Pasta!

Over the last two days we have turned our backs to Chinese cuisine and enjoyed the taste, texture and flavors (and calories) of European food, namely pasta. The best part of the dinner: a glass of French red wine (!). We visited Beijing’s expat supermarket, called Jenny Lou, that sells a lot of European delights, and went crazy, buying different pastas, cheeses, salami, Earl Gray tea, Cote’d'Ivore chocolate, coffee, dark rye bread and a bunch of other things…I could have bought the whole shop if only it would not have been that expensive! One of the Finnish girls in our language class had a birthday, so we decided to make her day and got her a bottle of Finlandia as well.

About the pasta – we did not use any specific recipe, just tried to improvise a dish from the ingredients that we had at hand. Nevertheless, both dishes came out wonderful (or maybe it was just that we hadn’t had pasta like forever).

The first dish, bacon-mushroom penne, was made by J. A plateful of simple, creamy goodness that was. And easy! Next time would maybe add some asparagus for texture and colour…or frozen peas? Could also use turkey bacon for less fatty option, but I don’t think I’ll find it here in China…And to be honest, I don’t think turkey bacon would give as much flavor as the smoked pork bacon did.

• ca 200 g penne pasta
• 100 g smoked bacon, cut into stripes
• 100 ml cream (up to you how heavy you use)
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1-2 gloves of garlic, crushed (depending on how into garlics you are)
• 4-5 button mushrooms, sliced
• salt and pepper
• olive oil
• butter

# Heat butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan (a wok-pan would do as well), add bacon and fry until browned and crispy. Remove from pan and pat dry with household paper.

# Remove excess fat from the pan (not all of it), add garlic and onion to the pan, stirring and scrapping the brown pieces from the pan. Fry until golden, add mushroom to the pan and fry for an additional couple of minutes. Tip: if too dry, try adding some water, to not to burn the onions/mushrooms.

# Pour cream to the pan, season with salt and pepper and heat through, to thicken the sauce. Finally add the bacon to the sauce.

# In the mean time boil penne pasta until al dente, drain, pour over with some olive oil and stir. Add to the sauce, give everything a good toss and serve immediately.

The second pasta dish was my own creation, nothing special, but also very tasty. Hearty, flavorfur, yet not an overpowering tomato base – a perfect match with the wine we got.

• ca 200 g spaghetti
• 2 large tomatoes, diced
• 100 g smoked bacon, cut into stripes
• 3-4 button mushrooms, sliced
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 gloves of garlic, crushed
• some dried (or fresh) basil
• half a cube of pork bullion
• salt and pepper
• olive oil
• butter
• some red wine (optional)

# Start the same way as the previous dish: heat butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan (a wok-pan would do as well), add bacon and fry until browned and crispy. Remove from pan and pat dry with household paper.

# Remove excess fat from the pan (not all of it), add garlic and onion to the pan, stirring and scrapping the brown pieces from the pan. Fry until golden, add mushroom to the pan and fry for an additional couple of minutes.

# Add diced tomatoes to the pan, season with salt, pepper, basil and the crumbled bullion cube. Turn the heat down and simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring meanwhile (and crushing the tomatoes at the same time). Tip: If I had a blender here, I would have even pureed the whole lot, to get a nice thick pasta sauce.

# Finally add the bacon and some wine, heat through and serve over spaghetti. Oh, and of course you’ll need to cook the spaghetti in the mean time, don’t forget that!

Daring bakers: lasagne

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

Baked at the very last minute, here is my this month’s Daring Bakers challenge. See the recipe here. I think I made it in record time, just in less than 3 hours, and at the moment it is actually sitting downstaris on the kithcen table, waiting to be eaten. It is late, yes, but it is exam period and the being awake-eating-sleeping time is mixed anyway. So I will not stop for long – because I am hungry.

I used the recipe that was requested, but I had to half it because I only had a small loaf tin that I could use.  I used the same tin in which I did the French Yule Log a couple of months ago (something that did not work out very well for me – see here). So I was a bit scared that this tin might be cursed and that the lasagne would come out inedable. But there was no reason to be scared – and as I have now tasted a tiny bit of it already, I can say that it came out pretty tasty. Spinach makes the dish! The only problem is that making it is quite time consuming…but no great things come without downsides anyway, right?

Well, I’m off to my late night snack now. Until the next challenge!

Broccoli pasta with peppermint

During one of my journey in the endlessly-seeming list of foodblogs and different recipe-sites, I somewhere found the idea to pair peppermint, orange and lemon and use them all together in a pasta dish. Sounded like fun, so I decided to try. Unfortunately I was in a mood for this dish on the very day I did not have any fresh mint leaves at hand. So here’s what I did – I substituted the leaves with peppermint tea. Just made a strong cupful using regular Lipton tea and poured it into the sauce.

You might want to be careful with the orange rind, as in case you add too much of it, you’ll end up with a rather bitter sauce and there’s nothing you can do to fix it…so be careful. And what else…I guess you can play around with the veggies, but I would recommend some mild-flavored vegetables such as broccoli, as you need something which taste wouldn’t overpower the fresh marriage of lemon and peppermint.

Serves two:

• 200 g pasta (penne, rotini, farfalle)
• 200 ml cream
• 200 ml chicken broth
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 gloves of garlic, crushed
• olive oil
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 100 g chopped broccoli florets
• 1 tsp grated orange rind
• 2 tsp grated lemon rind
• 50 ml strong peppermint tea (or a handful of fresh peppermint leaves)
• 1 tbsp flour
• 4 slices of prosciutto
• grated Parmesan (optional)

# Heat the oil in a heavy saucepan and fry onion and garlic until translucent.

# Add chicken broth and cream into the saucepan and continue simmering for 5 minutes. Add chili powder together with the grated lemon and orange rind. Stir, and also add broccoli florets into the sauce.

