From California, With Love

This is not New Year’s resolution food, at least not unless your goals for 2013 involve incorporating more carbohydrates and fat into your diet. But it’s February, so even setting aside my antagonism toward the whole concept of resolutions, you’ve all had over a month to compensate with whole grains, dark leafy greens, etc., in which case one rich pasta dish isn’t going to utterly corrupt you, or you’ve already fallen off the wagon and this bit of indulgence isn’t going to do any additional damage.

Beautifully silky, creamy and elegant, with the warmth of lightly toasted walnuts and the brightness of good extra-virgin olive oil, this walnut sauce is neither complicated nor time-consuming to prepare. However, there is one catch, and it’s critically important to heed it: you really do need to make this with the freshest, highest-quality walnuts, because it will make the difference between a sauce that’s luscious nutty perfection and one that’s flat and dull or, even worse, bitter or rancid.

My walnuts were backyard-grown, very recently harvested, and lovingly shipped to me from northern California by His Lordship’s cousin. The first time I made this, I did it on-site during a holiday visit with walnuts from the same source. If you’re not lucky enough to have a West Coast connection, either wait until locally-grown walnuts in season are available in your farmers market, or seek out the best vendor you can find, preferably get them still in the shell, and make sure to taste the nuts before trying this recipe. If they don’t taste fresh and mild and sweet, use them for a more forgiving sauce, like pesto.

Slight post-facto edit: A rousing discussion with my Facebook friends made me think of a possible alternative if you can’t get really good walnuts.  Pistachios still in the shell are readily available year-round just about everywhere, and would definitely work as an alternative.  It will taste and look quite different, of course, but it should still give you the nutty, creamy unctuousness that’s the heart of this sauce.  As a bonus, if you have children, it will be entertainingly green and you can tell them it will make them strong like The Hulk.

Pasta with Fresh Walnut Sauce
(Mash-up of two recipes, one from Nigella Lawson’s Christmas Special, and one from Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian)
Serves 4 as a main course, 6-8 as a side dish

1 slice bread, crusts removed
½ cup cream or whole milk
1 cup walnuts, as fresh as possible and preferably hand-shelled
2 cloves garlic, peeled
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and freshly grated black pepper
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
¼ cup Italian parsley, chopped
1 pound dried spaghetti rigate, fettucini, or other substantial ribbon pasta

Roughly tear up the bread and place it in a shallow bowl, pouring over the cream or milk. While it soaks, very carefully toast the walnuts in a dry pan over medium-low heat, tossing frequently to avoid burning, just until the nuts have barely started to turn golden and release a faint toasty aroma. Allow to cool briefly.

Place the nuts, garlic and cheese in a food processor and pulse a few times, until the nuts are broken up. Add the soaked bread and the liquid, with a hefty few pinches of salt and several grinds of pepper, and run the processor again until a paste forms. With the processor running, pour the olive oil down the feed tube and process just until you have a homogenous sauce that looks like a slightly grainy mayonnaise. Taste and correct the salt and pepper as necessary.

Boil the pasta in very well-salted water until al dente according to the package instructions. When you drain the pasta, reserve a good cup of the pasta water and set it aside. Toss the pasta with the sauce and the parsley, adding as much pasta water as needed to thin the sauce to a creamy consistency that evenly coats the pasta and allows the strands to caress each other instead of clumping. Serve immediately in warmed bowls.

Notes:

All resolution-bashing aside, there are some things you can do to lighten this up just a teeny bit, although it’s never going to be exactly what your doctor ordered. You can use low-fat milk instead of cream, whole wheat pasta and multigrain bread (provided it’s not too dense and chewy), and cut back a bit on the cheese, or you could serve smaller portions as a side dish beside a suitably healthy protein and a very large salad.

This would also work just fine as a vegan dish with non-dairy milk and omitting the cheese entirely, although in that case you’ll need to salt a little more aggressively, and you might want to toast the walnuts a tiny bit darker for added flavor. I’d also be tempted to add a very light grating of nutmeg for complexity.

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Champagne and Caviar

2013’s New Year’s lentil recipe has the dual advantages of being vegan and also using up any leftover champagne you might have lying around after the New Year’s Eve festivities. It’s also a wee bit clever, given that they’re beluga lentils. (Incidentally, this is the only kind of caviar I could tolerate even before becoming vegetarian, since I was never able to share my mother’s wild passion for genuine beluga.)

This is a perfect mid-week pasta dish for the rest of the year, since it comes together in about half an hour if you time it right, and you can substitute any white wine or even a dry hard cider, French or even plain old brown lentils, and essentially any sort of green vegetable. I was originally going to add broccolini, but it was missing from the crisper when I went to cook, probably because I added it to soup mid-holiday week and forgot. No matter, since the leeks worked fine, as would any leafy green or brassica.

The only thing I’d recommend not messing with if at all possible is the fresh shiitakes, because they go so satisfyingly crackly at the edges when seared, and add so much meaty savoriness to the dish. Regular button mushrooms would not be quite the same.

