Summer tomatoes . . . anything better? But bumper-crops can get you down. You don’t want to waste those goodies, do you? Sure, you can roast them, or bake up a tarte, but what about a ultra-quick weeknight dish that’ll highlight their deliciousness without breaking your back? Check out this recipe – 20 minutes from start to finish. Dinner. Is. Done.

Pasta with Fresh Tomatoes and Pine Nuts (adapted from Everyday Food)

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
4 medium tomatoes, diced
2 garlic clove, minced (or 1 t. crushed garlic from a jar – even easier! I like Trader Joe’s)
3 T.extra virgin olive oil
8 oz. angel-hair pasta
4 T. pine nuts (beware Chinese pine nuts – they may give you “pine mouth,” a terrible metallic/bitter taste that lasts for days)

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Meanwhile, combine tomatoes, garlic, and oil in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Let stand at least 10 minutes.  Cook pasta in boiling water according to taste; drain, and return to pot. Add tomato mixture; toss to combine. Serve sprinkled with pine nuts.

Serves 4.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

© 2011, Sarah. All rights reserved.

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Hi Friends!  Long time, no post here . . . holidays and blog-hackers have kicked my butt these past couple of weeks . . . but never fear, there’s been lots of cooking here at casa Semi-Sweet, and I’m back on the scene to share my spoils with you.  Just in time for a long, lazy New Year weekend.

This recipe is not healthy. Not remotely. It is, however, sublimely delicious.  Young and old alike will smack their lips when you pull this pan of cheesy goodness from your oven.  Plus, you can make it ahead and then bake it off before you guests arrive, and it reheats famously . . . . seriously, what’s not to love?  You can go back to your fiber cereal and vegetables on Monday.  I know I will.

Happy new year, everyone!

Baked Macaroni and Cheese (originally from the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook)

Preheat the oven to 400.  Melt 2 T. of the butter and toss it with 2 slices of white sandwich bread that you’ve processed to course crumbs in your food processor.  Set this aside.

Prepare the macaroni according to package directions, but cook only until almost tender, but still firm to the bite – you don’t want it too mushy in your casserole.  Drain the macaroni and leave it in the colander so it will be quite dry when you add it to your cheese mixture.

Wipe the pasta pot dry, add the remaining 6 T. of butter and melt it over medium heat.  Stir in the garlic, mustard mixture and cayenne (if using).  Cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Stir in the flour and cook until golden, about a minute.  Slowly whisk in the milk and broth.  Bring to a simmer.  Cook, whisking often, until the mixture is slightly thickened, about 6 minutes.

Off the heat, whisk in the Colby and cheddar until completely melted.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Stir in the drained macaroni, breaking up any clumps, until well combined.

Pour the mixture into a 9×13-inch baking dish.  If you’re baking this right away, sprinkle with the breadcrumbs and bake until golden brown and bubbly, about 25-30 minutes.  Let cool for 10 minutes before serving.  If you’re making this ahead, store your breadcrumbs in a baggie alongside your casserole in the fridge – cover your casserole tightly with plastic wrap – you can keep it for up to 3 days in the fridge.  Remove it from the fridge an hour before baking, and top it with the breadcrumbs before baking.

Serves 6-8.

For goodnesssake, serve a salad with this, will you??

© 2010 – 2011, Sarah. All rights reserved.

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Oh my friends, I’ve missed you so . . . and I’m not happy to let you know it’s going to be a bit longer ’til I’m up and running again here on Semi-Sweet.  This moving thing, plus a series of other unfortunate events, have thrown this blogger under the bus.  I am pining for you though, rest assured.  So much so that I wanted to share a little pasta ditty I threw together tonight, just to touch base with you all one more time before I jump off the diving board into the deep end – our actual move day is Tuesday.

So being that we’re moving, I’m clearing the food decks as much as possible.  We’re only moving a mile from our current place, so we certainly can transfer stuff easily, but really, who wants to transport more food than she has to?  And then there’s that pesky (but fabulous) CSA share that just keeps on giving . . . every week the undertow of greens and veggies threatens to suck me down, but I’m keeping my head above water, yes I am.

Tonight I used up the delicious fresh tomatoes we got on Wednesday, along with a log of goat cheese I had in the fridge and some nice Parmiggiano-Reggiano cheese.  You can alter the proportions of this to your liking, and if I’d had it, I’d have used whole wheat pasta for more flavor and nutrition.

Whatever you’re doing or cooking this summer, enjoy yourself for me, will you?  Moving’s exciting, but not so much fun.  I’m SO looking forward to cooking and blogging more in September . . . stick with me friends, the best is yet to come!

Cavatappi with Tomatoes, Goat Cheese and Spinach

Cook pasta according to package directions.  Meanwhile, combine all the other ingredients except for the spinach in a large bowl and stir to combine – you want this to look saucy – the goat cheese will become smooth and the liquid of the tomatoes will help this.  Don’t be afraid of using a couple good glugs of olive oil – it’ll smooth out your sauce and add great flavor.  Dump the spinach leaves on top of this mixture.  Drain the pasta and while it’s still piping hot (don’t worry about extra moisture, it’ll help make your sauce more spreadable), pour it over the spinach and sauce mixture.  Stir to combine and to wilt the spinach leaves.  Taste and adjust seasonings as necessary.

