Best of 2012: Pasta, Gnocchi and Rice

Pasta is one of the things I like to make most. It’s quick and forgiving, making it ripe for experimentation. My favorite pasta recipes from the year highlight a variety of seasonal flavors, like the Spring Pasta with Asparagus and Snap Peas, the summery Extra Fresh Pasta with Ricotta and Roasted Tomato Sauce and Orecchiette with Roasted Brussels Sprouts, which I made in the spring but would be perfect for fall. The latter two recipes include homemade pasta; easier to make than you might think and worth the extra effort. One dish I made over and over was Tomatoes Two Ways Pasta, which features the bright flavor of fresh ripe tomatoes stirred into the sauce at the end to cook up just a bit and tomatoes that have been slowly roasted in the oven to develop depth of flavor.

A dish that’s good any time of year is Macaroni & Cheese, which I presented in a traditional style, a corn pudding-inspired Macorny and Cheese and a dressed-up Truffled Mushroom Mac & Cheese.

Homemade pasta is wonderful, but the store-bought dried version is good too. With gnocchi though, you really ought to go homemade. This Gnocchi with Sausage-Mushroom Ragu surrounds the pillowy potato dumplings in a rich, savory sauce flavored with sage.

Rice is an ingredient I’d like to do more with next year (I have my eye on paella). My favorite rice treatment is risotto, the classic Italian dish that sometimes gets a bad reputation for requiring lots of stirring (you have to stir it, but there are lots of dishes that require stirring, so it’s really no different). Corn Risotto offers a lighter take on what can be a heavy dish if it’s smothered with too much cheese and cream.

Best of 2012: Salads, Soups, Sides and Appetizers

Top (L to R): Corn Soup, Heirloom Tomato Panzanella, Kale "Caesar" Salad. Middle: Green Beans with Bacon, Blue Cheese, Pecans and Dried Cranberries; Blackberry-Cucumber Salad with Fennel Pollen; Roasted Parsnip-Quinoa Salad with Shallot-Lemon Dressing. Bottom: Roasted Beet and Carrot Salad, Watermelon-Pepperoni Salad, Creamy Andalusian Gazpacho.

This week, I’m looking back at my favorite dishes I made over the past year. These are the dishes I will probably make again (some I already have).

Appetizers and Sides

I don’t spend a lot of time making appetizers, apart from those I prepared for my holiday entertaining week in early December. My favorite from that week was the Crostini with Smoked Blue Cheese, Caramelized Onion and Rosemary, which packed a potent amount of flavor in each bite-size serving. As for side dishes, Thanksgiving was a celebration of many good sides, the best of which were these Green Beans with Bacon, Blue Cheese, Pecans and Dried Cranberries.

Soups

The Creamy Andalusian Gazpacho got attention from America’s Test Kitchen’s Feed site as a Twitter Fan Photo of the Week, which was a nice honor. Doesn’t hurt that the cold Spanish soup was really quite delicious. So was the Apple-Fennel Soup with Beans and Sausage, which I was inspired to make after reading an interview with the West End Bistro’s new chef, Devin Bozkaya. My favorite soup though was this Corn Soup, which I was inspired to make after having a hit-the-spot bowl at Bouchon Café.

Salads

Kale was one of the biggest food trends of 2012. It was everywhere: salads, snacks and sides whether it was roasted, braised or raw. It’s no surprise then that the Kale “Caesar” Salad I wrote about in January, was on of Cook In / Dine Out’s most popular recipes this year. Adapted from a GQ recipe, it’s a bold take on the kale salad craze.

As the seasons changed, I was inspired by available produce, producing salads like the Blackberry Cucumber Salad, which featured fennel pollen I picked up during my last visit to Eataly, and the Roasted Beet and Carrot Salad, probably the most visually appealing salad I made this year, which was inspired by the work of Bryan Voltaggio, chef of Volt. I don’t know why I threw together watermelon and pepperoni, but they were great together in Watermelon-Pepperoni Salad. For a Thanksgiving side, I came up with the seasonally appropriate Roasted Parsnip and Quinoa Salad with Lemon-Shallot Vinaigrette.

My personal favorite salad was the Heirloom Tomato Panzanella, which I’ve been making for years pretty much every Sunday evening while tomatoes are in season from about mid July to mid September. It’s one of Chris and my favorite dishes.

