Category Archives: Delicious

Ask Auntie BubboPants

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I promised and promised and promised and finally here it is, the food column!

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Dear Auntie BubboPants,
First, like probably many of your fans, I enjoy reading your column in each issue of This Week in Ravelry. I appreciate your insight and your no nonsense approach to giving advice and saying what you feel. As per your request for food questions, I have some for you. I often find myself in a rut making the same or similar meals. With my hubby & I both working, there isn’t much time for dinner preparation when we get home. We’re hungry & don’t want to wait an hour for dinner, especially when we get home at 6 pm or later. That leads to snacking & unfortunately the snacking is usually not healthy. Maybe this is a multiple part question: Can you suggest any recipes or meals that are tasty, quick to make & packed with vegetables? Perhaps related, do you have any recipes for spaghetti squash other than the usual bake, shred, eat or bake with cheese, shred, eat? Don’t get me wrong, I like spaghetti squash prepared that way, but I’d like to broaden my spaghetti squash horizons.
Thanks for any & all answers!
spaghetti squash butt
Dear SSB,
First off, thank you thank you! I do really appreciate that people enjoy reading the column!
So let’s see, you’re having trouble with snacking before dinner time and it’s ruining your dinner? Stop buying those snacks. Really and truly! Stop buying the kinds of snacks that lead to eating and eating and eating. I know it sounds sort of trite and mom-like, but if you’re hungry, then eat a piece of fruit! Or some carrots! Stop buying the empty calorie type treats and snacks. Instead, when you go shopping, make a list that focuses on the reality of your situation. You are often too tired and hungry to focus on large meal prep right when you get home, you need to eat something little first to help curb the hunger pangs. Once you’ve had your little home-from-work snack you can get back to focusing on a real meal. So buy some legitimate snacking options like baby carrots, apples, bananas and whatnot.
As for quick and easy veggie packed meals, I will share with you the secret method David and I use. We often forget to cook dinner until it is very late at night. We are very easily distracted and somewhat irresponsible at times. One of the things we started doing is keeping big bags of frozen mixed veggies in the freezer. Our easiest meal is to make spaghetti, and we will dump a bunch of frozen mixed veggies into the sauce while it’s heating up. It’s not the kind of thing that I would serve to guests, but it gets a lot of veggies into me in short order and I don’t have to try to plan out multiple dishes for dinner when I am tired or not really feeling like cooking.
Spaghetti squash is lovely and can be added to just about anything. I like to stab it a few times then throw it in the microwave for 8-10 minutes depending on the size of the squash and the power of your microwave. While that is happening throw some minced garlic and olive oil in a saute pan. Then add about 1/2 to 1 tablespoon of any spice blend you want! An italian herb mix or some curry powder or Greek seasoning or whatever you are craving. Add about a teaspoon or so of water. Stir that up on medium heat until the water is mostly cooked off. Turn it off and let it just sit. Once you have your spaghetti squash well shredded then toss that in the pan with the seasonings, turn on the heat and mix until the seasonings are thoroughly mixed in. This seasoning mix trick can be used on pasta, other veggies, potatoes or whatever. The water and the sitting time are important for helping the flavors in the seasoning mix bloom and blend before adding the main ingredient (pasta or squash or whatever).
Also! Spaghetti squash, regular squash, potatoes and bunches of other things can be cooked in larger batches and kept in the fridge for about a week. When you are cooking, consider making a double portion of veggies or potatoes or the main dish.

