As a teenager, I spent what felt like entire summers babysitting for the kids across the street. There were three of them, aged 4-10, and they were a handful. But they also had a pool and they paid well, so it was a good job all in all. The kids used to love eating pastina, basically tiny little pasta stars, with masses of butter and that shakeable powdered parmesan cheese. I rarely had to cook anything for them (their mom was a great cook and there was always tons of food in their house), but I made pastina once or twice. It was perfect comfort food for kids, no spice, all warmth and simplicity.

Fast forward 15 years. Trevor and I just started a major kitchen renovation (!) and the house is full of dust. It’s still cold and snowy, and it’s that time of year where you’re just on the edge of being sick all the time. We’re ready for spring and it’s not here yet. Comfort food is in order pretty much every day. A few weeks back (before the renovation started!), in this late winter state of being, I was staring forlornly inside the fridge, hoping for inspiration to strike from a handful of leftovers. I was in a bad mood. I was tired. And there was really very little in the fridge since we’d been proactively cleaning it out. So I dumped half a container of homemade kitchen stock in a pot and boiled some Israeli couscous in it. I added a huge amount of freshly grated parmesan cheese and some cracked black pepper. I plopped it unceremoniously in a bowl and took a bite. And it turned out to be the most perfect thing – creamy, savory, comforting, cheesy – and just like pastina with butter, but all grown-up.

I’ve finessed this recipe a little bit to share with you, but it really is very simple. Use the best chicken stock you can as that’s where all the flavor comes from. Don’t be shy with the parmesan or the pepper or the parsley. Your reward for 10 minutes of effort will be a bowl of super delicious pasta to get you through these last few weeks of winter.

Israeli Couscous “Pastina”

A super simple, super comforting pasta, rich with the flavors of chicken broth and parmesan cheese.

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door

Ingredients

• 2 cups high quality chicken stock, preferably homemade
• 1 cup Israeli couscous (also sold as pearled couscous)
• 3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup minced fresh parsley

Instructions

1. Add the chicken stock to a small saucepan and bring just to a boil. As soon as it reaches a boil, add the Israeli couscous (don’t wait as your stock will evaporate and there won’t be enough left to fully cook the couscous). Let stock return to a simmer. Simmer the couscous, stirring occasionally, until the couscous is tender and the chicken stock has been almost completely absorbed, about 7 to 8 minutes.
2. Remove the pan from the heat. Don’t drain it – the couscous will continue to absorb the stock, and it should have a slightly loose, creamy texture. Add the 3/4 cup of grated parmesan cheese, a generous amount of black pepper, and the chopped parsley. Stir until the cheese has melted into the couscous. Serve immediately, topped with additional parmesan and black pepper if desired.

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The first three months of the year have been a total whirlwind. Since the last time I checked in, I’ve spent two weeks in Hong Kong, a week and a half in Singapore, and a few days in Thailand. And in the brief in between times back in the US, I left home again for weekend trips to Austin, Nashville, and Montreal. So despite the snowy remnants of the last few March Nor’easters, I’m relishing a few quiet weeks at home. I’m planning the garden and reading and cooking and just generally doing the small things that make me happiest. And it means I have the chance to blog for the first time since January!

Generally, I quite like the food in Asia. Particularly so in Hong Kong and Singapore, where you can find pretty much any type of food you want. It helps that Hong Kongers and Singaporeans are obsessed with food so everything meets a minimum standard of good. But after two weeks on the road, lots of Chinese and Thai and room-service gets heavy. When I hit that point, I turn to Vietnamese for brightness and fresh vegetables. Compared to the cuisines of neighboring countries, Vietnamese food is light and refreshing. Lots of mint, basil, cilantro, and pickled vegetables bring a greenness that I really crave when traveling.

One of my go-to orders is bún, a rice noodle salad with several options for customization. I like it best with grilled lemongrass beef and a mass of pickled carrots. After my last trip I attempted making it at home, and it was surprisingly easy to make a convincing replica of my favorite restaurant versions. I love the slightly floral sweetness that the lemongrass lends to the beef, and the contrast the hot beef provides to the cool noodles and vegetables. Bún is good pretty much any time of year, but it’s particularly refreshing when the weather is hot and swampy. So, why make it in March? Brightness. I realize we’re pretty far from days that qualify as “hot,” but I’m so, so ready to eat bright-tasting things in March. This fits the bill perfectly!

Bún Bò Xào – Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad with Lemongrass Beef

A quick and refreshing Vietnamese rice noodle salad named Bún Bò Xào. Stir-fried lemongrass beef, pickled carrots, and sweet-salty nuoc cham sauce bring tons of flavor to this bright dinner.

Adapted from Vietnamese Home Cooking.

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
• Yield: 4

Ingredients

For the Lemongrass Beef:

• 2 stalks fresh lemongrass
• 5 cloves garlic
• 1 TBS sugar
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 TBS soy sauce
• 1 TBS sesame oil
• 2 TBS canola oil
• 1 lb thinly sliced flank steak

For the pickled carrots:

• 2 large carrots, peeled
• 1/3 cup distilled white vinegar
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 whole star anise

For the nuoc cham:

• 1/4 cup fish sauce
• 3 TBS sugar
• 1/3 cup warm water
• 3 TBS white vinegar
• 1 Thai chile, stemmed and finely minced
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and finely minced

For the bowls and assembly:

• 10 oz. dried rice vermicelli noodles
• 1 TBS canola oil
• One bunch of fresh mint, leaves picked off and washed
• 1/2 cup chopped peanuts, toasted in a dry pan for 3–4 minutes

Instructions

1. To make the beef marinade: Remove and discard the outer layer of each piece of lemongrass. Trim about 3-inches of the dry, stick-like part of the lemongrass from the top so that you are left with the plumper, white interior. Slice this interior into small coins, and then finely chop those coins until evenly minced. Place minced lemongrass in a medium bowl. Peel and mince the garlic and add to the bowl with the lemongrass. Add the sugar, salt, soy sauce, sesame oil and canola oil to the bowl and stir to combine. Add the sliced flank steak and stir to coat with the marinade. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.
2. To make the pickled carrots: Use a julienne peeler to shred the carrots into long, noodle-like strips. If you don’t have a julienne peeler, carefully chop the carrots into long, thin match-sticks. Place the carrots in a heatproof bowl. Add the vinegar, sugar, water, and star anise to a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Simmer just for 30 seconds, then pour the hot liquid over the carrots. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use, at least an hour. Discard the star anise before serving.
3. To make the nuoc cham: Place all of the ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Taste and adjust seasoning if desired.
4. To finish and assemble the bowls: Cook the rice noodles according to the package directions. Drain and rinse.
5. Just before serving, cook the beef. Heat the canola oil in a large, heavy-bottomed frying pan over medium-high heat. When the pan is hot, add the marinated beef to the pan in batches (each batch of beef should easily fit in the pan in a single layer). Cook the beef for 1-2 minutes on each side, until deeply caramelized on the outside but just tender in the center. Remove to a plate and continue until you have cooked all the beef.
6. To serve, fill each bowl halfway with rice noodles. Top with a quarter of the pickled carrots, several pieces of the cooked beef, a small handful of fresh mint leaves, and 2 tablespoons of chopped peanuts. Serve the bowls with the nuoc cham sauce on the side, so that each person can dress their bowl according to taste.

Notes

If you pickle the carrots at the same time that you marinate the beef, this will only take about 20 minutes to finish up before serving.

The post Bún Bò Xào – Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad with Lemongrass Beef appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

Although I’m a bit later than usual this year, my annual year-end post is one of my favorite things to write each year. I love reading other people’s posts, too, even people I don’t know personally. I like reflecting on how much growth and change and activity a single year can hold. It gives me perspective. But, if you’re not a big fan of this sort of thing, or of lengthy personal blog posts, skip on down to the end. There’s a recipe for a kale, golden raisin, and kabocha squash pasta that’s been getting me through this cold snap. I’ve made it four or five times to get the balance just right, and now it’s become my go-to winter pasta.

