Linguine with Parmesan cream, proscuitto and radicchio

You know the comic panel that shows two scientists at the black board with the phrase "And then a miracle occurs" in the middle of the computation? (If not, check it out here.) Some recipes are like that. You're following along and then suddenly you're like what the what? Ideally, someone like me sweeps up behind the recipe authors and catches those gaps, but in this recipe I attempted to follow, I had to make some giant assumptions so I've no idea whether the end result reflects the intent. 

The picture in the book, while lovely, was no help, because it clearly didn't reflect the recipe in three different aspects and was just designed to maximize the lookiness. Perhaps it was an uncorrected advanced reading copy. We'll be kind and chalk it up to that.

Linguine with Parmesan cream, prosciutto and radicchio

Adapted from "Fiamma: The Essence of Contemporary Italian Cooking" by Michael White with Joanna Pruess

Ingredients

Linguine or other wider ribbon pasta

1½ cups grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish, divided

1 ½ cups chicken broth, divided

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for drizzling

2 teaspoons white truffle oil

4 tablespoons butter

1 small onion, chopped small

2 cloves garlic, sliced

2 cups julienne radicchio leaves

6 ounces prosciutto, smoked ham or bacon, cut into thin strips

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

Method

Cook pasta in boiling water until al dente.

Meanwhile, heat chicken broth to boiling. Put all but 2 tablespoons of the Parmesan cheese in a bowl. Pour ½ cup boiling broth over the top. Use a stick blender to process until smooth. (Or use a blender if you don’t have a stick blender. Or be prepared for a messy whisking job if you don’t have either.) Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and the truffle oil and blend until emulsified. Pour mixture into a small pan, cover and keep warm on the lowest heat setting.

(If using bacon, at this point cook in a large skillet until browned but not crispy. Remove from pan and let drain. Substitute bacon drippings for butter in the next step.)

In a large skillet, melt butter over medium low heat. Add onion and garlic and cook until onion is translucent. Add radicchio, prosciutto (or ham or cooked bacon), thyme and remaining broth. Heat through, then remove from heat and season with salt and pepper to taste.

When pasta is ready, drain, and I mean drain really well or you'll make your cheese sauce runny. Pour cream sauce into a large serving bowl. Stir in remaining 2 tablespoons Parmesan. Add drained pasta and toss to coat. Top with radicchio mixture. Serve drizzled with more olive oil and a garnish of grated Parmesan. 

Rating: Mixed reviews. Dave really liked this recipe. My attitude was more reserved, partly because I was cranked off by having to guess at the assembly stage. I will say this: That cheese sauce is pretty tasty and could definitely have other applications. It makes a delightfully creamy sauce, aside from that one stubborn lump of admittedly tasty cheese, so it's like adding cream to a recipe when you don't have it on hand. I could see just adding garlic to the broth-cheese sauce it and calling it a day. I might try this again and go for bacon or pancetta.

Quinoa bowl with spicy squash and arugula

Week three of attempting to build a better lunch:

Quinoa bowl with spicy squash and arugula

Adapted from a couple of recipes: Red Quinoa Salad with Black Beans and Avocado, a Merc Co-Op recipe from the Taste section that I can't find the link to, and Spicy and Tangy Sweet Potatoes from Beth Dooley, printed in the Jan. 26, 2017, Taste section.

Ingredients

4 cups chopped butternut squash

1 green onion, chopped

2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon chili powder

½ teaspoon ground cumin

1 cup red quinoa

2 cups water

1 small red onion, chopped

1 ½ cups cooked black beans

3½ tablespoons fresh lime juice

3½ tablespoons light olive oil

1 ½ teaspoons chopped cilantro

½ teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon sea salt or to taste

Arugula, several cups

Chopped toasted pecans, about a tablespoon per serving

The method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss the squash with the green onion, coconut oil, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, chili powder, and cumin. Spread on a rimmed baking sheet and roast about 30 minutes until tender and lightly browned. Remove from oven and set aside.

Meanwhile, bring quinoa and 2 cups water to a simmer. Cook for 15 minutes or until liquid is absorbed. Add red onion and black beans and set aside.

