I Love You More Than Food

Category: special occasion

Tutto Mare – mixed seafood pasta

A New Year’s Day dinner recipe while we hosted Y’s brother & wife from HKG.

Pasta ingredients
semolina flour, ground finely (0 or 00 size)
wheat flour, ground finely (0 or 00 size)
2 eggs
salt

Make pasta for four – recipe (double it), cut the noodles 1/3 inch wide, lay flat to wait to be cooked at end.

Sauce ingredients
1/3 yellow onion, diced finely
1-2 T fresh thyme or lemon-thyme
Parsley, washed & chopped fine
1 package ground saffron, or pinch infused into warm clam juice or fish stock
1/2 bottle clam juice or clam bouillion
8-10oz fish stock (can buy frozen in stores)
1/2 lb shrimp
1/2 lb bay diver scallops
1/3 lb fresh crab meat
10-12 small clams (smaller = more tender)
1/2 stick butter
champagne or dry white wine, 1 cup
olive oil
salt & pepper
vanilla salt (infuse salt with vanilla pod that has been cut/used and shake, reserve for future use)

Set water to heat on high in a very large pot while you heat a large skillet with high sides & with a fitting lid to medium heat.

Add half of the butter to the skillet and let melt, allowing water to sizzle off. Add the onion, and let cook until soft, but not colored. Add the thyme, and cook for 1 minute.

Meanwhile, heat to high a non-stick skillet and add the remaining butter. Once hot, add the scallops and some vanilla salt. Cook 1-2 minutes and add shrimp. When nearly done cooking, add 1/2 to 1 cup champagne or dry white wine, reduce until shrimps are cooked, remove shrimps & scallops and reserve, while continuing to reduce fluid.

To the high-sided skillet, once thyme is cooked 1 minute, add fish stock, clam juice, vanilla salt (use reason) & saffron, reducing by 1/4 to 1/2, and add clams to cook & cover it until they open. Once opened, add the liquid from the nonstick skillet and allow all to reduce.

Your water should be boiling now. Add a heaping table spoon of salt, and add the noodles to cook for 3-4 minutes. Meanwhile, add crab meat to saffron-clam mixture, to warm. When cooked, strain noodles and add to broth mixture, coating. Add the shrimp & scallops and cook 1 min on high heat. Adjust seasoning. Distribute into heated bowls and top with parsley.

Wine: we just ate it with leftover new years eve champagne.

January 2, 2010
Alaskan Halibut on Hazelnut Gomashi Corn, Peaches in Wine

1lb halibut fillet, no skin
5 ears fresh sweet corn (2 white 3 yellow)
Gomashi (toasted sesame seeds and salt in a grinder, use a mortal and pestal lightly if you dont have one)
Rainbow microgreens
3 green onions/scallions
Hazelnut Oil
Sesame seeds
Soy Sauce
1T butter
Olive oil

Marinate the halibut in soy sauce, touch of olive oil, and sesame seeds for at least a couple of hours, but not more than 12.Â Cook it in a nonstick pan just big enough for it, so it’s nice and tight. More on this in a moment.

Cut the corn off the cob. Slice the scallions thinly into the green.

In a large nonstick pan, heat 2 T hazelnut oil and butter (alternatively use a lightly flavored oil or olive oil and toast actual hazelnuts in it–crush them well first, use low heat for some time to infuse, but it’s just not the same) at medium heat, and add the corn. Add Gomashi mixture to add saltiness. Taste as you cook to add regular salt if needed, depending on proportion of your gomashi.

In a small nonstick pan, cook your marinated halibut on medium, top side down first. Once getting opaque, flip it over and cover it at least loosely with a lid, reduce heat slightly and continue cooking through.

When corn starts to color, add the scallions. Keep tossing until some kernels are browned and all are cooked. Place this on the base of your plate.

Top with clean microgreens, then portion the halibut onto each plate. This serves four with an appetizer (we had some heirloom tomato sauce & red pepper linguini, very small amount).

There is also now a Chilean Sea Bass & Spinich version of this dish.

Peaches in Wine

4-5 peaches (you can mix apricots too, and yellow and white peaches)
White sugar
Rose or dry white wine

No need to skin them unless you don’t like the skin

Slice evenly and toss in a bit of sugar, then cover in rose or dry white wine, most of the way. Cover and refrigerate for several hours at least. I served them on shortcakes and reduced the liquid to syrup in a pan, putting on top.

July 26, 2009
Dutch Baked Apple Pancake

In the tradition of what American’s mispercieve as French souffle, this baked pancake could also be called domestically “souffle” though internationally I’d argue it’s not.

