Casareccie with Pattypan Squash

I was drawn to these squash simply for their beauty, a cool bell-like shape and wonderfully deep greens and yellows, it was hard for me to cut them up an cook them, destroying all of that. But I did not buy them as ornaments, it is not Thanksgiving and I’m not the type of girl to decorate for the seasons. 

This was another wonderful find at the Daniel Island Farmers Market, which I am so thankful that we have, the trip to Marion Square on Saturday mornings is too much in this heat and the crowds, well, I’m just not a fan of crowds even though I am a city mouse at heart. This market brings great local vegetables to my stepfordish island, allowing me to avoid the jaundice and wilted vegetables at our local grocery store, or the over-priced vegetables from California at Whole Foods. And the peaches, oh don’t get me started on the peaches, I am living for them these days and sad that I am all out and have to wait until Thursday to get more. 

  

I wasn’t really sure what to do with these babes, I knew that they would be as watery as yellow squash, so not ideal for a pasta, but since pasta has been what I have been craving lately, I had to make it work. I decided to give them a more complex flavor by roasting them. It is a little warm for roasting, but I am incapable of getting a grill going outside, and too lazy to grill them on our grill pan. After roasting them I chopped them up an sautéed them with bacon, carrots, celery and onions that I had chopped up in a food processor. It was very light, even with the bacon, and a great summer pasta. 

 

Casareccie with Pattypan Squash

• 3 pattypan squash
• 3 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
• 1 carrot, peeled
• 1 stalk of celery
• 1/2 an onion
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 lb of casareccie pasta
• grated parmiggiano reggiano cheese

Preheat your oven to 400°. Cut pattypan squash into 1/2 inch slices. Place in a single layer on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Roast for 10 to 20 minutes, depending on how much time it takes them to brown. When they are browned, remove from the oven and allow to cool. 

Fill a large pot with water for the pasta. Bring to a boil over high heat.

Heat a pan over low-heat and add your bacon pieces. While the bacon is cooking, chop your carrot, celery and onion in a food processor. If you have parsley at hand, add a few sprigs, it will add great color. 

When the bacon has started to sizzle and change color add the carrot mix, sauté for a few minutes, allowing the liquid to evaporate. Chop the cooled roasted pattypans and add to the pan. There should be a lot of liquid from the vegetables, but if it starts to dry out add about a half cup of water. 

Once the water starts to boil for the pasta add a small handful of salt to the water and bring to a rolling boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente. When the pasta is perfectly al dente, drain the pasta and turn up the heat on the sauce. Without shaking all of the water out of the colander pour the pasta into the pan and toss it with the sauce. This allows for the pasta to cook a little longer in the sauce and to absorb the flavor. Serve immediately with grated parmiggiano reggiano. 

Chicken and Spinach Enchiladas

  

I’ve been off food lately, surprising, I love food, cooking it, eating it, writing about it, photographing it and shopping for it. Lately the thought of it turns my stomach, pasta with butter has been the most appetizing thing to me. My husband has been wonderful and has been doing most of the cooking lately, but I’ve been avoiding the kitchen, and therefore not even photographing his efforts. My archives are dwindling and my desire to even look at the photographs has been negative, so I’ve been off the blog for a while, but I don’t want to leave it hanging, because my love for writing this blog is greater than my turned stomach. 

  

I made enchiladas a few weeks ago, tried it out with some chicken and corn tortillas. They were delicious though I am ashamed to admit that I prefer flour tortillas over corn, they are easier to manage and have a texture that appeals to me more than the grainy corn tortillas. I essentially used the same recipe for these guys that I had used for the black bean enchiladas that I made a few months ago from Diana Kennedy’s wonderful cookbook The Essential Cuisines of Mexico.  A friend of mine from Mexico confusedly asked about the fact that milk was one of the ingredients in the salsa verde, I was surprised by that too, but I haven’t tried a different recipe at this point, this one is pretty amazing. 

Chicken and Spinach Enchiladas

• 8 flour or corn tortillas (depending on the size of the tortillas, corn tortillas are more traditional for this recipe and are smaller than most flour tortillas, use as many as will fill the dish)
• 2 cups of cooked chicken, shredded
• 2 cups of baby spinach
• 6 ounces of queso fresco
• salsa verde (recipe below)
• cilantro for garnish
• sour cream 

You can cook your chicken anyway that you prefer. I browned chicken thighs and then baked them, which made the process a little longer, but gave wonderful flavor to my chicken. You could also poach chicken breasts, which would make it a lot faster, less messy and less work, but you are foregoing flavor. I also recommend grilling too much meat the next time you have a barbecue and using the leftover chicken the next day in your enchiladas, wonderful flavor. 

