I Don't Have a Pasta Machine But...

I do have a rolling pin!

Once again I made pasta without the help of a pasta machine. The recipe was Ravioli with Butternut Squash Filling. Making the filling wasn't too hard once I scraped the flesh out of the squash. You just blend it with an egg yolk and some cheese and voila.

The pasta was more difficult because I had to roll it out until it was translucent and then I stretched it and rolled it some more.

I formed nice little raviolis, although on or two of them fell apart while cooking. They were very yummy but a little bit too chewy. Unfortunately, I did not have any sage so I  could not chiffonade it and serve it on top. Too bad.

Roasted Pineapple

I thought it would be simple. I was wrong.

Well it would be if it did not burn one time and start melting wax paper the other.

It smelled like Christmas trees and burnt candy with a hint of fruit punch. It tasted...Very sweet and slightly burnt and had a very mushy texture. You didn't get that stange feeling in your mouth, like you do with fresh pineapple, but it didn't taste very pinappley.

Blah.

Garlic

I love garlic. When I make French bread I almost always make garlic butter to go on it. I have been know to eat cloves of raw garlic on toast.

But this time the garlic was cooked. I chopped the tops off of 2 cloves, stuck them in custard cups and covered them with thyme and olive oil. They were actually supposed to cook for 2 hours but we were hungry and increased the heat a bit and decreased the cooking time.

We popped the garlic out of its cloves and spread it on French bread instead of garlic butter.

Ohhhh yum.

Omelet La Flop

Omelets are so easy and hard. I made an Herb Filled Omelet this morning, with chives, basil and tarragon. it tasted awesome but it looked...not so good. Is the heat too high? Maybe. The eggs formed curds rather quickly. But they did not want to form a nice folded omelet shape.

I guess omelet's take practice. To be continued...The Epic Battle of the Flopped Omelet.

Clay Baked Casserole

Don't ask how to pronounce it. Vegetable Tian is, according to Ms. Stewart, a Provencal creation named for the traditional earthenware baking dish it is cooked in. Basically it is a refined eggplant-tomato-zucchini-onion casserole.

I do not have a tian, but I do have some earthenware pizza pans which I used instead. My  vegetable tian was not nearly as pretty as the one in the picture, mostly because I had a very fat eggplant. The slices were huge. There was also some interesting color variation because half of my tomatoes were green.

Whole cloves of garlic, sprigs of rosemary & thyme, and a lot of oil went on top. I stuck it in the oven and went to make biscuits.

We popped the garlic out of it shells and spread it on the biscuits. The tian was delicious, even though I'm not too fond of zucchini. It tasted slightly of the dish I had cooked it in which I guess is why you bake it in earthenware. My dad showed us how to sprinkle the leaves of the herbs on our food but then wished he hadn't because we each immediately grabbed another sprig.

Yum yum yum.

Strange Green Substances

It was almost perfect. I had everything I needed to make Pureed Mixed Vegetable Soup. Except for onions.
Onions. How could I not have them? Not one.

So I needed chives. We have a zillion in our garden. Armed with a flashlight and a paring knife, I went out after being warned about chucacabra thingys (mexican werewolves) by my brother. I found the chives, and cut a bunch of them with the paring knife (it works so much better than scissors.)

Once I escaped from the chucacabras, I made this soup of potatoes, broccoli, spinach and chives. The result was a strange green substance that looked like it belonged in a cauldron.

It was bland and weird and not very tasty. The  vegetable soups in this book have been sort of disappointing.

Ambrosial Pan Sauce

I had a thawed chicken and was learning the fine art of breaking chicken joints from my dad. Needless to say, it was disgusting. Once the joints were broken (which makes it easier to carve) I washed it out (also disgusting) and dried it out (even more disgusting). Once it was in the roasting pan, it looked all...floppy (and disgusting). I arranged the chicken so it was less floppy, and stuffed it with lemon, garlic and lots of rosemary. I also stuffed butter and even more rosemary underneath its skin, which wasn't too disgusting, but was sort of difficult.

It was roasted at rather high heat, but it came out beautifully. I pour the juices into a pan, did not get rid of the fat (whats the point? Fat tastes good.) and whisked in some white wine, reduced it by half, and added some butter. This was poured over the chicken and tasted amazing. You could live on it, that stuff is so good. It had a hint of rosemary and garlic and smelled like heaven.

I will definitely make this again. I'm having trouble finding reasons to make chicken any other way.