For those of you sticking with me for the long haul, let’s talk about 2017. For me, 2017 was the year of the wedding, first and foremost. After that, there was travel – but less of it than 2016 and 2015 and more of it for fun than for work. It was a year of great and easy friendships, of growing beautiful flowers, of work weekends in Maine. It was a good year, perhaps not a great year, but a good one.

The big thing – our wedding

Of course, we knew before the year even started that 2017 would be the year of the wedding. It dominated the whole year. Our wedding day turned out more beautiful than we had imagined, but it was a huge amount of work to get there. We had our wedding at my parent’s house in Maine, and it was very much a from-scratch affair. We built the barn by hand (and by we I mean mostly my parents), which was an enormous undertaking. We had gorgeous hand-made farm tables milled from trees on the property. I did my own flowers, and grew half of them. (As an aside, 2017 was 100% a year of flowers for me. I fell in love with flower gardening and arranging and I can’t wait to get my seeds started in the spring.) Every aspect of the wedding was personal and lovely, but it was so much work. I’m really glad we got married and had our closest friends and family there by our sides, and I’m really glad we’re not doing it again.

Twenty-eight countries and counting

Trevor and I kicked off the year with five weeks in Portugal, an incredible escape from the cold and dark of January in Boston. Of course, I was working the whole time, but we still got to explore on weekends and immerse ourselves in the wonderful Portuguese culture. I leave a little part of my heart everywhere I travel, but I left a big piece in Portugal. I miss the food and the wine, the lonely sounds of fado in tiny clubs, the white light reflecting off the cobblestones. I miss the café culture and the gentle winter sunshine. I miss the people, my coworkers and friends, who opened their hearts to us so easily. I miss the language, which I still practice almost daily, in hopes that I’ll need it again. I’m glad that we’re staying put this winter, after relocating for January and February in the past two years, but it was a wonderful experience to live in Lisbon.

In July, I took a long-anticipated trip to Iceland with three of my best girlfriends. It was a short trip – just five days – but absolutely packed. Iceland was stunning and wild, exceeding my already high expectations. It was also wonderful (if very tiring) to travel with friends, something I hadn’t done before beyond short weekend trips in the states. I already can’t wait to return to Iceland and continue exploring. And in November, we made a Thanksgiving trip to Colorado and Utah to visit my extended family. The sun was life-giving, and we were outside hiking in the beautiful desert every day.

And then of course, there was our honeymoon. We were gone three full weeks, making our way up the Croatian coastline, driving through the Slovenian alps, then wrapping up with a city break in Prague. It was an epic trip. It was also so nice to just be with Trevor for three weeks and… hang out. Of course we were exploring and adventuring but we were also just being us, something I had missed in the chaos leading up to the wedding. I’ll write about our trip properly someday, but for now, I’ll just mention the highlights. There was a sunset bike ride through the sleepy hill-top olive groves in Korcula, followed by an unforgettable candlelit dinner under pomegranate trees. We spent an afternoon drinking champagne and watching the sun slowly sink over the Adriatic at a seaside bar where you could climb down into the ocean at any point. We hiked up through the emerald gorges in Slovenia, following a wooden sign with a piece of cheese on it, until we reached a beautiful alpine valley with two houses, one of which did, indeed, serve us some cheese. We designed our own brewery tour in Prague, sampling the best of the Czech Republic’s beer scene. We fit so much into three weeks – it will be a hard trip to top.

For other work travel, there was one follow-up trip to Portugal in April, for my birthday in fact. Never have I received so many hugs on a single day. A July trip to Hong Kong and Singapore registers as barely a blip on my mental calendar of the year, although it was my first time in Singapore. I’ll be back to both countries in a few weeks, and I’m excited to escape the cold (and for the food! Always the food). Then just a few weeks ago, a December trip to a small town in Northern Ireland followed by two days in Dublin. I love Ireland for so many reasons but this trip was a blur, especially getting home just three days before Christmas. Overall, work travel felt much more manageable this year – hopefully I can carry that through into 2018.

The best people

I’m not particularly quick to make new friends – I’ve always done better with a small group of people I’m really close to. But after 6 years living in Boston, I have such a solid crew, many of them high school friends who have moved back to the area. They are all good, smart people who are easy to be with, and some of my best memories of this year were with them. A lazy August Sunday spent tubing down the Saco river was a highlight, as was a weekend at a friend’s Maine island cottage, complete with hours of wine-laced Molkky, a candlelit lobster dinner, the poetry reading that his father mandates, beautiful sailing, and a late night bonfire dance party. And, I almost forgot, our 10 year Andover reunion. I imagine most people don’t look forward to their high school reunions as much as we do. It was a blissful weekend full of super impressive people, an all day kickball lawn party (complete with kegs), midnight dancing, and collapsing on the lawn in fits of giggles around 2am. Sunday we couldn’t move, because we’re old now, but it was worth it. Add to this the many other dinner parties, bar nights, one epic scavenger hunt birthday party and a casual NYE game night turned dance party to close out the year, and it sums up to a year of really good playtime with really good friends.

Working and blogging and growing

I feel a huge amount of relief going into 2018 with an understanding of what I want this blog to be. I spent the first half of 2017 listening to blogging podcasts ad nauseam, investing in a new design and a mailing list and SEO plugins. I thought a lot about my content and who I wanted it to reach, and I pored over my analytics to understand how I could grow. Basically, I hustled. It was stressful and frustrating and overwhelming. And then somewhere in the middle of all that hustle I realized that I don’t want to blog as a business-owner. That’s not why I started, and that’s not what brings me joy. I have a stable, compelling career that I love and it’s not blogging – so why should I turn blogging into work when it doesn’t need to be? I want to create beautiful content and delicious recipes and tell stories as long as it feels like a hobby and not a chore. Of course, it’s nice when a hobby has financial perks, but making business success the goal of blogging took all the fun out of it. Realizing this has been so helpful.

On the flip side of this blogging decisions lies my real work. Although I went through a similar questioning phase about what I wanted my next career move to be, I came out the other side with the realization that I really like my job. I’m going into 2018 in a new role, with a team and multiple projects to manage, and I’m excited. I have a lot to learn but I work in a team with the smartest, best people, which makes all the learning and growing easier.

Now for 2018

I’ve been reflecting this week about how open 2018 feels. It’s a wonderful feeling. Of course, we have things planned – weddings to attend and house projects and a few trips with friends already on our calendar. But largely, the year feels full of potential, untethered to major life milestones. I’m excited to see where it takes us, what new opportunities and adventures it will bring. My intentions for 2018 are to bring a sense of calm into every day, to spend as much time as I can outside in nature, to prioritize my health, and to learn and grow.

Winter Pasta

And if you made it through all of that… I’m impressed. I’m guessing even my mother will skim this one. So now, what most of you are here for, a recipe for a delicious winter pasta. A few year’s back I read a magazine article about how you should always be finishing your pasta in the pan with the sauce and a splash of the pasta cooking water, and it has totally changed the way I cook pasta. It’s such a simple trick and it makes a huge difference. Since reading that article, I’ve been experimenting with what I think of as “perfect seasonal pastas.” I test them over and over again until they are just right, foolproof, and full of seasonal ingredients. So far I have a summer pasta, with heirloom yellow tomatoes and sweet onions, a creamy mushroom spaghetti that is irresistible in the fall, and a spring carbonara with ramps and meyer lemon zest. Over the past 5 or 6 weeks I’ve been testing what I’ve come to think of as my winter pasta, and I’m ready to share it. This pasta has tuscan kale and shallots slow-cooked in white wine, plump golden raisins, a hint of chile, and sweet roasted kabocha squash. It is hearty and wintery without being overly heavy or creamy. It’s on weekly rotation in our house and I hope it will be in yours, too.

Happy 2018 to all of you!

Past New Years’ posts…

2016: Feta and Onion Phyllo Pie
2015: Brown-Butter Chestnut Waffles with Poached Pears and Mascarpone
2014: Rye Blini, Smoked Salmon Dip, Russian Beet Dip, Pretty in Pink Cocktail
2013: Raspberry Sherbet Champagne Floats
2012: Butter-Roasted Cinnamon Chicken with Almonds and Pomegranates

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Winter Pasta with Slow-Cooked Kale, Kabocha Squash, and Golden Raisins

A seasonal winter pasta with slow-cooked Tuscan kale, roasted kabocha squash and golden raisins. Satisfying and warming without being heavy.

