This pasta had a lot of things going for it. First, a pound of the newly available and awesome hot Italian sausage from the Skagit Co-op (we are very excited about their new line of housemade sausages). Next, a large bag of Blue Heron Farm’s braising mix of tender bitter greens, which I’ve been very much missing since they stopped coming to our local farmer’s market. Thirdly, a ladleful of bay- and garlic-flavored white beans left over from a previous dinner. Mixed up with gemelli and some fresh olive oil this was a really delicious dinner to eat in front of Jeeves & Wooster on a Friday evening at home. And, perhaps, even better a day or two later with a dollop of ricotta stirred into it.

We recently indulged ourselves in a Big City hunting and gathering trip, stocking up on supplies not commonly found in our neck of the woods. Pedro Ximenez and Oloroso sherry from the Spanish Table, Sichuan preserved vegetable from Ping’s (finally identified by learning the Chinese words for it, cha choy), gochujang, curry leaves, Indian bitter melon, sea beans (also called samphire or glasswort) and noodles from Uwajimaya, and Toulouse sausage from the Paris Grocery. The bitter melon molded within a day and had to be composted (darn it), so the night which had been slated for curry suddenly had to be re-planned.

The main dish I came up with was simple – farfalle pasta tossed with garlic, chile, white beans and the sausage, which I seared in a skillet and cut into rounds. For the sea beans I took a flavor concept from the Zuni Cookbook, sauteeing them in butter and finishing them with a splash of sherry vinegar. Sea beans are so salty no other seasoning was needed, and the vinegar was a perfect complement. I think this was my favorite way of eating sea beans so far.

Sorry for being such a cruddy blogger this week. The above picture of spaghetti and meatballs is the only food photo I’ve taken in the past week – it’s kinda embarrassing. I made a really tasty Sichuan stirfry of green beans, pork and tofu a few days ago, but completely failed to document it. The mushroom lasagna and the roast chicken, while extremely delicious, have already been thoroughly blogged about. And last night I ate squid in tomato sauce, some sort of roasted meat and a yellow rice pilaf from a buffet in a retirement home (it was the kickoff party for an art show), and it seemed too strange to photograph.

Maybe next week.

We made it up to the Bellingham Farmer’s Market last weekend, always a welcome activity when spring is making itself felt but our local market won’t open for weeks yet. We placed an order for half a cow from Skagit Angus Beef, bought an astonishing quantity of leafy greens, two chunks of goat feta and some fresh, purple-tipped asparagus, then swung by the Bellingham Pasta Company’s table and picked up a pound each of lemon pepper linguine and nettle fettuccine.

I love fresh pasta, but seldom make it myself (perhaps because it often turns into a drama-filled production complete with tears and recriminations), so it’s always fun to have some different noodles in the house. The nettle pasta we used immediately for lunch.

One of my standby there’s-nothing-in-the-house-to-eat meals is pasta with canned tuna, capers, olives, chile pepper, and tomato. There are endless variations depending on what’s in the pantry, and it’s always good. I wanted to use tuna with the nettle pasta, but this time I didn’t want such a pungent sauce, for fear it would overwhelm the delicate green flavor. After a quick consultation with a few cookbooks, I tossed together a sauce of mashed tuna (the really good locally-packed albacore from Island Trollers) mixed with raw garlic, fresh chives from the garden, and a splash of cream to moisten it. The noodles, after their three minutes in the boiling water, went into the bowl with the uncooked sauce, and I swirled it all together. It was delicious – light, garlic-scented, but still highlighting the fresh noodles. One of my better ideas.

Or as I originally wanted to title this post, The Annual Pumpkin Ravioli Cock-up. It seems like we get worse at this every year.

The first thing that went wrong was the pumpkin. As usual we cut in in half, scooped it out, rubbed it with oil and stuck it in the oven. Instead of getting soft and caramelized, however, it dried out and got stiff. It was too hard to mash by hand, so Jon ran it through the Cuisinart. A little balsamic vinegar and grated Parmesan and it seemed fine, but it was much more work than usual.

