cobbling leftovers into real food

first, before i forget, the recipe for pasta i made a while back:

pasta with bacon, onions, + tomatoes
1 pkg bacon
1 lb pasta (preferably shells)
1 1/2 lbs plum tomatoes, chopped (i suppose you could use 2 cans of diced tomatoes, drained, if you were really desperate)
4 large onions, diced
parmesan cheese
white wine, muscat, or water

[1] Fry bacon in batches over medium heat, until crispy. Pour off fat into a bowl between batches. Drain bacon on paper towels, then rip into small pieces. Put in a bowl, cover, and set aside.

[2] Use white wine, muscat, or water to deglaze the pan. Set aside fond liquid - it's fine if it has bits of stuff in it. Pour a few tablespoons of bacon fat into the skillet and fry onions until almost browned. Set aside in a bowl.

[3] Pour fond liquid into skillet and add tomatoes. Cook until reduced to a thick sauce.

[4] Pour sauce over pasta. Add onions and bacon, and toss. Add parmesan to taste and toss. Serve immediately.

[serves 6]

today was really spent cooking. i intended to wake up at my usual time, sometime around 7, but apparently my body thought it needed more sleep. i think it may have actually needed more sleep, as i didn't feel tired immediately after i woke up (at 10am). i then proceeded to make pancakes, the recipe of which i am still fiddling with. the past couple of times that i have used 2T of baking powder, there was definitely a baking powder taste, although they are still as fluffy and absorbent as they always are. i think i'll drop it down to 1T and see how it goes. i also tried splitting the milk between buttermilk and whole milk because buttermilk has no fat, but there was no noticeable difference. oddly enough, the egg whites were slightly runny (translate: old) but they whipped up faster than usual. was it the fork? or the metal bowl? who knows. maybe harold mcgee does!

i also cooked the niman ranch sausages i bought at whole foods. namely, the "pure maple pork sausage" variety, which are actually a partnership between niman ranch and "sausages by amy" - niman ranch raises the happy pigs and sausages by amy provides the sausage recipe. the sausages have a comforting ingredient list: niman ranch pork, pure maple syrup, water, kosher salt, spices, turbinado sugar, natural flavor, lamb casing. actual review of the sausages: i think they are probably better than any other sausages of the same type that i've had. i still have a special place in my heart for the ultra-unhealthy chinese sausages, but these were really good taste-wise - not overspiced, and juicy with pork juices rather than fat.

come the evening, i went to the kitchen to cook a package of mushrooms leftover from friday's menu. upon remembering that there was a package of basil also leftover from a menu and that we still had pine nuts, i decided to make pesto as well. good thing we had leftover parsley too, because there wasn't quite enough basil to make the pesto taste like pesto. then, as i was finishing the pesto i realized i had sundried tomatoes, so i added some of those. the result: parsley-basil pesto with sundried tomatoes. i added mushrooms and sauteed slices of chicken sausage to mine (i mixed the pasta with the pesto but left the mushrooms and chicken sausage in bowls for other people to add to theirs). it was quite a good combination. oh, as for the mushrooms, i just sauteed them on medium-high heat with some oil and then i added brown sugar when the liquid was almost all gone, and a bit of salt. mmm, caramelized mushrooms are wonderful. the recipe below is an approximation of the pesto i made; really it was a combination of what i had on hand. the chicken sausage was ok, but not really particularly special after having had the niman ranch sausages earlier - it was fairly bland.

and a short bit about thursday, which was a holiday, as well as both nina's and oliver's birthday. we made dinner - nina made pesto and i made this chicken dish from cook's illustrated - braised chicken in a balsamic reduction, with swiss chard. i had never had swiss chard, so that was a fun experience; it looks and tastes like kale, but is milder. highlights of the cooking process: i foolishly grasped the handle of my skillet after it had come out of the oven, for the umpteenth time (i MUST stop doing that); browning the chicken thighs in the oven, in the skillet, didn't really work so well - I ended up taking them out of the oven after upping the temperature from 350 to 400 (did i just not let the oil heat up enough?) and browning them on the stovetop. the dish itself as great, though the preparation was somewhat lengthy and complicated. it was very much a complete dish (and now i'm getting hungry again) with the meat plus vegetables, so it bears some connection to healthy. it also went extremely well with the pesto. we had a red wine - a malbec from argentina - with dinner and it was serviceable and nicely fruity, but a little harsh.

parsley-basil pesto with sundried tomatoes
1c basil leaves, picked off the stems
1/2c parsley leaves, picked off the stems
1/2c parmesan cheese, grated
2/3c to 1c extra-virgin olive oil
1 large clove garlic
1/4c pine nuts, toasted
scant 1/4c sundried tomatoes
salt to taste

1 lb fettuccine
extra parmesan cheese, grated, if desired

[1] Boil some water and blanch the basil (put the leaves in the water and wait for them to wilt, ~10 seconds or so). Take them out with a slotted spoon. If you want to be fancy, you can transfer them to a bowl of ice water to stop them from cooking further. Otherwise, transfer them to a food processor or blender.

[2] Add the pine nuts, parsley, clove of garlic, sundried tomatoes, and parmesan cheese. Pulse until it forms a paste.

[3] Add enough olive oil for the pesto to look, well, like pesto. Don't add it all at once; you can pour it through the feed tube if you want. Taste before adding more.

[4] Add some salt and pulse to blend, then taste and adjust if necessary.

[5] Boil water and add some salt and olive oil. Add pasta and cook. When draining the pasta, reserve a bit of the cooking water (a few tablespoons) .

[6] Add the reserved pasta water to the drained pasta and add the desired amount of pesto (you may not need to use all of it). Toss to mix and sprinkle with extra parmesan cheese if desired.

[serves 4]