Inspired by Sunday Suppers at Lucques.

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
• Yield: 2-3

Ingredients

• 1/2 small kabocha squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 5 TBS olive oil, divided
• sea salt and black pepper to taste
• 4 shallots, peeled and thinly sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 sprig fresh rosemary, needles finely chopped
• 1 chile de arbol, broken in half (or 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes)
• 1 bunch Tuscan kale, center ribs removed, torn into bite-sized pieces
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/4 cup golden raisins
• 1/2 lb. orechiette pasta (or other similar shape)
• 1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 400F. Toss the cubed squash with 2 TBS of olive oil and spread out on a rimmed baking sheet. Season with sea salt and black pepper. Roast in the preheated oven until tender, about 25-30 minutes. Flip the squash cubes over halfway through cooking.
2. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil.
3. Heat 1 of the remaining tablespoons of olive oil in a large saute pan over medium-low heat. Add the sliced shallots, sliced garlic, chopped rosemary, and the chile de arbol to the pan. Saute until the shallots are soft and golden brown, about 5 minutes. Add the kale along with the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Season with sea salt. Cook the kale in the olive oil for 3-4 minutes, stirring frequently, then add the wine and the raisins to the pan. As soon as you add the wine, stir to scrape any burnt bits off the bottom of the pan.
4. Cook the kale over low heat for about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, add the pasta to the boiling water. Continue cooking the kale while the pasta cooks. When the pasta is just barely al dente, use a skimmer to add the pasta to the pan with the kale. Add a few splashes of the pasta cooking water to the pan as well, along with the grated parmesan cheese. Add the roasted squash to the pan. Cook everything together for 2-3 minutes, stirring to fully coat the pasta in the sauce and to evenly distribute the vegetables. Serve immediately.

The post 2017 – A Year in Review // Winter Pasta with Slow-Cooked Kale, Kabocha Squash, and Golden Raisins appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

I know it’s the very tail end of ramp season, and most of you have moved on to stone fruits and strawberries, but I didn’t want to let another year slip by without posting this recipe for ramp carbonara. It’s nothing revolutionary, just a simple spaghetti carbonara dressed up for spring. Spaghetti carbonara is one of my favorite meals, rich with eggs and cheese. I probably make it more often than I should, given how indulgent it is, but I love it.

I’ve never seen a ramp growing. They have sort of a woodsy mystique about them, one of the first spring edibles to hit the markets, gathered in wild forests some unknown distance away. I picture them growing in quiet, verdant groves, their dark green leaves waving gently in filtered forest light. Perhaps they’ll be the next on the list of foolhardy things we are trying to grow in our little urban backyard. Although, like asparagus, they need several years to establish themselves. I’m not sure we have the patience.

I loved the idea of the long, thin ramp leaves winding through the pasta like noodles, so the first time I tried this, I left the ramp leaves whole. While it was beautiful to look at, it left me chewing (and chewing and chewing) big mouthfuls of ramp, which wasn’t particularly pleasant. So this time around, I treated the ramps with a bit more finesse. I sliced the leaves into thin strips and just barely cooked them, keeping their texture crisp. It worked out much better.

This came out lovely. While spaghetti covered in cheese is always good, there’s a big difference between a good carbonara and a great carbonara. This one was great. I thickened the sauce with a little bit of mascarpone so it was truly creamy. Instead of parmesan alone, I used a mix of parmesan and pecorino. Of course the ramps, swirled into the noodles, made it garlicky and a little special. And the finishing touch – a shower of meyer lemon zest – brought it all together.

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More Ramp recipes…

Ramp, Cheddar, and Bacon Buttermilk Biscuits

Polenta Pizza with Wild Mushrooms and Ramp Pesto

Quinoa, Cauliflower, and Ramp Cakes

Ramp Carbonara

Spaghetti carbonara with a spring twist – whole ramps, pecorino cheese, and meyer lemon zest.

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
• Yield: 3-4

Ingredients

• 8 medium-sized ramps
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 4 oz. pancetta, cut into 1/4 inch dice
• 2 eggs
• 2 oz. grated pecorino cheese (about 3/4 cup, packed)
• 2 oz. grated parmesan cheese (about 3/4 cup, packed)
• 1/4 cup mascarpone
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• zest from 1 Meyer lemon
• 1/2 lb. spaghetti

Instructions

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
2. Prepare the ramps by washing thoroughly to rinse away any dirt, and gently patting the leaves dry. Separate the round white bulbs from the leaves. Trim any stringy white roots from the bulb and discard the roots, then finely dice the ramp bulb. Slice the ramp leaves into very thin strips, then set aside.
3. Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the diced pancetta and saute until it is crispy and brown all over, which should take about 6-8 minutes. After 3-4 minutes, add the diced ramp bulb to the pan. Keep a close eye on the pancetta and stir frequently – pancetta takes a while to start browning but can go to under-cooked to burned in a very short period of time.
4. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, pecorino cheese, parmesan cheese, and mascarpone until smooth. Stir in the black pepper, Meyer lemon zest, and the cooked pancetta. Set aside.
5. Add the spaghetti to the boiling water and cook according to package directions, until just al dente. Drain, leaving just a few tablespoons of the cooking water in the bottom of the pot with the pasta. Add the hot pasta and reserved cooking water to the egg mixture and quickly toss with tongs to create a creamy sauce from the eggs and cheese. Do this immediately after adding the pasta to prevent the eggs from scrambling. Add the ramp leaves to the pasta and toss a few times just to wilt the leaves. Serve immediately.

The post Ramp Carbonara appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

It’s time for the (slightly belated) final post for fava bean week. It’s another recipe inspired by Italy – homemade ravioli filled with a fava bean, mascarpone, and ricotta mixture and served in a two-ingredient truffle butter sauce. Because it turns out that when one of your ingredients is truffle butter, you don’t need much else.

While fava beans are abundant in Italy and Portugal, they aren’t particularly common in the US, even at the height of their season. They occasionally make an appearance at Wholefoods, and some people have found them frozen at Trader Joe’s, but I couldn’t find any near me. We are growing a long row of them, but they won’t be ready until late June, about the same time that Bostonians will be able to find them at local farmer’s markets.

So what’s a fava bean lover to do? I’ve basically been rabid for them in anticipation of the series, knowing it would be difficult to get my hands on enough for several recipes. I’ve started harassing the staff at Wholefoods, begging for them to go back into the stock room and bring me a few pounds. I made my friend Veronika walk through all of the Wholefoods in Cambridge with me – surprisingly, the little Wholefoods had some and the big one didn’t. It doesn’t help that you need about 1 pound of pods for every cup of beans, so what may look like a lot of beans disappears surprisingly quickly.

And then, unexpectedly, I found fava bean nirvana – Eataly. While out shopping for  wedding shoes with my mom, we stopped in at the new Eataly in Boston. I needed truffle butter for this recipe, and figured it made more sense to pay a little more at a store that I knew would carry it than to schlep all over looking for it. If you’ve never been, Eataly is like the Ikea of Italian food, except everything is expensive. You have to wind your way through the massive store in a certain order.  You’ll pass the gelato and pastry counters, a case full of beautiful seafood, a deli counter with dozens of prosciuttos, and rows of dry and canned goods. After weaving my way through the tempting rows filled with jars of fancy tomatoes and olive oils and capers,I found the produce section. There, next to a beautiful basket of morel mushrooms, were all the fava beans I could want. So now I know. And if you’re in Boston, New York, or Chicago, you know too.

Back to the ravioli. Every once in a while Trevor and I break out the pasta machine and make a batch of homemade pasta. I find it quite therapeutic to make, although our pasta is never quite as tender as I want. It’s fun to customize, though, and this filling is really lovely. The sweet mascarpone and ricotta really mellow out the fava flavor. We tossed the ravioli with a quick burro fuso – truffle butter melted and whisked with a bit of warm water. Simple, elegant, and springlike, a homemade pasta worth the effort.

