Do you like Italian food Do you like food that is kind of like lasagne but not exactly like lasagne?

Do you like making a multi-step meal that involves scratch-made sauce and hand-filled pasta?

Do you like leftovers that last for days and only get better with time Do you like perfectly delightful combinations of pasta, cheese, spinach, and meat sauce  Do you like noodle tubes filled with magic and topped with awesome?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then this is a recipe for you!

I started making manicotti a couple years ago when I was home for Christmas. My mom, a long-time lasagne maker, decided to mix it up and buy manicotti shells instead for a family dinner. I volunteered to help, and though it was a lengthy process, I genuinely enjoyed stuffing a cheesy, spinach-y goo into the shells. Since then I’ve tinkered with different recipes, and I finally landed on the right balance. Like, a year ago. But it takes a long time to make already, so I hadn’t yet talked myself into taking the time to photograph the process. Not to mention, I keep making it in the winter when I have little evening light for shooting photos, soooooo.

Sorry for the delay!

A warning: if you’re looking for a quick week-night dinner, this is not the right choice. It could be if you decide to use frozen spinach instead of fresh or pre-made pasta sauce. But where’s the fun in that?

We start with a full pound of fresh spinach and trim all the stems off. Honestly, when I’m being lazy, I don’t trim the stems, but can I urge you to do so The texture is just so much better without them.

Once trimmed, the spinach needs to be cooked down. Lots of people recommend boiling the spinach, but I actually prefer to sauté it. Since the spinach needs to be squeezed of moisture later, why introduce a pot of water to the equation?

So the spinach is washed, trimmed, sautéed, drained, squeezed, and chopped. Alternately, use a 10 oz package of frozen spinach. Your call.

Next up Saucy saucy. I love using my Favorite Quick Spaghetti Sauce for this with the addition of ground beef. If you’re not a carnivore, or even if you are but don’t feel like having meat today, you can also totally make this without and be perfectly happy. I like options!

NEXT! While the sauce is simmering along, mixing up the filling doesn’t take much time at all. A blend of ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan is added to the spinach, along with an egg to keep the mixture nice and fluffy in the oven.

Also, cook your noodles. You’ll need those.

Sauce Check. Noodles Check. Filling Check.

Now it’s time for the fun, messy part!

Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to fill your noodles with a spoon. You’ll just end up with cheese everywhere around you with not nearly enough in the noodles.

I use a large pastry bag with an opening about 3/4″ in diameter. If you won’t have one of those, no sweat, just trim the end off of a plastic baggie.

Fill each noodle until it feels firm and the cheese is barely oozing out the ends.

Fast-forward 10 minutes and voila! You’re done! Now just a coat of meat sauce and a generous sprinkle of parmesan before it’s time for the oven.

I won’t lie: this is a lot of work. But the final product is so worth it! Next time you have a Sunday afternoon free and wanna make a splash at dinner, make this! You’ll be glad you did.

Manicotti
Adapted from Food Network Kitchen

For the Filled Manicotti Shells
1 lb fresh spinach (or a 10 oz package of frozen spinach)
1 1/2 lb (3 c) ricotta
6 oz (about 2 c) mozzarella cheese, freshly grated
2 oz (about 1 c) parmesan cheese, freshly grated
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 tsp course salt
a few cranks freshly ground black pepper
1 lb manicotti shells

For the Sauce
2 tsp olive oil
1 c diced yellow onion
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 pints basic tomato sauce
2 T sugar
2 tsp dried parsley
2 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 lb ground beef

If using fresh spinach, remove stems and wash thoroughly. Heat a large frying pan over medium heat and add spinach in batches, cooking until spinach is soft, fairly dense, and dark green. Remove to a colander and repeat with remaining spinach. Squeeze as much liquid from the spinach as possible and chop finely. If using frozen spinach, thaw completely, squeeze the liquid out, and chop finely. Set spinach aside.

In the frying pan you used to cook the spinach, heat over medium and add ground beef. Season with salt and pepper and add a couple tablespoons of water to help break down the beef into small bits. Cook until browned through and set aside.

While the beef is browning, dice onion and mince garlic for the sauce. Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan and saute onion and garlic until they have a bit of color. Add tomato sauce and all seasonings and stir well. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 15-20 minutes or until sauce has begun to thicken. Once the sauce has reached desired consistency, blend with an immersion blender, blender, or food processor. Add the sauce to the ground beef and set aside.

While sauce is cooking, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add manicotti noodles and cook for 10 minutes or until noodles are al dente. Drain in a colander.