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Dear Auntie BubboPants,
I’m newly married. I do the cooking, my husband does the dishes. Except, he complains a lot about doing the dishes. He prefers that I heat up a frozen pizza rather than cook a nice, healthy, tasty meal, because he doesn’t like doing the dishes. I don’t wish to serve unhealthy meals every night.
I’m trying positive reinforcement – lots of thank-yous, etc., when he does the dishes without complaining. We’re making slow progress.
In the meantime: can you recommend some dinners – real, hot meals with all four food groups – that use very few dishes for preparation?
(And while we’re at it… how can I make dish-time less of an ordeal?)
Thanks!
She Who Makes the Dishes Dirty
Dear SWMtDD,
I do not know what your kitchen situation is like, but I am going to recommend that you look into getting a full sized portable dishwasher! If you don’t know what they are, I will tell you (because I am good that way). A portable dishwasher is the same size as a regular dishwasher but does not get installed permanently, it hooks up to the kitchen faucet via an adapter. It exhausts the water right into your kitchen sink. When it’s done it can easily be unhooked from your faucet and rolled anywhere you like. Check Craigslist, I got mine for $50. They have the added benefit of giving you an extra square of mobile countertop.
So that is one way to make dish time less of an ordeal.
Okay, but I want to talk a little bit about the “equal division of chores”. When you first set up house with someone you always want to have an equitable sharing of responsibility so that everyone feels that everyone else is pulling their own weight. So, you divide things up and everyone seems happy. Happy until one person realizes that they just really really hate one of those chores. Sometimes the “equal division of chores” just isn’t all that equal or fair. Every act or chore does not need an equal corollary chore. Or if it does, it needn’t be the one seemingly related to it. The corollary chore to ‘making dinner’ doesn’t seem to be ‘doing dishes’ since doing the dishes seems to be something he really hates as opposed to just a chore to do. What I would suggest is that the two of you work together on the dishes and clean up after dinner and he picks up a different household responsibility.
I know it seems unfair, why should you cook and do part of the cleaning! Well, that’s just one of the 2 million compromises that you will make in the course of your relationship. You are going to find that most of the assumptions you had about fairness were at best, naïve. I know you are tired after working and cooking, but have him help you with dinner, and you can help him with the dishes.
Also, do you have a crock pot or slow cooker? If you don’t then get one! They are relatively inexpensive and they are invaluable in the kitchen. A roast tossed in the crock pot with a bit of water and some seasonings in the morning becomes delicious roast beef by the time you get home. Microwave a couple potatoes and some veggies and you’ve got dinner. Or make a simplified version of my crock pot chili!
1 can diced tomatoes (with the juices)
1 can diced jalapeños
3 tbl chili powder
1 tbl oregano
1 tbl cocoa powder
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
1/2 tb pepper
1/2 tbl salt
1 cup water
4 or 5 or more garlic cloves
1 chuck roast
put all of this in the crock pot before you go to work. Or, put all of it in the crock the night before and store it in the fridge and then put the crock into the cooker before you go to work.
When you get home, pull the roast out and put it in a large bowl to rest. Remove the bay leaf and cinnamon stick. Puree the contents of the crock pot. Once the beef has rested it will shred easily with 2 forks, add the beef back to the chili puree in the crock pot. From here add a couple cans of diced tomatoes and as many different cans of beans (black beans, kidney beans, red beans) as you like. You may have to add a bit of water as well. Heat it up and boom, you have enough chili to last you a few nights and your dishes are minimal.

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Hello, Auntie BubboPants!
For several months (a year?) now, I have been completely uninspired in the kitchen. Then, I found SmittenKitchen.com – a food blog with beautiful and inspiring pictures! I wanted to share! Because I am now in the kitchen for hours at a time with all sorts of goodies!
I have to credit SallySitwell for the discovery, a lady who I met once at a knit night and then again once at yoga and then friended on ravelry and then found her blog where she mentions the site…
I hope you enjoy!
Sarah

Dear Sarah,
That site looks awesome!
I found a site called “Our Best Bites” a few days ago and fell in love with their single serving pies!
Readers, what are your favorite foodie sites? Pop them into the comments section so we can all share.