More Fava Bean Recipes…

Spanish Fava Bean Salad with Tomatoes and Prosciutto

Avocado Toast with Fava Beans and Pecorino

Fava Bean Soup with Mascarpone, Mint, and Pancetta

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Fava Bean and Mascarpone Ravioli with Truffle Butter Sauce

Homemade Ravioli with a Fava Bean, Mascarpone and Ricotta Filling. Served in a simple Truffle Butter burro fuso sauce.

Adapted from SPQR. 

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
• Yield: 4

Ingredients

• 1 cup blanched, peeled fava beans (from 1 pound of fresh beans)
• 1 TBS chopped fresh mint (from 10–12 leaves)
• 1/4 cup mascarpone
• 1/2 cup ricotta
• 1/4 – 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1 recipe homemade pasta dough
• 2 oz. truffle butter
• 3 TBS warm water (preferably the pasta cooking water).
• grated pecorino cheese, for serving

Instructions

1. Add the fava beans, mint, mascarpone, and ricotta to a food processor. Process until smooth and fluffy. Season to taste with sea salt. Transfer to a bowl, cover, and refrigerate.
2. Use a pasta machine to roll out the pasta dough in thin sheets. Target the third or fourth thinnest setting as your ultimate thickness of the pasta.
3. Lay the pasta sheets flat on a lightly floured surface, covering the sheets you aren’t using with a piece of plastic wrap. Use a knife to score the pasta sheets into 2 inch squares. Place 2 teaspoons of the chilled filling in the center of half the squares. Wet your finger with water and run it along the edge of each square, then cover the squares with filling with another sheet of the pasta. Press the sheets firmly together around the edges of each filled square, forming ravioli. Use a ravioli cutter or knife to cut the ravioli apart, then firmly press the edges together again to ensure there are no air bubbles. Repeat until you have used all of the pasta dough, re-rolling any dough scraps as needed.
4. Bring a large pot of salted water to a gentle boil. Gently place the ravioli in the boiling water and cook just until al dente, about 2-3 minutes. They should be floating at the surface of the water when they are ready. Remove them from the water with a slotted spoon and place them on a large plate. Drizzle the ravioli with just a little olive oil to keep them from sticking.
5. Add the 3 TBS of the pasta cooking water to a small frying pan, and bring to a simmer over low heat. Whisk in the truffle butter one piece at a time, allowing the butter to melt between additions. When you have incorporated all of the truffle butter, add the cooked ravioli to the frying pan and toss gently to coat with the butter sauce. Divide between plates, sprinkle with the grated pecorino, and serve immediately.

The post Ingredient of the Week: Fava Beans // Fava Bean and Mascarpone Ravioli with Truffle Butter appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

At this time of year I get so anxious for spring to arrive. The first few weeks of April are a special kind of torture for New Englanders. One moment it’s 70° and sunny and I’m sure that it’s time to plant the tomatoes, and the next day I’m wearing three layers while trodding through the rain. Every year I find myself scrolling back through my Instagram feed trying to find the moment when spring arrived. When did the apple trees bloom? When did the crocuses pop? It had to be earlier last year, didn’t it?

Slowly but surely, it’s coming. We had a weekend with a hint of sunburn, a beer on the porch in the afternoon, and a promise of more warm days to come. The peas have sprouted and we check on them three times a day, the only denizens of our garden so far. The trees are in that tentative green stage, and I find myself looking up every 10 minutes, as if they may somehow magically burst into blossom over the course of an afternoon. But that’s how it feels when it finally happens, isn’t it? One morning the gray branches and bare against the spring blue sky, practically bursting with anticipation, and the next somehow everything is green and lush.

But all this is the essence of spring, is it not? The uncertainty, the anticipation, the oscillation between summer and winter. So, thank you, spring, for showing up. For teasing us with sunshine and letting us plunge our hands into the soil. For the first signs of green and even for the cool nip in the wind. I promise to enjoy every moment of you, the most fleeting of seasons. I’ll enjoy the rainy days with fat raindrops pounding against the roof. I’ll enjoy every blossom you toss our way – first, the purple and yellow crocus tips, then the showy magnolia blooms, the showers of pink apple blossoms and the regal irises.

Because every season needs at least one or two go-to pasta recipes, I’ve been developing spring pastas. I’m trying to build a collection for each season, like this Creamy Mushroom Pasta and this Heirloom Tomato Spaghetti. And now, my latest for spring – Goat Cheese Stuffed Shells with Spring Vegetables. They have all the usual spring suspects – peas, asparagus, goat cheese, lemon – tucked inside thick pasta shells. The filling also includes ricotta, mozzarella, and chopped spinach. So much cheese! So many vegetables! The finishing touch is a quick bechamel sauce and just a little bit more cheese before baking.

A word of warning: these contain an almost lethal amount of cheese, as you might have guessed from the above. Pace yourself and remember that this batch should serve 8-10 people! Four or five shells is a good serving size, and it’s easy to wolf them down. Serve alongside a salad or some bright steamed asparagus for balance.

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Goat Cheese Stuffed Shells with Peas and Asparagus

A Katie at the Kitchen Door original recipes. Serves 8-10.

• One 12-oz. box of jumbo pasta shells
• 6 oz. soft goat cheese
• 1 lb. ricotta cheese
• 8 oz. mozzarella cheese, grated and divided
• 1 egg
• 1 cup (6 oz.) frozen spinach
• 2 cups frozen peas
• 1 lb. asparagus, ends trimmed
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• zest of 1 lemon
• 3 TBS butter
• 3 TBS flour
• 2 1/2 cups milk, warmed in the microwave
• sea salt

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta shells and cook for the amount of time specified on the packages. Err on the side of undercooking the pasta just a little bit – if you overcook the shells they are more likely to fall apart when stuffing. Drain the shells and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, beat the goat cheese until smooth and creamy. Add the ricotta cheese and 6 oz of the mozzarella cheese and stir to combine. Reserve the remaining mozzarella cheese for topping the shells. Add the egg to the cheese mixture and beat slightly, stirring to combine evenly with the cheeses.
3. Add the frozen spinach to a microwaveable bowl with a little bit of water. Microwave until fully thawed, about 90 seconds to 2 minutes. Use a spoon to press any excess liquid out of the spinach, draining the liquid out of the bowl. When the spinach is dry, add to the bowl with the cheeses and stir to combine. Now add the peas to the microwaveable bowl with a little water and microwave for 60-90 seconds to defrost the peas. Drain the liquid from the bowl and add the peas to the spinach and cheese mixture, stirring to combine.
4. Bring a large pot of salted water to a simmer. When simmering, add the asparagus and blanch until bright green, about 90 seconds. Drain immediately and rinse the asparagus under cold running water to stop the cooking. Cut the asparagus into small pieces, about 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch long, and add to the cheese filling. Add the lemon zest and black pepper, stir to combine, and set aside.
5. To prepare the bechamel sauce, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the flour and stir into the butter. Cook the flour and butter, stirring constantly, until fragrant and just beginning to color, about 2 minutes. Slowly pour in the warm milk, stirring as you do to incorporate the milk into the roux. Cook the bechamel, stirring the whole time, until it has thickened enough to coat the back of the spoon but still runs freely when lifted. This should only take 2-3 minutes. Remove from the heat and season to taste with sea salt.
6. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spread a little bit of the bechamel sauce on the bottom of a 9×13 inch casserole dish (to help keep the shells in place as you fill them). Working one at a time, spoon the cheese and vegetable mixture inside the pasta shells, using about 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons of filling per shell. As you stuff them, line the shells up on the casserole dish in a single layer. Pour the bechamel sauce over the top of the shells, then sprinkle the reserved grated mozzarella over the top. Bake for 30 minutes, until cheese is golden brown and bubbly. Serve warm.

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I recently discovered two things. First, Cara Cara oranges. Have you ever had one? They’re amazing. Whoever invented orange-flavored candies was definitely inspired by these guys. They are so much sweeter, juicier, and just more wonderful than regular oranges, and they’re a beautiful pink color inside, too. Although I usually associate citrus with January and February, Cara Caras seem to just be hitting their peak season now. At least, Wholefoods is full of them: no ramps or fava beans, just a lot of oranges. Although to be honest, I think my expectations for the seasonal produce that should be available in April have always been a little out of touch with reality. It was snowing two weeks ago, after all.