Serves 4-6, easily.  Pass the crushed red pepper for the heat-seekers at your dinner table.

© 2010, Sarah. All rights reserved.

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In last week’s CSA share, we got some garlic scapes . . . have you tried these delicious creatures?  All curly and full of whimsy, yet with a garlicky zing that’ll knock your socks off.  I’d had them before, but never cooked with them myself, until Saturday night when I decided to whip up a pesto with them – and wow, were D. and I psyched.  It was garlicky and cheesy and nutty and coated the linguine so well.  A minimum of effort and fuss yields spectacular results here.  A perfect recipe for hot days – all you need to do is pull out your Cuisinart or blender and boil a pot of water.  Whip up a side-salad dressed simply with oil and vinegar (your tastebuds will need a breather after the pesto).  A loaf of nice bread, some fresh berries and cream for dessert, and you’ve got a lovely summer repast.

Garlic Scape Pesto (adapted from Umami Girl)

1 1/4 c. chopped garlic scapes
1/2 c. pine nuts, toasted
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
3/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 c. Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, cut into chunks

Combine scapes, cheese, pine nuts, lemon juice and zest, salt and pepper in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the blade attachment.

Pulse until well combined. Pour in the olive oil slowly through the feed tube while the motor is running.  Process until the mixture is fairly smooth and emulsified. Taste for seasoning and add more salt and pepper if necessary.

Makes 2.5-3 cups.

Serve over pasta (you might want to reserve some of the cooking water to thin out the pesto a bit so it spreads over the pasta more easily).  This would also be delicious as a base for a grilled pizza or as a spread for crusty bread. This’ll freeze well – think of how psyched you’ll be in January if you have a pot of this up your sleeve!  I have 2 cups in the freezer right now . . . .

© 2010, Sarah. All rights reserved.

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This spring and summer, I have the pleasure of being part of the Picadilly Farm CSA.  Each week, I get to pick up a box of goodies, grown organically in New Hampshire.  This past Wednesday was my first pickup, and the box was packed with salad greens, radishes, hakurei turnips, cilantro, bok choy, pea tendrils and some lovely red Russian kale. 

I started getting creative from day one – I love the challenge of being presented with ingredients and having to dream up recipes.  I had a rotisserie chicken in the fridge and so we had whole wheat rollups with lettuce, cilantro, chicken, grated sharp cheddar and enchilada sauce.  The next night was steamed tofu with bok choy and pea tendrils over rice, with a sauce made from low-sodium soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, tabasco and chopped cilantro.  It was tasty, and it was pretty:

Saturday night, I sauteed the kale and added spicy Italian chicken sausages, tomatoes and garlic and served that over whole wheat penne with Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.  Delicious comfort food – and the kale was tender and sweet.

And last night, it was giant salads.  Red leaf lettuce topped with halved cherry tomatoes, sliced radishes and salad turnips.  I added some buffalo chicken meatballs from Trader Joe’s (pretty good and heat ‘n’ eat to boot!) and this delicious ranch dressing, inspired by a recipe in Eating Well magazine:

Combine all those in a jar and shake it up – preferably a little bit before dinner so that the flavors have some time to mesh . . . it’s creamy, tangy and a great compliment to the spicy meatballs and crisp lettuce.  Here’s what the final creation looked like:

 So hearty, and healthy . . . and once you start making your own ranch dressing, you’ll never long to go lookin’ for that hidden valley again!

Eating veggies this fresh spoils a girl . . . even for premium produce the likes of Whole Foods’.  There is just no substitute.  I’ll keep filling you in on what I’m doing, and for even more inspiration, check out this great blog, A Bushel of What? 

Do you belong to a CSA?  What’re you whipping up from your spring share?

© 2010, Sarah. All rights reserved.

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Today’s recipe is born of fridge-cleanup and a need for speed.  All the ingredients can be purchased at Trader Joe’s, but feel free to sub your favorites.  Although the sauce for the spinach is “creamy,” it’s healthful because it’s made with Fage 0% Greek yogurt.  Make sure that your mixture isn’t still simmering when you stir in the yogurt, though, because the yogurt will curdle.  This is super-speedy – ready in about 20 minutes, and could easily be scaled up to serve more people.

TJ’s Lemon Chicken With Creamy Spinach Sauce

Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and set aside.

Cut chicken into strips. Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add chicken, stirring to warm it through. Add the garlic and sauté for 2 minutes. Add red pepper flakes and a sprinkle of salt and pepper and stir. Add spinach and toss with tongs until it’s just beginning to wilt. Remove pan from heat and cover to wilt spinach completely, approximately 1 minute more. Remove the lid, stir in yogurt and lemon juice. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Serve spinach sauce over pasta.

Serves 2 to 3.