Holiday Pasta

This dish came about as a way to use up ingredients in the 'fridge, namely some leftover tomato sauce and Italian chicken sausage from pizza I'd made the previous weekend, plus the rest of the bag of arugula I'd used for salad a couple days prior.

What resulted was unexpectedly festive: a beautifully red and green pasta dish that, when topped with freshly grated pecorino romano, looked like it was covered in fresh snowfall.


Holiday Pasta

1 lb. dried whole wheat penne pasta
2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium sweet onion, diced
Salt, to taste
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 lb. (2 large) mild Italian chicken sausage, removed from casings
2 tsp. dried thyme
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 14 oz. (or 1 28 oz.) cans of diced tomatoes
1 cup (packed) arugula leaves
Fresh ground black pepper, to taste
Chopped fresh Italian (flat-leaf) parsley
Grated pecorino romano cheese

1. Bring a large salted pot of water to boil. Cook pasta according to package direction for al dente. Drain and set aside.

2. Heat 1 tbsp. olive oil in a large frying pan or skillet over medium heat. Add onion and salt and sauté until the onion softens, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and sausage, using a wooden spoon or spatula to break up the sausage as it cooks. Season with thyme and oregano and continue cooking until the sausage is cooked through, about 5-7 minutes. Add the tomatoes and once the mixture bubbles, reduce heat to simmer and cook for 10-15 minutes. Add arugula leaves for the last 2 minutes of cooking and stir into sauce as the leaves wilt. Pour sauce over pasta and stir to combine. Serve pasta in bowls topped with fresh parsley and grated pecorino romano cheese.

Crack Pie

“Because you can’t stop eating it,” is why Momofuku Pastry Chef Christina Tosi named this dish Crack Pie, a riff on the classic southern Chess Pie. In her Momofuku Milk Bar Cookbook, she tells the story of how she created the pie for “family meal” (the meal chefs prepare for their staff). It was the result of having few ingredients on hand, but everyone loved it and kept coming back to her for more until the pie was polished off.

The crust comes from baking and then crumbling a giant oatmeal cookie.

According to Tosi, Chess Pie was what cooks made when they didn’t have the ingredients to make anything more complex. Since it requires no seasonal ingredients, it’s perfect for winter.

Because Tosi’s work has been such an inspiration for my dessert-making this year, I wanted to try one last recipe from her as my entry in this year’s winter office dessert contest (you’ll recall for our summer contest I entered this Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting).

I made the pie from the recipe that appeared in Bon Appetit, which is slightly modified from Tosi’s recipe in the Momofuku Milk Bar Cookbook, most notably because it lacks corn powder, the ground freeze-dried corn that is an essential ingredient in the Corn Cookies. This is a very rich pie, but the oatmeal cookie crust gives it some body so it’s not just sickly sweet but really quite pleasant. I made some minor modifications, one of out necessity, as I forget to stock up on light brown sugar, so I substituted equal parts dark brown sugar and white sugar (light brown sugar is the same thing as dark brown sugar, just with less molasses). I also reduced the butter and brown sugar just a tad.

The surface appearance might be another reason for calling this "crack" pie.

Since I decided to make two pies (one for the office party and one for Chris and me to enjoy at home), I experimented a bit just to see if it made any difference. Although I whipped the filling with the stand mixer for both pies, I whipped one batch quite a bit longer, so much so that the filling was thick enough that it needed to spread in the crust with a spatula (the filling for the other pie leveled off by itself after pouring). After baking, this didn’t make a noticeable difference in texture except that the pie with the overwhipped filling had more of a “crust” on the top part of the filling, but there wasn’t a difference in taste.

Crack Pie
Adapted from Crack Pie, Bon Appetit

Oatmeal cookie crust:
Vegetable oil
8 tbsp. (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
4 tbsp. (packed) light brown sugar
2 tbsp. white sugar
1 large egg
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons old-fashioned oats
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/8 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. (generous) salt

Pie filling:
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1 tbsp. nonfat dry milk powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted, cooled slightly
6 1/2 tbsp. heavy whipping cream (This is a little shy of half a cup)
4 large egg yolks
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Powdered sugar (for dusting)

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.