While the noodles are cooking and the sauce is simmering, grate mozzarella and parmesan cheese. In a small bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Combine spinach, ricotta, mozzarella, half of the parmesan, salt, pepper, and the eggs. Mix well.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spread a thin layer of the meat sauce into the bottom of a 13″x 9″ baking dish. Scoop filling into a large pastry bag, or, trim the end off a plastic storage bag. The opening of either should be about 3/4″ in diameter. Fill each manicotti shell by placing one end against the pad of your hand (to prevent filling from squeezing out) and filling to the top. Make sure each shell doesn’t have any empty sections. Place filled shells in the baking dish. You’ll have to press them fairly close together so they will all fit.

Spread the remaining meat sauce across the top of the manicotti. Sprinkle remaining parmesan cheese over the top of the sauce and bake for 30 minutes.

I eat rather a lot of pasta. When I started writing this post, I had to go back to see what stories I’ve already told you about my lifelong noodle-y obsession, just to make sure I wasn’t repeating something.

I’ve already mentioned that as a kid, I loved spaghetti with butter and parmesan cheese above all other things, and in fact I rarely tolerated the annoying hindrance of spaghetti sauce. It was sloppy, acidic, and mostly just not my thing. I still remember the first time I actually enjoyed a smear of red sauce atop a mound of pasta. Bizarrely, it was on a camping trip. In our open-air kitchen of two camp stoves and a picnic table, Dad carefully cooked a pot of pasta in one pot and in another, he combined a can of basic tomato sauce with a seasoning mix.  I don’t know why I opted to try the sauce that time, but I suddenly realized this red sauce thing wasn’t necessarily so bad after all. To this day, however, I’m still pretty picky about my red sauces and rarely order them at a restaurant as a result.

There are a few brands and varieties I’ve discovered at the grocery over the years that I like rather well, but once I began canning my own basic tomato sauce, I felt it was time to finally find the homemade version I was seeking.

Since there are approximately one gazillion recipes for spaghetti sauce out there, each one claiming to be better than the last, it was a bit intimidating to know where to begin. Some swore by the addition of carrots and peppers, others piled on the sugar, and still others demanded the tomatoes be practically raw to achieve pure spaghetti sauce bliss. Fresh herbs, dried herbs, lots of spice, none at all – there really are so many ways to do this. How was I to know what I liked the most?

So I began experimenting. And after quite a few acceptable batches, I finally found the combination of herbs, seasoning, garlic, and onions that makes my soul sing.

For those of you who are fresh-herb-purists out there, you’ll probably decry my little piles of dried leaves and insist that their flavor is lacking. And perhaps you’re right. But I’ve loved the way this sauce turns out every time, and I like that it’s always something I can throw together without a trip to the grocery for delicate green leaves. If you do want to try fresh herbs, you’ll probably need more than the quantities listed below to achieve the same density of flavor.

And for you fresh-tomato-purists out there: do you know how many months of the year I can buy high-quality, delicious tomatoes in Colorado About four. One third of the year. Great spaghetti sauce does not need to start from fresh tomatoes the night it is served, in my opinion. In fact that would take FOREVER to cook. Since I can my own tomatoes, I am lucky that I know where they came from and what’s in the sauce. I love that I can pull a bottle of that summer sunshine from the pantry and have a deep, vibrant spaghetti sauce ready in half an hour. There’s no way I’m starting from fresh tomatoes, especially at this time of year when the only tomatoes I can buy are, erm, horrible.

So here you have it: a delicious, flavorful spaghetti sauce that you can make year-round, without the need for anything that is out of season. I love this sauce on every pasta I’ve thrown it over – spaghetti, spaghetti with meatballs, manicotti, lasagne… the list goes on. When doubled, it takes a pound of ground beef perfectly for the creation of manicotti and lasagne.

Give it a shot!

Favorite Quick Spaghetti Sauce

1-2 tsp olive oil
1/2 c diced yellow onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 pint basic tomato sauce
1 T sugar
1 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp salt
pinch black pepper

Heat olive oil in a small sauce pan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and cook until onion is translucent and garlic has just a bit of color. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Cook until sauce has reached desired consistency.

Use an immersion blender, blender, or food processor to puree the sauce until smooth.

Serve over literally any pasta, or use as the sauce in manicotti or lasagne.

Magic Pasta.

Having stumbled across this delightful combination of ingredients by pure accident, I accidentally discovered a meal that Brad and I both find so perfect, so delicious, that I have to work really really hard to make anything else for dinner. Originally hatched as a way to use up the previous year’s supply of home-canned marinara sauce, this dish now holds permanent quarters at the top of our favorites list. I know that “Magic Pasta” doesn’t really indicate the components of the meal particularly well, but it’s all we call it. If you prefer, you can call it Pasta with Amazing Tomato Cream Sauce and Italian Sausage.

