Words fail me

But I will try, it's what I do. Still, how can you describe the best pasta you've ever had?

After my last entry featuring Hurricane Earl Pasta, I've been craving my Fresh Taste of Tuscany Pasta, but can't get the taste of the Italian sausage out of my head. So what better way to commemorate the best of two dishes, but to make a new variation that is beyond stunning.

I finished about 20 minutes ago and still the taste of the garlic, basil, tomato and red wine vinegar is playing on my tongue. I have to got out in just over an hour to do an interview for a magazine I write, but still I chose to drink a small bit of red wine with this pasta. It proved impossible to abstain.

This time I didn't use any cheese, except at the end, when I freshly grated some Romano on top. If I could find tomatoes like this all winter summer might never end. But after my Hurricane Earl experience with hothouse tomatoes, I know they have to be vine-ripened (although Roma tomaotes or grape tomatoes are so sweet I will try it again later this fall). That's the secret to this dish — everything MUST be fresh. That's why it's so good.

That's why it's the best past I've ever eaten, with or without Italian sausage.

Enjoy!

Kathy

Hurricane Earl Pasta

When Hurricane Earl passed through Atlantic Canada a few weeks ago, we were worried our herbs and veggies would be decimated, so we took down the fabric top to our gazebo

My dog Lulu in the picture here virtually did not move the entire time we worked, expecting us to accommodate her!

and put away our not quite ripened tomatoes and peppers, and our herbs.

Safely stowed away

We called our work "Operation Earl". I was expecting a big storm, but in the end all we got were some winds and rain. Nothing I haven't seen before. Other parts of Atlantic Canada (and of course the U.S.) had it much worse.

To commemorate Hurricane Earl, I made a fresh pasta. I wanted something meaty, so I bought some Italian sausages (they were local and made with organic pork — so much leaner). I also bought local field tomatoes, but should have known better. Even if they were vine-ripened, they were still hothouse tomatoes. I saw that they were the typical hothouse mealy variety as soon as I cut into it. I should have used grape or plum tomatoes. Nonetheless, the pasta was good and memorable because of why it came about.

With the proper tomatoes and not cooking the sauce (similar to the Taste of Tuscany recipe I made a while back) this will be a keeper.

I wish whole wheat pasta came in colours, it would look so even more appetizing! I might have to break my own no white pasta rule and try it next time. I wonder if pasta made with spinach and sun-dried tomatoes still qualifies as white carbs?

Here's the rough recipe, revised:

Hurricane Earl Pasta
5 Hot Italian Sausages, cut into bite-sized pieces and cooked
4 cloves garlic minced
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup fresh chopped basil
2 sprigs fresh chopped oregano
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
Sea salt and pepper
Whole wheat rotini for 4 people

After cooking the sausage, add in the rest of the ingredients, toss and serve over pasta with some freshly grated Romano cheese.

Oh so tasty stuffed baked sweet potatoes

I've made this before and I will make it again. This time instead of baking the sweet potatoes, I did follow the instructions to microwave this recipe from EatingWell.com for Sweet Potatoes with Warm Black Bean Salad because it was far too hot to turn on an oven. And it was so very simple I will likely do it again unless I'm already baking something else.

This time I did add some salsa to the black beans for additional flavour, and used cheddar cheese instead of sour cream to top it off — a lot of cheddar cheese :-)

This is kind of like eating a chili-stuffed potato. I'm crazy for sweet potatoes — so so much better! I'd highly recommend this for a hearty vegetarian dinner winter or summer. Yum!

Kathy

Sweet Potatoes with Warm Black Bean Salad

http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/sweet_potatoes_with_warm_black_bean_salad.html
From EatingWell:  December 2005/January 2006, EatingWell Serves TwoFor a satisfying last-minute supper, it's hard to beat a sweet potato zapped in the microwave. The fragrant filling of beans and tomatoes adds protein. Be sure to eat the skin, which is full of fiber, as well.
4 servings | Active Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

• 4 medium sweet potatoes
• 1 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed
• 2 medium tomatoes, diced
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup reduced-fat sour cream
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Preparation

1. Prick sweet potatoes with a fork in several places. Microwave on High until tender all the way to the center, 12 to 15 minutes. (Alternatively, place in a baking dish and bake at 425 degrees F until tender all the way to the center, about 1 hour.)
2. Meanwhile, in a medium microwaveable bowl, combine beans, tomatoes, oil, cumin, coriander and salt; microwave on High until just heated through, 2 to 3 minutes. (Alternatively, heat in a small saucepan over medium heat.)
3. When just cool enough to handle, slash each sweet potato lengthwise, press open to make a well in the center and spoon the bean mixture into the well. Top each with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkle of cilantro.

