Pasta/Noodles

Hint-of-Mint Agnolotti with Cantaloupe Sauce and Prosciutto

Post-bar life is rather strange.  As much as I’ve been looking forward to it…I find this whole leisure time business truly weird.  I’m not naturally a “relax and do nothing” kind of person, in case you didn’t get that from the “law school plus food blog” thing.  So I decided to channel my energies into cooking.  For help, I turned to one of the most intense chefs I could think of: Thomas Keller.  And The French Laundry Cookbook.  I’ve been meaning to check out Keller’s pasta dough since Linda at Salty Seattle posted about it.  I went a little creative with this one; the end recipe is a Celia original.  Pasta is my lingua franca.  This isn’t a vintage recipe, but it’s a new evolution of a traditional form.  And it’s totally delicious.

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Act IV: Chestnut-Lentil Stew with Bulgur Pilaf

And now back to filling my front page with Latin…

Lenticulam de castaneis. Accipies caccabum novum, et castaneas purgatas diligenter mittis. Adicies aquam et nitrum modice, facies ut coquatur. Cum coquitur, mittis in mortario piper, cuminum, semen coriandri, mentam, rutam, laseris radicem, puleium, fricabis. suffundis acetum, mel, liquamen, aceto temperabis, et super castaneas coctas refundis. adicies oleum, facies ut ferveat. cum bene ferbuerit, tudiclabis [ut in mortario teres]. gustas, si quid deest, addes. cum in boletar miseris, addes oleum viridem.
– Apicius, De Re Coquinaria V.ii.2

Translation: Take a new saucepan, put carefully peeled chestnuts in it, add water and a little soda and set it to cooking. While it is cooking, crush in the mortar pepper, cumin, coriander seed, mint, rue, laser root and pennyroyal. Moisten with vinegar, honey, and fish sauce; add vinegar to taste and pour over the cooked chestnuts. Add oil and bring to a boil. When it is simmering, crush the nuts as you would in the mortar. Taste to see if something is missing and if so, put it in. When you have put it in a serving dish, add green virgin oil.


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Coconut Rice with Black Eyed Peas

One day not too long ago, I was poking around my cookbook collection, when I decided I had too many Anglo/French-focused books. Determined to be more multicultural, I hit up my favorite book store in the city: Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks. Every time I go to Bonnie’s I lose a large chunk of time browsing her amazing collection; on my last visit, after a lot of wandering around, I settled on a 1966 reprint of Berta Cabanillas’ 1956 classic Puerto Rican Dishes. I haven’t shared anything yet from this book, so when this rice dish caught my eye recently I decided to go for it.


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Szechuan Noodles v 2.0

When I cook from old recipes, I often change them for one of two reasons: 1) to make the food more amenable to 21st century palates, 2) to make it healthier.  In this case, I took a classic Szechuan dish – a noodle dish called “Ants Climbing a Tree” – and went with the latter approach.  I’ve been making this dish for a while, but this post from The Kitchn prompted me to share: my version of Ants Climbing a Tree is a great, spicy, flavorful way to get into vegan-friendly, gluten-free shirataki noodles.

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