Preheat the oven to 350°. Drizzle some extra-virgin olive oil at the bottom of a 9″ x 13″ baking dish. Crumble a few tbsp of queso fresco in a tortilla, put a few leaves of spinach and a small handful of chicken in a tortilla and roll it up, placing it in the baking dish. Repeat with the following 7 tortillas, filling in the entire dish. Pour in the salsa verde and smother the tortillas. 

Bake for 30 minutes. 

Plate the enchiladas and sprinkle with queso fresco and cilantro. Serve immediately with sour cream on the side. 

Salsa Verde:

• 2 cups cooked tomate verde, drained (see below)
• 4 serrano chiles (I used half of a jalapeño since my husband doesn’t take well to too much heat)
• 3 sprigs cilantro (a lot more!)
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 garlic clove
• salt to taste
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 tbsp sour cream

Remove the husks from the tomatillos, wash them and place them on an ungreased cast iron skillet or grill pan, cook them over medium heat, turning from time to time, until they are fairly soft and slightly charred. 

Blend the tomate verde with the chiles, cilantro, milk, garlic and salt until smooth. Heat the oil in a large skillet and cook the sauce over fairly high heat until reduced and seasoned – about 5 minutes. Remove from heat, add the sour cream and set aside. 

Farfalle with Zucchini Flowers and Saffron

Zucchini flowers!!! A delicacy that I never dreamed of finding in an American market, what a pleasant surprise when I found them at the Daniel Island Farmers Market a few weeks ago. I was surprised by how much they cost, considering the fact that most farmers just toss them and sell the zucchini, but I ignored it and bought a few to make in a pasta. Had I been feeling more creative I may have stuffed them and fried them alla romana. I hope to find them again this week!

  

Even though I had beautiful vegetables and these flowers at my disposal, I was not feeling inspired or creative in the kitchen. Luckily my husband’s juices were flowing and he made dinner for us that night. Ahhhhh, I love it when that happens, a rare treat these days, the poor dear. 

He made a pasta that a friend of his in Milan had made for him once, with a battuto of carrots, celery, onions and parsley all minced up in the food processor. This was simmered over a low flame and then tossed with saffron and the zucchini flowers, complex flavors and wonderfully delicate. Grazie amore. 

Farfalle with Zucchini Flowers and Saffron

• 8 to 12 zucchini flowers
• 1 carrot, peeled
• 1 stalk of celery
• 1 small onion
• ½ cup of flat-leaved parsley
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 envelopes of saffron
• ½ lb of farfalle pasta
• salt for pasta water

Fill a large pot with water for the pasta. Bring to a boil over high heat.

Clean the carrot, celery and onion and chop them up in a food processor with the parsley. Heat butter in a wide saucepan over medium-high heat and add the carrot, celery, onion and parsley mix. Allow to simmer over medium-low heat for a few minutes while bringing a large pot of water for the pasta to a boil. If the mix starts to dry out, add water as needed. 

In the meantime, clean your zucchini flowers. There were a number of little bugs on my zucchini flowers, which you won’t always find, but it is best rinse them out to make sure you don’t get that extra protein. Dry them with a kitchen cloth or allow them to drain in a colander, the extra water won’t hurt. 

Once the water starts to boil for the pasta add a small handful of salt to the water and bring to a rolling boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente.

At this point, add the saffron and the zucchini flowers. 

When the pasta is perfectly al dente, drain the pasta and turn up the heat on the sauce. Without shaking all of the water out of the colander pour the pasta into the pan and toss it with the sauce. This allows for the pasta to cook a little longer in the sauce and to absorb the flavor. Serve immediately. 

*You don’t want to add cheese to a dish with saffron, it would kill the saffron’s delicate flavor. 

Couscous Salad with Yellow Zucchini

Yellow zucchini? I’ve never heard of yellow zucchini, there were a number of different types of zucchini in Italy, but they were all different tones of green, never yellow. It must be some sort of hybrid with yellow squash, who knows, I always got C’s in biology in high school, so I won’t even start asking those questions. They were beautiful, so they came home with me. 

     

I had a really hard time figuring out what to do with them, I feel like I make too much pasta, so I didn’t want to make them for a pasta dish, I thought about making them for a scapece, with mint and a dash of balsamic vinegar, a quiche, but none of that sounded good to me. So I went with a couscous salad, perfect for the dog days of summer, keeping the kitchen nice and cool and eating something that wouldn’t heat our bodies up either. I used baby spinach, mint, a farmers market tomato and toasted green pumpkin seeds, which have recently become the new pine nut in my kitchen, mmmmm, so delicious. 