Mix lime juice, olive oil, cilantro, ½ teaspoon cumin and ½ teaspoon sea salt, adjusting seasonings as desired.

The drill: Put quinoa-bean mixture in an individual serving bowl. Top with some squash cubes, a generous handful of arugula and about a tablespoon of pecans. Transport about a tablespoon of the lime dressing separately and drizzle on right before serving. Makes 5 reasonable lunch-size servings.

Rating: Tasty and satisfying. Quinoa and beans are much more filling (and no doubt more caloric) than a salad.  Those spicy squash cubes aren't particularly spicy, but roasted squash is always tasty in my book. I didn't get tired of it by the end of the week.

Note: If you're one of those that hate cilantro, aka coriander, obviously you can substitute parsley. And you'd probably appreciate this tweet.

Kale and curried chickpea salad with golden sesame dressing

Time for Week 2 of trying to make more satisfying lunches to take to work.

Kale and curried chickpea salad with golden sesame dressing

I got the idea for the base from this Kitchn blog post; the chickpeas are adapted from “Anti-Inflammatory Eating Made Easy” by Michelle Babb; the dressing is adapted from a Robin Asbell recipe printed in the Jan. 19, 2017, Taste section. 

The base: kale and radicchio, sliced into thin ribbons.

The topping: crispy curried chickpeas (1¾ cups cooked chickpeas, tossed with 1 tablespoon of grapeseed oil, 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 1 teaspoon turmeric and 1 teaspoon salt and then baked spread out on a baking sheet at 400 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes until well browned). Store in an airtight container.

The dressing: ¼ cup tahini, 1 tablespoon honey, 1 pressed garlic clove, 2 tablespoons apple cider, 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon soy sauce and ¼ teaspoon five-spice powder, all pureed in a food processor or blender.

The drill: Toss a lot, and I mean a lot more than you think you'll possibly be willing to eat, of the kale-radicchio mixture into a bowl. Top with a handful of chickpeas. Transport some of the dressing in a separate container and then mix in when you're ready to it so it doesn't turn the chickpeas soggy.

Rating: The golden sesame dressing is quite nice, and overall the dish worked OK flavor and texture-wise. The first day I took it in I didn't realize just how much the kale mixture would collapse when mixed with the dressing so I didn't have nearly enough food. And the chickpeas are crisped to more or less puff balls, which makes for a fine enough snack but they don't have much heft. I added some leftover baked tofu one day, and a sliced hard-cooked egg another day, and that helped with the satisfaction level.

Super Bowl app: ham and cheese pastries

Why are so many of the appetizers that get served at Super Bowl parties super ugly? Yes, guacamole is an inherently kind of murky substance, but all those cheese-salsa dips look really repulsive. Sure, they quite often taste good in a guilty pleasure, once-in-awhile indulgence kind of way, but most don't score on the attractiveness scale. And no, shaping something like a football or frosting it in a way that resembles one doesn't do it for me.

So I tried this recipe, figuring it had a fighting chance of providing the salt-spice food components required of any game-day snack with the possibility of a modicum of attractiveness.

Ham and cheese pastry puffs
From PlainChicken.com

Ingredients

1 package puff pastry, thawed

Dijon mustard

Thinly sliced ham (maybe half a pound)

Cheese slices (up to a cup)

1 tablespoon chili

1 teaspoon onion powder

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon garlic powder

Egg wash (1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water)

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Unfold puff pastry and roll to smooth it out. Cut each pastry sheet into 9 squares and place on a parchment or Silpat-lined baking sheet. Brush each square with mustard, leaving an edge all around. Top with a small amount of thinly sliced ham. Top with cheese slices.

Mix chili, onion powder, cinnamon and garlic powder. Sprinkle a bit of the mixture over cheese. 

Bring two points of the pastry square together and seal in the middle. Brush with egg wash. Sprinkle with a bit more of the spice mixture. Bake for 15 minutes or until puffed and golden.

Rating: Surprisingly, I wasn't super impressed with the taste of these. Maybe the cheddar I had on hand could be improved upon, say with fontina or flavored havarti? But they're kind of a cute delivery device for ham and cheese sandwich fixings.