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Dear Auntie BubboPants,
This is probably more food etiquette than food itself, but I’d appreciate your thoughts on the matter. I tend to show affection through food. I like nothing more than cooking or baking for friends and my DH’s family (mine is a continent away). There are several things I cook that are now constantly requested. His family has noticed this trend, and are starting to reciprocate.
The problem is, besides a few key dishes, his family members are terrible cooks. When his parents came to dinner last, they decided to make jambalaya. Now, I make a mean jambalaya. What they brought was disgusting. My husband and I choked it down. And before his mom served it, she said that “this dish will impress you!”
I had to thank her and take the leftovers (which were thrown out). Then she said she’s going to make it again for us when we go on a family trip next month. My husband gagged when I told him this.
Is there a polite way to tell her that we didn’t care for it? That I’d prefer to make it myself? I don’t want to seem rude, and there’s enough against me already that I don’t want to step on any more toes (they’re Cuban, and I just don’t like Cuban food, save for a few things! Friction!).
Furthermore, I have a lot of dietary considerations; some are medical and some are personal convictions. I can’t have dairy, but I won’t eat anything with artificial colors (actually I am allergic to some of those too!), flavors or preservatives. So when they brought sherbet for dessert (which has all of the above) I had to politely eat that too. I was woefully ill for days, and had an allergic reaction to the dye in it. (as an aside, I’ve told them I like sorbet. They don’t know the difference!)
So, how does one cope when dealing with food situations like this? If I declined either food, I’d have gone without dinner, and it would have been rude not to accept the gift of my guests. But at the same time, having to excuse myself to vomit isn’t very nice either.
What to do?
-Sick to my Stomach
Dear StmS,
You raise a couple of etiquette dilemmas here. The food issues/allergies one is pretty straightforward. You can let your hosts know that you have food allergies or dietary concerns. They can choose to cook for that, but they don’t have to. As the person with the dietary concerns you have to be responsible for what you eat, not them. So, if you are going to go eat somewhere, make sure they know your concerns, have a conversation about them. If they feel they cannot cook for your specific situation then you can bring your own food. There is no reason to eat something you are allergic to simply to seem polite, but these dietary concerns are yours, not theirs, and therefore your responsibility.
If you are not comfortable bringing this up to his parents then it is your husband’s job to do this. As your husband he is obligated to act as your proxy when dealing with his family (just as it would be yours to deal with your family on his behalf).
So, what happens if they cook a meal with your concerns in mind but it is unpalatable? You eat it and you smile and you appreciate the efforts that they went through to make a meal for you. I know it’s not fun to eat things that don’t taste good or are gross, but there are things that are so much more important in the long run than temporary discomfort. The act of feeding someone is rooted deep in our psyche. We don’t feed someone a meal just for the meal’s sake, we give the gift of food as a way of saying, “with you I will share my resources because you are important and we accept you into our pack”. Find a way, make a bit of a sacrifice, eat a small amount. Do this not just to make them happy but to accept the gift they have given to you, the gift of accepting you into their family.

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Dear Auntie BubboPants,
Unless “is procrastination the natural human condition” counts, I am presently lacking in relationship and other big “what do I do with my life” questions, being as my primary relationship at the moment is with a graduate program that is allegedly helping me answer the “what do I do with my life” sorts of things as well. I DO, however, have a food question, which I trust you to answer as well as you answer other peoples’ more interesting and important life-issues sorts of questions.
I love to cook, it is one of the things that I do. I love to feed my friends and loved ones my cooking. I am also, as of a few years ago, a vegetarian who has no money (see also, graduate school). So, here is the question: What sort of vegetarian main (that does not involve pumpkin, which I don’t like) and is not a curry (which I love, but one does need some variety) can one serve a group of friends in winter in Massachusetts?
Thank you,
Tofurkey-Butt

Dear TB,
I am totally the queen of procrastination! I can relate.
Vegetarian meals without pumpkin? Easy! First things first, you see that chili recipe I posted up there? you make that but leave out the beef. Cook the tomatoes and spices all day, then puree it up and add more tomatoes, all the different beans you like, maybe some canned hominy (sometimes called maize blanco) and any veggies that catch your eye.
Or you can make the chili recipe up to and including the step where you puree it. Then take some peppers, onions and saute until golden in a bit of oil with some garlic. Add some sliced carrots, maybe some zucchini, cilantro and some kale and cook until about half done.
In small tortillas layer the veggies with some refried beans and cheese. Roll up and place seam side down in a 9×13 baking pan. Fit as many as you can in there. Pour the chili puree over these, cover in more shredded cheese and bake for about 30 minutes at say, 400 degrees or until they are hot all the way through. Serve with a salad and maybe some corn bread.
One more idea:
1 head of kale, deribbed and shredded
2 apples, cut into chunks (use apples that are good for cooking like McIntosh, Jonathan, or Gravenstein)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 white onion, chopped
1 zucchini, sliced
a lot of sliced carrots
1 tsp rubbed sage
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup corn meal
1/2 cup shredded parmesan
2 tsp chopped rosemary
in a pot with a cover bring 4 cups of water to a boil. Slowly pour the cornmeal into the boiling water while whisking. Quickly add the parmesan and rosemary. Remove from heat, cover and set aside. It will finish cooking with the residual heat.
In a large fry pan saute the onions and garlic in oil until translucent. Add a stick of butter and let it melt (you can use less butter if you want, I’m not the boss of your butter). Then toss in the zucchini and carrots, apples, sage, salt and pepper. Cook on high heat. When the veggies get some brown around the edges add your kale. Toss it well into the mix and then cover and cook for about 3-5 minutes or until the kale is bright bright green and softened (but not overcooked).
Divide the polenta into 4 bowls and then divide the kale/apple/veggie mixture over the polenta.
Delicious.