Then the pasta. I made one egg’s worth, using all-purpose flour and semolina, and it felt fine. But it dried out very quickly, and once again the #5 setting on our Atlas pasta maker seemed to rip the sheets to shreds (I wonder if the calibration is off?) When we tried laying a sheet in our ravioli mold and added the squash filling, the pasta cracked and tore under the weight. We dumped the broken ravioli into the compost and cut up the rest of the pasta into ribbons. I cooked the pasta ribbons and served them with a scoop of pumpkin puree on top, with a hot Italian sausage on the side and a spinach salad. It was delicious. But it was assuredly not ravioli.

It’s a good thing I like this dish, because we made a huge pan of it last Sunday and I’m still eating it for lunch. We probably should have invited about eight people over to dinner when we first made it, although I’m not quite tired of it yet. It’s awfully good.

Pastitsio, if you haven’t heard of it, is the Greek answer to lasagna. Details differ, but the basic formula is hollow pasta (preferably bucatini, which we can’t get, but other shapes work) layered with spiced tomato meat sauce and an egg-enriched white sauce which forms a custardy topping. The textures are fabulous, creamy and chewy all at once, and the cool custard complements the meaty tomato flavors. It’s a bit of work to put together, but well worth the effort if you have a long Sunday afternoon to spare. And now that autumn is here and standing over a hot stove is actually a pleasant activity, why not?

This was one of those amusing occasions where I open every recipe I have, then follow whichever parts appeal to me. In the past, we’ve made pastitsio from Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything, which is very different – the bechamel is looser and binds all the ingredients, which are also tossed with breadcrumbs and extra cheese, and it’s rather bland (though in a good way). This time, in the pursuit of authenticity and a bit more flavor, I made the meat sauce (with some adjustments) from How to Roast a Lamb, and Jon made the bechamel from Saveur’s Greek issue (we have been getting a ton of mileage out of that issue). It worked!

If you like a cocktail while you fix dinner, be aware that this is at least a two-cocktail recipe. The sauce simmers for an hour, then you have to make the white sauce and cook the noodles and build it, then it bakes for another hour. Start early, and allow time for it to cool a bit before you cut in. And maybe have a snack while you’re cooking to tide you over, because this smells really good in the oven. Serve with a big green salad and red wine.

Pastitsio

adapted from How to Roast a Lamb by Michael Psilakis and issue #131 (Aug/Sept 2010) Saveur

Sauce:

• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 3 fresh bay leaves (or 6 dried)
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 pound ground lamb (or you could make it all beef)
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 1 quart water
• 1 28 oz can whole tomatoes
• 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1-2 Tbsp kosher salt
• black pepper

Bechamel:

• 1 stick of butter
• 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 quart whole milk
• 3 eggs, separated
• 3/4 cup grated Parmesan

Other:

• 1 pound dried pasta, either bucatini, ziti, rigatoni or macaroni. Really anything works, but hollow is recommended.
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan

Timing note: get the red sauce going, then put on water for the pasta and preheat the oven to 350°. That way you’ll be ready to spring into action once the bechamel is done.

To make the sauce, saute the onion, cinnamon sticks and bay leaves in the olive oil until just softened. Add the ground meat and cook until browned, stir in the ground cinnamon, then add water, vinegar, sugar and the can of tomatoes, lightly crushed by hand, with all their juice. Stir in salt and pepper to taste – you want the sauce to be a bit salty. Simmer uncovered for an hour or so, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is thick and almost dry.

To make the bechamel, melt the butter in a saucepan, then stir in the flour. Whisk constantly over medium heat until it’s as smooth as you can get it - it will be very thick. Add the milk and whisk it smooth, cook until thickened. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the cheese and egg yolks, set aside.

Cook the pasta until not quite done, then drain. The Saveur recipe then has you beat together the remaining egg whites with the last quarter cup of Parmesan, and toss the cooked noodles in this – I have no idea why. We did it, though, and it was fine.