So far I still give the edge to these guilty pleasures for Super Bowl food:

A tidy home? I'll drink to that

Boulevardier, from Jennifer McCartney's "Cocktails for Drinkers": Mix 1 part each bourbon, sweet vermouth and Campari. Serve over ice with an orange twist.

It’s all about the booze. That’s one possible take-away from Jennifer McCartney’s: "The Joy of Leaving Your Sh*t All Over the Place.” My sister passed along this hilarious slender book that’s the antidote to Marie Kondo’s KonMari way.

The KonMari method, for those who have been blissfully living without exposure to it, is outlined in Kondo’s “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying: A Simple, Effective Way to Banish Clutter Forever” which has been dwelling on the bestseller lists for eons. I read her book last year in one of my January fits of self-improvement/introspection/general funk. It contains a few kernels of useful information. If it had been confined to a 10-page pamphlet instead of 300-plus relentlessly repetitive pages, it would have been a fine enough thing.

Here’s my summary, so you don’t have to read it:

Kondo urges purging/then organizing your possessions in a rip-the-bandage-off approach as the key to finally gaining control without backsliding. None of this 15-minutes-a-day approach in her book. Most of us would need to take at least a week off and therapy to accomplish/recover from this, but I’m guessing it works better in small Japanese dwellings.

Your are to tackle your purge/organization by category, bringing all possessions of like kind together, regardless of where they were housed, so you can evaluate a category of items in its entirety and store all like items together. Start with clothes as the easiest target; move on to books, then CDs and DVDs, then paperwork, then mementos.

She tells you to evaluate each item to see if it sparks joy. If not, out it goes, after having been properly thanked for its service. (This, interestingly, is the opposite of most decluttering advice, which cautions you not to touch your possessions unnecessarily lest it increase your attachment.)

It’s not bad advice for how about to go about a purge, and I was finally able to hang up some clothes in a closet after one bout of KonMari fever. But I’m unlikely to fold my shirts so they can be stored in drawers vertically, take out the contents of my purse daily or get rid of books I haven’t read in a year, suggesting you could just buy the book again (!) if you wanted to read it later. She totally lost me with that last one.

McCartney’s tome, on the other hand, will no doubt be taken as comedic hyperbole, not actual advice, but it’s a highly therapeutic read in a my-cheeks-hurt kind of way. One takeaway: Enjoy your damn life and step over the mess on the way to get a drink to calm down and not be so uptight about it.

I fall somewhere in between the two extremes. I’ve got enough OCD that I suffer from “surface tension” when things aren’t put in their proper place, or worse yet, lack a proper place. But I like stuff. And not just the stuff that sparks joy, like my few bits of Cottura pottery, but stuff that’s simply useful. I won’t say that my giant coffee maker sparks joy, but sometimes you need one, even if it isn’t every year.

Besides, stuff is part of your backstory; it tells you a lot about how you got to be where you are. We got that coffee maker for what turned into a giant baby shower with an out-of-control guest list for a lovely co-worker. I’m pretty sure that kid is old enough to vote now, and that coffee maker has stayed bought, coming out for a friend’s post-wedding brunch and other events that result in trips down memory lane.

But I can’t just leave things lying around like a carefully staged Ralph Lauren commercial, where whips and leather-bound tomes are artfully piled. For one thing, my piles aren’t artful, and for another thing, that kind of delightful chaos only works if the backdrop is Highclere Castle and you’ve got some Turners hanging on your walls. It does not give you an excuse to leave your bedding carefully rumpled (I’m looking at you, pricey Airbnb rental photos.)

My version of a January purge definitely hit a middle ground between the KonMari-McCartney approaches. I did an inventory of what’s in my freezer space, removed several random bits of bread and made a favorite strata. Low and behold there was finally room to store the horseradish vodka (a recent Christmas gift from friends) in its best home: the freezer, where it’s ready for pairing with appetizers like these. So, yes, McCartney is right; it’s all about the booze. And if you read too much of Kondo’s prose, you’re going to need it.

Oh, and that drink? Very tasty, at least if you adore Campari.