Nutrition

Per serving : 295 Calories; 6 g Fat; 2 g Sat; 3 g Mono; 6 mg Cholesterol; 52 g Carbohydrates; 8 g Protein; 9 g Fiber; 572 mg Sodium; 541 mg Potassium
3 Carbohydrate Serving
Exchanges: 3 starch, 1 vegetable 1/2 fat

Mediterranean Tuna Salad

When I'm not busy with writing, I will sometimes take a bit of time to make a special lunch. On the menu one recent day was tuna salad, which my mom used to make when she was on Weight Watchers in the old days and needed to make her 5 meals of fish each week. Her leaned down version just had vinegar as a dressing, we rarely had fresh lemons and I my mom only ever used olive oil to put in our ears when we had an earache! Oh how cooking has changed since the days of the Kraft Dinner Hour!

Ever since reading about how amazing tuna is when packed in olive oil, I've been trying to find it, but to no avail. So with a couple of cans of water-packed tuna (I only really like white meat tuna, so it's not often I eat it anymore), local cukes, tomatoes, basil from the garden, red pepper,  a bit of shallot, green olives and a lemon and olive oil dressing, here's what we ate for lunch:

Very tasty, refreshing and filling enough to last 'til dinner time.

Bon Appetit!

Kathy

P.S. I wonder if it would be "okay" to eat something like tuna made with olive oil if I happen to find it on my travels? I know it still wouldn't be local even if I ate it where I bought it, but does food you bring home with you while not on a grocery shopping expedition count on a 100 mile diet? Something to ponder...

Somehow failures are harder to report

I really should look at recipe failures as learning experiences, but when you put great hopes into something new, you don't want to mess it up. That's why I've been avoiding this food blog.

Lately I've been reworking and realigning my thinking about food. I've been on a slow food (or pro-food, or real-food) kick since January of this year, mostly in earnest, cooking food from scratch most days. I won't say I haven't eaten the occasional noodle soup (still one of my faves) or haven't eaten fast food ever, but I have come around to preferring food that I cook over food that comes from a box or package 9 times out of 10.

When I watched "Food Inc." and read "In Defense of Food" it made me re-think how I cook too. I'm so much more conscious of where the food came from, how it was grown or raised, and what its impact is on the planet. Before I only thought of organic food as being about ingesting no pesticides, but it's so much more. I've also learned that food grown close to home is almost always grown without pesticides and raised without growth hormones and is free range. And that every time we choose it at our local supermarket over food grown with pesticides or with hormones we are showing food producers that organically grown or locally grown food is viable for them to grow, raise and sell at market.

So, I got VERY excited when I bought my first truly organic and local piece of meat at my local farmer's market. It was a beef rib roast and we planned to cook it on the barbecue, using our rotisserie attachment. (I'm sure some of you are already shaking your heads about this, but we had to learn ourselves.) The friendly meat guy told me to cook it at a very low temperature, and to keep it wrapped, as organic beef (being also grass eating cows that are constantly on the move for greener pastures as the saying goes) is leaner than the grain-fed and more processed beef we're used to. Like I said, I had high hopes.

It all started off well, look at this beautiful piece of meat! How can you go wrong with a bulb of garlic, olive oil, fresh rosemary, sea salt and pepper?

So it was with high hopes and aluminum foil that hubby skewered the roast and began to cook it. We couldn't find a recipe in our grill book, so we kind of followed a pork roast. Turns out 300°F for 1.5 hours is WAY too long for a small beef roast. (In my defense, I'm not much of a beef eater, except for steak, and rarely cook meat with bones). Despite our best intentions, it shrank to nothing and was so overcooked and tough, it wasn't very tasty at all.

One redeeming feature of this meal is that I also roasted vegetables with olive oil in a pan on the grill, and they were amazing! Roasted corn is a revelation to me! And I adore fennel and beets do it for me! Yum!

Yes my friends, that shoe leather on the plate is indeed beef, not pork. I can't judge how it tasted. It was tough and even with all the added flavour of the garlic, olive oil, salt and paper I added to it, it was so very disapointing.

So there you have it, I have shared my shame. Don't let this happen to you. Know your meat and how it reacts. 150°F would have worked much better. I still think organic meat is worth trying, and all accounts say it is better tasting than what we're used to, never mind the health benefits. And I must say it wasn't even that much more expensive. I WILL master this!

If you have any tips about barbecuing free range meat, I'd love to hear about it. And if any of you out there have barbecue disasters to share, misery loves company!


Kathy