There are various ways of layering, but we oiled the pan, spread half the pasta in the bottom, poured all the meat sauce on top, then arranged the rest of the pasta over that. Then we put the bechamel on top and carefully smoothed it out over the noodles, trying not to shove them around. Then the pan went into the oven for one hour. The custardy top gets golden brown and almost crunchy around the edges – when it reaches this point, take it out and let it cool for at least 20 minutes, or you may not be able to make a clean cut.

Cut into squares and serve. Makes great leftovers.

On Monday I really, really didn’t feel like going anywhere, including the grocery store. I rummaged through the refrigerator, then tossed a tweet out asking for suggestions based on my main available ingredients: macaroni noodles, fresh tomatoes, feta and salami. Cook Local (as well as my cousin Katherine) came through with an improvised pasta idea – thanks! I decided to add arugula at the last moment, partly to add color but mostly because a friend gave us a bag of arugula that still needed to be finished off – I had forgotten to list it among my assets.

The truffled salami here was in my IFBC goody bag. It was extremely fragrant – when I cut into it the smell of truffles infused the entire house and lingered for hours and hours. I used half of it in this pasta and we ate the other half last night, sliced thinly and tucked into hot gougères alongside Negroni cocktails. To quote James Oseland, Oh my god that was so good.

The main thing I learned here is that feta is a great thing to add to pasta. I’ve recently started buying an Israeli sheep feta that is gloriously soft and salty, and it vanishes into hot macaroni like butter. I had thought about making an actual white sauce for more of a mac-and-cheese effect, but it really wasn’t necessary. Yum.

Truffled Salami Macaroni

A highly improvised recipe. Serves two with lots of leftovers.

• half a truffled salami, finely diced
• two handfuls fresh ripe tomatoes, halved or quartered
• one handful arugula, roughly chopped
• half a pound macaroni noodles, cooked and drained (reserve a cup of the cooking water)
• random quantity feta cheese (maybe a cup?), crumbled

Saute the salami in a little olive oil, then add the tomatoes. Once they are heated through, toss in the arugula to wilt, then stir in the macaroni. Sprinkle the feta over the top and gently stir it all together until the cheese is melted. Add leftover pasta water if the sauce needs loosening. Serve immediately.

This week we did our annual car camping trip to Washington Park on Fidalgo Island. It rained. Welcome to a Pacific Northwest summer.

Fortunately the firewood we brought burned well, and we were able to successfully cook our dinner. Hebrew National hot dogs, blistered over the fire and dressed with sweet relish and very hot Dijon mustard, macaroni salad, Bonny Doon grenache, and toasted marshmallows. I tend to think that, if you don’t cook it on a stick over the fire, it’s not real camping food. Except the macaroni salad, which can be scooped directly out of its tupperware in case you don’t feel like washing extra dishes. 

You probably don’t need a recipe for toasted marshmallows (although it was fun taking these pictures), but I’m happy to share my macaroni salad with you. This was actually the first time I’ve made it myself – it worked very well, considering I was making it up as I went along. And being rained on didn’t seem to hurt it any.

Macaroni Salad for Two (a very loosely estimated recipe)

• 1/4 pound elbow macaroni
• Half of a large carrot, finely diced
• 1/2 cup Best Foods mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup or so cider vinegar
• 2 scallions, finely chopped
• 3 radishes, finely diced
• a handful of fresh chives, finely chopped
• salt and pepper

Cook the macaroni in boiling salted water until just done, adding the minced carrot to the pot a few minutes before the end. Drain and rinse well with cold water. Make sure it has completely cooled before continuing.

Mix all the other ingredients into the cooled pasta. Taste for seasoning, and refrigerate. If you make it a day ahead, like I did, be aware the noodles will absorb most of the dressing. Be prepared to add more mayonnaise. Do not, I repeat, do not use Miracle Whip. Or if you do, don’t tell me about it – I don’t want to know.