Writing the above paragraph has sent me down an internet rabbit hole looking for orange trees online. Because wouldn’t a Cara Cara orange tree be the perfect addition to our collection of trees that you probably shouldn’t try and grow in Boston? Our impulse-tree-purchase rate is way up this month anyways – last weekend alone we bought an olive tree and a coral bark Japanese Maple. What would harm could one more citrus tree do?

The second thing I discovered is that I’ve been cooking asparagus wrong. My standard cooking method for most vegetables is this: douse liberally with olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt, roast at 400°F until nicely charred. I like my roasted vegetables to be borderline carcinogenic. Especially brussels sprouts – I love the way the leaves get translucent and crunchy. Unfortunately, this method has left me unsatisfied when it comes to asparagus. If you roast asparagus even a little bit too long, it becomes stringy and mushy. So I recently tried a recipe in Diana Henry’s Simple which calls for you to lightly steam the asparagus by putting the thick ends in an inch or two of simmering water and pushing the tips just below the edge of the pot, without putting the whole stalk underwater. You only cook the asparagus for a few minutes, until they’re bright green, then drain immediately. This method resulted in asparagus that was fresh, tender, and perfectly cooked without being limp or mushy or stringy. Success!

In this recipe I’ve brought these two April delicacies together in – surprise! – a bowl. I just like things better when they’re in bowl form, OK? It’s a trend that makes me eat my vegetables. I’ve built on the Diana Henry recipe I mentioned above, which served the steamed asparagus with goat cheese and lemon butter, to build a warm bowl that screams spring. The base of the bowl is Israeli Couscous tossed with butter, lemon juice, and lemon zest while the couscous is still warm. Adding spinach, steamed asparagus, goat cheese, the lovely Cara Cara oranges, and shelled pistachios makes a healthy spring dinner that is complete and satisfying.

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Lemony Israeli Couscous with Asparagus, Oranges, and Goat Cheese

Inspired by Simple. Serves 2.

• 1 cup of uncooked Israeli couscous
• 2 TBS butter
• zest and juice of half a lemon
• black pepper
• 1/2 pound of asparagus
• 3 oz. of baby spinach
• 1 Cara Cara orange, peeled and supremed (cut into segments)
• 3 oz. soft goat cheese, cut into slices
• 1/4 cup of shelled pistachios

1. Bring a medium pot of salted water to a boil over medium heat (the pot should be slightly less wide than the length of your asparagus stalks). Add the couscous to the boiling water and stir. Cook until tender and chewy, about 5-7 minutes, then drain. Transfer to a bowl and add the butter, lemon juice, lemon zest, and black pepper while couscous is warm. Stir until the couscous is evenly coated with the lemon butter and set aside.
2. Add about 2 inches of water to the pot and return to the stove. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Prepare the asparagus by snapping or trimming off the thick woody end of each stalk, usually about the bottom 1 inch. (You can gently bend the asparagus to find the natural breaking point as a guide). Place the thick end of the stalks in the simmering water in the bottom of the pot. Gently bend the asparagus so the tips are resting just inside the pot but aren’t submerged in the water, so they will steam but not boil. Cook the asparagus in this way until bright green, which should take about 3-5 minutes depending on the thickness of your asparagus. Remove from the heat, drain, and run under cold water for 60 seconds to stop the cooking process.
3. To assemble the salads, divide the couscous and spinach between two bowls. Top with asparagus, orange segments, goat cheese, and pistachios. Serve warm.

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It has taken me so long to write about the time we spent in Hong Kong last winter. I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps because we were there for long enough to feel like it wasn’t a trip, so there’s no clear narrative, but not long enough to make it feel routine. I’m not sure how best to structure our stories and experiences to share with you, but at the end, it’s probably best to just start writing.

We had a wonderful time in Hong Kong, and I’d go back in a heartbeat. Hong Kong is this vibrant, slightly chaotic, proud, country full of contrasts. It is at times loud and bustling and wonderfully modern and at times ancient and mystical and steeped in tradition. Pristine luxury shopping malls smelling of expensive perfume bump up against Buddhist temples filled with incense smoke. Michelin stars are awarded to French tasting menus and hole-in-the-wall dim sum joints. You can spend $30 on a cocktail or $2 for a bowl of noodles, and both will be delicious. The iconic skyscrapers packed together in Central fade suddenly and without warning into green mountains, blanketed with hiking trails.

A friend who visited several months after we’d left told me afterwards “I wasn’t expecting it to be so Chinese.” And he’s right. The international image of Hong Kong is of a massive, modern, high-tech city, full of expats and expensive clothes and big business. And it is that, in parts, but it’s also old, and pungent, and a little run-down, and very traditional. The international glitz is fun, but for us, the real draw was outside of the glamorous neighborhoods: the hole-in-the-wall dumpling restaurants and the sleepy seaside island towns. In five weeks we barely scratched the surface – for a small country there’s a lot to explore.

Hong Kong is a food-lover’s dream travel destination. Everything is good, and you can find pretty much anything, for a price. There’s an amazing hipster coffee scene (if you’re willing to spend $7 on a latte), 61 Michelin-starred restaurants (more than London and Chicago and Madrid), wet markets where you can buy any meat or seafood you can think of, and incredible local Cantonese cuisine. I tried things I never thought I would – abalone and shark fin and literal birds’ nests – and had some of the most memorable meals of my life.

When we got back from Asia I wrote down all the recipes I wanted to eventually share here – noodles and dumplings and soups. The other night I was reading through that list and when I got to “Shanghai Noodles with Pork, Mushrooms, and Cabbage” I had the most visceral food memory. Those noodles – fat as a pencil and utterly slurpable and chewy and coated in an addictive, salty-sweet brown sauce – were unbelievable. I struggled to recreate them at home – that sauce! Those fat noodles! – but after several rounds of trial-and-error I finally have a reasonable approximation.

The first recipe I tried wasn’t saucy enough and the second was far too salty. I ended up ditching the pork because it wasn’t adding anything, and experimenting with my own sauce. Ideally I would use thick fresh egg noodles but I couldn’t find any, so I made do with fresh udon. Now that I know how to make them, these are actually very easy. Once you have the sauce ingredients, you could whip them up on a weeknight with no problem.

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Shanghai Noodles with Mushrooms and Cabbage

Thick, eggy Shanghai Noodles covered in a slurpable, sweet-salty sauce and stir-fried with mushrooms and cabbage. Inspired by an extended trip to Hong Kong.

Adapted loosely from The Daring Gourmet, with sauce inspiration from BBC Good Food. 

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
• Yield: 4-6

Ingredients

• 4 TBS dark soy sauce (don’t substitute regular soy sauce!)
• 2 TBS peanut butter
• 2 TBS honey
• 1 TBS sugar
• 2 TBS rice wine vinegar
• 1 tsp hot sauce
• 2 TBS plus 2 tsp sesame oil, divided
• 1 TBS fish sauce
• 1/2 cup chicken stock
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 1 TBS canola oil
• 2 portobello mushroom cups, cleaned and cut into 1/4 inch thick slices
• 1/2 lb shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, caps cut into thin slices
• sea salt
• 5 cups shredded napa cabbage
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
• 3/4 lb. thick fresh egg noodles or fresh udon noodles
• 2 fresh scallions, chopped, for garnish

Instructions

1. In a medium bowl, combine dark soy sauce, peanut butter, honey, sugar, rice wine vinegar, hot sauce, 2 teaspoons of the sesame oil and the fish sauce. Whisk until very smooth.
2. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the chicken stock and the cornstarch until smooth. Set aside.
3. Heat half of the remaining sesame oil and half of the canola oil in a wok over medium-high heat. Add the sliced mushrooms and sprinkle with sea salt. Cook until golden brown on both sides and tender, about 5-6 minutes, stirring often. Transfer the cooked mushrooms to a plate. Add the remaining sesame oil and canola oil to the walk along with the shredded cabbage and the minced garlic. Cook quickly, just until wilted, stirring frequently.
4. Add the sauce and the noodles to the pan with the cabbage. Use tongs to coat the noodles in the sauce, then add the chicken stock with the cornstarch. Continuously toss the noodles in the sauce until the sauce is glossy and thickly coats the noodles. Add the mushrooms back to the pan and toss a few more times, then remove from the heat. Serve immediately, topped with chopped scallions.

