sauces – The Kitchen Illiterate

Thai Chicken Satay Pasta

The Midwestern girl in me loves a baked pasta dish. If you spend enough time digging through the archives of this site you’ll probably feel sort of appalled at the number of casseroles and casserole-like dishes I’ve managed to kludge together over the years. Give me a baking dish and a hodgepodge of ingredients, and I’ll make you a casserole. Some people aren’t into those kinds of things, but to those people I say, you are missing out. Unless you don’t like pasta (in which case, who are you?) what could be wrong with pasta baked into a dish with other yummy things?
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Shakshuka!

When I was growing up, eggs for dinner were usually a sign that money was tight. Maybe my brothers and I needed dental work that month, or we’d just had to go shopping for new clothes and school supplies, or the car has broken down. As a child, I wasn’t completely aware of my parents’ financial situation, but I could usually read the dinner table to to get a sense for how comfortable we were at any given point. And even more so by whether my parents were joking about it, or serving us pancakes at night with grim faces. We weren’t by any means poor, but my parents were young, and just getting started out in life. There were times when eggs for dinner were a necessity.
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Cauliflower Puttanesca

I may have mentioned this before, but I used to be a very picky eater. And I’m not just talking about my childhood. I mean, throughout most of my adolescent and adult life I had very strict rules about what I would not eat. I didn’t eat much. Some of those verboten items were onions, raw tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers (green or red), olives, mustard, mayonnaise, avocados, sour cream, and anything spicy.
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Pumpkin Seed Cilantro Pesto

I’m not alone in finding myself trying to eat better in January. I read a lot of food blogs, and I think at least half of them are talking about embracing the vegetable (the other half are valiantly clinging to their chocolate and bacon, shouting a battle cry against dieting). I’m not a dieter, I wholeheartedly disagree with the idea of limiting your food intake for a specified period of time in the hopes of losing weight. First, it’s not healthy, and “losing weight” is a dubious goal. And second, I don’t have that much willpower. But even I have to admit that after the holidays, I was feeling a little sugared out. I needed to get back to the healthy eating habits I’d more or less adopted over the last two years. I knew a lengthy visit to the produce department was in order, but I was having a hard time planning meals that didn’t involve butter. It was like I’d forgotten how.

If you know me, you know I’m a huge fan of plans. I love lists and schedules and charts. And as much as I hate to admit it, I like those detailed features in fitness magazines that tell you what to eat and when (and by the way, how do those magazines get away with calling themselves fitness magazines?). When I saw the Bon Appetit Food Lover’s Cleanse for 2012, I was instantly drawn to it.
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Sweet Potato Black Bean Enchiladas

I’ve made many enchiladas in my life, but I always make them the same way. There is usually chicken, and definitely refried beans. There is always cheese. And the enchilada sauce comes from a can. These are terrific enchiladas.

I’ve also cooked many sweet potatoes in my life. They are almost always roasted, either whole or cubed, tossed with oil and salt. They get stirred into rice, or baked in gratins, or mixed into soup. They find their way to salads. I love me some roasted sweet potatoes.

I have never thought to combine these things. But last weekend, I did. And I did not regret it. The enchilada became something wholly new, something a little bit healthier, and full of flavors I never thought I would find there. Sweet potatoes love enchiladas. They love beans and chiles. How have I kept them apart for so long?
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Curried Lentils and Grilled Branzini

Sometimes I see a recipe somewhere and I think, “That looks awesome, I’m making it for dinner this week.” The ingredients go on the shopping list and I think I’m all set. Then the time comes to cook the meal and I can’t find the recipe anywhere, like it was a figment of my imagination. There are so many places I find recipes, so many ways they pop into my life every day, it can be like a wild goose chase trying to hunt down any one in particular. Lucky for me, this one was simple enough that I was able to re-construct it, or at lease a pretty good facsimile, with little trouble. But I still have no idea where I got the idea in the first place.
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Chanterelle and Nameko Mushroom Pasta

Last weekend, as we are wont to do, we spent some time wandering around the Ferry Plaza Marketplace. Yes, I’m sure you’re all aware by now how much I love that place. But as much as I love it, I tend to feel a little on guard, a little wallet protective, you might say. There are many glories there, to be sure, and they are not cheap. There are always a million things I want to try, and an equal number of reasons I deny myself, but last weekend, I was feeling in a less denying mood. I had a beautiful lentil salad at from Cowgirl Creamery AND a mushroom empanada from El Porteno. I went ahead and ordered a carafe of rose at the wine shop, instead of just a glass. And while I was off swooning over alfajores, Sean surprised me by picking up a few cartons of mushrooms from Far West Fungi.
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Rigatoni with Braised Chicken in a Saffron Cream Sauce

I love magazines. I always have. I love the shiny pages and pictures, I even love the ads (yup, natural-born American consumer, right here). I collect them, and have a really hard time letting them go. Just ask my mom about the three years’ worth of Sassy magazines she accidentally got rid of when I was away at college. Right now, I have about five years worth of back issues of Bon Appetit, about a year of Food & Wine, the three issues of Gourmet I received before it went belly up, and a handful of random cooking magazines I’ve picked up over the years at airports and bookstores. A lot of people ask me if I ever actually go back and look at all those magazines, and the truth is, I do. I actually have a system, because, well, I’m a dork.
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Mushroom, Chicken, and Spring Pea Penne

Sometimes, when I’m walking home from work in the evening, or sitting on BART heading into San Francisco, or wandering through the Rockridge Market Hall drooling over fresh pasta, I’m overcome by joy that I get to live here, that this is, really and truly, my new home. Two weekends ago Mr. X and I took a trip into the city to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, and I couldn’t stop grinning, despite the crowds and noise and madness. I felt like I was in my own personal version of heaven, surrounded by piles of glorious spring onions and purple carrots and flawless mushrooms of all kinds. I could spend hours wandering through that place, but luckily for Mr. X, I was content to cut the shopping short and sit down to enjoy a glass of cava once I found my new culinary magical ingredient: Umami paste.
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Creamy Mushroom and Chicken Pasta

I think for a minute there I started to go into hibernation. The grey and the cold and the snow, well, let’s just say it makes me feel awfully unmotivated. The lure of True Blood and Cougar Town, and of simple dinners consisting of nothing but rice and roasted vegetables, has sadly left this space bereft of anything new. And with holiday travel, and holiday planning, I guess writing has been pushed to the back of my mind. I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t leave you too hungry.

The thing is, too, that I’m starting to feel I’ve outgrown this space. More than a few people have mentioned to me that I’m not exactly a kitchen illiterate anymore. It’s been hard to find a way to write about what I’m doing in the kitchen these days in a way that fits in here. So I’ve been hard at work (ok, when I manage to get off the couch) creating a new site for my new food blogging project. I’ll definitely share it all when it’s ready, but never fear, I’ll still be sharing recipes one the internets, even if it’s not right here.

In the meantime, I wanted to share this delicious pasta dish I’ve been kind of obsessing over lately. I kept my distance from the rich, creamy pastas for most of the last year, but when it started to get really cold again, I was craving heavy cream something serious. And when I came up with this sauce, it was all over. This is really something special.
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