In the morning, by the way, the sun came out. Were we surprised? No.

Ever since our last cooking class with Casey Schanen, I’ve been thinking fondly of his ravioli stuffed with fresh peas and feta, served in a lemon beurre blanc. We received a ravioli making kit for Christmas, and fresh shelling peas just appeared in the market. Our choice for Sunday dinner was clear.

For the filling, I wanted to use Gothberg Farms fresh chevre, because I am still newly in love with this cheese and I want to use it in everything. This particular ball of cheese had a distinctly grassy note entwined with its sweet milkiness. It seemed made to go with peas.

First, we shelled our peas. I blanched them in boiling water for two minutes, then drained and cooled them. I set aside a few peas to go on top of the ravioli, but mashed the rest lightly with a spoon before adding the goat cheese along with some salt and pepper. In retrospect, a little lemon zest would have been nice as well. And perhaps a little chopped fresh mint. Next time…

I made a small amount of pasta dough with one egg and about equal parts unbleached flour and semolina flour. The ravioli mold is exactly the width of a sheet of pasta made from our hand-crank machine, so we had some fun trying to get the dough to come out full width. The mold worked great, though – you lay a sheet on the bottom mold, then press it down with the top piece to create hollows for the filling. Then you lay another pasta sheet on top and roll over it with a rolling pin to seal and cut the edges. Very easy, and makes much prettier ravioli than the ones I’ve done by hand.

The finished ravioli went into the pot of boiling salted water, inflated beautifully and danced around for five minutes (not a single one leaked, yay!). I fished them out carefully and dressed them with hot butter, peas, parsley and tarragon. A sprinkle of coarse salt at the end made it perfect.

With small filets of pan-seared sockeye salmon and an incredible Cabernet Franc rosé from Chinook Winery, this made a beautiful spring supper.

Since our local farmer’s market doesn’t start for another month, we drove up to Bellingham last week to see how their market was doing. Man! I have serious market envy. Not that I don’t love ours, of course, but wow.

Covering a large parking lot as well as filling the big permanent covered area the city built, the market is thriving, not just with local fresh vegetables and crafts, but food carts, plants, bread, meat, clothing and henna tattoo artists. Instead of a main stage, they have the old-fashioned approach of letting acoustic musicians set up in the intersections. A hula-hoop area is set up on one side for the amusement of limber youth, and the goat-with-a-cart sculpture on the corner is constantly beset by children. People are everywhere, shopping and visiting and hula-hooping and eating.

The market booth had some really excellent ballcaps. Jon bought himself one, while I ogled the croissants and rhubarb tarts in the neighboring stall.

We wandered the circuit, picking up our favorite semolina crackers and a couple of macaroons from the Breadfarm booth, plus a magnificent head of napa cabbage and some spinach and asparagus. As we headed back through the center aisle we saw this amazing display of pastas, right next to a booth of exquisite cupcakes (salted caramel, oh my) and a blend-your-own-smoothie station with built-in bicycles.

The pasta, made by the Bellingham Pasta Company,  looked gorgeous and didn’t seem exorbitantly expensive. We picked up a pound of lemon-black pepper linguine, then tore ourselves away to go make lunch at home.

That pasta? It was fantastic. When I opened the packet a cloud of lemon scent wafted out, and the pepper came through in every bite. It cooked perfectly in 3-4 minutes and did not stick to itself. We had it for lunch two days running, both times using leftovers from a Gretchen’s class.

The first day I chopped up these incredible pink oyster mushrooms and sauteed them with roasted garlic, then mixed in smoked salmon and some goat cheese. That was pretty good.

The second day I used chopped crimini mushrooms and leeks, mixed in sliced serrano ham, then tossed the pasta with it and added some of its cooking water along with finely chopped parsley and grated parmesan. That was really, really good. Really.

We still have a few weeks until our own market starts up, so I suspect we’ll be heading up to Bellingham again soon. What pasta lunches might we end up with next time?