Tagliatelle with Salmon

Well, at least we got half of a gorgeous weekend, eh? Saturday was perfect, and we spent most of the day hanging out in the courtyard having a few beers and enjoying the sun. Once the sun set we dug into a few pounds of giant king crab legs that I completely forgot to take pictures of. They were so good that we made a promise to ourselves to do it again soon, and I'll try and remember to document them then.

Last night we had some friends over for dinner and I ended up throwing together a bit of a slapdash meal. I suppose you could call it Tagliatelle with Salmon and Mushrooms, but that's a bit of a boring name, I think. Let's call it Pasta for a rainy Sunday that Should Have Been Sunnier but Wasn't. Or something. It was really just an excuse to make fresh pasta, which I hadn't done in a while. I eschewed the pasta cutter I normally use to make some hand-cut tagliatelle, which turned out great.

Tagliattelle with Salmon and Mushrooms

Ingredients:

~2 lbs fresh pasta dough. See my recipe here
1 lb salmon
8 oz sliced baby bella mushrooms
1/2 c grated parmigiano reggiano
Minced garlic
Fresh parsley
Extra virgin olive oil
Lemon Juice
Seasoning to taste

Directions:

Press the pasta into flat sheets, either by hand or with a pasta roller. Dust with flour, then stack the sheets and roll them. Cut the roll into strips about a half an inch wide - wider if you want fatter pasta. Unroll and separate.

Season the salmon with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and whatever other seasonins you like and grill or roast or pan-fry it - I used a rotisserie to roast mine. Once it's done, throw it in a large bowl and break it up.

Heat up a generous glug of olive oil in a pain with some garlic and rosemary. When the oil is hot, add the mushrooms and sautee for 15-20 minutes until tender. Add the mushrooms with the oil to the salmon.

Add the pasta to a post of boiling water with salt and cook for 2-3 minutes until al dente. Drain the pasta quickly and add to the bowl along with a little bit of the salt water it was boiled in. Stir in some pepper and the parmigiano. Plate the pasta and add some more cheese along with some fresh parsley.

We had the pasta along with some rolls and then some pignoli from my father and a slice of amazing cheesecake from Fairway for dessert. It was a pretty good Sunday.

Mother's Day Cookies

Yeah, I know I haven't had much to say lately. I've been too busy for either cooking or eating out, so I've been relegated to posting about local happenings that I'm too busy to attend anyway.

I took a break this afternoon to take part in that most manly of Sunday activities: baking cookies. I had wanted to make a batch of pignoli cookies from a recipe my father provided, but once I started thinking about it, I realized that what I really wanted was chocolate chip.

I use a slight variation of the basic Toll House recipe for my cookies. The only real difference is that I swap out half the baking soda for baking powder and melt the butter prior to adding it to the sugar and vanilla. I also make sure to chill the dough before baking it so that it spreads more slowly in the oven. Oh, and I used Ghirardelli chocolate chips because they looked good and the package was shiny and I like shiny things.

CHF Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

2 1/4 c all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3/4 c sugar
3/4 c brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 c (two sticks) butter, melted
Most of 1 bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips. I use about 2/3rds of the bag and munch on the rest because I'm greedy and piggish.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375.

In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

In a stand mixer (or mixing bowl), combine sugar and vanilla. Begin mixing at the lowest speed and slowly pour in the melted butter. Mix until creamy. Slowly add in the flour mixture, alowing it to combine as it mixes. Once the dough is completely combined, add in the chocolate chips and mix until combined evenly. Chill the dough in the fridge for about half an hour.

Using a tablespoon, ball the dough onto a cookie sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes.

That's it. Quick, easy, and awesome.

Happy Mother's Day!

Fresh Pasta and Pastiera

To conclude my trilogy of posts about our weekend dining over Easter, I present the fresh pasta with bolognese.

My father was responsible for the pasta, using a recipe similar to my own (he taught me to make it, after all). My stepmother, Pat, made the bolognese sauce. The recipe comes from the book Cooking By Hand, which along with The Silver Spoon is something any Italian kitchen should have.

Also shown is the incredible pastiera made by my father. He's currently compiling the recipe for me and I'm going to try my own hand at it.

Happy Valentine's Day - Stripper Pie

I hope everyone has a happy Valentine's Day, whether you're in love with someone special or just wallowing in bitterness.

I don't have any good Valentine's Day-related recipes, but this recipe for Soda Cracker Pie is one of my favorite desserts to make, so I guess it counts. This stands to this day as our friend Liz's favorite thing I've ever made. it started out as a basic soda cracker pie recipe that my mother gave me, but I added a layer of reduces fruit that I rotate each time I make it - apples, strawberries, raspberries, whatever. It ended up getting called Stripper Pie, since I served it to a group of my neighbors one night after they'd all gone to a pole dancing class. Sometimes life is pretty cool.