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I’ve been trying to perfect some of my pasta recipes. In my kitchen, pasta is both a luxury and a staple, giving it a unique place in my repertoire. It’s easy to make, and it’s what I crave when I’m exhausted and can’t think of anything else to make. But it’s also a treat – I usually go heavy on the cream and the cheese. So when I make it, I want it to be really good. And too often, it’s just OK. Why indulge in a giant bowl of pasta that’s just OK? I want my pasta to be great.

The first recipe I tackled was a fresh heirloom tomato sauce. It took a few tries, but now it’s pretty much the only thing I want to eat when I’ve got an excess of fresh tomatoes (and you can find the recipe here). Next up, mushroom cream sauce. I’ve been making a variation of this for ages, but it’s never quite what I want, which is: golden brown and crispy mushrooms; a thick, luxurious sauce that covers each and every bite of pasta; the right balance of mushrooms and pasta; and plenty of cheesy flavor in every forkful.

So here’s what I’ve learned over the past few weeks in my efforts to make the perfect bowl of creamy mushroom pasta. First, there’s never enough sauce. What looks like a huge amount of sauce becomes dwarfed by half a pound of pasta in no time. As a corollary, you need more mushrooms than you think you do – I weighed my mushrooms this time, thinking there would be way too many and wanting to give you accurate measurements. But a pound of mushrooms quickly cooks down into just enough for half a pound of pasta. You already know this one, but don’t crowd your mushrooms – give them lots of space in the pan so they turn crisp and brown. And last, my secret pasta weapon: mascarpone. A spoonful stirred into hot pasta makes all your pasta dreams come true, thickening the sauce just enough to luxuriously coat each noodle.

I know that many of us are trying to watch the indulgences this month – saving room for all the cookies and wine and Christmas treats. But it’s all about balance, right? And sometimes you just need a bowl of pasta. When you do, make it a good one.

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More perfect pasta recipes:

Heirloom Tomato and Sweet Onion Pasta

Rigatoni Bolognese

Butternut Squash Carbonara with Fried Sage

Creamy Mushroom Pasta

A Katie at the Kitchen Door original recipe. Serves 2-3.

• 3 TBS butter
• 2 shallots, peeled and sliced into thin rings
• 1 lb of mixed wild mushrooms, thinly sliced (I used an equal mixture of criminis, shiitakes, and chanterelles)
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 lb. spaghetti
• 2 oz. freshly grated parmesan cheese (about 3/4 cup packed)
• 1 cup of pasta cooking water
• 1/4 cup mascarpone
• black pepper
• sea salt
• 2 TBS minced fresh parsley leaves

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil. Let boil while you prepare the sauce (don’t add the pasta until the sauce is almost ready).
2. Melt the butter in a wide frying pan over medium heat. Add the sliced shallots and saute until soft and translucent, about 3-4 minutes. Add one variety of the sliced mushrooms in a single layer, being careful not to crowd the mushrooms to ensure good browning. Let the mushrooms cook undisturbed until they are golden brown on one side, about 2-5 minutes depending on the mushroom variety, then flip and cook on the other side. Transfer the cooked mushrooms to a plate, then repeat with the remaining varieties of mushrooms. Once all the mushrooms are cooked, add them all back to the pan and lower the heat to medium-low.
3. Add the spaghetti to the boiling water and cook until barely al dente, 1 or 2 minutes less than the package directs.
4. Add the heavy cream to the pan with the mushrooms and stir until the mushrooms have absorbed most of the cream, about 1-2 minutes. When the pasta is just al dente, use tongs to transfer the noodles directly into the pan with the mushrooms and cream. Add a ladleful of the hot pasta water to the pan as well (about 3/4 to 1 cup), along with the grated parmesan cheese. Use the tongs to toss the pasta with the mushrooms until the cheese is melted and a smooth, luxurious sauce has formed. Cook one to two minutes longer if needed for the sauce to thicken. Remove from the heat. Stir in the mascarpone and parsley until they coat the noodles. Season generously with black pepper, and to taste with sea salt, and serve immediately.

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I have the perfect recipe for your last heirloom tomato – I hope you’ve been saving it. When all of our beautiful, Striped German tomatoes ripened seemingly simultaneously at the end of September, I was sort of at a loss for what to do with them all. I like tomatoes but I don’t love tomatoes, at least the way some people do. You will probably never catch me eating a tomato like an apple. I’m a little bit embarrassed to admit it but you might actually find me picking the tomato out of a sandwich now and then, if it’s a particularly bad tomato. So I was a bit stressed by the idea of using up 12 pounds of beautiful homegrown tomatoes before they went bad.

I was flipping through my favorite cookbooks, looking for tomato-inspiration, when I came across a recipe for Spaghetti with Heirloom Tomatoes, Basil and Bottarga Breadcrumbs in Sunday Suppers at Lucques, which is my very favorite cookbook, at least currently (all of Suzanne’s recipes are so spot on, and seemingly timeless, given that the flavors still sound incredible over 10 years after the book was published). While I wasn’t looking for anything as complicated as making homemade breadcrumbs flavored with cured tuna roe on this particular evening, the other flavors in the recipe sounded just right, so I made a few quick modifications and tried it. It was good, but not mind-blowing. But I loved the idea of the dish, and there were elements that were really strong – I loved the mellow sweetness of the onions melding with the tangy-sweet tomato, the way the rosemary fried in olive oil seemed to perfume the whole dish, and the process of cooking the spaghetti in the sauce so it would soak it up. It just needed more body and more salt. So I kept trying the recipe, adding a spoonful of capers here, toning down the chile heat, and finally, the move that sealed the deal, stirring in a generous spoonful of mascarpone cheese, which transformed the sauce into something silky and luxurious that coated every noodle.

Now that it’s perfect, I want to eat this spaghetti every day. Which is why, although I considered it, I couldn’t wait until next tomato season to share this with you. I want you to be able to try it now, with those last tomatoes. And after this I promise that it’s going to be all soups and roasts and dumplings and pumpkin-y things around here.

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Heirloom Tomato and Sweet Onion Spaghetti

Inspired by Sunday Suppers at Lucques. Serves 2-3.

• 2 TBS olive oil
• 1 TBS chopped fresh rosemary leaves
• 1/2 small red chile, seeded and finely minced OR 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 large sweet onion, peeled, halved, and cut into very thin half-ring slices
• 2 large heirloom tomatoes (about 2 pounds total), cored and cut into 1 inch pieces
• 1/2 lb. spaghetti
• 2 TBS butter
• 1 TBS capers
• 1/4 c. mascarpone cheese
• 10 leaves fresh basil, rolled and julienned
• 2 TBS chopped fresh parsley leaves
• 1 oz. parmesan cheese, shaved into flakes with a vegetable peeler

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the rosemary leaves and the minced chile or red pepper flakes. Saute until fragrant and sizzling, about 60 seconds. Lower the heat to medium-low, add the onion slices and saute, stirring frequently until very tender and translucent, about 5-7 minutes. Add the tomato pieces and stir. Cook, stirring frequently, until tomatoes have softened into a sauce and the sauce has thickened, about 10-15 minutes.
3. When your sauce is almost ready, add the spaghetti to the boiling water. Cook until it is almost al dente – drain the pasta about 1-2 minutes before it is done (you are going to finish cooking it in the sauce). Transfer the hot pasta to the pan with the tomatoes and toss to coat. Add the butter and capers and toss with the pasta and sauce. Cook for 1-2 minutes longer then remove from the heat. Stir in the mascarpone cheese until it has coated all of the pasta. Sprinkle the sliced basil and parsley over the top of the pasta and stir to mix. Divide the pasta between 2 or 3 plates and top each serving with some of the flaked parmesan cheeese. Serve immediately.