But don’t worry, you don’t have to go back in time to can your own pasta sauce to make this dish at home. A store-bought marinara would work just fine, or you can make your own version fairly quickly by spicing up a pint of plain tomato sauce. The sweet Italian sausage, on the other hand, is non-negotiable. We’ve tried it with chicken and with ground beef, and while both are good, neither one achieves the magic of the sausage.

With a little cream, sugar, salt, and pepper, the sauce is simple and cooks quickly while the pasta boils nearby. It takes almost no time at all.

I urge you, nay, I beg you to make this pasta. I’m looking out for you, and I’m telling you, you NEED this in your life this week. I know it’s summer and everyone’s all into salads and smoothies and juice, but please lay those ideas aside and make yourself a big pot of tomato-y, sausage-y pasta.

Then invite me over so I can eat some, too.

Magic Pasta

Serves 3-4

10 oz rigatoni or penne
2 links sweet Italian sausage
1 pint marinara sauce (see note below)
1/2 c heavy cream
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 T granulated sugar

Note: If you don’t already have a marinara sauce you like, combine 1 pint of plain tomato sauce with 1/4 tsp onion powder, 1/4 tsp garlic powder, and 1/2 tsp dried basil as a substitute.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat while you prepare the sauce below. Cook pasta to al denté.

Heat a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Slice the end of each sausage and squeeze the sausage out of the casing and into the frying pan. (If you prefer, you can slice the sausage into coins, instead.) Cook sausage until it is cooked through and starting to brown.

Without draining the pan, pour the marinara sauce into a large frying pan with the sausage. Add heavy cream, salt, pepper, and sugar and stir well until sauce is a uniform color. Allow sauce to bubble, uncovered, for about 10 minutes, to allow the sauce to thicken. Stir frequently.

Drain pasta and return to the pot. Add sauce to the pasta and mix thoroughly.

Serve immediately. Good luck keeping leftovers for more than two hours.

And from our recent weekend getaway to the Grand Strand beaches of South Carolina, I brought back a few pounds of fresh-caught shrimp.

Having grown up in a rather land-locked state, I never had many opportunities to enjoy fresh seafood. Shrimp was always something I liked to eat, but I mostly knew it only in its breaded, popcorn form, or cold and pink around the shores of a cocktail sauce reservoir. With this rare opportunity to buy it right from the waters of the Atlantic, I wanted to try a dish I’ve been thinking about ever since I was served something similar at a friend’s after their own return from their beach house in the Outer Banks: a pasta dish studded with shrimp and lightly coated with a buttery, flavorful sauce.

The longest part of making this dish is, BY FAR, preparing all the ingredients. There aren’t many, but between peeling and chopping the garlic and shallot, finely chopping the parsley, grating lemon peel and parmesan, and peeling and deveining the shrimp, you’ll want to allow yourself at least 30-40 minutes to prep. However, you can knock the time down significantly if you buy shrimp that is already peeled and deveined. Your call!

With all the ingredients prepared and the pasta water boiling, it will now be less than ten minutes until you’re eating dinner. While the pasta cooks, you’ll put together the sauce and cook the shrimp very quickly. But no stress! Super easy.

Once the shrimp are cooked just until they are opaque (not much longer or they’ll get super rubbery) and the pasta is al denté, just toss them together for a match made in heaven. The shrimp is tender and flavorful, accented by a bit of lemon and parsley. And the linguine is an excellent base for the buttery, garlic-y sauce with just a little kick from the red pepper flakes.

Topped with a bit of parmesan cheese, it makes me wish I could buy fresh shrimp all the time. You can definitely make this with frozen shrimp (and I most certainly will be) but wouldn’t it be more fun to just move to the beach where you can buy it fresh daily?

Anyone with me I can be packed in five!

Shrimp Scampi Linguine
Adapted from Ina Garten

Serves 2

1/2 pound linguine
3 T unsalted butter
2 T olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp freshly grated lemon zest
1 1/2 T fresh lemon juice (a big squeeze or two from half a lemon)
3 T finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/2 c freshly grated parmesan cheese, loosely packed

Mince garlic and shallot, grate lemon zest and cheese, and chop parsley before you begin cooking. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. While the water comes to a boil, peel and devein the shrimp and set aside.