copyright 2010 heather ward/bubbodesigns

Take the hungry from mah belly!

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David brought home the plague from one of the booger factories he works with. So, he’s been sick, now I’m sick.
But before I got sick, I cooked! Like a maniac.
First, a coconut curry squash stew:
I used this recipe as a starting point. More garlic, less onion, no bell pepper, I used crowder peas instead of chick peas because that’s what i had on hand. Instead of curry powder I mixed up a blend of spices heavy on the cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg, along with toasted cumin seeds, mustard seeds, fenugreek, coriander, smoked spanish paprika and a bunch of other things, I also added a small dollop of red curry paste and a big dollop of mild curry paste. I also added 1/2 a squash that I got from my sister. She told me what kind it was but I can’t remember. It’s about the same color as a butternut but slightly sweeter. Big, ridged on the outside. Good stuff. Served it on rice. David put coriander chutney on his, I put tamarind chutney on mine. Even better as leftovers.
Then, squash raviolis and pork tenderloin:
I sliced the pork tenderloin open and stuffed it with a mixture of chopped garlic, rosemary, olive oil and salt. I skewered it back together and let it marinate for the day.
Apple slices were tossed with olive oil, salt and pumpkin pie spice then baked in the oven at 225 for about an hour. This was to dry them a bit but still leave them juicy on the inside.
Ravioli stuffing was made from the other half of the squash, pureed and mixed with pressed ricotta, parmesan, salt, pepper and more pumpkin pie spice (really, I was too lazy to try to make the right spice blend). Because I was feeling lazy and wanted something quick I didn’t make my own pasta. Potsticker wrappers are perfect for the cause, they are the right size and thickness. Unfortunately, they were out of poststicker wrappers at the little grocery by my house. I know from experience that wonton wrappers are too thin, so i figured I would try the eggroll wrappers cut into squares. Meh, I don’t recommend the eggroll wrappers. too thin.
Pork roast went into the oven at 325 for less than an hour. While the roast was resting I brought a pot of water to a boil. In a giant frying pan I melted half a stick of butter, tossed in some toasted hazelnuts, the roasted apples and some rubbed sage. Once hot I added the ripped up leaves of a bunch of kale and sauteed. Raviolis were cooked and tossed in the frying pan with the kale and apple mixture. Everything was mixed up, pork was sliced and everything was served.
If I were to do it again I would roast the garlic for the pork before I stuffed it in. I cook my pork to just under done, still pink, and that does not allow the temp to get high enough to cook the garlic enough to mellow it. It was good but the garlic was still too strong. And the too-thin wrappers made the raviolis difficult to manipulate once they were cooked. I have to be super careful because they broke too easily.
And for the dogs, I made liver treats!
Making liver treats for the dogs SOUNDS like such an awesome idea! They think it is awesome, they think it is the best idea you will ever have. The idea is awesome, the execution is not so awesome.
Puree one pound of raw beef liver in the food processor. Oh holy shit! You think you have seen foulness in your times! YOU THINK THIS!!! But you have not seen truly foul anything until you look at a bowl of pureed raw beef liver. Holy. Crap.
It looks like a bowl of blood flavored instant pudding! It is red! It is wobbly! It is sticky! blergh.
The nice thing about dog treats is that they are not an exact science. The end result gets fed to an animal that licks its own butt in the name of high cuisine. So, dump the Sheol Brand Instant Liver Pudding of Doom into the stand mixer bowl along with a couple eggs, a handful of flax seed meal, some olive oil and about a cup of self-rising flour.
Note on the self rising flour: I happened to have self rising flour on hand because David picked some up for me once getting it confused with bread flour. Self rising flour has baking powder, if you use regular flour then add about a teaspoon of baking powder.
Using the dough hook, start mixing the vile mess. Keep adding flour until the mass becomes less sticky and more doughy. The lesson I learned the hard way is that pureed liver has many of the same properties as epoxy glues and never stops being sticky (‘add flour until no longer sticky’ is a common instruction for me when describing making doughs. It doesn’t work for this.). Oil a pie plate well and dump the monstrosity in there. Try to smooth it out with a greased rubber spatula. It won’t work. It will stick to your spatula. Bake at 325 for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Let cool.
At this point you will realize that your entire home smells like a cross between a slaughterhouse and your grandma’s kitchen on liver and onions night. God cannot hear your lamentations anymore for he has moved on to less smelly environs.
Once the lump has cooled, slice it into 1/4 inch slices and cut those into 1 inch wide piece. spread in single layer on a cookie sheet and dry in the oven at 225 for about an hour. Your dogs will love you forever and that will probably make up for the wretched odor that permeates every molecule of your home for the next 3 days.