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For the first 25 years of my life, I abhorred seafood. All of it. Yes, including lobster. Yes, including shrimp. I’ve written about it before so I won’t rehash it again. Suffice it to say, that through travel and the necessity of eating what’s available/local/good, I got over it. And in the past few months, the amount – and variety – of seafood that I eat has grown exponentially. I just got home from a week in Portugal where, not only did I eat some form of seafood every day, I ate, and loved, octopus, squid, and scallops. My mother wouldn’t recognize the girl who used to cry through meals when a “no thank you portion” of baked cod sat sadly on her plate.

This summer, I’ve been cooking lots of seafood at home, too – perhaps to make up for lost time, or perhaps because it just goes so well with a chilled glass of white wine. To celebrate my newfound love of seafood, I put together a little Italian seafood dinner paired with three La Crema wines. It’s the sort of meal that demands to be eaten outside at the end of a hot, sunny day, when the sun is just beginning to slip behind the trees and the breeze picks up again. It’s also the sort of meal that should be lingered over, with plenty of conversation and several bottles of wine on ice, within arm’s reach. It’s slow food.

The first course is a take on Mussels Bruschetta – sauté fennel and garlic until tender and fragrant, then steam the mussels just until they open. Add a splash of Chardonnay, a handful of tomatoes, and fresh basil and parsley, then serve on top of freshly-toasted bread. Set the toasts out on a tray and open a bottle of La Crema Monterey Chardonnay to kick off the evening. Next, a Salmon Carpaccio served on a salad of spicy greens, a light, refreshing, and elegant summer dish. The carpaccio – like an Italian-style ceviche – relies on juicy lemons and herbs like parsley and thyme to both flavor and “cook” the raw fish. Pair it with a crisp, bright La Crema Pinot Gris.

The main event is a Seafood Pasta with Squid, Clams, and Tomatoes – because in my mind, no Italian meal is complete without pasta. Wide rough-cut noodles of eggy pappardelle tossed with flash-fried squid, steamed clams, and fresh tomatoes make a simple and delicious main. If you have the time to make the fresh pasta yourself, do it. The ritual of making pasta at home – cracking the eggs into a well of flour; drawing the tines of a fork through the mixture until it is no longer eggs and flour but a dough; slowly kneading the dough until it’s soft and pliable; rolling the dough into thinner and thinner sheets; folding and pressing and re-rolling; cutting the sheets into thick noodles; hanging them to dry on wooden dowels – takes time and love but it’s so worth it. With the pasta, serve your last bottle of wine, a chilled, buttery La Crema Sonoma Coast Chardonnay.

You can find recipes for all three dishes on the La Crema blog – Mussels and Fennel Bruschetta, Salmon Carpaccio and Spicy Greens Salad, and Seafood Pasta with Squid, Clams, and Tomatoes.

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by La Crema. All opinions are honest and my own.

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I spent this past week in Hong Kong, on my first work trip in two months. This trip felt a lot easier than some of the others I’ve taken this year, for a number of reasons. For one, it was a lot easier to say goodbye after so much uninterrupted time at home, a much-needed break after the insanity of the first 8 months of this year. And Hong Kong is such an exciting city, with great food and a ton to see, it made the week fly by.

When I’m gone for more than a day or two, I have a tendency to cook up a bunch of different meals and then leave them in the fridge. I’m not consciously doing it to make sure Trevor stays fed while I’m gone, as he’s a very good cook (despite his tendency to eat primarily chips, salsa and hot dogs while I’m gone… I think that habit is more of a celebration of his brief freedom from bounty bowls and green vegetables). But maybe I’m subconsciously doing it out of guilt for leaving so often. Regardless of the reason, I haven’t heard any complaints. This time, I left him with not one but two big batch meals, a steak and ale pie (recipe coming soon!) and a tray of this lasagna.

Over the past few months I’ve been experimenting with lasagna recipes, which I’ll admit, is kind of a fattening thing to experiment with. The first one I tried was a classic lasagna Bolognese, adapted from the over-the-top Serious Eats version. It was delicious, but it took like 6 hours to make from start to finish and was also a little too soupy (probably because I lacked patience in cooking the ragu down to the right consistency and then letting it cool). Next I tried this Wild Mushroom Lasagnette, which was much faster and had great flavors, but was a little dry. So I came up with my own version, using tons of wild mushrooms, fresh fall herbs like sage and rosemary, a rich béchamel sauce, ricotta, and grated taleggio cheese. I won’t say that I’ve reached lasagna perfection, but I will say that when I got home from my trip last night the entire tray of lasagna was gone… so I know it was good.

Wild Mushroom Lasagna

Serves 6-8. Inspired by Bon Appetit and Serious Eats.

• 2 TBS butter
• 2 TBS olive oil
• 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
• 2 TBS chopped fresh sage
• 1  TBS chopped fresh rosemary leaves
• 1/2 lb. oyster mushrooms, sliced lengthwise
• 1/2 lb. shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, thinly sliced
• 1/2 lb. crimini mushrooms, thinly sliced
• sea salt to taste
• 1/2 c. white wine
• 1 bunch Tuscan kale, leaves removed from stems and roughly chopped
• 1/2 c. heavy cream
• 3 TBS butter
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 TBS flour
• 2 c. whole milk
• 1/2 lb. taleggio cheese, grated
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1 box no-boil lasagna noodles
• 1 lb. whole milk ricotta cheese

1. Finely chop the fresh herbs and mix together in a small bowl. Melt 1/3 of the butter and 1/3 of the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the oyster mushrooms to the pan in a single layer, and sprinkle with 1/3 of the chopped herbs and a pinch of sea salt. Let cook undisturbed for 3-4 minutes, then flip with a spatula and brown on the other side. Mushrooms should be golden brown all over and slightly crisp when finished. Transfer oyster mushrooms to a bowl and repeat the process with the shiitakes and criminis, cooking each type separately in a new batch of butter, olive oil, herbs, and sea salt.
2. Once all the mushrooms are cooked, return them all to the pan and add the wine and kale to the pan. Simmer the mixture until the kale is tender and the wine has mostly evaporated. Add the heavy cream and simmer for 2-3 minutes longer. Season the mixture to taste with salt and pepper, then remove from the heat and set aside.
3. Add the 3 TBS of butter to a small saucepan and melt over low heat. Add the minced garlic and saute until fragrant, about 1-2 minutes. Add the flour all at once and stir into the butter to form a paste. Cook for 1 minute, until flour is lightly browned and nutty smelling. Slowly drizzle in the milk, whisking as you do to incorporate the milk smoothly into the roux. Once you have added all the milk, cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until the sauce has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. Remove the sauce from the heat. Reserve a small portion of the grated taleggio cheese to the side for topping the lasagna, then stir the rest of the cheese in a handful at a time, until it is fully melted. Stir in the nutmeg. Set the béchamel sauce to the side.
4. Preheat the oven to 350°F. To assemble the lasagna, place a thin layer of ricotta cheese on the bottom of a large casserole dish. Cover the ricotta with a layer of noodles. Top the noodles with a layer of mushroom filling, a thin layer of ricotta, and a layer of béchamel sauce, spreading each layer out thinly to cover the entire area. Repeat this layering – noodles, mushrooms, ricotta, béchamel – until you have used all of the filling and almost all of the noodles and béchamel. Your last layer should consist of noodles, topped with béchamel, and then sprinkled with the reserved taleggio cheese. I usually get between 3-5 layers out of this amount of filling. Place the lasagna on a baking sheet to catch any drips, and place in the oven. Bake until noodles are tender and cheese on top is browned, about 40 minutes.

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As you know, we are currently in transition mode. We’re fully moved into our new house, but it doesn’t quite feel like home, and there’s still a lot to be done to fix it up. The kitchen was completely unusable for the first few weeks we were there, but as of Monday, we’re starting to get back into the rhythms of cooking.

