blue_dolphin

Asparagus with crab, brown butter, and lemon p 166 from Six Seasons of Pasta I had some rock crab claws that I might ordinarily steam and serve with lemon and butter. This recipe captures those flavors nicely in a pasta dish with one of my favorite vegetables. Much tidier to pull out all the crabmeat in the kitchen than at the table, too!

No, thank you! I get that lobster, shrimp and crab boils are served this way but it’s not my cup of tea. Many cuisines are traditionally eaten without utensils but in a very civilized way using bread, rice, etc to gather bites that can be politely popped in one’s mouth. Spaghetti? No way!

That’s a beautiful loaf, @Tropicalsenior! I would love to try toasting a slice for breakfast!

I really liked the Creamy Sesame Ginger in a slaw and on roasted winter squash, sweet potatoes or carrots. I loved the House Dressing on the warm potato salad. That one seems to go with everything! So far, I’ve found the Tahini Sbagliato the least versatile, maybe because mine came out quite garlicky due to giant garlic cloves. However, it was excellent as a marinade for chicken thighs, as a sandwich spread and as the base for a herby hummus. Probably shouldn’t have said it wasn’t versatile as that’s a pretty good range! The Creamy Oregano was also excellent as a chicken thigh marinade (she calls that variation “souvlaki-ish”), on roasted veg and in several bean salads. I’m on a mission to try all the dressings in that book. I have a small batch of the Roquefort on hand at the moment but I’m not crazy for it. I prefer blue cheeses like that as crumbles rather than blended into a creamy dressing. Maybe I need to put it on a wedge of iceberg!

I made the roasted Brussels sprouts with pancetta vinaigrette from Six Seasons, put a poached egg on it and called it breakfast. I had the pancetta vinaigrette leftover from a pasta salad in Six Seasons of Pasta so this was very quick. I also had some little potatoes left from the same dish so they got thrown in, too.

Welcome to eG, @Sassy_Momma! My favorite so far is still the pasta with fresh corn, jalapeños and brown butter that’s in the first post in this topic. You really need the best fresh sweet corn for that so it’s no good for this time of year unless you’re in Australia! The turnips with turnip greens, anchovies and garlic surprised me with how good it is for something so easy. If you have the garlic butter made, the rest comes together in a flash. I quite liked two of the cabbage dishes. I thought the one with cabbage, whipped lemon ricotta and chile crisp was really interesting with different flavors and the one with cabbage and pancetta is a real homey, comfort food dish. I’ve barely dipped a toe in the ragu chapter but liked all the ones I tried: the nut ragu, the green lentil ragu and the short rib ragu with black peppercorns.

You could try Sugru (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) if you have some around.

Sorry for the slow progress and the frigid temps. I’d say you’re underway - you’ve departed your home port and are making progress, even if it’s not as much as you’d like. I’m looking forward to following along in this adventure from my sofa which is blessedly safe from mechanical failures!

Today, I made the Springtime Pasta Salad with Pancetta Vinaigrette from Six Seasons of Pasta. Yeah, I know it’s freezing in half the country but it’s headed for 80°F here today so I figured a pasta salad was a good idea. The veg are new potatoes, fava beans, peas (which I omitted), snap peas, asparagus, artichoke hearts and scallions. The Pancetta Vinaigrette is the same as in Six Seasons. The tomatoes weren’t in the recipe but were in the kitchen and got added. I enjoyed this but think it might be better as a potato/veg salad. In any case, the potatoes (which I apparently hid in the photo) should get the same treatment the pasta does - tossed with lemon juice and maybe some of the dressing while they’re still warm to season them well

That looks a really satisfying meal and the cutie is a perfect little dessert with it! I’ll bet the soup was delicious but I feel your pain on seasoning soups. I’ve been known to have an array of tiny dishes of soup on the counter with lemon juice added to one, sherry vinegar in another, fish sauce, hot sauce, a pinch of sugar, etc, etc, going back and forth to get it right before seasoning the whole pot!

Pretty much the same as @ElsieD except I don’t have their app. Tapping the little bookmark icon on the website does pretty much the same thing. I save recipes I want to try and mark them as cooked when I do. Also handy that it lets you see a list of the recipes you’ve recently viewed. You can also create as many folders as you like.

This is the short rib ragu with black peppercorns p 90 from Six Seasons of Pasta. The header notes say this is a play on peposa, a Tuscan beef dish with a lot of black pepper. The recipe calls for 2 Tbsp of black peppercorns for a 5 cup batch and that seems pleasant to me. I might add some additional cracked peppercorns next time. The peppercorns are softened during the long cook but still give a nice little tongue-tingling pop when you bite into them. The header notes recommend a curled shape like gemelli or rotini to capture the short rib bits. I chose the reginette (little queens) shape from my recent Etto purchase. I will be freezing the ragu in meal-sized portions and should have an almost life-time supply! Anybody want some?

Six Seasons of Pasta has three recipes that use a celery root purée as a base for the sauce. The celery root is peeled, cut into chunks, simmered in milk with bay leaves and blitzed in the blender. I followed his suggestion to freeze the extra purée in meal-sized portions and look forward to using it in different ways. This is the Celery root and seafood "chowder" on p 372 With shrimp, scallops and white fish (I used rockfish), this really does taste like a seafood chowder, though if that’s what I’m craving, I probably want soup, not pasta! I learned from making one of the other celery root recipes to limit the amount of celery root purée to what’s specified. He says a few tablespoons in either direction is fine but too much really gives a gloopy, pasty appearance. The purée has a very light texture and is not pasty at all but too much and it really looks that way. I used spaghetti triangoletti as the pasta. The lemon juice and the drizzle of lemon agrumato oil added the perfect finish.

A lot of evaporated milk contains ingredients like disodium phosphate and carrageenan that prevent coagulation and stabilize the mixture. That could be important. I tried to freeze quiche once. I like a quiche with a delicate custard and upon thawing, it looked like @Smithy’s example.

A strawberry & cheese crepe from a local small business, Ukrainian Flavors, plus some giant blueberries from TJ’s They sell their items frozen to reheat at home. In my case, this went into the CSO on steam bake and came out very nicely. The crepe was lovely and paper thin.