Place a medium-sized frying pan over medium heat. Melt butter and olive oil and allow to bubble slightly. At this time, your water should be boiling: add the pasta and cook to al denté. Once the butter and olive oil have begun to bubble, add the garlic, shallots, and red pepper flakes and sauté for 1-2 minutes, stirring frequently so the garlic does not burn. Add the shrimp, salt, and pepper to the frying pan and sauté for 3-4 minutes until shrimp is pink and opaque on both sides. Remove the frying pan from the heat and add the lemon zest, lemon juice, and parsley. Toss well and adjust seasoning to taste.

Drain the linguine in a colander and add it to the shrimp mixture. Toss to coat all pasta.

Scoop pasta and shrimp onto dinner plates and top generously with parmesan cheese.

I suppose that’s the way it goes, isn’t it Perhaps there’s a reason those projects are still on the list: they simply don’t take priority when other things come up. Sometimes it’s dinner with friends, sometimes a movie, sometimes it’s work.

This time, it was a MASSIVE harvest of tiny tomatoes that would be heartbreaking to waste.

Up until a couple of years ago, I only ate cherry tomatoes raw, usually in salads or from the veggie tray at parties. And as someone who is not a particularly big fan of raw tomatoes, I typically only ate one or two.

Now that I am growing my own, however, I must find other ways to use them up. I actually dried most of this batch, but I’ve been curious about what a tomato sauce made from these tiny, sweet tomatoes would taste like, so I decided to give it a shot. And while it is certainly more labor-intensive than pulling a jar of Ragu from the pantry, it’s quite a delightful way to make the most of the tomato-harvest of August.

This tomato sauce is nothing fancy: no herbs, no carrots, no celery, no sugar: just a bit of butter and the flavor of an onion that is cooked into it. It’s about as basic as it gets, and it’s wonderful. The tomatoes are blanched and peeled before cooking, which is fairly quick even with so many small ones. Simply slice an “x” in the non-stem end of each, blanch them for a minute or two, and then the skins slide off quite easily.

With the tomatoes ready to go, the last two ingredients remain.

Now normally, I only cook with unsalted butter. But I grabbed the wrong box in a hurried trip to the grocery store, so I gave the salted butter a shot in this one. If you go with unsalted, you may need to add a bit of salt to the sauce after it finishes.

Which won’t take long, by the way. In less than an hour, the sauce is ready to dress up a good sturdy pasta.

And there you have it! It’s a warm, savory way to use up a large quantity of little tomatoes. The flavor is bright and sweet, reminiscent of the height of summer bounty. And taking only an hour to prepare, it’s quick enough for a weeknight. Maybe even quick enough to leave time to mark another project off the list.

Cherry Tomato Sauce
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
5-6 c cherry tomatoes (I used Juliets)
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and halved
5 T butter
8 oz rotini (or your favorite pasta)
salt to taste (unless you’re using salted butter, which I did because it was all I had on hand)

Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. While the water heats, wash and pat dry tomatoes. Use a knife to cut a small “x” on the end of each tomato (the end opposite the stem). Fill a bowl with cold water and set aside. Carefully place the tomatoes into the water for 60-90 seconds. Using a slotted spoon, remove the tomatoes to the bowl of cold water so the cooking will stop. Once the tomatoes have cooled enough to handle, remove the skins from the tomatoes. They should slip right off. Discard the skins and place the peeled tomatoes in a medium-sized pot.

Nestle the halves of the onion and the butter into the tomatoes and bring to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer. Simmer for 45-50 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent from burning and crushing the tomatoes with a wooden spoon as they begin to break down.

When the tomatoes have cooked for about 30 minutes, bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta to al denté and drain. By this time, the tomato sauce should be done. Discard the onion halves (and any layers that have broken free). Mix the pasta into the sauce until it is thoroughly coated.

Serve with or without a generous sprinkle of parmesan cheese.

And now, for something thoroughly NOT wedding cake:

Meatballs!

After spending the majority of last week baking more cake than many people bake in a lifetime, I’m celebrating this week by not baking anything sweet. No cookies, no cakes, no pies, nothin’. Instead, MEATBALLS.

These particular meatballs are a blend, primarily, of ground beef and ground pork. You can really mix and match any ground meats you like, or you can just use one variety. I’ve made excellent batches using only ground turkey, but beef and pork were in the freezer, so there you are. But contrary to their name, meatballs are not entirely meat. I daresay that every recipe I’ve seen suggests that bread crumbs are just as important as the meat itself.

Let’s actually talk about bread crumbs for a moment. Bread crumbs are incredibly easy to produce (if you have bread, you can make bread crumbs), but they have still managed to find their way onto the shelves of grocery stores in a consistency that often is not so much of crumbs as it is a fine dust. If you have fresh bread, a few minutes in the oven will crisp it enough that you can smash it into crumbs at whatever consistency you fancy. Or, if you have trouble making it through a baguette before it goes stale, as I always seem to do, you can grind that sucker up in the food processor for bread crumbs far more satisfying and probably more economical than the canisters at the store.