2. Make the cookie crust. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and brush lightly with vegetable oil. Combine 6 tbsp. butter, 4 tbsp. brown sugar and 2 tbsp. sugar and beat on medium-high to high with a stand or hand mixer until light and fluffy, scraping down the side of the bowl with a spatula as needed, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs and beat on medium-high until pale and fluffy (this is where I experimented, beating one mixture about 2 minutes and the other about 5, which made it noticeably thicker). Add oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and beat on low to combine, about 1 minute. Transfer dough to the prepared baking sheet and spread evenly with a spatula until the cookie is about 9 x 13 inches. Bake until golden on top, about 18 minutes. Cool baking sheet about 5 minutes then transfer cookie to rack to cool completely.

3. Put cookie in a large bowl and crumble with your hands. Add the 2 tbsp. of butter and rub the mixture with your fingertips until the butter is evenly mixed in and the mixture starts to stick together. Transfer the oat cookie crumbles to a pie plate and use your fingers to press it evenly onto the bottom and side of the plate.

4. While the cookie bakes, make the filling. Whisk (or whip, if using a stand mixer) sugars, milk powder and salt in a medium bowl. Add the melted butter and blend in. Then blend in the cream, then the egg yolks and vanilla. Whisk until well blended. Pour filling into prepared crust. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 F, the reduce the oven temperature to 325 F and bake another 20 minutes until the filling is lightly browned and set around the edges but still jiggly in the center if the pie dish is gently shaken. Cool pie for 2 hours on rack, then refrigerate overnight to chill. Serve cold. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

Cocktail: The Ginger Ken Ten

Here's a cocktail revisiting ingredients from some recent drinks: the Corsair Triple Smoke Whiskey, which I used in The Backyard, and the Italian spirit Cynar, which appeared in Old Tom's New Twist. This drink showcases the whiskey and ginger well, so I named it "Ginger Ken Ten," since Corsair's distilleries are in Kentucky and Tennessee.

The Ginger Ken Ten

1 1/2 oz. smoked whiskey (Corsair Triple Smoke Whiskey)
1/2 oz. Cynar
1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice (juice from 1/2 a lemon)
2 dashes Angostura bitters
3 oz. ginger beer
Lemon twist (garnish)

Combine whiskey, Cynar, lemon juice and Angostura bitters in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake until cold. Pour into rocks glass with ice. Add ginger beer and stir to combine. Top with lemon twist.

Food (Section) Fight!: Week 50

Food (Section) Fight! is my weekly look at The Washington Post's Food section and The New York Times' Dining section with my verdict on which section had the better content for the week.

Washington Post

1) “The gift of goose,” by Cathy Barrow. There are just 6 days ‘til Christmas—“6 geese a layin’” as the song goes. But watch out! If Ms. Barrow gets too close to your flock, you may find yourself down to 5. Drawing on skills acquired from a recent cooking workshop in France, she talks about braising a whole broken down goose with root vegetables (recipe). Although a good butcher may be able to do it for you, she also describes how to “break it down.” I’ve never made a goose, and doubt I will soon, but it’s interesting to read about.

2) “It never hurts to have a plan for a single pan,” Cooking for One by Joe Yonan. Yonan tackles one of Spain’s best-known dishes, Paella. Although often served in a large pan, Yonan talks about how to cut the rice dish down to size for one person. He almost convinced me to buy a carbon steel paella pan until, during today’s Free Range on Food chat, he said using a stainless steel or cast iron pan would work too. He includes two recipes: Squash and Artichoke Paella and Spinach and Chickpea Paella.

3) “Why I chose the good bubbly stuff,” Wine by Dave McIntyre. Champagne, real Champagne, is expensive, at least $30 for a basic bottle and it goes way, way higher for the premium stuff (I’ll be doing my New Year’s toast with Prosecco, thank you). Despite a longstanding clampdown on vintners outside of France’s Champagne region marketing their sparkling wines as “Champagne,” there’s still some confusion about the drink. McIntyre does a nice job presenting the “101” on Champagne and what makes it special. 

4) “The highlights of 2012 were blasts from the past,” Spirits by Jason Wilson. Wilson looks at 2012 and sees…1912, at least judging from the rise in popularity of truly old school cocktail ingredients. This is among the trends Wilson ponders in this year-end Spirits capping column, which includes a recipe for a White Negroni.

5) “Grilled Chicken and Green Chili Soup,” Nourish by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick. This chicken soup is loaded with heat—jalapeño and poblano peppers—but the southwestern flavors of cilantro and lime make this spicy soup sound refreshing too.

