Swerve is out! That means I can officially share the recipe everyone was drooling over last week. And in fact I did make it again tonight, having come home to not much in the fridge but cheese left over from this recipe, and milk that I threw in the freezer to use in baking and stuff like this. I used frozen spinach, and it did the trick. I also made it with brown rice pasta this time, in a tentative move away from consuming so much wheat. I know, baby steps.
Also: I have news!
No, it’s not a bun in the oven. But – it’s a boy! I get to host – yes, me – one ANTHONY BOURDAIN when he comes to Calgary in January. Maybe you’ve heard of him? My stomach is already doing flip-flops over not only getting to meet him, but INTRODUCE him. Do you think that counts as an ab workout? Maybe I’ll have abs of steel by January?
Here are the specifics: he’ll be giving a Kitchen Confidential lecture on Tuesday, January 12th at the Jack Singer Concert Hall in the Epcore Centre for Performing Arts. Doors open at 7; the talk will start at 8. Afterward I believe there will be a reception (to which you can buy tickets, I think?) with Janice Beaton Fine Cheese and wine from Willow Park Wines & Spirits. I’ll keep you posted as I learn more about it myself.
Standing in line at the Co-op deli this morning I zeroed in on a new little sign stuck into a leopard-print wheel of cheese in the display window. It read: Sticky Toffee Cheese. Well, OK.
SINCE YOU PUT IT THAT WAY.
I bought a chunk and took it home for my very own. Rich, salty-sweet and dense, almost like a soft cows’ milk cheddar, studded with a soft brown sugary toffee of sorts, it was not long for this world.
I was there in the queue to buy cheese for research purposes, on assignment for next Friday’s issue of Swerve (the Calgary Herald magazine). (I love it when cheese becomes a business expense.) I chose to make a mac & cheese. My capacity for the stuff is near limitless; especially when it’s made with bacon, onions, roasted garlic, kale, and old Gouda and manchego cheese, then baked with a crusty halo of olive-oily bread crumbs. I picked at the crispy edges and finished the last dozen or so spoonfuls cold, standing up at the stove.
(Since this is technically for Swerve I’m going to hold out on you – I’ll post the recipe when it comes out next Friday. You’ll just have to come on back. Sorry.)
So yes, we’re cleaning out the fridge to take off to Jasper for a week for Christmas in November, a week if eating, drinking and being merry like no other. I CAN’T WAIT.
One thing that had to go was a big bunch of kale. I had seen something, somewhere, made with kale that made me want to eat it. Where was that? Wading through torn-out magazine pages (which are scattered through my house like – I fear I’ll decades from now become a spinster with a house full of torn-out recipes instead of cats) I spent a couple days scrolling through my memory to try and retrieve the file. Fortunately, the world-wide inter-web makes a fine filing system, and if I can at least trigger the memory of which publication it was in (I knew it was Molly, and she has a new column in Bon Appétit – the first I flip to), I can look it up. Bingo.
1/2 lb. spaghetti
canola or olive oil, for cooking with
1 large onion, chopped
1 head of garlic, cloves peeled and chopped
1 large bunch of kale
a squeeze of lemon juice
grated Parmesan cheese
salt & pepper
Put a big pot of water on to boil, and cook the spaghetti. Meanwhile, heat a drizzle of oil in a heavy skillet and saute the onion for about 5 minutes, until golden. Add the garlic and cook for a few more minutes.
Rinse the kale, pull out the tough ribs and coarsely chop or tear apart; add another drizzle of oil and then the kale to the onions and garlic. Add about 1/4 cup of the pasta water, straight from the pot, to the pan as well. Cover, reduce the heat to medium-low and cook for about 10 minutes, until tender.
Drain the spaghetti, reserving a bit of the cooking liquid. Add the spaghetti to the kale mixture. Add lemon juice and a few spoonfuls of the reserved cooking liquid; toss to combine, adding a handful of Parmesan cheese and more liquid by tablespoonfuls if it’s too dry. Serve immediately.
W maturely dined on plain pasta drizzled with good olive oil and a sprinkle of coarse sea salt. Snif.
Bit of a week. My head hurts. It’s after midnight. I can’t seem to spell without the aid of spell-check. Still on Thursday and Friday’s to-do list: find a Julia Child wig (and build a costume around it, then practice my higher-octave voice) for Breakfast TV Friday morning (I’m hoping they’ll let me bloodily cut my finger on the air à la Dan Ackroyd on Saturday Night Live), shop and prep for two different cooking segments (cupcakes, shaggy monster cookies, spun-sugar cobweb croquembouche, stuff with pumpkin in it), make green food for a photo shoot for ParentsCanada magazine tomorrow afternoon (at which I’ll also be taking the pictures), finish two articles and take photos for one of them, and cook for a Napa Valley wine event at Willow Park on Friday night, which 250 hungry people will be attending. That’s not including the little stuff, and the outline and sample chapter of a book manuscript I was supposed to have done this week, which obviously won’t. And oh yeah-
I have a 4 year old.
Luckily (for so many reasons) I have a next door neighbour who happens to be a chef. He comes in handy because 1) we’re tag teaming on this Napa Valley event, which is a very good thing because he’s far more cheffy than I, making things like seared scallops over radicchio slaw in soup spoons, and there’s no way I could pull it off myself. Also, he sometimes brings us food. Some days he leans over the fence to give me a taste of a duck confit or some little cornucopia filled with something interesting. Earlier this week he brought over cold rigatoni stuffed with goat cheese and tossed in pesto, which we’ve been dipping into for the past few days.
Tonight at around dinnertime they came in handy-we set the last of them out in a bowl at the table and nervously scarfed them down with our fingers, dunked in chipotle aioli, as my sister filled out paperwork to make an offer on a house. Her very first house. Directly across the street.
Rigatoni Stuffed with Goat Cheese
from Chef Wade Paterson-thanks Wade!
1 package (500 grams) good quality dried rigatoni
1 lb soft goat cheese
¼ cup sun dried tomatoes packed in oil (well drained)
1 14 oz can artichoke hearts (well drained)
¼ cup chopped fresh basil
¼ cup ground Parmesan
½ cup pesto
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
salt & pepper
Cook rigatoni in a large pot of well salted boiling water until just al dente. Drain well and immerse in cold water to stop cooking. In a food processor add cheeses, tomatoes and artichokes. Process until smooth. Add in basil and pulse until just mixed. Season with salt and pepper.
Fit a piping bag with a small straight tip small enough to fit in the rigatoni. Fill bag with cheese mixture. (Alternatively, fill a large ziploc bag, seal and snip a corner off to pipe from.) Drain rigatoni well and pipe cheese mixture into rigatoni. Be careful not to overfill or the rigatoni might break.
In a large bowl combine pesto and olive oil and mix well. Add stuffed pasta and toss to coat. Serve at room temperature. Store in the fridge up to 3 days. Does not freeze well.
W asked for noodles and meatballs for dinner, and he got it. Brown rice noodles, which of course are made with brown rice rather than white flour, but which have the same mouthfeel as regular white pasta; none of the tweediness of whole wheat pasta. I like it. (When I was a kid, I actually avoided going to a certain family’s house for dinner because they served whole wheat spaghetti, and I, obsessed with the idea of Kraft Dinner, thought it was just too weird.)
But I still had a salty peanut bar for dinner.
This, dear friends, is what my life amounts to these days. The song has crawled into my ear and embedded itself on my brainstem. I cannot rid myself of it. Fortunately, W sounds cute when he sings it, making up words that sound sort of like “catches thieves just like flies”.
