let your kids cut the pasta into stracci (“little rags”), or fold it as shown and slice into noodles.  (If the pasta seems at all sticky, flour it lightly for this step.)  Pull apart into a pile of noodles and toss with a few pinches of flour to keep the noodles from sticking.  Cook in a boiling pot of salted water for a few minutes, tasting as you go (cooking time will depend on the thickness of your pasta).

We drained our pasta and tossed it into a pan of puttanesca-style sauce: olive oil, garlic, capers, tomatoes, red pepper flakes, dried oregano, and a few more handfuls of spinach.

Put a Fried Egg on Your Pasta

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Ok, so I’ll give you that this is more of a tip than a recipe.  But I promise you this: a salty, garlicky, spicy plate of pasta is even better with a fried egg on top.

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Jewel Tone Winter Pasta

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I have mentioned before that orange vegetables have favored status with the children in our household.  Which is why, when I have a butternut squash around, my first thought about dinner is usually that I should dice it up and roast it.  My oldest calls the carmelized bites “squash candy,” which isn’t at all wrong (although I don’t go this far).

I, however, am not picky about the color of my food, so long as my plate contains an array of stunning hues.  Ok, so I am picky.  It’s worth it.  Beautiful tastes better.

Luckily, we eat a lot of vegetables, and vegetables are gorgeous.  This pasta has a combination of veggies that I love for their jewel tones almost as much as I love them for their flavor together: butternut squash, kale, red onion, and mushrooms.

I am not an evangelist on this point, but I think this combination is worth trying with whole wheat pasta.  At this time of year especially, I like the robust savor of whole wheat noodles underlying the sweetness of caramelized winter vegetables.  But hey, if that’s not your thing, go ahead and use whatever you’ve got on your shelf.

Jewel Tone Winter Pasta begins with the roasting of a peeled, diced butternut squash tossed with a spoonful of olive oil and a few good pinches of salt.  Roast it at 450 and stir every 10 minutes or so until the cubes start to candy at the edges (about 40 minutes for 1/2″ cubes).  Meanwhile, heat a pot of water to boil pasta.  While it’s heating, find a pan large enough to hold the finished dish and saute a sliced red onion in olive oil on high heat with a pinch of salt until it begins to really brown.  Add a pile of sliced mushrooms and continue cooking until the liquid evaporates and they shine like gold.  Now toss in a big pinch of salt and a shredded head of washed kale, with a few additional spoonfuls of water if necessary to deglaze the pan, and cook until the kale is tender but not mushy.  (Take the pan off the heat if your pasta and squash aren’t ready yet.)  When your squash is nearing perfection, cook whole wheat spaghetti (or your noodles of choice) in salted water for 1 minute less than usual and then drain, reserving a cup of cooking water–the pasta will finish cooking in your pan.  Put your pan back on the heat and combine everything: sauteed veggies, roasted squash, noodles, a splash of olive oil and some good grindings of pepper.  Taste for salt and serve with more pepper at the table, and a little bit of cheese if you’re so inclined.  I love this dish with blue cheese, but fresh goat cheese or grated parmesan would be perfectly acceptable alternatives.

We served this pasta with a spinach salad with fresh pears, dried cherries, sunflower seeds and Creamy Pear Vinaigrette, but it would also be delicious with this lemony Romaine salad with homemade croutons.

Zippy Noodle Curry with Tofu, Sweet Potatoes and Chard

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J and I spent a week taking cooking classes in Chiang Mai once when we were kicking around Thailand for a few months.  (We also spent a week taking foot massage classes in Bangkok.  Both were pretty nice weeks.)  We love Thai food and occasionally dig into the freezer and pantry to bring the scents and flavors of Thai cooking into our home.

One of my favorite foods in Thailand was a rich, creamy noodle curry called khao soi.  This is not a recipe for khao soi.  You should definitely get yourself a bowl if you find yourself in Chiang Mai, though.  THIS is a very simple recipe based on the Big Curry Noodle Pot recipe in Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking.

In Zippy Noodle Curry with Tofu, Sweet Potatoes and Chard, “zippy” refers to both the flavors and the speed of making the dish.  (I’m funny, huh?)  Saute an onion, 1 big cubed sweet potato (I steamed mine first, but I think it was unnecessary) and some chopped garlic in a glob of heavenly-smelling coconut oil with 1-2 Tbsp. red or yellow curry paste.  Add a cubed block of extra-firm tofu and a few handfuls of chard leaves sliced to ribbons and stir to coat.  Pour in 2 c. veggie stock, 1 can of lite coconut milk, 2 tsp. turmeric, 2 Tbsp. soy sauce, and 1 Tbsp. sugar and simmer until the sweet potatoes are soft.  Meanwhile, cook 8 oz. fresh egg noodles in a separate pot.  Add cooked noodles and the juice of a lime to the curry.  Garnish with chopped cilantro, green onions and peanuts, and serve with chopsticks and a spoon.  Thai chile flakes, soy and/or fish sauce, and lime wedges at the table will let everyone perfect the dish according to their own taste.