New York Times


1) “Please, Mom and Dad: Just Have a Taste,” by Amy Chozick. I give my gold star today to this piece examining how family dynamics around food can change when children raised in a middle-American suburb (“land of chain restaurants, big-box grocery stores and drive-throughs”) grow up and move to culinary havens like New York or San Francisco. It’s a great story, touching on generational issues, urban elitism and how very differently Americans view what “good food” is. One of the nicest surprises in this article is that it quotes Grand Forks, N.D. restaurant critic Marilyn Hagerty in a manner that actually draws on her regional expertise (as opposed to mocking her, which became so common after her Olive Garden review went viral). 

2) “Wrapped in Tradition” by Fernanda Santos. I go to Mexican restaurants all the time, but never order tamales, the corn-dough and meat filling dish roasted inside a corn husk. Santos profiles a home cook who makes loads of them around the holidays, a time when they are most popular. Not sure if I’m ready to try the recipe (where does one buy dried corn husks?), but I’m certainly ready to try one now. 

3) “Dessert With Our Readers,” A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark. A few weeks ago, Clark asked for readers to submit their favorite holiday recipes. She made 13 of them and selected a top 3 to feature in this article, including Grandma Dorie’s Italian Ricotta Cookies, which I wish I was eating right now. The lemony cookies sound remarkably good.

4) “Cranberry Conserve: Tart Option To the Can,” by Cathy Barrow. In another good argument for homemade cranberry sauce (which I fully support), Barrow offers a recipe for Cranberry, Raspberry, Pecan Conserve. Conserve is basically cranberry sauce with nuts (pecans in this case). Notice the byline on this? Yes, this is the same Cathy Barrow who wrote the goose story that appeared in the Post today. How cool! You can read more about her on her blog, Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Kitchen.

5) “Elevating Champagne’s ‘Unacknowledged Grape’,” The Pour by Eric Asimov. According to Asimov, the Champagne trinity is comprised of chardonnay, pinot noir and...the third lesser-known member...pinot meunier. Huh? After the Post’s 101 on Champagne, this narrower piece offers nice depth on an often overlooked grape for good bubbly.

Verdict

The New York Times. Post, your goose is cooked! The Times has the upper hand this week with an interesting look at generational and geographical food differences, tamales and those ricotta cookies that my coworkers were all abuzz about today.

Score

The Washington Post: 26

The New York Times: 23

Next week: The 2012 Food (Section) Fight! finale. 

Farfalle with Brussels Sprouts and Pancetta

When Melissa Clark wrote about this dish recently in the New York Times, she said that “pasta with Brussels sprouts and bacon is the new pasta with broccoli rabe and sausage.” If that’s true, it’s a trend I welcome. Roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon is amazing side dish, perfect for Thanksgiving.

Here, the two ingredients get a pasta treatment, where they play together as well as they would in a roasting pan. I spliced the sprouts in a food processor. Some of them will separate while cooking, but a few discs remained whole. Those that get nicely browned on the bottom are the most special.

Farfalle with Brussels Sprouts and Pancetta
Adapted from Penne with Brussels Sprouts, Chile and Pancetta, New York Times

Makes 4 servings

Sea salt
16 oz. pasta, such as farfalle or penneg
6 oz. pancetta, diced
2 large rosemary sprigs, leaves removed and chopped coarsely
6 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
1 pinch red pepper flakes
Fresh-ground black pepper, to taste
16 oz. brussels sprouts, thinly sliced
1 tbsp. unsalted butter
2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
Freshly grated pecorino romano cheese

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Cook pasta according to package directions for al dente. Drain and set aside.

2. Heat a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the pancetta and sauté until it starts to brown, about a minute. Add the rosemary, garlic, pepper flakes and fresh-ground black pepper, and sauté until garlic and pancetta are well browned, about 3-5 minutes. Add the sliced brussels sprouts, a large pinch of salt and a splash of water to the pan, and sauté until sprouts just start to soften, about 2 minutes. Spread the sprouts mixture evenly around the pan and press down to flatten the mixture. Allow it to sear for about a minute, then stir and repeat (according to Clark’s recipe, this helps brown the sprouts). Add the butter, and sauté for another minute.

3. Combine the Brussels sprouts mixture with the pasta and drizzle with olive oil. Serve in bowls topped with grated pecorino romano cheese.