In addition to the bread crumbs, we’ll add some eggs, some parmesan cheese, and some seasoning to make our meatballs awesome.

Now you can really mix this up however you like, but as I stressed when making beef jerky some months ago, digging in with your hands is really the most effective means of mixing this quickly and well. You might as well, because you’re going to get your hands all meaty anyway to fashion the mixture into balls.

At the risk of prompting innuendo: you can make your meatballs whatever size you like. I tend to make lots of smaller, bite-size meatballs, while others may prefer fewer, larger ones. I find the smaller size easier to cook, as they more quickly cook all the way through by the time a brown crust has been achieved in the frying pan.

I’ve heard that you can bake meatballs as well, but as I mentioned, we’re not baking anything. Plus, the brown, pan-fried crust is one of the features of meatballs I find so appealing. So pan-frying it is!

Once they are done, these meatballs can be served in a variety of ways. You can eat them just as they are, stab them with a fork and dip them in ranch dressing, smother them with brown gravy Ikea-style, or my favorite, heaped atop a mound of spaghetti and tomato sauce.

Sheer, savory, not-anything-like-wedding-cake bliss.

Classic Meatballs
Adapted from Sarah W.

A Note on Yield: This recipe makes about 80 one-inch meatballs I like to cook about half of them (which will comfortably feed 4-6 people when served over pasta) and then freeze the remainder for another day. To freeze, line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and freeze the meatballs so they are not touching one another. Once they are solid (it takes about 2 hours), you can bag them up for storage.

1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground pork
4 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 c bread crumbs
1/2 c parmesan cheese
1 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp black pepper
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp oregano
2-3 T olive oil

In a large, wide bowl, combine all ingredients except for oil and mix well, using your fingers or a fork. Working with small sections of the meat mixture, roll each section between your palms to create a ball about 1″ in diameter. Continue until the entire mixture has been rolled into balls.

Heat oil in a large frying pan over medium heat until oil glistens and pan is hot. Add meatballs to pan to form a single layer, allowing a bit of space between the meatballs. Turn meatballs as the bottom side begins to brown, allowing a crisp exterior to form on as much of the meatball as possible, and until meatballs are cooked through. Remove meatballs to a plate lined with paper towels to soak up excess grease.

If serving meatballs over spaghetti, bring a pot of water to a boil while you are heating the oil in the frying pan. Add pasta and cook to al denté, usually about 7-8 minutes. Heat your favorite pasta sauce in a separate pan.

You can add the meatballs directly to the pasta sauce if you wish, but I prefer to place them on top of each plate of pasta & sauce. Garnish with parmesan cheese if desired.

I frequently lament that I need another freezer. We have your standard apartment fridge-and-freezer combo, but our freezer is, shall I say, stuffed. Filled to the brim. There are many reasons for this. I have given up on buying chicken breast and now buy the whole dang bird, break it down, and separate the parts into meal-size portions. I capture strawberries at their peak ripeness, freeze them on cookie sheets, then bag them up to use in winter months when the only berries to be found are the imposters at the grocery store. Insanely, I recently made enough soup to open a deli and froze most of it because really, who wants soup in 95° weather?

Oh, and last summer, after foolishly planting seven basil plants that plotted to take over the world, it was all I could do to keep up with it by tossing it in the food processor with some nuts, garlic, parmesan, and a glug or two of olive oil before freezing it in my ice cube trays to make an army of pesto cubes. (Finding actual ice in our freezer is, coincidentally, impossible. Icy beverage lovers, beware.)

And then there are the pizza doughs. I made about twenty of them in the afterglow of my homemade mozzarella cheese experiment this spring with the leftover whey, and may have over-estimated the value of their convenience in relation to my precious freezer real estate.

Fortunately, this freezer angst, this lack of ice, this precarious stacking of freezer containers and strategic tucking-in of drumsticks, the inevitable shaking of the head I’ll get from Brad when he gets back from his summer: it all pays off in a burst of kitchen goodness. And ladies and gentlemen, that is certainly what we have here.

This is basically a cheese pizza with pesto instead of pizza sauce, asiago & parmesan instead of mozzarella. Except this pizza is rolled up into a loaf to create a pretty little pinwheel!

You can also add more pizza part if you want. I dunno, mushrooms Pepperoni Really tiny pieces of chicken But don’t feel too compelled to jazz it up: it’s really tasty on its own.