Pappardelle with Beluga Lentils, Seared Shiitake Mushrooms and Leftover Champagne
Serves 4

½ cup black (beluga) lentils
5-6 tablespoons olive oil
8 ounces fresh shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, roughly sliced
2 medium leeks, white and pale green parts only, thoroughly cleaned and thinly sliced
1 cup leftover champagne or white wine
Salt and freshly cracked black pepper
8 ounces dried egg pappardelle

Cook the lentils in a small saucepan with sufficient water to generously cover until just tender, around 20 minutes.

While preparing the sauce, set a large pot of water to boil for the pasta, salting it well once it has reached the boil. Add the pasta and cook to al dente according to the package instructions.

In a large, non-nonstick sauté pan, heat 3 tablespoons of the olive oil over medium-high heat until shimmering, then add the shiitakes. Sear the mushrooms until deep golden and crisping around the thin edges, adding a bit more oil if the pan gets too dry. Remove the mushrooms but don’t worry about any brown bits that cling to the pan.

Add the remaining oil to the pan, lower the heat to medium, and add the leeks. Sautee until they begin to brown a bit, then deglaze the pan with the champagne, add a generous amount of salt and pepper, and simmer until the champagne has mostly reduced away. Add the lentils and taste, correcting seasonings as necessary.

Drain the pasta, reserving about a cup of the pasta water. Add the pappardelle to the pan and toss with the lentils, loosening it with the reserved pasta water as necessary. Serve in warmed bowls with a quarter of the seared mushrooms mounded on top.

Notes:

If using fresh pasta instead of dried, you’ll want to double the quantity by weight. Also, if you don’t use leeks, I’d throw in a couple of cloves of minced garlic along with your green vegetable of choice.

It’s important not to use a nonstick pan because you want to be able to use high enough heat to sear the mushrooms properly, and you also want to be able to scrape up all the yummy browned bits when you deglaze with the champagne.

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More Fun with Beets

I don’t just view beets as a non-toxic source of food coloring. They’re actually one of my favorite vegetables, and have been ever since I was a kid. Nonconformist that I was even then, I have always loved beets, and their accompanying greens, in every form I could get them.

One of the beauties of beets is that you get two vegetables for the price of one if you buy them with the tops on, as you should definitely strive to do since that keeps the beets fresh longer too. Beet greens are on the mild end of the greens spectrum, very close to spinach in texture and right next to chard, their near-relative, in flavor, but with thinner and more tender stems. This makes beet greens an ideal replacement or companion to either, as in the filling for this luxurious, thrice-green lasagna.

The combination of spinach and ricotta in lasagna, ravioli, or other filled pasta may be classic, but to be perfectly honest, it can also be kind of boring. You’re never going to offend anyone with it, but you won’t wow anyone either. Mixing in greens with a little more personality — in this case, the mellow mineral note of the beet greens and the bright peppery note of arugula — brings in genuine wow potential. Since I strongly prefer a white lasagna over a red one when the filling is this green, the more complex combination of greens creates a nice balance against the richness of the bechamel. This not-too-cheesy, creamy yet assertive lasagna is a great fit for the cooler temperatures we’re finally getting.

In case you’re wondering, the beets that came with these greens were roasted — my favorite way to cook them, because it concentrates all that sweetness instead of bleeding it into the boiling water — and turned into a vaguely Eastern European salad that I will probably write up next week.

Spinach, Arugula and Beet Green Lasagna
Serves 6-8

For the filling:
3 tablespoons olive oil
15 ounces baby spinach
15 ounces baby arugula
Greens from two bunches beets
1 small onion, finely diced
2 shallots, finely diced
15 ounces ricotta
1/4 cup grated parmesan
Salt, freshly ground pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg to taste

For the sauce:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 shallot, minced
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
1/4 cup pureed canned tomatoes
Salt, freshly ground pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg to taste

For assembly:
6-8 sheets no-boil lasagna noodles
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup grated parmesan

Thoroughly wash all the greens, and slice the beet greens into thin ribbons.

Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot and saute the onion and shallots until transparent. Add the greens in big handfuls, turning with tongs to cook evenly, and adding more greens as soon as the batch before wilts down enough to make room.

Once all the greens have wilted, set them in a strainer over a bowl until most of the liquid has drained off. Squeeze thoroughly to remove any remaining liquid, then turn the greens out on a cutting board and chop into bite-sized pieces. Put the greens in a bowl, stir in the ricotta and 1/4 cup parmesan, and season assertively with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Combine the butter and the minced shallot in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until the butter has completely melted and the shallots have softened. Whisk in the flour and cook for an additional minute or two, then whisk in the milk. Simmer for at least five more minutes, stirring regularly, until the sauce is well thickened.

Preheat the oven to 375 F.

Spread an 8×8 Pyrex pan with enough sauce to generously cover the bottom, and nestle in enough noodles to form a single layer without overlaps. Spread several tablespoons of sauce over the noodles, add half the filling in an even layer, and sprinkle with a handful of mozzarella. Repeat the layering process with the remaining half of the filling, topping with a third layer of noodles. Add the tomato puree to the remaining sauce, pour the sauce over the top layer of noodles, and sprinkle the rest of the mozzarella and parmesan evenly over the top.