It’s the little things that distract

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the problem with the ‘microblogging’ (twitter and its inelegant cousin, the facebook wall) is that I’m able to brain vomit whatever is sloshing around in the head at that moment without concern for things like crafting paragraphs and intelligent transitions. So, being able to just dump without thinking (I’m like a bear! sitting next to the pope! in the woods!) sort of distracts from this place where presumably I put a modicum of thought into what I write.
So here are some random tidbits:

  • 36th birthday = big Indian food picnic in bed
  • I’m moving the Bubbo Designs shop from Etsy to Artfire. Mostly, I just happen to like the way Artfire works, their interface for listing items is way more streamlined, the payment set up makes more sense and they have happen to have a bunch of features I’d been wishing Etsy had. Listings are slim right now, I just pulled a bunch of yarn and sent it out to a brick and mortar, we’ll see how that goes. You will notice, however, that I have started selling some hand dyed roving. Coming soon: bigger Cthulhu awesomeness, purses, superwash roving and handspun.
  • take one medium eggplant, cube it, toss with kosher salt and let it weep for about 90 minutes (or the time it takes to go to walgreens to buy soap and then to Petco to buy a muzzle and then come home, laugh at chester in his muzzle, drink a beer and read a short story about apartheid and…)
    mince 3 cloves of garlic
    cook a small spaghetti squash in the microwave (please poke more holes in yours than I did in mine! the top assploded right off the squash and the guts are stuck to the microwave door) let cool and shred
    wash, de-rib and tear up about half a bunch of baby collard greens
    open one 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes
    open one 14 oz can of cannellini beans (or great northern), rinse the beans
    Rinse the eggplant quickly and fry it up until brownybrown on the outside and completely cooked through (undercooked eggplant makes me gag). Once the eggplant is done cooking toss the garlic in and saute until it starts to go a little golden. Add tomatoes to stop the garlic from overbrowning. mix it all up. Add 2 handfuls (mmmmmtechnical measurements! I have very little hands, so maybe do 1 handful) of Penzeys Pasta Sprinkle and maybe a fat tablespoon of Penzeys Greek Seasoning. Add beans and collard greens cover and let simmer.
    Make some spaghetti according to package directions. When the spaghetti is almost done, throw some golden raisins into the sauce.
    Serve sauce on spaghetti and also have a beer. Beer is good.
  • I love David Attenborough
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  • The dry mouth side effect that comes from taking effexor is linked to a “meth-mouth” type condition in the mouth where you don’t make enough of the awesome antibacterial saliva you need. This would explain why the enamel has literally been crumbling off my teeth a little bit at a time for the past year. I’m going to end up with fucking guv’ment dentures! my mouth will look like this: (UUUUUU)
  • Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad
    1. In the minibowl of the food processor throw about 1/2 head peeled garlic cloves, a rightly good chunk of peeled ginger chunked up, about a tsp kosher salt and 3 tbl or so canola oil. whir it up, scrap down the edges, add more oil if necessary. If you whir too long you’ll get some sort of ginger garlic aioli but that can’t be a terrible thing, can it. put this to the side.
    2. dressing: mix together 3 tbl fish sauce, 2 tbl sugar, 1 tbl mirin, 1-2 tbl sesame oil, juice of a lime, 1/4 cup rice vinegar, 1 tbl ginger garlic paste you just made and chili oil to taste. Whisk and fridge for at least an hour.
    3. mock duck marinade: I discovered I was out of honey which sucked, but i found a jar of my peach clementine marmalade that I made like 2 years ago! 1/4 merciful peaches marmalade, 2tbl ginger garlic paste, 2 tbl sesame oil, 1/4 rice vinegar, few drops of chili oil. Whisked this and added one can of WELL SQUEEZED mock duck and that’s sitting there. Fry over high heat to caramelize it
    4. Chop, shred or otherwise prep: romaine lettuce, cilantro, papaya, tomatoes, cucumbers, sprouts. Cook and rinse rice noodles.
    5. Rice noodles in bowls, veggies on top, mock duck on that, dressing on everything.
    6. delicious
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eating and running