This bread, happily, doesn’t take much longer to cook than a regular pizza. After about 20 minutes in the oven, the outer crust was a nice, crisp golden-brown, ready for a quick brush of butter and a sprinkle of garlic and black pepper. But still, what if it wasn’t done inside Would it be a big gooey mess?

Nope. It was not. Crisp on the outside, the loaf sliced reveal fragrant swirls of pesto nestled between soft layers of crust. The bread is really tasty on its own, but it’s a miracle dipped in a little bit of red pasta sauce.

Maybe my freezer will empty out sooner than I thought.

Pesto Pinwheel Pizza Bread

1/2 recipe pizza dough, or your favorite recipe for a 12″ pizza
1/2 c pesto
1/2 c parmesan cheese, grated
1/2 c asiago cheese, grated
1 T butter, melted
garlic powder
black pepper
red pasta sauce for serving

Preheat oven to 450 °F. Flip over a cookie sheet and place a piece of parchment paper on the bottom surface. Sprinkle lightly with cornmeal.

On a floured surface, roll out dough until it is about 1/4″ thick. Spread pesto evenly over the surface, leaving 1/2″ space at the edges of the dough. Sprinkle cheeses over the pesto. Starting on one of the long edges of your dough, gently roll the dough up into a pinwheel. Tuck the edges in at the ends of the loaf when you are done, and carefully transfer the loaf to the upside-down cookie sheet with the seam of the bread facing down. Bake for 20-22 minutes or until top of dough is golden brown.

Remove from oven and brush the crust with melted butter. Sprinkle lightly with garlic powder and black pepper to taste and allow to cool for ten minutes.

Slice and serve warm with red pasta sauce for dipping.

Have I talked about my obsession with peas?

I’m not kidding.

I look forward to the brief harvest of pea pods from their delicate vines more than any other veggie. My grandparents planted endless rows of peas in their garden not so much because they needed that many for themselves, but because they had two wily granddaughters who spent many summer days amongst the plants, picking and eating peas still warm from the sun.

Despite this lifelong love for these tiny green veggies – or perhaps because of it – I’ve never cooked much with them. Why cook something that is utterly perfect raw At most, I’ve added them whole to soups, stir fries, and the like. But lately I’ve been curious about the versatility of the humble pea. I started hunting for recipes, and though I uncovered a rather surprising number (there is a whole WEBSITE devoted to peas… I was surprised, too) I found just the one I wanted in one of my favorite corners of the internet, as usual. Peas whirled into a pesto!

I still, however, was not willing to use the precious batch of peas from my own little garden. See obsession above. Fortunately, one of the vendors at the farmers market grows enough peas to sell fully shelled. I froze many of them for later in the year, but there was plenty for a batch of pea pesto.

Peas don’t take much to cook… just a couple of minutes and these tiny green orbs are ready for whirling, along with its pesto friends.

This summer dinner comes together very quickly. With just a couple minutes to cook the peas, a quick trip in the food processor, and a few minutes for pasta, you’ll be ready to eat before you know it.

So embrace ye the humble pea! And enjoy yourself a very quick, very tasty summer meal.

Fresh Pea Pesto Linguine
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

1 c fresh peas
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 T pine nuts
1/4 c grated parmesan, plus additional for sprinkling
1 tsp salt, scant
1/4 c olive oil
8 oz linguine
black pepper

In a small frying pan, toast pine nuts over low heat, turning often, until nuts are lightly browned. Remove from pan and set aside.

If using fresh peas, shell enough to make one cup. Bring a small pot of water to a boil and add peas. Cook for about 2 minutes or until peas have brightened. Rinse peas under cold water in a colander and set 1/3 of peas aside.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine remaining 2/3 c peas, garlic, pine nuts, parmesan, and salt and whirl until thoroughly combined. With the food processor on, drizzle olive oil into the mixture though the pour spout in the lid. Remove pesto from food processor and set aside.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add linguine and cook to al dente. Drain pasta, reserving about 1/2 c pasta water. Return pasta to the pot and add pesto, 1/3 c remaining peas, and 1/4 of the pasta water. Toss together until pesto adheres to the linguine, adding more pasta water if needed.

Serve immediately,  sprinkling with black pepper and additional parmesan cheese to taste.

There are things I daydream about. Sometimes, they are kitchen things.

In these kitchen daydreams, the sauce pan I need is never at the back of the cabinet. All my spice bottles are the same shape, same size, same color, and they’re all labeled in the same font. Sunshine floods across my countertops and splashes to the floor, filling the room with light. My knives are always sharp, but I never cut my fingers. Avocados grow locally. Also cashews and cocoa beans and grapefruits.

