Pasta with squid

I'm pretty sure I saw this recipe on the Bitten blog a while ago, under a piece written about the dilemma about sustainable fishing. There was a recipe for something with lobster and something with squid, and I figured I'd try the squid, since I had a couple pounds in my freezer from the Chinese grocery store downtown. I can't find the post now, though. I don't remember how much I actually followed a recipe, but whatever it was, it was really good. The usual "stuff with pasta" approach to dinner!

Pasta with squid and tomatoes
Serves two, approximately. Add more pasta for hungrier folks

1/2 box pasta - preferably something small and chunky, not spaghetti like I used here. Italian grandmothers worldwide are rolling in their graves right now saying "you can't have a chunky sauce with spaghetti!"
~1-2C cherry tomatoes
1/4C fresh basil, chopped or chiffonaded finely
1/4C fresh parsley, optional
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2lb squid, all the bits that look mostly edible, chopped into bite-sized pieces
~1/4C breadcrumbs, for sprinkling on top
parmesan cheese, optional
~1/4-1/2C white wine
salt, pepper to taste
Olive oil

Get a big pot of water boiling. Chop the onion and garlic, slice all the tomatoes in half. Put a glug or two of olive oil in a fairly big frying pan, and sweat your onions. Add the garlic and cook until its golden brown. You can pull this off the heat now until the water is boiling, because you want to finish your pasta in the pan with all the stuff, and the stuff doesn't take long to cook.

Once you've added the pasta to the water, add the cherry tomatoes and the wine and the herbs to the pan. Cook those for about three or four minutes. Test the pasta, if it seems close to done (as in, its edible, but a little TOO al dente for regular eating), drain it, and add to the pan. Toss around the pasta for a few minutes, until it tastes done. Then add the squid and the rest of the herbs, and cook that for about a minute, maybe two. You don't want to overcook squid, or it'll taste rubbery and blah. Don't be afraid to taste it, after a minute. Its probably done. Serve this onto a plate and sprinkle bread crumbs and/or parmesan cheese on top.

Cheese Straws

I made these a while ago when I was sending Sharon the care package, but the recipe was big enough that I didn't end up cooking the whole batch. I wrapped about half the batch in plastic and stuck it in my freezer, and then found it yesterday while rooting through looking for something else. Three months apparently was no problem for these guys, clearly they have enough butter in them, because they turned out GREAT. In Ed's words, "these are going to disappear SO FAST". But really, how can you go wrong with butter, cheese, and a little spice?

The recipe is straight from King Arthur Flour, and really doesn't require any tweaking whatsoever. I've reprinted it below with what I did for shaping the straws:

2-1/2 C Flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp salt
3 C cheddar cheese, grated
1-1/2 sticks cold butter (from the freezer)
1/2 cup + 2 tbs water

Combine the flour, baking powder, cayenne and salt. Using a cheese grater, grate the butter into the flour mixture. Add 1-1/2C of the cheese. Use your fingers to rub this mixture together, sort of working some of the flour into the butter and cheese, but not too much. You don't want to melt the butter. Add the water, and mix it until it forms a dry dough. Wrap it in plastic and chill for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, take out the dough, flour the table, and roll it out to a 12x18" rectangle. Sprinkle on the remaining cheese. Fold the dough in thirds (like a letter), and roll it out again. I folded and rolled one more time, and then put it back in the refrigerator. After 10 minutes, I took it out and rolled and folded three more times. It is so stiff after the chilling that I figured I'd just give it one more fold and roll while I was at it. Or something along those lines. Then return it to the fridge for another 10 minutes.

To form the straws, I rolled out the dough and just used a knife to cut rectangles. Most of them I just baked as they were, but some of them I tried twisting them as I put them down on the baking sheet. This sort of worked, but mostly they just untwisted before setting in the oven. All that folding and rolling made for a wonderfully flaky dough, though.

Bake the straws for 10-15 minutes at 400F, until they're golden brown.


It sounds like a lot of work, but it is TOTALLY worth it to make these little cheesy bits of goodness. Because they're delicious.

Banana Peach Smoothie

Anna had told me about an amazing banana peach smoothie that she had had the other day, and I was intrigued. I don't really like smoothies, but banana and peach sounded like a good combination. I figured I'd give it a go. I have a blender, but we rarely use it, so this was one of my few chances to use the damn thing. In went half a banana, half a peach, half a cup of yogurt, about two tablespoons of lemon juice, a quarter cup of water, 2 tablespoons of honey. Spun it around. It turned kind of orange-y pink. It actually looked quite appealing. I tasted it. Tastes like a smoothie. Thick. I don't like thick drinks. I'd much rather have the fruit chopped up on the yogurt. Alas, I'm still not a smoothie drinker. But the flavor was wonderful! I think maybe if I had a curly straw, I would have enjoyed it a lot more.

Chipotle Corn Muffins

We have a can of chipotle chilis in adobo sauce. I don't really know why, I know that I bought it, with some idea of something I was going to do with it, but I've since forgotten that idea, and still not done anything with the can of chilis. So, Ed opened it the other day to make something spicy, and while that tasted fine and all, we were still left with most of a can of chilis. I had seen a recipe on Epicurious the other day for corn bread with chipotle chilis (maybe this was the elusive reason I bought the chilis in the first place!), so figured I'd go with something like that, but I used a random sort of recipe... it worked. The muffins ended up moist on the inside, with a fair kick. Given that I just about doubled the spice, that makes sense, but its not overwhelming. I was definitely NOT leaping for a glass of milk or anything, I just liked the hotness. When I got a chunk of poorly-chopped up pepper, that was a little too spicy, but overall, it was just about perfect.

