I’ve been making a lot of salads lately in an attempt to incorporate both more greens and more fiber into my evening diet. One way that I trick myself into eating an item I’m generally not too crazy about is by adding what should have been really obvious: fried potatoes. This has been the basis of many a salad lately, often incorporating minced red bell pepper, Brianna’s cheddar-chipotle dressing (the ONLY dressing I have ever used and been satisfied with or tolerant of), hangar steak, etc.

I prefer to use pre-washed, organic mixed greens because they’re not only versatile but the cost is completely worth the work that’s already been done, and I find in general they’re better or equal quality to what I can find pre-mixed in bulk, and last longer in the right quantities than what I can cut & mix on my own.

1 large pack “organic girl” pre washed mixed greens
3 T olive oil
1 T good balsamic vinegar (I like Bariani, for those of us in central & northern California)
salt & pepper
1 medium red potato, peeled & cubed
1 T butter
4-6 T soy nuts
1/4 C raw pistachios
1 slice dried pineapple, diced small
1/2 ripe fuyu persimmon, diced

In a saute pan on high heat, melt the butter. Add the cut potato, topping with plenty of salt & pepper. Toss, and let cook. Toss occasionally, once colored, reduce heat to medium low to cook through.

Meanwhile, Whisk together briskly the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt & pepper. Mix the greens to evenly coat, and add the soy nuts, pistachios, pineapple, and persimmon. Toss. If possible, let the potatoes cool a bit, and then toss them in as well. Serve immediately.

When I was a little girl, I lived in Seoul, South Korea for some time. My family sometimes ate at the Italian restaurant at the Seoul Hilton–foreign food was a delicacy to us back then (early 90’s), and sometimes real cravings surfaced. Since my mom is a pretty accomplished home chef (and has managed some pretty amazing multi-course 12 person dinner parties on her own!), she, over the course of some months or years, befriended the chef of the restaurant, an Italian man named Chef Bosco (I heard he now has a restaurant somewhere near the heel in Italy).

I loved Chef Bosco’s tomato soup. For a kid who loved sugar and chocolate more than anything, the amount that I loved this soup really cannot be communicated. I craved it. My family would eat a 3-course meal at this restaurant, and I’d order this soup for appetizer, main course, and even dessert. I couldn’t get enough of it. After 3 years, when we were moving away from Seoul, Chef Bosco was kind enough to share his recipe with my mother. I have modified it slightly to recreate it most suitibly to ingredients available in the US.

600-800 grams canned San Marzano Tomatoes (make sure they are real and imported from the Napoli area, with the DOC identification on the can. Alternatively, use canned tomatoes from other areas of Italy that are the PLUM variety, for example, a brand from Bolghari in Tuscany has some that compare). This is VERY IMPORTANT to the quality and flavor of the soup.

3 medium carrots, peeled
1 large onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 stick (or just scant) of butter
4+ C home made chicken stock
1 pint heavy whipping cream
4-6 T Parmesean cheese, grated
salt & pepper
Crusty bread for making crutons
Chives for garnish

Melt butter in large sauce or saute pan. When melted, add onion, garlic, and carrot. Add salt & pepper. Sautee until soft and bright in color.

Add tomatoes, and pleanty more salt. Let cook, break down, simmer and incorporate. When thickened, place into food processor, in parts if necessary. Blend until very smooth.

Add to pan large enough for all soup. Add the chicken stock (heat it/warm it first!). Mix, let come to boil. Add in heavy cream just before serving. (If you increase the batch or otherwise wish to freeze or preserve the soup for more than 3 days, do not add the cream. Add the cream before serving.) Add the parmesean cheese, let incorporate.

Serve with crutons on top, a crack of fresh ground pepper, whole or diced chives, and optional creme fraiche.

For Crutons: Dice bread. Spread evenly and in one layer on baking sheet, bake at 315-325 for 15-20 minutes, until darkened and dry. When almost done, heat 1-2 T butter in saucepan. Add 1 clove minced garlic. Let soften. Toss diced, toasted bread, turn off heat, let sit in butter.

For Two:
Italian style loaf bread, sliced thick
1/2 lb rare roast beef
1/4 large onion
pesto
Swiss, Leerdammer, or Bleu Cheese (Blue d’auvergene, St Agur, etc)
olive oil
salt & pepper

Heat your panini machine, slice the bread. Dice the onion and place into hot sautee pan with olive oil, adding salt & pepper. Cook until translucent.

Assemble sandwiches–Spread blue cheese on one side of the bread (alternatively layer your cheese), smear pesto on the other peice. Add hot onions against the cheese side, then add roast beef slices. You could also add arugula. Brush the outer sides of the bread with olive oil and grill at medium heat until heated through and golden outside.

