Farfalle and Summer Vegetables

Normally this time of the year we'd be asshole deep in produce from our garden. However, weeks and weeks of cold rain at the start of the season moved straight into oppressive heat and humidity. All our plants are stunted. Fortunately, there's a farmer's market in town where we can make up the difference. This is one of my favorite summer pasta dishes, especially because it is even good cold. It's quick and easy to make, uses up surplus produce, and can be modified. Add some shrimp or Crabuluxe. Throw in some Spanish chorizo. Add some shredded baked chicken. Add some zing with olives or capers. Maybe some artichoke hearts? The sky's the limit.

Farfalle and Summer Vegetables 

Ingredients

• 1 box (16 oz.) farfalle or other short pasta
• 1 pint cherry or roma tomatoes, halved
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 medium zucchini or yellow squash, chopped
• 4 ounces mushrooms, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• salt and pepper

Directions

1. Cook pasta according to directions, but shave a minute off the end. You want the pasta to have a little bite and it's going to cook a bit in the sauce you're about to make.
2. In a large pan, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add garlic and onion. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring regularly to prevent the garlic from burning.
3. Add the tomatoes, zucchini, and mushrooms. Cook for another 3-5 minutes, until the zucchini starts to get tender and the tomatoes start to break down.
4. Turn down the heat and add the cream and cheese. Cook at a simmer for another couple of minutes.
5. Add the pasta. Toss over low heat for a minute or two to make sure everything is coated. Salt and pepper to taste.

Good times!

Pasta with Cherry Tomato and Red Pepper

     We truly enjoy pasta in our house. There's nothing finer than a finely crafted pasta dish. If that's what you're looking for, you're probably on the wrong website. I can, however, provide you with a tasty and simple pasta recipe. Our garden has been producing tomatoes and peppers like crazy, so we were looking for ways to use them up. A basic, olive oil-based pasta dish seemed just the thing. It totally was. This is a fresh, light recipe that has a bit of a kick from the red pepper flakes. Give it a try and see what you think. Maybe less oil? Maybe add some shrimp? Get creative. As always, notes are in blue.

Pasta with Cherry Tomato and Red Pepper

Ingredients

• 1 pound pasta of your choice (don't pick something goofy like giant shells or lasagna noodles)
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (insert obvious virgin joke here)
• 2 medium red bell peppers, cored and sliced
• 2 cups cherry tomatoes, cut in half
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• shredded Parmesan for topping

Directions

1. Cook pasta until al dente. Drain and set aside.
2. In a large saucepan, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and sautee for a couple of minutes, until garlic starts to brown.
3. Add the bell pepper. Sautee for 2-3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and red pepper flakes. Sautee another 3-5 minutes. 
4. Add the pasta and toss over medium-low heat for 2-3 more minutes to incorporate ingredients. Garnish with Parmesan.

Good times!

Food I Have Trouble With

     I'm a grown man. I should be beyond this sort of stuff. My tastes have matured and I should be able to enjoy the myriad of foods available to me. This is not the case. There are just some foods and ingredients that I can't handle. Sometimes it's the taste, sometimes it's the consistency, sometimes it's childhood scarring.

"Souffles don't rise down here. When you're down here with us, you won't rise too!"

      Here is a small sampling of some of the foods I can't get past:

Blue Cheese

I know I should like this. I LOVE cheese. I have a few problems with blue cheese. For one thing, it's too pungent. Every time I have it in a dish, it tends to overpower everything. I also have a problem with the fact that it's fundamentally moldy cheese. When I see stuff growing on the cheese in my fridge, the first thing to go through my mind is generally not "Oh boy! A gastric delight!" You'd be pissed if somebody threw a piece of fuzzy cheddar on your burger and told you it was supposed to be that way.

Cherry Tomatoes

This is almost embarrassing. When I was like five or six, there was a cherry tomato in my salad. I picked it up with my fingers and bit into it. It squirted me directly in the eye, nearly blinding me. To this day, something like 35 years later, I still can't eat a raw cherry tomato. True story.

Swedish Potato Sausage

My mother-in-law's side of the family is Swedish, and year after year she attempts to inflict these on me. She calls them "potato skorka," but if you do a Google image search, you don't see pictures of sausages. Swedish Potato Sausages are actually called "potatiskorv" which leads me to believe that the Swedes are afraid to say the sausage's true name. Possibly they fear they will summon an angry sausage god that will lay waste to their town.  Nevertheless, these are just horrible. Imagine a bratwurst made of nothing but salt and gristle. Then make it an unappealing shade of beige. 

Potatiskorv knows the gate. Potatiskorv is the gate. Potatiskorv is the key and guardian of the gate.
Past, present, future, all are one in Potatiskorv.
He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. 

Swiss Chard

Tastes like dirt. It doesn't matter what I do with it. I've steamed, blanched, stir-fried, boiled, pickled, baked it in with other things, left it raw. It just tastes like I'm eating chunks of my yard. It's very aesthetically pleasing though, and ends up in the garden more for cosmetic reasons than anything else. 

Whole Mushrooms

If a mushroom is sliced and cooked, I'm fine. If it's a whole mushroom, I can't do it. Even a stuffed mushroom cap. There's something about the consistency. When I bite into a whole mushroom I get this weird feeling that somehow Freud would have something to say about it.

Panettone

Don't get me wrong, I love my in-laws to death, but they have some strange tastes. Normally I love Italian food. My father-in-law's side is Italian and they have great food. The desserts are wonderful. Except panettone. Every year these are secreted on my holiday table. I see that cardboard box and just despair. They are the consistency of a kitchen sponge and fairly devoid of notable flavor. They are useful in case of the apocalypse as they have a shelf life that would make a Twinkie envious. We opened one last December and it was largely unchanged into mid-March. 

Good times!