The batter was also a beautiful orange color, what with the red peppers and their spicy juice being added to the yellow batter. It was quite appealing to look at.



Chipotle corn muffins
Makes 19

1C corn meal
1C white whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4C brown sugar
1C yogurt
1/2C milk
3 eggs
2 tbs oil
3 tbs chipotle chilis in adobo sauce
1C corn kernels

Preheat the oven to 400F. Grease or line a muffin tin. Sorry about the uneven number of muffins, thats just how it turned out.
I suppose you could try filling each tin higher than 3/4 full.

Mix together the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix the wet ingredients. Add the wet to the dry, and fold to combine. Bake for 20-25min.

Broccoli Rabe Quiche

We had some broccoli rabe, which I'd never tasted before, and after tasting it the first time, Ed decided that he wanted to make a quiche with it. Somehow, the whole "Ed is going to make a quiche" turned into an "Alex is making the quiche for Ed" scenario. He did cook the bacon that was to go in it, so I shouldn't complain too much. And it turned out wonderfully, as quiches almost always do.

Quiche with bacon and broccoli rabe

1-1/4C flour
1 tsp salt
4 tbs butter
2 tbs frozen bacon grease (or more butter if you don't save your bacon drippings)
2-6tbs cold water
3 eggs
1/2C milk (we used 1%)
3 pieces of bacon
~1C worth of chopped broccoli rabe
1/2 tsp salt
1/4tsp pepper
~1/2C grated cheddar cheese

The crust:
In a food processor, combine the flour and salt. Add the butter in chunks, and process until the butter is all chopped up. Add the bacon grease and process that until thats in chunks, too. Add about 2 tbs of cold water, and process. Continue to add water and mix until you have a fairly dry mixture that holds together if you pinch it. Don't add too much water. Dump the pie dough onto a surface, form it into a ball, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 20-30min.

Alternatively, buy a pre-made pie crust. But those are just so expensive when flour and butter are practically free.

The quiche

While your crust chills, dice the bacon, and cook it until it is brown and crunchy, or maybe not crunchy if you don't like crunchy bacon. I happen to like bacon to be crunchy. Take it out and drain it on some paper towels. Bowl your broccoli rabe for 5-10 minutes, until it tastes cooked.

Once your crust has chilled for 20-30min, preheat your oven to 350F. Roll out the crust so that it is a little larger than your pie pan, and put it in there. Cut off the ragged edges and dock it with a fork, then bake it for 10-15min until it is just turning golden brown. Meanwhile, mix together three eggs and half a cup of milk, and season with salt and pepper.

Once the crust is out of the oven, a lot of recipes say to brush it with an egg yolk, but that was too much work for us, so we just layered in the bacon and broccoli rabe, and poured the liquid stuff over the top. Sprinkle the cheese on top. Put the quiche back in the oven and cook for 35-40 minutes, until it is set and no longer jiggles if you jiggle that pie pan.

Let it cool at least 10 minutes before slicing into it.

Fancy dinner

Ed decided that he wanted to make a fancy dinner. He didn't know what, but eventually decided on a stack of some sort. The original plan was a pile of goopy blue polenta, with some swiss chard leaves around the outside of that, and then a stack of tofu (marinated, and grilled on the george foreman), taro root fritters, and turnips. With a cilantro pesto sauce. This sort of worked out, except for when we found little moth larvae crawling around in the blue polenta, so had to scratch that idea. Yuck.

The really fancy part of this was that he wanted to make a cheese custard thing with a citrus marmalade and raspberry coulis on top. He's been watching molto Mario on teh interwebs, and Mario Batali made a cheese custard dessert with ricotta and parmesan, so Ed sort of did that, with mascarpone and parmesan. It was interesting, I actually quite liked it, but without the marmalade and raspberry coulis it would have tasted more like a cheese soufle. Anyway, it was good. I really liked the citrus marmalade, too, that was key limes and a lemon or two. and lots of sugar. The raspberries I would have preferred raw. I think you can probably find the recipe for the cheese custard thing if you look it up on the google...

Sharon wants dinner...

Looks like a sandwich!

The dessert! We would have been fine with that much custard for three of us... we'll see how it is for leftovers!

Ed and his marmalade.

Millions of peaches

peaches for me! Maybe not millions, but at least 12. In-season peaches are the best thing ever, I love any fruit that requires that you slurp up the juice from around your mouth after every bite.



Jackie had been raving last weekend about the peaches in wine thing that she saw here. We didn't have any peaches to try it out, but we had plenty of alcohol. Since the leftover alcohol came back to Boston with me, and now I have peaches, this was the first thing I tried. Of course, I didn't want to make eight peach's worth of this dessert, so I sort of made up the measurements. I sliced up one peach, pulled off the skins (I love it when they're so ripe you can just pull off the skins!), tossed it with two tablespoons or so of sugar, put it in a tupperware, and covered it with the Chardonnay we had in our fridge. I think it would have gone better with one of the bottles of Pinot Grigio, but we didn't have any of those open.


After letting it sit in the fridge overnight, I tried it. Yum. The peaches weren't that much sweetened, and they weren't that much alcoholed, but they were just even better than they had been the day before. This would be SO GOOD over ice cream. But its pretty good without the ice cream, too. Even Ed, who claims he doesn't like peaches (I know. I should get out of this relationship before its too late! The boy doesn't like PEACHES!) thought this worked nicely.

So, until my peaches are gone - which could be soon - I'll keep one in the fridge, marinating in a white wine syrup, for occasional munchings.