a little bit softer now
17 Wednesday Feb 2010
Posted in cheese, meatless, onions, pantry raid
Category Archives: cheese
Jennie’s Manicotti
28 Thursday Jan 2010
Posted in cheese, elsewhere in the blogosphere, food52, meatless, pasta, quick and easy
This manicotti? So good. Seriously, seriously good. As in, “serves 4″ should be a suggestion – Mike and I finished it all, and were jockeying for the leftover saucy bits in the baking dish. And I am not lying when I say I would happily eat it again, tonight, and the night after, and for many nights thereafter. We gilded the lily a bit by adding a bit of shredded Narragansett Creamery fresh mozzarella on top, and we used NC ricotta in the filling rather than homemade, but seriously, this is just a great, simple, deceptively easy dish. And you should make it for yourself soon.
(Huge thanks to the lovely and talented Jennifer Perillo for this recipe – it’s a keeper for sure.)
Feeling Cheesy
25 Monday Jan 2010
Those of you who have been waiting patiently for my gnudi recipe need wait no more – it’s live on the Edible Rhody website, along with my recipe for Sautéed Greens and Fresh Mozzarella Bruschetta. And don’t miss the great accompanying article about local treasure Narragansett Creamery, written by our friend Jan Faust Dane. Enjoy!
Brown Plate Specials
23 Wednesday Dec 2009
My week so far has been hectic, both at home and at the office, and our last couple of dinners have reflected that. The weekend’s snowfall has led to bus snafus and train delays, making my long days even longer, and by the time I have gotten home at night, I’ve found myself in a mad rush to both get dinner on the table at a decent hour, and to finish cranking out edible holiday treats.
As most of our fresh food is earmarked for holiday meals, I’ve relied heavily on pantry staples for these last two dinners, and since we’ve been dialing back on meat in anticipation of the rich dishes we’ll be indulging in over the extended holiday weekend, I turned to mushrooms to lend a hearty bite.
On Monday, my latest incarnation of lentil soup got extra heft with a topping of roasted criminis, and brightness from a crumble of tangy fresh goat cheese.
The goat cheese came into play again last night, to both brighten and add a bit of creaminess to bowls of spaghetti tossed with one of my favorite old standbys, a rich mushroom ragu.
While these two meals made for a couple of very brown plates, they made for two very satisfying dinners, and this time of year, that’s good enough for me.
In Edible… Rhody, that is
05 Saturday Dec 2009
My husband‘s not the only one who appears in the Winter 2009 issue of Edible Rhody – I was delighted to provide two recipes for inclusion in the issue. If you’re local, it’s on newsstands now.
The Great Unknown
04 Friday Dec 2009
Posted in cheese, meatless, personal, quick and easy, sandwiches, soups, tomatoes
This week has been a struggle. Just last week we celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday and expressed our gratitude for, among other things, how well our Kali has done with her treatment for anemia, but that same night when she stretched out on the table for scritches, we discovered something troubling – a lump. Mike pointed it out to the vet at Kali’s Monday appointment, a cell sample was taken for testing, and we waited. I’ve been distracted and out of sorts all week as a result, fretting about the unknown and fighting to stay healthy myself while seemingly everyone around me battles one bug or another.
I’ve also been fighting exhaustion – mental, pysical, and emotional. So much has happened during this whirlwind year, and while there are some potentially great things for us to look forward to in 2010, they are all still very much up in the air, and the weight of all the uncertainty we are facing has been difficult to bear. It has been hard to find inspiration, hard to find words to put down on a page, hard to just keep going day after day.
And while I planned and planned for our Thanksgiving meal, I never really got around to sketching out meals for this week. I brought home a mishmash of produce from last Saturday’s farmers’ market, but without any advance plans it has been difficult to get interesting meals to take shape this week. So there was pasta. And pizza. Soup and more soup. By last night soup was all that I wanted, a big bowl of cream-laced tomato, with tiny grilled cheese sandwiches alongside. Comfort in a bowl, a variant of one of my oldest “recipes“, something simple and warm to help chase my blues away.
The call from the vet came this morning, the results, “inconclusive.” We’ll keep waiting, and watching, forging ahead through the uncertainty until answers start to appear. I see a lot more soup in my future.
Fading
20 Tuesday Oct 2009
It was 33 degrees out when I left for work this morning. In the dark. In my full-length down coat. 33. People. I am not ready for this. One of the things we love most about New England is the fall, and I feel like it’s almost behind us, whizzing past like the vibrant foliage as I head home on the train in the evening, in the dark.
The change of seasons is always difficult for me physically, and this rapid drop in temperatures, the cold and damp, is particularly hard. I have no energy and I ache right to my core, and of course, I’m reacting by taking on Projects in the kitchen. Like these gnudi.
The last time I made gnudi was far too long ago, and since we have some of the best darned ricotta around, I figured it was high time I worked with it in this application.
I treated the ricotta much like I did in my most recent batch of ricotta gnocchi, draining it and beating it until fluffy, then incorporating chopped cooked chard, a beaten egg, salt, pepper, lemon zest, grated parm, and flour. I rolled out two dozen little dumplings, cooked them in plenty of boiling salted water until they bobbed to the top, then sauced them with a zippy lemon and thyme-infused butter, finishing them with crunchy little lemon-thyme breadcrumbs. It was, perhaps, a little fussy for a weeknight dish, but it was totally worth it, a welcome bright spot in an otherwise dreary day.
Oy.
16 Friday Oct 2009
The last week and a half has been some rollercoaster ride, and once again I am grateful for those dinners I can practically put together on auto-pilot. Like risotto.
This one was enriched with lots of limited edition Butter Moon blue cheese from Narragansett Creamery, and topped with roasted Wishing Stone Farm oyster mushrooms (one of my favorite things). Simple, tasty, and on the table in about half an hour.
Stop the Presses
12 Saturday Sep 2009
Posted in baking, cheese, elsewhere in the blogosphere, plums
I baked a tart.
No, really.
Me. Baking. See?
You can read about it and get my recipe over at food52.
The Indoor Picnic
28 Friday Aug 2009
Posted in beef, charcuterie, cheese, fennel, quick and easy, tomatoes
Some nights it’s nice to just not cook at all. Thanks to Farmstead, Seven Stars Bakery, Red Fire Farm and Kimball Fruit Farm for some truly delicious goodies.
