Cooking from Scratch
Basic recipes that are used in other recipes
So, it’s tomato season, and you have a huge number of fresh tomatoes. What do you do? Sure, they’re great just sliced with a bit of salt, but, don’t you want to save some of that bright summer flavor for later? We do. Plus, as you saw yesterday, when we get tomatoes, we get a serious amount of tomatoes. So, we’re always looking for ways to store some of those tomatoes for later. Even if later might be just later this week.
Continue reading “Tomato Confit”
Do you like gnocchi, but don’t want to go to all the trouble of baking potatoes, ricing them, and then making gnocchi? Do you wish you could just mix a few ingredients together and have done with it? Would you like to have delicious gnocchi available for quick and easy dinners? Well, this is the recipe for you. Plus it makes enough that you can turn a few minutes of work into multiple meals.
Continue reading “Ricotta Gnocchi”
This is the shape of the pasta that we had at Roma Antica in San Francisco a few weeks back. We tried to make them when we made our Pear and Cheese filling for pasta, but we had problems. First, we tried filling round pieces of pasta, but, our pasta sheets were too thick, resulting in a lot of bunched up pasta at the top. Fortunately for you, and us, we’ve figured out the kinks and are ready to show you how to make these cute little bags of filled pasta.
Continue reading “Shaping Sacchetti”
When we made the Broccoli Strascinati the other day, we had no idea what strascinati meant, so we figured that we’d simply search for it and find out. Well, it turns out that strascinati is related to the Italian word for dragged. Hmm. Who knew? But, it also turns out that strascinati refers to a particular shape of pasta, and it’s one that scratchers can make by hand. Naturally, we’ll show you how so that you can add it to your ever growing list of pasta shapes.
Continue reading “Shaping Strascinati”
We’ll be posting pickles and condiments over the next week or so — all will be pretty easy, and most will be coming from one of our favorite cookbooks, Ad Hoc at Home, by Thomas Keller. This is partly because they were recipes that we wanted to try, but, mainly, it was because we were busy making these things for a small French-style picnic luncheon we were catering. With everything going on during the holiday season, these simple recipes were really lifesavers, just as they were listed in the book.
Continue reading “Ad Hoc Pickled Cauliflower”
Apparently, pansotti means something like “big belly” in an Italian dialect, so we’re going to use the Italian term for these shapes, and not the English translation. It just sounds nicer to say that we’re shaping pansotti. And, fortunately for everyone, these are a very simple filled pasta shape to make. We’re pretty sure you can make them based on a single photo.
Continue reading “Shaping Pansotti”
We almost never buy nectarines or peaches at the store, no matter how cheap. Regardless of the price, they aren’t worth it. They’re generally crunchy, or mealy, or bruised, and never, ever good. So, we just say no, and move on to something that’ll taste good. This week, though, we came up with the idea of making Nectarine Chutney; something like that, with all the extra spices and flavors, and the long, slow cooking, should be okay using store-bought nectarines. At least, it won’t be too bad.
Continue reading “Nectarine Chutney”