Adventures in the kitchen

Week-night weirdness: following a recipe (sort of)

/ Peggy D / 1 Comment

Anyone who knows me, knows that I don’t take kindly to the notion of mindlessly following rules, or that anything could be set in stone. I went to Berkeley, for God’s sake – “Question Authority” isn’t just a bumper sticker to us, it’s our life’s work.

It follows, then, that preparing something straight from a recipe is just not what I do. I can’t. It’s not in me. So it was weird to find myself in the kitchen, printout from the New York Times food section in hand, trying to make myself do exactly what the recipe author (the highly-regarded Martha Rose Shulman) said to do.

I didn’t succeed, of course; I made a few changes that suit me, my tastebuds & my pantry better than Ms. Shulman’s written instructions. But I have a good reason – I’m checking out a couple of new ingredients I have on hand. One is a new preparation of olives that I want to play with, Olivasecca Dry Pitted Olives from Penna Olives, way up the Sacramento Valley in Orland, CA.

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Penna’s Olivasecca Dry Pitted Olives, prepped for the recipe

The other, Costco’s house brand Kirkland Canned Chunk Light Skipjack Tuna, guaranteed to be only skipjack tuna caught by purse seine – a sustainable method of harvesting wild tuna that is listed as a “Best Choice” in Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch app.

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I must say, Costco’s skipjack tuna is a lot nicer looking than some of the mushy & unappealing supermarket brands I’ve used (can you hear me, Chicken of the Sea?!). Breaks up into firm, handsome flakes.

Because it’s not the season to be making fresh tomato sauce (unless I want to buy tomatoes from the southern hemisphere, which I most definitely do not), Kirkland Marinara Sauce, which is also new to me.

[Yes, I do a lot of my grocery shopping at Costco. For the low prices, naturally, but also because I can get good organic ingredients & a few well-made prepared foods there. I don’t normally use much prepared stuff, but face it, some things – like good-quality canned beans, marinara, frozen fish, canned tuna – are handy to have around for those days when you just don’t feel like cooking dinner 100% fresh-from-scratch. I’ll dive deeper into this topic in a later post.]

And for good measure, nonpareil capers, because… well, because I can’t follow a recipe to save my life. It’s boring. So for today, my take on Martha Rose Shulman’s Pasta with Tuna & Olives. Easy, delicious, & fast enough for a weeknight meal.

Pasta With Tuna, Capers & Dried Olives
(adapted from http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016459-pasta-with-tuna-and-olives)

Ingredients:

• 1 7-oz can chunk light skipjack tuna in water, drained
• 2 tablespoons nonpareil capers, drained
• 2 generous tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 c. marinara sauce
• 5 or 6 sprigs of fresh Italian parsley, minced
• 1/2 tsp. dried red pepper flakes (optional for Ms Shulman, not optional at my house)
• 1/2 c. Penna Olivasecca Dry Pitted Olives – I cut about half of them in half to distribute the flavor, & left the other half as whole dried olives for the decadent way whole olives look in a sauce.
• 12 oz. organic Italian pasta – use a shape that will catch & hold the sauce. I’m using organic penne from the bulk food department at Berkeley Bowl.
• Freshly grated Parmesan

Preparation:

1. Put a big pot of water on to boil for your pasta.

2. In a large pasta bowl (time to get out the Deruta pottery!), break up the tuna.

3. Heat olive oil in a small saucepan over medium heat; add garlic & cook until fragrant – like, 30 seconds to a minute at the very most. Add to the tuna along with the parsley & capers; stir to combine, & set aside.

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4. Add marinara to the saucepan, heat through & season to taste – this Costco sauce didn’t need anything other than a twist of freshly-ground black pepper. Add red pepper flakes & olives, & simmer a couple of minutes to infuse the sauce with olive flavor & heat from the chiles. Set aside.

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5. When the water is boiling, add a heaping tablespoon of salt & the pasta. Cook until al dente. Drain, reserving 2 or 3 tablespoons of pasta water. Add reserved water to tuna mixture & stir.

6. Transfer drained pasta to the bowl. Add tomato sauce, toss everything together & serve. Pass freshly grated Parmesan at the table.

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Yup. This one’s a keeper. The dried olives are also a keeper, a new pantry staple that I’ll be happy to keep on hand : https://www.greatolives.com/buy-gourmet-olives/index.php?route=product/product&path=44_59&product_id=52

Simple Pasta Sauce

/ Peggy D / Leave a comment

As I said in my previous post, this was an easy way to do something productive with a 10-lb basket of tomatoes at the end of the season.

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Fresh tomato sauce – this is from about 10 lb. tomatoes, mostly Romas & Early Girls

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The add-ins: some of this summer’s crop of garlic, about a dozen heads of Italian Purple, a hardneck variety that I’m using mostly because the hardnecks don’t hold in the pantry as long as softneck varieties. It doesn’t hurt that it’s Italian. A couple of cans of tomato paste for a thicker sauce & a deeper flavor (I ended up using 3 cans); organic fennel seed; Mexican oregano, which I like because it comes as whole leaves & stems, all you need to do is crush it between your hands & pick out the twigs; & fresh Italian parsley from the herb garden. And sea salt to taste — in this batch, about 3 Tbsp.

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Sautéing the tomato paste in a little olive oil before I add the minced garlic.

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Adding the raw tomato sauce, fennel, oregano & parsley; threw in a couple of bay leaves too. Simmer for maybe half an hour until I like the flavor enough to call it done. Once finished, a splash of red wine vinegar to rev up the tanginess &, incidentally, acidify it for canning. Then pack into hot, clean pint-&-a-half jars & into a pressure canner for 10 minutes. I use the National Center for Home Food Preservation’s guidelines (http://nchfp.uga.edu/index.html) as my go-to online reference.

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Done!

Playing with food

/ Peggy D / Leave a comment

Really, that’s what I do. My big old-fashioned farmhouse kitchen is a place to play.

Before my husband (“the Hubster”) & I moved into my family home in Marin, we spent more years than I care to think about living in a townhouse in the East Bay. And I, at least, hated almost every minute of it. Not just the neighborhood on the edge of a ghetto, though that was reason enough for any sensible person to hate it; but OMFG, the kitchen! Less than half the size of what I have now, functionally less when you consider it was an eat-in kitchen; with a sink wide & deep enough to bathe a Golden Retriever in & about 3 feet of counter space. Outside the kitchen door, a yard with horrible clay instead of good healthy loam, that in any case was too small to hold more than a couple of flowerpots.

For someone who loves to cook, & who grew up eating home-grown, home-preserved produce, it was sheer hell. Three years ago we moved back to Marin, with all the headaches & snafus that come with a move plus a few extra ones thrown in for good measure. As we stood in our disorderly new kitchen & looked out at the neglected vegetable-garden-that-was, the Hubster asked me how I felt. All I could do was smile at him through tears & say, “Honey, I haven’t been this happy in years.”

So, here I am. Relaxing a bit after a summer of vegetable growing, fruit picking, canning, jam-making & experimenting (about which more next year, when I’m in the thick of it again).

Today’s task is dealing with the last of the tomatoes, picked just before the first rain of autumn. I grew four varieties this year, two plants each of Early Girl & Roma, one each of Sweet 100 & Gardener’s Delight. Most of the cherry tomatoes end up in salads, the Hubster’s lunchbox or the dehydrator; the full-size fruits end up in my canning jars. But what I’ve just picked isn’t enough to bother canning as whole pack, so I’ve run them through a “Roma” brand food strainer & will be making a Simple Pasta Sauce to can for this winter.