Le sigh.

Some dreams stay that way. But other dreams Pasta-and-mushrooms-tossed-in-sun-dried-tomato-cream-sauce dreams Oh yeah. They’re COMING TRUE.

This pasta is zingy. It’s dotted with crispy bacon and caramelized onions and tender mushrooms and pungent cheese.

I’ve found myself cooking with mushrooms more and more lately. I always thought I didn’t like them, but suddenly, they’re on my grocery list every week. Weird how that happens sometimes.

Sun-dried tomatoes, on the other hand, are new to me. These ones are packed in oil, but I’m curious to try it again with the dehydrated ones I occasionally see for sale at the farmers market. Or better yet, I could dry my own!

The dish comes together with a little cream, some milk, and nice little pile of parmesan. It’s not a sauce for swimming. In fact, it’s really there to bring everything together rather than to drown the pasta.

It’s pretty simple, pretty quick, and as cream sauce pastas go, it’s pretty light. Also, it’s pretty pretty.

Told ya. Dream come true.

Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomato Cream Sauce
Adapted from Epicurious

5 slices bacon, chopped into 1/2″ pieces
1/2 large onion, diced, about 1 1/2 cups
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 c mushrooms, sliced
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 black pepper
1/2 c oil-packed sundried tomatoes, drained and chopped into small pieces
1/2 c cream
3/4 c milk
1 pound bowtie pasta
3/4 c parmesan cheese, finely grated

In a large frying pan, cook bacon until lightly browned and mostly crisp. Remove to a plate lined with paper towel using a slotted spoon. Pour off the majority of the bacon grease, leaving just enough in the pan to coat the bottom with a very thin layer. Add onion, garlic, and mushrooms to the frying pan and sauté until onions are tender and beginning to caramelize, about 7-10 minutes.

While this is cooking, bring a pot of salted water to a boil and add pasta.

Once onions have begun to caramelize, add salt, pepper, tomatoes, cream, milk to the frying pan and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 3-5 minutes to thicken sauce slightly, then remove from heat.

When pasta is done, scoop out about 1 cup of pasta water and set aside. Drain pasta and return to pot. Pour sauce and grated cheese over pasta and mix well, adding pasta water a little at a time to achieve desired consistency.

Sprinkle with additional parmesan cheese and fresh parsley.

Remember a week or two ago when I made fresh mozzarella cheese And I said I was gonna tell you what you could do with the 1/2 gallon + of whey that results from the cheesemaking process?

I’m here to fulfill my promise.The promise of pizza.

It’s a lovely thing when completion of one kitchen project leads inexorably to another. What better way to use a pound of fresh mozzarella than to throw the old pizza stone in the oven, pull out the pizza cutter, and have yourself a pizza feast And this pizza crust THIS one uses up the whey from making mozzarella. Some of it. Or if you’re moderately obsessive me, it uses all of the whey.

I’ve used several recipes over the last couple of years for homemade pizza crust. Sometimes thick and fluffy, sometimes thin and crispy, sometimes in that strange place in between. This crust is simple to put together, has a short list of ingredients, and can go from disparate ingredients to rolled-and-ready-for-toppings in less than 30 minutes.

Now maybe your kitchen is different than mine, but whey is not something that I usually just have, you know, lying around. In fact the ONLY time I have it is when I make fresh mozzarella. But fear not! You can still make this yummy crust by swapping in milk. Or, maybe this is even more incentive to take a stab at cheese making.

As I mentioned, this business is FAST. Using rapid-rise yeast helps the process, but it also doesn’t take long to bring the dough to the right consistency. It is not, however, exact. The flour needed has changed slightly every time I make it.

Soon enough, you’ll have lovely, warm, perfect blob of pizza dough.

So the whey. This here blob took up a cup of whey. I had saved over half a gallon from my batch of fresh mozzarella. So again, if you’re like me and want to find a use for all this whey, you have a few options:

a) make a gazillion batches and freeze them for delicious pizzas in the future

b) make a gazillion batches and invite over your friends for the best pizza party since 4th grade

c) make a normal, human size batch for dinner

or

d) all of the above

I went with Option D, as you have likely already deduced  (thanks to Tim and Monica for the party photos!)

But if, perhaps, you are here hoping for a killer-awesome pizza dinner idea, I’ve got you covered.

Whether you make the dough and roll it out immediately, let it raise in the refrigerator for a couple of hours, or thaw out a frozen dough in the fridge while you’re at work, this set of toppings, while not overly innovative, may possibly become one of your favorites. It certainly has for us.

Maybe you’ll be better than me at making perfectly round crusts. I am really. bad. at. this. Which is why I always end up with oblong, misshapen pies. Oh well.

