parmesan – Page 2 – The Kitchen Illiterate

Grilled Salmon and Potato Salad

Last summer, when I packed up my stuff in Boston and moved it all out to Walla Walla, I brought along the mystery grill. The grill showed up a few years back, on a rainy Fourth of July, but for whatever reason was never even unpacked from the box. It first saw the light of day in Walla Walla, when I used it to cook the first meal I made in my new house. I intended to use it often last summer, but instead, I found myself intimidated by it, and uninterested in spending the time and energy required to start a fire when I was cooking for myself alone.

The grill is a tiny thing, a little Smokey Joe. And last week I decided to get over my fear of fire-starting, pull it out of the shed, and give it back its rightful place on my porch. And despite the freezer full of beef waiting to be eaten, I once again decided to cook some salmon on my little grill.
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From the farm: Pea Shoot Pesto

I got my first box from West End Farm this week, which was very exciting. It was full of green things, many of them unknown to me, but thanks to the handy dandy newsletter, they were quickly identified. Tis the season, apparently, for pea shoots and baby greens and spinach and lettuce and teeny, tiny radishes, not to mention wonderful smelling mint and green onions. And all of it looked so unbelievably fresh and lovely. And green. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with all of those greens, but the newsletter recommended making pesto with the tiny, delicate pea shoots, and I figured it was high time I get over my fear of making pesto and give it a shot.
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Spicy Spaghetti with Fennel

From the moment I saw this recipe in January’s issue of Bon Appetit it went on my list. I don’t usually eat a lot of fennel. It doesn’t occur to me to pick it up. But the photo was so alluring, and I’m a sucker for a big ol’ bowl of pasta. It sounded different from my normal cream-heavy pasta dishes, so I had to try it. And wowza, it was amazing. A touch of thick-cut bacon, fennel braised long enough to become silky and rich, and just enough spice to keep things interesting, and I was hooked. You probably will be, too.
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Cauliflower Caper Risotto

Last night I threw together this risotto willy nilly, completely unsure if the random things I pulled out the refrigerator would really taste right together. And boy howdy did they! This risotto blew my mind with awesomeness. The cauliflower became soft and almost silky, the herbes de provence gave this a very Thanksgiving kind of flavor (thyme and fennel will do that), and the capers added a hit of delightful briny saltiness that elevated the whole dish. This was one of those rare kitchen triumphs, the kind that feel even more special because the whole endeavor began under a cloud of doubt. This risotto is one for the records.
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Cheesy Turkey Manicotti

Lately I’ve had quite a thing for meals I can portion out and freeze in little individual servings. This Turkey Manicotti is exactly that. I thought it was just as delicious defrosted and carried to work in a little plastic container as it was when I first made it. In fact, I thought maybe it was even better. Maybe the flavors had more time to develop and become one, though I’m not entirely sure that can actually happen in a freezer. Either way, this is an excellent meal to make on a weekend and freeze for those evenings when you just don’t want to cook or those mornings when you can’t find anything else in the cupboard to bring for lunch.
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End-of-Summer Baked Penne

This baked penne really felt like my last hurrah to summer: chock full of summer’s produce, corn, zucchini, tomatoes, but baked in the oven, which heats up my little house quite nicely when it’s suddenly dropped to 50 degrees outside. I realize October might seem pretty far past summer, but it’s really only a few weeks since the official season change, and people do seem to be pulling the last tomatoes off their vines right about now. Not me, though. Mine gave up the ghost ages ago. So I think this is an excellent early fall dinner, to use up the last of the over-abundant zucchini and get you ready for casseroles and slow cookers and braises galore as the days cool off.

I originally saw this recipe on the Williams-Sonoma site, but I have to say their proportions seemed a little crazy. Eight zucchini? Really?! My skillet is just not that big. Of course, their recipe is meant to feed eight people, and I really only wanted to feed one, with a few days of leftovers. Some recipe rearranging skills were definitely in order.
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Garlicky Sauteed Kale and Chickpeas with Polenta

I am not very good at summertime cooking. When most normal people are throwing their fresh tomatoes and mountains of zucchini into cool and refreshing salads, I insist on standing in front of a hot stove before dinner. I will heat the oven to 550 degrees, and keep it on for over an hour, in the middle of August. I will labor over risotto, trying not to sweat into the stock. I don’t know what it is, but I just have to have a hot meal at the end of the day. It’s a strange compulsion, but there it is.

I am getting a little better at reducing the amount of heat I produce in the kitchen when it’s over 100 degrees outside of it. Last week roasted red pepper tacos turned into sauteed pepper tacos, and this week another recipe I’ve had in my to-be-tried pile was similarly reinvented to avoid using the oven. Garlic roasted garbanzos, you say? I say nay, but the stovetop might work just fine.
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Lobster Risotto

It is amazing how fast time is passing these days. I do believe I promised to share this lobster risotto a few days ago, but suddenly the weekend was over and I still hadn’t posted this recipe. Doh. My apologies.

I was dreaming of lobster risotto for a long time. Over a year, in fact. But cooking lobster always seemed so decadent, so difficult, so expensive…it was one of those things I just kept putting off. Which is silly, because it’s really none of those things, and lobster risotto is so wonderful, it’s worth boiling up a lobster just for this dish alone. Though if you’re lucky, you can have a lobster dinner one night, and lobster risotto with the leftovers the next.
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Mushroom Sausage Puffs

I love puff pastry. I consider it a culinary wonder. But it’s not exactly something you can have for dinner every night, and most of the uses to which puff pastry can be put fall firmly in the appetizer category. So I relish the opportunity to make appetizers for dinner parties, and I was given just that opportunity this past weekend. Our awesome friends Stan and Charity hosted a dinner party and invited me, Mr. X, and some kind of pre-dinner treat, so I decided to throw together these.

They are very similar to the Mushroom and Goat Cheese Triangles I have made for several dinner parties in the past, but I wanted to do something a little different, a little more substantial. So sausage it is! And frankly, I think they are much better for it.
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Spinach and Sweet Pea Pasta

I don’t need to say it again, do I? In Boston, our farmers’ markets are still a long way away. Things aren’t really growing yet. Eating locally without eating potatoes is still a distant dream. So, a message to all the food writers out there in happier climes: Stop taunting me with all your joyous greenery and ramps and asparagus and small, alive things poking their little heads out of the ground.

Alright, maybe I should just stop reading if it saddens me so much, right? Or, I can use the bounty of others as inspirations in these last, dragging days of winter here in New England, and create a light, simple, verdant pasta dish that lets me pretend like it’s spring, even if none of its ingredients are really fresh from the ground. As you can see, I decided to take the second course.
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