Cover the pan with foil and set on a baking sheet in case of drips. Bake for 30 minutes, then remove the foil and bake another 15 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling, the noodles yield to a sharp knife, and the cheese is golden-brown. Switch on the broiler and cook for an additional 3-5 minutes for a really brown and burnished top.

Cool for 10-15 minutes to firm up the lasagna and prevent serious roof-of-mouth burning.

Notes:

Be sure to season the filling really aggressively, since the noodles, cheese and sauce will mute the flavor a bit.

The addition of the small amount of tomato puree to the sauce is not enough to impart noticeable tomato flavor; it just adds some color and used up a small amount of canned diced tomatoes I had lying around anyway. You could easily leave that out.

If you don’t have beet greens, you could use a large bunch of Swiss chard instead, but trim away the stems and just use the leaves here. The stems can be chopped and added to soup or pasta with olive oil and garlic later in the week, but they’re a little too firm for this filling.

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I’ll Give You a Thirty-Minute Meal

This is what a genuine thirty-minute meal looks like.

Dinner at the Disdain manse this evening was a colorful, healthy, economical, and realistic dish of whole wheat pasta with chard and toasted pine nuts, prepared in twenty-nine minutes and change. It did not involve any wacky uses of convenience foods, nominal dressing-up of prepared items, juggling a dozen products between the cupboard and the stove, or bacterial cross-contamination. With the exception of the chard, which I bought at the farmer’s market over the weekend, all of the ingredients are cupboard staples, and since it’s just me and the Lord (I mean Mr. Disdain, not Jehovah), there is enough left over for us to have tomorrow’s lunch taken care of as well. And I only have one pasta pot, one wide saute pan, a pair of tongs, a ladle, a cutting board, and a chef’s knife to clean up.

Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Rainbow Chard and Pine Nuts
(Serves 4)

8 oz whole wheat spaghetti or other pasta

1 bunch rainbow chard (regular or Swiss chard work fine)
3 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
Kosher salt to taste

Start a large pot of water boiling for the pasta. Once the water boils, salt generously and add the pasta.

Meanwhile, chop the stems of the chard thinly, and slice the leafy part into ribbons. Mince the garlic.

In a wide saute pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat and add the chard stems, garlic, pepper flakes, and two good pinches of salt. Saute until the stems begin to turn tender, then add the shredded greens, in two batches. Continue to saute until the greens begin to wilt, then add the balsamic vinegar and a large ladleful of the water from the pasta pot. Stir occasionally until the greens are tender, adding more pasta water as necessary. Once the pasta is cooked, remove it from the pot with tongs and drop it into the saute pan, stirring over the heat until all the liquid has evaporated.

Add the pine nuts, toss again to combine, and serve.

Notes: The balsamic vinegar may sound like a weird addition, but greens really like a bit of acidity, and it’s perfectly traditional in Italian cooking to go for the agrodolce (sweet and sour) effect that way. I frequently emphasize the effect by adding some golden raisins, briefly soaked in hot water while I’m preparing the other ingredients to soften them a bit.

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The Zen of Aglio Olio

Perhaps it’s my Italian blood, or perhaps it’s just the carbs, but there’s something wonderfully calming about the ritual of preparing and eating a plate of spaghetti aglio olio (spaghetti with garlic and olive oil). It’s so easy to prepare that it’s my standard mid-week I-can’t-deal-with-cooking dinner of choice, but I still never get sick of the silky, smoky tangle of noodles, although I do add variety by throwing in halved cherry tomatoes one night, a handful of chopped basil another night, a sprinkle of incendiary red pepper flakes yet another night, or a generous scattering of crackly golden pan-fried bread crumbs still another.

The only two tricks I’ve discovered to preparing it properly are 1) you must not, under any circumstances, burn the garlic, and 2) you must slightly undercook the noodles and finish them off in the pan you warmed the oil and garlic in. I learned the secret of both from Lidia Bastianich, one of the least irritating of the celebrity chefs, and so like my grandmother that I feel completely comfortable whenever I watch her. Lidia’s method is to warm several thinly sliced cloves of garlic and several tablespoons of good (but not necessarily extra virgin) olive oil in a large, shallow pan on low heat while the pasta is boiling on another burner. When the garlic starts to barely turn golden, drop several large ladlefuls of the pasta water into the pan, which will stop the garlic from getting any darker and also provide just enough liquid to finish cooking the pasta and serve as a vector to carry the garlic flavor into the pasta, instead of just leaving an oily film on the outer surface. When the pasta is almost al dente, scoop it out of its pot (I use tongs) and deposit it into the pan, turning up the heat a bit and stirring it gently until all the liquid is absorbed.

This entire procedure takes less than twenty minutes, and can be done on autopilot after the worst possible day, but I try to concentrate on the flow of it all the same, turning it into a meditation that nourishes the soul as well as the body.

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