Roast Vegetable Ragout
2 large heirloom tomatoes, preferably green/purple variety or other rich color
2 large carrots, peeled & trimmed
1/2 medium onion
6+ garlic cloves, peeled & trimmed
1/2 red bell pepper

Cut all vegetables into chunks; carrots diagonally. Put into baking dish, toss with 1/4-1/3 C olive oil, pleanty of sea salt & cracked pepper. Cook for 45-90min until soft and rich in color. Add 2/3rds mixture to food processor or blender, pulse until coarsely incorporated. Mix with left over whole vegetables. Reserve to place on bread, eat with roast meat, etc.

Alternatively, roast these vegetables with a london broil steak or other cut to roast; the juice from the meat will enrich the flavor, or add your own beef stock (1/3 cup) before roasting.

Place on toasted baguette that has been rubbed with a fresh, uncooked garlic clove.

Coconut Macadamia Green Beans
3 spring carrots (small with tops on) trimmed, peeled
1 lb green beans, trimmed
1/4 cup halved macadamia nuts (roasted & salted)
1/2 medium size hot pepper, small diced
2 cloves garlic
1 handful fresh pea shoots, washed & drained
3 T unrefined raw coconut oil (looks for lack of better description like large chunks of crack cocaine, with lots of actual coconut pulp left in it)

Cut green beans into 1-inch segments, cut carrots into 1/8th inch thick segments (or thinner). Mince garlic. Smash macadamia nuts unevenly to have mostly small pieces and some larger ones.

Heat non stick pan to medium heat, fully. Add coconut oil, let melt a little. It will retain some uneven chunks of coconut, don’t worry about this. Just make sure the heat is not so high it wil burn the coconut, though browning is OK. Add the carrot, hot fresh pepper, and garlic, cook 1-2 minutes until slightly softened/brightened color. Add cracked pepper, and a small amount of salt.  Next add the green beans. Reduce heat after 2-3 minutes to medium low. Let cook until beans slightly softened and much brighter in color. Add macadamia nuts, cook several more minutes, tossing as you go. Add the pea shoots at the end, raw on top.

Crepe Batter:
1/2 C Hazelnut “flour” (finely ground hazelnuts)
1/2 C -2T all-purpose unbleached flour
3 eggs
2T melted butter
1 1/3 C whole milk
dash salt
dash fresh grated nutmeg

Mix dry; Mix wet, add into a “well” of the dry and whisk together to avoid lumps, slowly incorporating the dry. The batter should be the consistency of light cream.

2 large fresh leeks, greens removed
4 small to medium white new potatoes
2-3 T butter
salt & pepper
5-8 stalks fresh wild arugula

Split leeks in half and chop finely in half circles. Dice finely the new potatoes to the size just slightly bigger than the eraser on a pencil. Melt the butter in a non stick pan at medium high heat (you could also use pancetta and half as much butter). When the water has evaporated (it stops bubbling), add the potatoes, with plenty of salt & pepper. Let them color, tossing occasionally. Reduce heat to medium, add leeks. Let leeks soften and color while potatoes also finish cooking.

Use a non-stick skillet and cook the crepes at medium high heat. Coat the pan in butter first, let the water evaporate and add batter. Don’t add too much batter or the crepes will be too thick; they should barely coat the pan. Flip when mostly done, cooking briefly on the other side.

Assemble, adding fresh washed arugula. Top with creme fraiche or sour creme and a few whole hazelnuts.

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. Let it brown, and add pasta as it’s finished cooking. Toss. Serve.

This one is Stephanie Approved Y’all!

1 butternut squash
6 spears asparagus (large)
1/4 vidalia or other sweet onion
1 large eggplant
1 C quinoa
2 C water
1 slice 1/4 inch thick pancetta, cubed
olive oil
salt & pepper

Cube butternut squash, egglant. Dice onion. Section eggplant to 1/2 inch sections.

Wash quinoa and combine with water in saucepan. Bring to boil, cover, reduce heat immediately to low. Set 15 min until water absorbed.

Fry pancetta in seperate pan, dry, adding to medium hot pan until crisp.

Heat olive oil and onion to medium high. Once onion shrunk but not translucent or colored yet, add butternut squash cubes (salt & pepper at every stage). Let soften. Turn heat up, add eggplant cubes. Allow to color, continuing to toss occasionally.

Add asparagus last. Let get bright green, turn off heat. Combine cooked quinoa with mixture, top with fried pancetta and serve.