Also! I love pizza cooked on a pizza stone, but I’ve only recently acquired one. And the stone only fits one pizza anyway, and I’m usually cooking two (one for the vacuum I live with, the other for me and future me’s lunch). So! How do you get a nice, crisp crust on the bottom of your pizza without a stone Flip over a couple of cookie sheets, throw some parchment paper on them, and build the pizzas right on top.

Then top, top, top away! Your pizza crust is your creation, a blank canvas awaiting decoration with colors and shapes and flavors, so go forth! This particular pizza benefited from a creamy alfredo sauce, chicken sautéed in garlic and parsley, red onions, spinach, and three zingy cheeses (mozzarella, parmesan, and asiago).

Before you know it, dinner awaits!

Favorite Pizza Crust
Adapted from Ricki Carroll

Makes one 14″ thick-crust pizza, two 12″ thin-crust pizzas, or 4 indy thin-crust pizzas

about 3 c flour
1 package rapid-rise yeast (1 T)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 c very warm whey (heated to 120-130 °F) or milk
2 T olive oil

In a large bowl, use a fork to briskly mix 2 1/2 c flour, yeast (undissolved), and salt. Pour whey into a microwave safe bowl and heat for about 90 seconds or until whey reaches 120-130 °F. Add whey and olive oil to dry ingredients and mix with fork. Once wet ingredients have mostly been absorbed (dough will still be very flour-y and disconnected), dump contents of bowl onto a floured surface.

Knead together for 10-15 minutes and continue to incorporate flour a couple of tablespoons at a time. Once dough is soft and smooth but not overly sticky (it will stick to your fingers just a little, but not the counter), it is ready for the next step, which can be one of three things:

For Immediate Preparation
Place dough on a floured surface and cover with a dry cloth, allowing the dough to rest for 10 minutes.

For Making Dough 2-3 hours in Advance
Place in a lightly greased bowl and cover with saran wrap in the refrigerator until you are ready to roll out the dough. Dough will raise as it refrigerates.

For Freezing Dough
Before dough raises, separate into sizes you would want for future meals (for this particular recipe, I separate the dough into two blobs). Place doughs 3-4 inches apart on a cookie sheet lined with parchment and freeze. Doughs will raise slightly as they begin to cool, but not too much. Allow doughs to freeze for several hours, preferably overnight, until they are frozen solid. Store in large freezer bags. To thaw, place a dough in a medium bowl (larger than the frozen blob) and cover with saran wrap in the refrigerator 8-10 hours before you want to make your pizza.

When you are ready to roll out the dough, preheat oven to 425 °F. After dough has rested (or raised if you’ve held it in the fridge), punch it down, separate if making multiple thin-crust pizzas, and roll out each dough.

Using cookie sheets that have been flipped upside down, lay down a piece of parchment paper and sprinkle generously with corn meal. Place pizza dough on parchment and stretch out if needed. Top as desired.

Bake pizzas for about 20 minutes or until cheese is bubbly and crust has browned. For a finishing touch, put the oven on broil and watch VERY CAREFULLY, allowing the pizza to broil for just a minute or two. Use caution: your pizza can go from perfectly browned to burned black in a matter of seconds under the broiler, but the perfectly browned cheese is worth the risk. This is not a time for multi-tasking.

Slice pizza and serve to everyone!

Chicken Spinach Alfredo Pizza
Inspired by pizza places everywhere

2 tsp olive oil
6-8 oz skinless boneless chicken breast
5 cloves garlic
2 T fresh parsley, minced
salt & pepper to taste
1 – 1 1/2 c alfredo sauce (use your favorite or make your own)
2 c fresh spinach leaves
1 c red onions, chopped with layers separated
1 1/2 c mozzarella cheese, grated
1 c asiago cheese, grated
1/2 parmesan cheese, grated

Heat a oil in a  medium frying pan over medium heat. Chop chicken into bite size pieces, mince garlic, and chop parsley. Add chicken and garlic to pan and season with salt and pepper. Cook until meat is nearly cooked through, then add parsley. Cook through and allow chicken to brown slightly. Set aside

Wash spinach, chop onions, and grate cheeses and set aside.

Once you’ve rolled out the pizza dough, spoon alfredo sauce evenly over each dough, leaving about 3/4″ of crust around the edges. Place one or two layers of spinach leaves on the sauce, allowing the leaves to overlap. Sprinkle mozzarella cheese on top of the spinach. Add chicken and onions evenly over the crust(s). Finally, add asiago and parmesan cheeses. Bake as directed in pizza crust recipe above.