Earthbound Farm asked me to develop a recipe using their Kale Italia salad blend, and I decided that using the pre-mixed, pre-washed greens as the base for a simple recipe would be another good way to ease back into cooking. Given the state of our kitchen, I had very specific requirements for this recipe: use as few utensils as possible, be quick to make (with limited use of appliances that create heat in 90° weather), minimize leftovers so that they fit into the tiny fridge, and only use fresh ingredients that can be completely used up in one night. And really, apart from the leftover component, perhaps, isn’t this what many people want from a weeknight dinner?

Pesto is a great option when you want to turn a lot of fresh greens into a manageable volume of food. Of course, it’s the same amount of greens overall – it can just be consumed in fewer bites (and eating an entire box of greens in one sitting can be a rather daunting prospect.) I’ve been successful making pesto from kale, as well as from arugula. Mizuna, with it’s tangy, mustardy flavor didn’t feel like much of a stretch as a pesto candidate. That left radicchio as the only question mark from the Kale Italia blend, and I decided it would be a low risk experiment to give it a try.

The result was excellent – a bright, zingy pesto full of flavor. We tossed it with some gnocchi, fresh mozzarella, and cherry tomatoes for an easy, summery weeknight dinner. Next time you’re in the supermarket, keep your eye out for Earthbound Farm’s Kale Italia product – it’s a great way to easily get a lot of flavors (and nutrition) into your next meal. Here’s a quick coupon if you’re interested!

Kale Italia Pesto Gnocchi

Serves 4. A Katie at the Kitchen Door original recipe.

• 2 TBS pine nuts
• 4 oz. parmesan cheese, cut into chunks
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1/4 c. olive oil
• One 5-oz. package of Earthbound Farm Kale Italia Salad Blend
• juice from 1/2 lemon
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 lb. gnocchi, prepared according to package directions
• 1 1/2 c. cherry tomatoes, cut in halves
• 8 oz. fresh mozzarella, torn into small pieces

1. To make the pesto, place the pine nuts, parmesan, garlic, and olive oil in a food processor and blend until a rough paste is formed. Add the Kale Italia a handful at a time, blending in between additions and scraping down the sides of the food processor if necessary, until you have blended all of the Kale Italia into the pesto. Add the lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste, and pulse a few times to incorporate into the pesto.
2. Toss the pesto with the gnocchi, cherry tomatoes, and mozzarella. Best served warm.

This conversation is sponsored by Earthbound Farm. The opinions and text are all mine.

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We are (very) slowly starting to settle in to our new house. The pile of unpacked boxes in the dining room is dwindling, and things are starting to find homes. I built a little herb garden, not exactly a priority as far as house projects go but something that I’ve been looking forward to since we decided to buy a house. Yesterday we caved and bought a mini-fridge to tide us over until our real fridge is available, and a chilled glass of lemonade in this 95° heat is already worth the cost of the fridge, in my book. Trevor ripped out some of the old cabinets and replaced them with gorgeous industrial-style pine shelves, and we now have a plan to make the kitchen usable for the next 12 months or so while we save up to truly remodel it. Things are still a little chaotic, but they’re looking up.

With a few surfaces cleared and cleaned, at least a little cold storage, and a place to store our groceries, we’re easing back into cooking.  The very first meal was a package of frozen tortellini and a jar of tomato sauce. Gourmet, I know. Last night we were more ambitious and fired up the grill for sausage, peppers, and onions, along with grilled corn on the cob. Today, I’ve managed to have all my meals at home – cereal (ice cold milk, what a delicious thing!), tomato-lentil-couscous, and now, this Smoked Salmon Soba Bowl. Because there are still a number of kitchen tools we haven’t unearthed, and because we’re just starting to build up a new pantry, I needed to keep this meal super simple, and it is. The only cooking is to boil the soba noodles and edamame, then the noodles get tossed with a 5-ingredient dressing, and topped with smoked salmon, avocado, and pickled ginger. Simple, healthy, and full of flavor. And there’s something supremely satisfying about slurping cold, nutty noodles straight from the bowl when it’s too hot to think. Enjoy, and stay cool!

Smoked Salmon Soba Bowl

A quick and easy summer dinner, delicious served at room temperature or chilled. I make this with store-bought hot-smoked salmon, making it even easier to get dinner on the table.

Dressing adapted from this Sprouted Kitchen recipe. 

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
• Prep Time: 15m
• Cook Time: 10m
• Total Time: 28 minute
• Yield: 4-6

Ingredients

• 1/4 c. tahini
• 2 TBS honey
• 2 TBS soy sauce
• 1 TBS sesame oil
• 1 TBS rice wine vinegar
• 8 oz. soba noodles, cooked according to package directions
• 1 c. shelled edamame, cooked according to package directions
• 1 avocado, pitted and cut into cubes
• 8 oz. hot-smoked salmon
• 1 oz. pickled ginger slices
• sesame or poppy seeds for garnish

Instructions

1. In a small bowl, whisk together tahini, honey, soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice wine vinegar until smooth. Taste and adjust flavors to your liking. Set aside.
2. Toss the prepared soba noodles with the edamame and the dressing. Chill until ready to serve. To serve, divide noodles between plates and top with avocado cubes, pieces of salmon, pickled ginger, and sesame or poppy seeds.

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There are pros and cons to a travel schedule like mine. On the one hand, I get to fly all over the world for work, experiencing new cultures, meeting new people, trying all kinds of different foods, and exploring major world cities. It’s an amazing opportunity and an incredibly cool part of my job. On the other hand, as anyone who travels a lot can tell you, it can be exhausting and make it difficult to maintain a routine at home. After a long trip like my most recent one, I’m all but brain-dead for the first few days that I’m home, sleeping way more than I normally would and mostly just focused on getting an enormous amount of laundry done. Travel as a lifestyle is a skill, and it’s one I’m still working on.

One challenge of going on longer trips is prepping all my blog posts beforehand – not a whole lot of opportunities to cook in hotel rooms. This can mean that the weekend before a trip is totally consumed by cooking and photographing and preparing posts for a two week period. Sometimes even my best intentions fall short though, and that’s when I turn to my archives – recipes I’ve made and photographed but have never written about. I’m actually home now – I arrived Thursday night – but I still haven’t found the wherewithal to think about cooking anything other than eggs, toast, or reheating leftovers from the freezer. so today’s post is one of those archive ones – my favorite spaghetti and meatballs recipe. It’s another one from Franny’s Simple Seasonal Italian, the same book that inspired my recent bolognese recipe. These meatballs are the best homemade ones that I’ve ever had, super-flavorful and tender. I don’t think there’s any one trick that makes these so good, it’s every element of the recipe added together that does it: the lemon zest, the generous amount of chopped parsley, the parmesan cheese, the mixture of beef and pork, and the crusty chunks of bread soaked in milk in the place of traditional bread crumbs. I like to make a big batch of these and pop half of them in the freezer for nights that I need a quick fix – like the day after arriving home from a long trip. Even if you have a favorite meatball recipe, please give these ones a try, too – they really are delicious.

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Perfect Spaghetti and Meatballs

Recipe adapted from Franny’s Simple Seasonal Italian. Serves 4-6.

• 4 oz. day-old country-style bread
• 1/2 c. whole milk
• 1 lb. ground beef
• 1 lb. ground pork
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 c. finely grated parmesan chese
• 1/3 c. finely chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely minced
• 1 TBS kosher salt
• 1 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• finely grated zest of 1 lemon
• extra virgin olive oil
• 1 lb. pasta, prepared according to package directions
• your favorite tomato sauce

1. Preheat the oven to 450°F. Cut the crusts off the bread and then cut the bread into 1/4-inch cubes and place in a large bowl. Pour the milk over the bread and toss to coat. Set aside and let soak for 10 minutes, or until the bread has absorbed all of the milk.
2. In a large bowl, gently fold the beef, pork, onion, cheese, parsley, garlic, salt, pepper, and lemon zest together until evenly mixed. Stir in the soaked bread crumbs. Try not to over-mix the meat mixture, but to leave it relatively loosely combined.
3. Roll the meat into ping pong sized balls. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and place the meatballs an inch apart on the sheet. Brush the meatballs lightly with olive oil and then bake, turning once or twice, until meatballs are golden brown on the outside and cooked through, about 12-15 minutes. Serve on top of the pasta and tomato sauce.

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