I received a set of Penzey’s spices from my mother some time ago and have been slowly making my way through the spices. Since that time, they’ve sent me catalogs, which I am mostly uninterested in and ought to call and have myself removed as I do with everything else–but back to the point, this one had a recipe that looked good.

As an aside, they carry much the same quality and even often from the same suppliers as The Spice House in Chicago, and in fact, the families behind each are closely related (brothers) and it’s some sort of feud that causes them to have seperate and competing businesses. I’d recommend either for a variety of reasons, for online ordering.

Back to the point: There was an eye catching recipe for an apple pancake using their “cinnamon sugar” mixture (it’s the lazy man’s mixtures that turn me off from Penzey’s as a serious cook), and I do have a ton of apples left from my Farm Fresh to You shipment, so I figured hey, why not?

I used half the recipe but the full amount of milk, and made a few adjustments such as making my own cinnamon heavy “cinnamon sugar”, using more vanilla extract than required, and per usual using organic free range blah blah everything. It does taste better to do so, though, most of the time if not for anything else but the care and quality put into it vs mass produce. Half the recipe served 2 of us with nothing else for breakfast, I think this would be a great brunch dish to have a small slice of.

I baked it in a springform pan as we all know about my limited space and I haven’t room to stock both a pie pan and a springform.

Instead of syrup as the recipe suggests, I’d top it with powdered sugar.

March 15, 2009
Roast Golden Beet & Chevre Tortelloni in Brown Butter Sauce

Including: How to make fresh pasta for tortelloni and other stuffed pastas & ravioli

Most of us who are at least a little enamored with Italian food realize and recognize the vast and unending code for Italian pasta shapes. They range from fairly consistent (spaghetti is spaghetti just about anywhere you go) to the incredibly confusing (tortelloni can be either the little parmesean filled pastas we find dried in the grocery, more commonly known in the US as tortellini, or large, fresh pasta dumplings, or even a stuffed dumpling of any kind, as in a bit after the middle ages, when pasta was really making itself popular in Italy via Napoli’s maccheroni which we think of as being the elbow shape but in Italy can mean just about any unstuffed pasta shape, especially something similar to bucatini).

Anyway, it’s not consistent. But by tortelloni here, I mean a stuffed pasta in a particular shape, as, well, shown.

For the filling:
two medium golden beets, roasted with olive oil, salt, & pepper in foil for 1 1/2 hours or more, peeled & rough chopped
1/3 lb capricho di caba or other salty, moist fresh goat cheese/chevre
salt & pepper
olive oil

Blend all ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Add olive oil as needed to make a ricotta consistency.

For the pasta:
Measurements are approximate
1/2 C (or 50g) semolina 00 size flour
1/2 C (or 50g) 00 white wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 egg

Mix the flours, pour in a pile and create a well. Sprinkle with salt, add the egg to the center, and gently beat to incorporate flour. Once somewhat together, use hands to mix the rest of the flour in until it takes a comfortable amount and is no longer sticky when handling repetedly for several rounds of kneading. Cover tightly in plastic wrap and let set for at least 1 hour, up to 12. See this entry on making fresh pasta for more details on making the dough: How to Make Fresh Italian Egg Pasta.

Roll the dough out using plenty of flour to keep it from sticking. I find it easier to work with half the dough at once, keeping the other half nicely covered with the plastic wrap. Roll out as thin as the dough will allow without tearing or becoming fragile. The longer you let it rest the easier it will be to accomplish this. Using the correct size flour (extra fine) will also aid in this.

Cut in equal squares. I eyeball it, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Add a small drop of filling to each square.

Fold into a triangle and seal with your fingertips by pinching, starting at the top of the triangle and working around the edges. Try not to include extra air near the filling, or they may have trouble staying closed once in the hot water.

Press the left and right sides of the triangle together to form a circle with a tail. Flip the pasta “inside out” to create an edge that will help trap sauce.

Cook in boiling hot water, salted (several T of sea or kosher salt).

Meanwhile, melt 2-3 T of butter, adding salt & pepper; you can add poppy seeds too if you like. Let it brown, and add pasta as it’s finished cooking. Toss. Serve.

Wine: this one is fairly tricky, because of the salty-sweet combo. A nice and soft, round merlot would work, as would a dry, less aromatic white.

September 15, 2008
Fritole (Italian Doughnuts)

In April 2011, I rewrote this 2006 recipe to add western measurements to the metric system on the original, and added new, clearer photos. Please enjoy the recipe for Fritole – Italian doughnuts!

November 8, 2006