Cooking with "Six Seasons of Pasta," by Joshua McFadden

[SLB]

As always, you and these photos are making the book basically irresistible.

 

In the meantime, if I heard Dave Arnold correctly, McFadden is the guest on next week's episode of the "Cooking Issues" podcast.  

[blue_dolphin]

15 minutes ago, SLB said:

As always, you and these photos are making the book basically irresistible.

 

In the meantime, if I heard Dave Arnold correctly, McFadden is the guest on next week's episode of the "Cooking Issues" podcast.  

Thanks - I’ll check it out!

[patti]

Your photos are stunning and the composition of the food is exquisite … WOW!

[blue_dolphin]

16 hours ago, patti said:

Your photos are stunning and the composition of the food is exquisite … WOW!

Aww, that’s sweet of you to say ❤️

[blue_dolphin]

When I roasted the butternut squash cubes for the last recipe, I roasted the rest of the squash and made the butternut squash purée that’s used in the pasta with butternut squash with sausage, sage, and spicy chiles on p 375.

The squash/sausage/sage combo is pretty classic but the Calabrian chilies are what make it sing!

After finding the roasted squash/nut ragu pasta too sweet for my taste, I was a bit wary about trying this one but the purée was made so I soldiered on and was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this.  I used hot Italian sausage and used Calabrian bomba sauce instead of the sliced chilies called for and suspect a variety of chiles or chile pastes would work. I also threw in a handful of arugula to increase the veg quotient. 
 

I have more squash purée left and plan to try some variations on this theme. 

[Paul Bacino]

Ambitious I say!! @blue_dolphin

[blue_dolphin]

From Six Seasons of Pasta, I made the Sun-dried tomato and almond pesto p 33 a while back and stashed it in the freezer. Today, I pulled that out and used it in the pasta with Brussels sprouts with sun-dried tomato and almond pesto p 329. 

 

Excellent flavor combination, if a bit rich. I wish I’d noticed a previous recommendation on Eat Your Books to roast the Brussels sprouts instead of browning them in the skillet with the pancetta and garlic which gave them good flavor but I needed to add oil to the pan for this step even though I knew the pesto to be added later had plenty of oil in it. Still, it was delicious. I’ll add more sprouts next time - I have pasta left but all the sprouts got eaten!

 

The sun-dried tomato and almond pesto is delicious.  It calls for oil packed sun-dried tomatoes and I used some from an older jar which were quite dark. The flavor is fine but I might use some regular sun-dried tomatoes that I’ve steamed to soften for a brighter color and flavor.