red pepper flakes – Page 2 – The Kitchen Illiterate

Black-Eyed Pea and Peanut Soup

It’s true, I really do cook and eat a lot of soup. And unfortunately, all soups tend to look the same, which doesn’t make for fun food photography. Fortunately, they don’t all taste the same, and this one in particular is a pretty keen flavor sensation. What started out as a basic greens and beans soup was transformed at the last minute into something much richer and more interesting by the addition of a little spice and a little peanut butter. It almost reminds me a Thai curry flavor, but is much more basic and simple than that. And no less delicious for it. And to think, I probably would never have thought of it if I hadn’t had so many leftover black-eyed peas in the refrigerator.
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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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Simple Fresh Tomato Pasta

This summer is flying by, so quickly it’s kind of nerve-wracking. And it has been an extremely full one, what with moving across country, starting a new job, being visited by friends, traveling for work, and spending a glorious week on Puget Sound with a group of some of my favorite people. I have been neglecting this blog, and I have been neglecting my new garden. The lawn is definitely overgrown, but at least it’s still alive. And I’m learning that there is truth in the statement that things in Walla Walla pretty much grow themselves: my tomatoes are thriving through no work of my own.

So what do you do with tons of cherry tomatoes? You make very simple and summery pasta dishes.
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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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Grilled Salmon Livornese

Whew. It has been awhile. The move across the country put a longer hold on my blogging than I expected, but I’m here, in Walla Walla, WA, and getting settled in quite nicely. I’m more homesick for Boston than I ever thought I would be, but am quickly finding that Walla Walla ain’t a bad place to be, even though the whole town does shut down at 10 on weekends. The Farmers Market today played a pretty big part in convincing me I might be just fine here, and if you come back later this week you’ll find out what I’m planning to do with my bounty. Today is also the Walla Walla Sweet Onion Festival, but I have to admit I haven’t bought any sweet onions yet, largely because I only saw them for sale in five, ten, or fifty pound bags, and frankly, I do not need that many onions.

What I’m going to tell you about today has nothing to do with Walla Walla, really, other than that this was the first meal I cooked in my new house, and on my new grill. Daddy-o kindly showed me how to light a charcoal grill, and hopefully I won’t be too afraid to do it on my own in the future, because this grilled salmon was pretty spectacular and I definitely would like to do it at again.
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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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Spinach and Barley Soup

Alright, so it’s not really soup weather anymore. In fact, Boston has suddenly leaped forward into what is pretty much summer. But I bought all this spinach when it was still soup weather, overcast and wet and chilly, and I really wanted this soup. It might be my last soup of the season, or at least, the last hot soup (I have some gazpacho in mind). So I had to do it. And even though it was 85 degrees out, and probably hotter in my kitchen, it was completely worth it. That bright green color made me so happy, and it was light and brightly flavored, and really would have been 100 percent perfect if I had made it when it was still hovering around 50 degrees in Massachusetts. At least now I have it in my repertoire for fall. And if you come across another cool day before summer is official, I recommend you give this soup a shot.
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Soy-glazed Red Snapper with Spring Vegetables and Roasted Potatoes

It’s finally spring in New England, though we are still about a month away from farmer’s market produce. I’m only four days away from finishing grad school, and miraculously, am actually finished with all my finals—I had to finish early because we had a trip to take: I’m in Los Angeles for my good friend Kim’s wedding! It’s already been a great party, and the wedding itself is this evening, at a ranch in Malibu.

I kind of forgot that eating in Southern California tends to take place in chain restaurants more often than not. We went to the San Fernando Valley’s “restaurant row” last night, which consisted of The Cheesecake Factory, El Torito, Fuddrucker’s, Quizno’s, and P.F. Chang’s. That’s about all there is in walking distance of our hotel. We did get room service for breakfast this morning, which is certainly never the best food, but I love having someone bring a tray of covered plates to my room and being able to eat breakfast on a fluffy, white King-sized bed.
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Creamy Vegetarian Minestrone

I’m not sure if it’s entirely fair to call this a soup. It turned out much thicker than I intended, but in this case that only made it better. This is a very hearty, warming, comforting winter meal, and its creaminess totally belies the fact that it’s pretty darned healthy. In my quest to eat more like a vegetarian or a vegan, this soup is a winner.

I’ve made minestrone many times, so I’m surprised I’ve never written about it. Minestrone is the simplest soup, made up of whatever bits and odds and ends are leftover in the pantry or refrigerator. It usually includes beans, pasta, and tomatoes as a base, but there is no set recipe, and the word minestrone has become a synonym for “hodgepodge” in Italy. It’s a great soup to make on Saturday night, before you go to the grocery store, when your refrigerator is mostly bare, and you need to use up the last of whatever is on hand, and it’s an especially excellent winter soup, because it takes well to all those winter vegetables. Yes, I love minestrone and turn to it often, and yet I’ve never seen the results I saw from this most recent minestrone making.
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