Couscous Salad with Yellow Zucchini

• 1 cup couscous
• 1¼ cups water
• 4 medium yellow zucchini (green zucchini will also work)
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, divided
• 1 cup chopped spinach
• 1 large tomato, chopped
• 3 tbsp mint, chopped
• ½ cup toasted green pumpkin seeds

Wash and thinly slice zucchini into half-moons. Heat 2 tbsps of the oil in a wide saucepan over medium-high heat and add the whole cloves of garlic. When garlic starts to sizzle add slices of zucchini. Sauté zucchini over high heat for about five minutes or until they start to brown, lower heat to a medium flame. You need to make sure to turn the zucchini frequently so that it doesn’t burn. When the zucchini is done, place them on a paper towel with a slotted spoon to absorb the excess oil. 

For couscous pour water and the remaining tbsp of olive oil in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil. When the water is boiling remove from heat and add the couscous making sure that all of the couscous is covered by the water. Cover and set aside for 5 minutes. Add butter and fluff the couscous with a fork over a light flame. 

Allow the couscous to cool in a bowl large enough for you to toss the other ingredients in. Add the zucchini and toss, followed by the remaining ingredients. This should be served at room temperature as a main course or as a side dish. 

 

Baby Artichokes and Scallops Risotto

   

These pictures have been sitting in my archives for over a month now, I’m not sure why I have put off posting this recipe for as long as I have. Artichokes are already out of season, we’re in tomato and squash season now and those yellow zucchini have been in my fridge for too long, I really need to get to them before regretting their death. 

 

One of the challenges of cooking with artichokes is making sure that they are tender enough to be eaten. My first attempts at cooking artichokes were total failures, hitting really tough spots in every bite, luckily these attempts were in Italy where artichokes cost about the same as zucchini and aren’t thistly jewels in the produce section. I thought that baby artichokes may have been a bit less tough than the big ones, but was mistaken. You really need to blanch or steam them for a few minutes before adding them to a sauce, especially when making a risotto, you will overcook your rice while trying to get the artichokes to soften. This is unfortunately what happened to this dish. 

Artichokes go beautifully with seafood, and since it is really difficult to find squid or cuttlefish in the Charleston markets (Whole Foods sometimes has them, but they look like they have been dead for weeks and are usually shipped in from Thailand), I went with giant sea scallops, shrimp not being an option for us due to my husband’s allergies. The scallops were good, but their texture and flavor were a smidgen too subtle for what I was going for. 

Baby Artichokes and Scallops Risotto

• ½ lb sea scallops or bay scallops, if using sea scallops, cut them in half or into quarters
• 8 baby artichokes
• ½ an onion, chopped finely
• 1 cup of carnaroli or Arborio rice (Italians measure rice by demitasse cups, 1 cup for each person and one for the pot)
• 4½ cups fish broth (recipe to follow)
• 2 cups of dry white wine
• 3 tbsp butter
• zest of 1 lemon
• a few sprigs of flat-leaf parsley
• salt to taste

Clean the artichokes by eliminating their outer leaves; you can do this by bending them and snapping them off. Do this until you get to the leaves that are lighter in color.  Cut off the tip of the central cone, to eliminate the tougher green end of the leaves. Cut the heart in half, but with baby artichokes you don’t need to clean out the choke, there is so little that it couldn’t do any damage. Cut the heart of the artichoke into thin slices and immerse in the lemon water. If your artichokes have stems, cut the stem off and peel it of its outer skin. 

Blanch the artichokes in boiling water for 5 minutes. 

Chop onion into fine pieces and bring the fish broth to a simmer.

Heat a large stovetop casserole pan over medium-high heat and melt 2 tbsp of butter at the bottom of the pan, covering the pan. When the butter is melted add onion and sauté until the onion is translucent. Add rice and coat it in the butter, toasting it a bit. When the rice becomes opaque, after about 1 minute add a cup of wine to the pan, enough to cover the rice, stir frequently.

When the rice has absorbed the wine, add a ladleful of broth to the pan and continue stirring. Once the rice starts to absorb the broth add the artichokes and the scallops to the pan. Continue adding the broth as the rice absorbs it, you want it to almost dry out before adding the broth each time. Add the lemon zest towards the end of cooking. 

When the rice is finished it should be al dente and all of the liquid should be absorbed. Remove from heat and add remaining tablespoon of butter, toss chopped parsley in. Serve immediately.

fish broth

• 4 small fish, cleaned
• 1 carrot, peeled
• 2 stalk of celery, cleaned
• 1 onion, peeled
• 1 bay leaf
• 5 cups of water
• pinch of salt

Place all of the ingredients into a pot and bring to a boil, let boil until the fish has fallen apart and the carrot seemed to be cooked through, strain with a sieve into another pot and set aside for risotto.