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Still on track to cook tasty dinners regularly! It feels good. Unfortunately it’s cutting into my fiber time. Balance! We will find the balance.
Tuesday’s stir fry!
I took the second half of the pork tenderloin (used the first half on monday with the risotto) and marinated it in a mixture of (all measurements approx) 2tbl course dijon, 2 tbl black bean sauce, 1 tbl rice vinegar, 1 tbl fresh grated ginger, 1 tbl sesame oil, 1 tbl soy sauce, 1 tsp chili oil. I just threw all the ingredients in a ziploc freezer bag, tossed in the pork and shook it up. It marinated for about 6 hours.
I roasted it in the oven at 325 for about 30is minutes. I put it on a cookie rack in a baking pan so it wouldn’t get soggy on the bottom. Everyone hates a soggy bottom.
Then it was the last of the CSA cauliflower and broccoli along with peas and carrots and the 2nd half of the butternut squash from the night before all chopped and ready to stir fry.
The sauce for the stir fry was (approx) 1 cup orange juice, 1 tbl soy sauce, 1 tbl fresh ginger, 1/2 tbl sesame oil, dash of chili oil. I think there was something else in there but I forget. I just start grabbing things and whisking them in. I set that to the side and started cooking the veggies. When they were done I poured in the sauce, brought it to temp and thickened it with a cornstarch slurry.
All of this was served on bean thread noodles.
Last night!
Anna and I got together for our weekly get out of the house and do something day. We decided to go out in search of a chinese buffet that wasn’t fartbox. Unfortunately, the one we found was pretty crappy. I mean I know, chinese buffets are pretty crappy, actually most buffets are crappy, they have to be in order to make their profit margins work, but still…
Anyways, there we were! In the suburbs no less! and as i was loading up on suspect proteins in multicolored goo I got to listen in on the conversation at the table next to the buffet. So we’re in the suburbs at a chinese buffet located kind of by one of those nondescript angular office ‘complexes’ populated with people who shot for the corner office downtown but landed in a cube farm by the freeway interchange. All cheap imitations of what they imagine business men look like based on whatever popular weekly drama is currently depicting business men.
They were upset. Like really really upset. How could Obama have won? How could that happen? Now what? Hell in a handbasket I tell ya! These people just don’t know what they’re in for electing a guy ‘like that’ into office.
They were polite enough. They never mentioned race and if you pinned them down on it I’m sure you could learn that each of them has lots of black friends…well, not friends – people they know….well they don’t KNOW them but they talk to them sometimes…well, they don’t really talk to them so much…well, they don’t talk to them at all unless shouting at the tv counts.
After lunch we got coffee, celebratory ice cream (OBAMARAMA!) and beer (YEAH) and headed home.
Then I taught Anna the basics of pasta dough! We made up a batch of my pumpkin pasta dough which Anna shaped into cencioni (I looked up pasta shapes to find the one it matched!).
My pumpkin pasta goes like this…
put about 2 cups of bread flour or 1 3/4 cup all purpose and 1/4 semolina flour into the bottom of a big wide mixing bowl, make a well, drop in about 3/4 can of pumpkin (straight up pumpkin! not pie filling). You can do the thing with flour on the counter and not use the bowl but I find the bowl captures any mess and cuts down on swearing immensely! To the pumpkin ad 1 tbl pumpkin pie spice and 1 tsp cardamom (or 1 tbl garam masala), 1/2 tbl salt
With a fork slowly stir and incorporate the flour into the pumpkin. Continue adding flour until you can’t really stir it and then start working it by hand. You want to knead it and continue to add flour until it stops being sticky. There’s no good ratio for that, last night we added a LOT more flour than we expected and still it was sticky, it was just that humid in the house. You shape the cencioni by hand and your best bet is to get Anna started on that right away (after the dough rests). Remember to toss the newly made pasta with cornmeal to keep it from sticking together.
MEANWHILE!
Crush some croutons until you have about a cup’s worth (I like salt and pepper croutons), set aside. THINLY slice 1/4 green cabbage, Medium dice a couple anjou pears. In a large frying pan (or wok, this is really easy in a wok) melt 6 tbl butter over med high. Once it foams add about 1 big handful of pecans to it (I added 2 but I have freakishly small hands), toss those around in the butter. This is where you want to watch the butter…you want the butter to start to brown but you don’twant it to burn and those moments can be very close. Once it starts to brown toss in the crushed croutons (or bread crumbs) and 1/2 tbl rubbed sage. Mix it up, kill the heat, add the pears and mix it up again. Put this to the side.
Start up a big pot of water to boil. Help Anna finish shaping the pasta in order to avoid being killed as she will realize that hand shaping pasta is kind of tedious (less tedious than the constant rolling and folding and rolling and folding when you use the Atlas). Once all the pasta is shaped and the water is boiling hard, throw the pasta into the water along with the cabbage. Put the crouton mixture back on the heat.
The cabbage will cook fairly quickly, with a big slotted spoon start scooping that out of the water and tossing it into the crouton mixture. Within a couple minutes the pasta will float to the top. Floating pasta is fully cooked pasta so start scooping those out with the big slotted spoon and toss them with the cabbage etc. The smaller ones finish first so mostly you just scoop them as they rise instead of draining the pot. Also, there’s probably a fair amount of cornmeal at the bottom of the pan and you don’t want to dump that down your drain (dump it in the toilet, trust me!).
Toss all the pasta and cabbage and crouton mix together, divide and serve!
I was also going to write an angry little screed about the various gay marriage bans that passed on election night, but it is after 9am and I have things to do! So I’ll get to that later but let me be really judgmental for a minute. If you voted to pass a law or amendment that would in any way limit the rights of homosexuals to marry, adopt children or otherwise enjoy the same freedoms you enjoy then you are, in my mind, a selfish coward. That you would choose to limit the freedoms of a group of people is low and shameful. You yourself do not deserve the freedoms that you would take from others.