# Mix hot peppermint tea with flour (avoid lumps). While stirring the sauce, pour the tea-and-flour-mix carefully into the sauce. Continue simmering until broccoli florets are soft enough for you (I don’t like them very mushy, so 10 minutes was enough for me).

# In the mean time prepare the pasta (in a water seasoned with salt). When cooked, drain and pour over with some olive oil, stir to coat. Then pour the pasta into the sauce, stir carefully and serve immediately (otherwise the pasta will suck all the sauce in it and you’ll end up with super-sized pasta and no sauce).

# When serving, you may want to top the pasta with some prosciutto and grated Parmesan.

Peppermint is undoubtedly the most important ingredient of this dish – without that it would be the same old creamy pasta…Very fresh, delicate and filling at the same time. Although I had a feeling that J made some faces while eating it (you can tell if one truly enjoys the dish or doesn’t)…I guess he was trying to figure out where did all this peppermint and freshness of this dish came, as there were no visible mint leaves…but in any case, he did finish the plateful and told me it was delicious. Well trained, all I can say.

Warm pasta salad with basil and avocado

So, finally something that is not sweet for a change. One has to limit the amount of sweet dishes, after all, it is summer and going-to-the-beach time. That is why I decided to use avocados in the salad that I made, because this green little fruit is very useful for your health. Did you know that avocados help to lower cholesterol and regulate blood pressure and can even offer significant protection against breast cancer?

Firstly, some tips for you on how to choose a perfect avocado from the shop or in the market:

- A ripe, ready to eat avocado is slightly soft but should have no dark sunken spots or cracks.

- Choose the avocado which has a slight neck, rather than the one which is rounded on top. Slight neck means that it was probably tree ripened and will therefore have better flavor.

- If you are not planning to use the avocado right away, you might want to choose a firmer avocado. It will ripen in a paper bag or in a fruit basket at room temperature within a few days. It is not recommended to refrigerate avocados until they are ripe. Once ripe, they can be kept refrigerated for up to a week.

The recipe serves two:

• 150 g pasta (penne, rotini)
• 1 avocado
• 150 g chicken fillet, chopped
• handful of fresh basil leaves
• salt and pepper
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• handful of finely shredded Parmesan cheese
• olive oil

# Boil pasta in water seasoned with salt.

# Meanwhile fry the chicken in a frying pan and season with salt an pepper.

# Using your hands, shred basil leaves into small pieces.

# Peel and chop avocado and place in a salad bowl. Drizzle over with lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Add shredded basil leaves and mix everything together.

# Place cooked chicken pieces into the salad bowl on top of the avocado-mixture.

# Drain pasta and add some olive oil to it. Mix to coat the pasta with olive oil and place pasta in the salad bowl. Give everything a good toss and adjust seasoning, if necessary. You can add the Parmesan to the salad or just sprinkle the platefuls over with some of it – up to you. Serve when warm, as then you’ll feel and smell all the nice flavors dish easy salad has to offer.

I liked it a lot. At first I was afraid of the taste of warm avocado. Never had had it before, that is why…but it was all okay – and mainly because I used not so ripe avocado, which could keep its texture while warm.  And the taste! The tender avocado together with strong Parmesan cheese – perfect combination.

Spaghetti and feta cheese…

…will give you a nice salad together. I discovered it one day when I needed to quickly prepare something light from these ingredients and I did not want to end up with some creamy pasta dish. Light was the word to be kept in mind. So here’s the recipe which will feed about 3 persons:

250 g spaghetti

3 tbsp olive oil

2 garlic gloves, crushed

3 tbsp olives, sliced

1 tsp grated lemon rind

2 tbsp basil pesto

200 g feta cheese, chopped into cubes

2 tbsp lemon juice

50 g rocket leaves

7-8 cherry tomatoes (optional)

# Boil the spaghetti in a pot of boiling water (seasoned with some salt) until al dente.

# While it is cooking, heat the olive oil in a pan over a medium heat. Add garlic, olives and lemon rind and simmer at low heat for about 2-3 minutes. Add pesto, stir and remove from heat.

# Drain spaghetti and place in a salad bowl. LEt it cool for about 10 minutes.

# Add cubed feta and lemon juice and give the salad a good toss. Also drizzle pesto-garlic-lemon rind mix on top.

# Finally add rocket leaves, stir carefully and serve. If you are using cherry tomatoes, add them together with the rocket leaves.

# Oh, and I remember that one time I also added chopped prosciutto to the salad, together with the rocket leaves and tomatoes. So if you like meat, feel free to add some.

That kind of salad. Be careful with the lemon juice – if you add it too much, you’ll end up with pretty acid salad. It tastes the best when warm (not too cold and not too hot). If too hot, the rocket leaves will lose their shape and turn into to ugly and tasteless thingies you don’t want to eat.

Basil and lemon pair really well with feta and rocket leaves – and the salad smells very good as well. When I have heated it for lunch at work, my office is full of lovely flavours…a bonus I would say! In many cases the reheated food does not smell that good – let’s say pasta in Alfredo sauce – I have brought it to work one time and ended up being in an office full of garlic smell…not that nice…

I remember having seen a similar recipe which uses capers and lime instead of olives and lemon. It could be just as good – but I never have limes at hand, let alone capers, so I haven’t yet had the chance to try.