Stripper Pie

Ingredients:

Pie

3 Egg whites
1/2 ts Baking powder
1 c Sugar
1/2 ts Vanilla
1 c Soda crackers (saltines) chopped into crumbs
1 c Chopped pecans

Fruit Layer (I'll use apples as an example, but you can use whatever you like)

4 Apples, cored and diced
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Sugar
1 tblsp Water

Whipped Cream

2 c Heavy Cream
1 tblsp Vanilla
1 tsp Sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350

Beat egg whites until stiff. Add the baking powder, then slowly beat in the sugar and add the vanilla. Mix in the crumbs and pecans slowly until everything's combined, then pour into a greased 9-inch pie plate. Bake for 30 minutes.

For the apples, place in a pot over low heat and add the cinnamon, sugar, and water. Stir frequently and cook for 30 minutes to an hour, as long as it takes to get the consistently you like. The longer you cook, the more mushy the apples will be.

For the whipped cream, add the vanilla and sugar to the heavy cream and beat until solid.

When the pie has cooled, spread the apples over the top. Add whipped cream before serving.

Comic from xkcd.com.

Krumbs is Yummy

There's a new bakery on Vanderbilt just south of Myrtle called Krumbs (I think, I guess there's an issue with the name) that I've been meaning to try it. I've heard the carrot cake is fantastic, and I love me some carrot cake, so tonight Riley and I stopped in. They have little mini cakes for $2.50, so I got one carrot and one red velvet cake.

It's really, really good. You should go get some right now.

Go. I mean it.


Information:

Krumbs (for now)
154 Vanderbilt Ave
Brooklyn, NY

To Il Torchio Once More!

I'm finally getting around to posting about all the eating out I did while I had family in town last weekend. I was unable to join them the first night they were here, but Mick took them to Tamboril and everyone agreed it was pretty great. No pictures, though, because apparently if I'm not there, there's no reason to document it. One nice thing about that night was what they brought home for me. I got a text from them at the restaurant asking if I'd like them to bring anything back, and if so, what. I said just bring me something spicy! The chef ended up making me a shrimp, spinach, and rice dish that was off the menu that turned out to be exactly what I needed. Spicy as hell and not too heavy. So that was Thursday.

On Friday we debated between Il Torchio and Graziella's. Actually, that's a lie, since we initially debated between Graziella's and the Stonehome Wine Bar. We decided on the latter, only to drive down there and discover a fourty-five minute to an hour wait for a table. That certainly wouldn't do, so we went with plan C: Il Torchio.

This was my third time there, and I've yet to have anything but a great meal. We went through three or four bottles of wine, a few different tapas, a cheese plate, and an entrée for each of us.

I had the Saffron Linguine, which has clams, calamari, and pepperoncini in a white wine sauce. Out of everything I've ever had here, this was the most disappointing. Not because it wasn't good - it was - but because there was so little of it. It seemed like there was only half a portion of pasta, especially when compared to the giant heaping bowls every other dish seems to consist of.

Among other things we ordered were the Penne "Il Torchio," penne pasta in a plum tomato sauce with bufala mozarella, the Taglioni, and the Risotto Del Giorno. Not a bad dish in the bunch, there.

One last quick note: our waitress accidentally spilled some water during the meal, and the staff was not only quick to clean everything up, but offered us free desserts for our trouble. Among other things, we tried the Cantuccini Con Vinsanto, a biscotti-like almond cookie (the cantuccini) served with Vinsanto, a sweet, muscat-like dessert wine. It came highly recommended, and with good reason.

Information:

Il Torchio
458 Myrtle Ave
Brooklyn, NY
718.422.1122

Google Map

Thanksgiving

We're going to be doing Thanksgiving ourselves this year, and Mick has decided, rather forcefully, that she's going to be doing most of the cooking. My role will be relegated to not much more than making the mashed potatoes and watching a lot of football. I may do a dessert of some kind as well, but while wandering around the Village on Sunday we stopped in a bakery and bought a couple of pies, so unless those get unceremoniously devoured before Thursday, there's our dessert.

I'll also likely be tasked with picking up a few bottles of wine. Any good suggestions for turkey day?

The $25,000 Hot Chocolate

This isn't Clinton Hill-specific, but since it's a NYC curiosity I figured I'd post it anyway since I find these kinds of things interesting. Serendipity-3 has unveiled their latest ridiculous dessert, this time a cup of hot chocolate that goes for $25,000. Usually most of the cost of these kinds of things comes from a gem or piece of jewelry that comes with it, and this appears to be no exception.

The dessert, spelled with two Rs, is infused with 5 grams (0.2 ounces) of edible 23-karat gold and served in a goblet lined with edible gold. At the base of the goblet is an 18-karat gold bracelet with 1 carat of white diamonds.

The sundae is topped with whipped cream covered with more gold and a side of La Madeline au Truffle from Knipschildt Chocolatier, which sells for $2,600 a pound.

It is eaten with a gold spoon decorated with white and chocolate-colored diamonds, which can also be taken home.

So, yeah. Doesn't that seem to be a lot of gold to be eating? Almost everything I know about medicine comes from TV, and there was an episode of House where some guy got poisoned by gold. This sounds dangerous.

My favorite hot chocolate comes from the Brooklyn Tea Lounge on Court St. They have a white chocolate mocha there that's pretty amazing too.