Baked pasta with golden cauliflower and sage

The print headline on Rick Nelson's article on the Taste page in this morning's Sunday paper was "How Great Is Ina?" Having just made this Ina Garten recipe for summer last night, I'd say pretty great.

Ina Garten has always had my vote for food celebrity whose house you'd most like to be invited to for a weekend visit. She makes tasty food, and unlike my longtime inspiration, Martha Stewart, she always seems very relaxed.

 

This dish takes advantage of the golden cauliflower I bought at the last regular farmers market of the year. (Thanks, Julie!) Yesterday we wished our farmer/vendor friends a good winter, congratulated them on making it to the finish line of another season, and thanked them for the many, many good meals we had courtesy of their efforts. Every meal I cook with farmers market produce brings a face to mind as I cook. Next year's market is going to be displaced due to construction, but we'll track them down somehow. (And once again we wonder why the heck can't we have market plazas like Europe?)

The dish also plays on the current love of cauliflower, although not in its trendy usage as a lower carb stand-in, since here it's paired with pasta.

 

Crusty baked shells and cauliflower

Adapted from “Cooking for Jeffrey” by Ina Garten as published in Food and Wine November 2016. If you can find golden cauliflower, it adds color to the dish and helps break up that white on white effect.

Ingredients

¾ pound medium pasta shells

7 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 large head cauliflower, cut into small florets

3 tablespoons chopped fresh sage leaves

2 tablespoons capers, drained

1 tablespoon minced garlic

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

2 cups grated Fontina cheese

1 cup fresh ricotta

½ cup panko bread crumbs

6 tablespoons grated Pecorino cheese

2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves

Method

Cook pasta in boiling salted water just until barely tender. You’ll be baking this later, so don’t overcook it. Drain into a large bowl.

Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add half of the cauliflower in a single layer across the bottom of the pan; you want all the cauliflower to make contact with the pan so you can brown it, which takes about 5 to 6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour contents of pan on top of the pasta in the bowl, scrapping out any little bits.

Add another 3 tablespoons of oil to the pan and repeat browning. Transfer cauliflower to the bowl but retain some oil in the pan. Add sage, capers, garlic, lemon zest and red pepper flakes and saute about 1 minute to flavor the oil. Pour mixture into the bowl with pasta and cauliflower. Stir in salt, pepper, and grated Fontina.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 10- by 13-inch baking pan with olive oil. Put half of pasta mixture in pan to form the bottom layer. Top with ricotta, and then spread remaining pasta mixture on top.

In a small bowl, mix panko, Pecorino, parsley and 1 tablespoon olive oil. Sprinkle mixture over the top of pasta in the pan. Bake for 35 to 30 minutes or until browned and crusty.

Rating: Ina's husband Jeffrey really is a lucky guy. I might add just a touch more garlic next time because I’m that way, but it’s a perfectly fine dish as is. She notes that you can assemble the dish the day before for make-ahead purposes. Like on a long weekend with guests.