I had forgotten

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So it’s occurred to me that I do not cook as much as I used to and when I do cook I find myself wondering if frozen pizza is a food group.
I’m trying to get back in to things, trying to be more productive and responsible and all that.
Tonight I cooked.
I made my butternut squash risotto that I hadn’t made in…a billion years. Two tricks to my butternut squash risotto:

  1. Precook the squash, cube it and add it half way through the risotto cooking process. Some of the squash will stay cubey and some will melt into the risotto
  2. finish with chevre instead of butter

I also made pork tenderloin. I consulted a few recipes and came up with my own plan. I whisked a tablespoon of molasses with a tablespoon of fig vinegar. I then added 2 tablespoons of spicy dijon mustard and 1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger. All of this was slathered on the pork (I used 1/2 the tenderloin, the other half saved for later) and then covered it with crushed S&P croutons. Roasted for about 25 minutes at 425. I prefer my pork medium to medium rare, trichinosis isn’t an issue anymore and pigs are bred so lean now that well done pork is dry. I do cook the pork all the way for guests, do not worry!
oh man, dinner was awesome. Seriously, I’d been forgetting about good and real food! Later this week Anna is coming over and we will make pumpkin pasta! I also have what I need for beef stew, chicken and dumplings, chicken pot pie, vegetable curry, spicy kielbasa with potatoes and cabbage, molé burritos (that’s mo-lay burritos, like the mexican sauce and not mole burritos like the thing in the ground that runs around), potato corn chowder….and on and on…. you can join us, but you have to bring booze or dessert!