© 2010, Sarah. All rights reserved.

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Regular readers here know that for the past year, I’ve been dealing with some bad foot pain.  I am so happy to report, however, that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Things have improved so much that this weekend I got back into the kitchen for an afternoon of cooking for friends.  On the way home from the market on Saturday morning, my car packed with ingredients, I thought to myself “this is what really makes me happy.”  I love the creative effort involved in planning a cohesive menu and spending time cooking up tasty food for friends.

This weekend’s menu featured Italian comfort foods, or as D. said, “3 of [his] favorite things: chocolate, wine and beef.” 

For munchies, we started out with Robioloa cheese and cranberry pepper jelly on 34 Degrees Natural Crispbread.  I also put out an artichoke heart and Parmesan dip that I got at Sevan Bakery, along with some grissini (long, skinny Italian bread sticks) and some pitted green olives with lemon and garlic from Whole Foods.

For dinner, we had short ribs with tagliatelle, which was rich and flavorful and worth the effort.  I didn’t make any adjustments at all to this Giada recipe (but for skimming off some of the fat several times during the cooking) and it came out deliciously – the wine and bittersweet chocolate add great depth of flavor.  

These ribs are a 3+ hour endeavor, though, so this recipe’s definitely a weekend special-event deal.  And although the recipe as written calls for 3 hours of cook-time, mine was closer to 4 – I had some really thick short-ribs.  If you decide to tackle these, I’d leave yourself more time because there is NO downside to having your sauce ready while you assemble the rest of your meal – it’ll just get that much more flavorful as it waits. 

 This fresh salad with red leaf lettuce, radishes, toasted pine nuts and a citrus vinaigrette provided a nice counterpoint to the very rich main dish.  I found the recipe in my new Gourmet Today cookbook, but lucky for you, it’s online at Epicurious as well.

I had intended to steam up some broccoli to serve with a little extra-virgin olive oil, Parmesan and red pepper flakes, but that got lost in the shuffle of dinner being overdue. 

I also served up some Scali (not homemade, from Formaggio) to mop up sauce, etc.

For dessert, there were assorted amaretti and chocolate-covered butter cookies for the kids and this easy, unexpected and delicious recipe for dried figs with walnuts and mascarpone cheese.  I’d make a couple adjustments to this recipe, however.  First, if your dried figs are large, I’d halve them.  Although they do get more tender in the wine and balsamic syrup, they’re still rather chewy and it’ll be easier going with halves.  Next, I think that toasting the walnuts prior to assembling the mix in your baking dish is overkill – the walnuts toast up nicely in the oven.  Third, these were good cold, but I think that serving them warm as called for in the recipe would send them to over-the-top deliciousness.  The mascarpone is such a nice creamy complement to the sweet and tangy syrupy figs and toasty nuts.  It’s a little party in your mouth and a relatively light way to end a rich meal.

Bon appetit!

© 2010, Sarah. All rights reserved.

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I grew up in a ruthlessly frugal household.  My parents were the economizers-in-chief of all things, and food was no exception.  Apple 3/4 of the way rotten?  Still 1/4 left to eat!  Limp veggies? Perk ‘em up in ice water!  Don’t know what to make for dinner and don’t have much in the house?  Get take-out?  Nooo!  We’ll raid the fridge staples for green peppers and eggs (I’m sure that my almost pathological dislike of cooked green peppers comes from having been fed this meal one too many times).

I am admittedly far less of a tightwad, but I do hate to waste food.  Sometimes, I find that all it takes to whip up a quick, cheap meal is a moment or two of opening my mind and foraging in my pantry.

Case in point:  I had a lot of leftover cooked whole wheat linguine (I’d say around 4 cups), which L. spontaneously decided she “hates.”  I had frozen peas that were gettin’ a little iced-over.  I had some whole milk ricotta that didn’t get used for a recipe.  And I had some shredded Italian 4-cheese blend threatening to mold.  Here’s what I did. 

I cut the pasta into bite-sized lengths.  In a large cast-iron skillet, I heated 2 T. of extra-virgin olive oil.  To that I added some bottled minced garlic and sauteed the garlic just until it was fragrant – about a minute.  I added the linguine and started heating it through – stirring frequently.  Meanwhile, I thawed some frozen peas – probably a cup of them.  After my linguine was warm, I added the peas, and stirred those together.  Then I added about 1/2 c. of the ricotta and stirred that in.  I needed a little moisture, so I used a little chicken stock I had sitting in the fridge (a couple tablespoons) and stirred that, creating a sauce.  Then I hit the whole thing with a generous sprinkling of Kosher salt and a lot of freshly ground black pepper and mixed it all up.  I made sure it was seasoned to my liking, then sprinkled the top of the whole deal with the 4-cheese blend, took it off the heat, and threw a lid on the pan .  .  . voila!  Add a side of protein (simple grilled chicken breast maybe?) or not, and you have a tasty, easy easy and cheap meal.  Sub in whatever pasta you have lying around, other fresh or frozen veg. (spinach or other greens would be nice here too), and of course, get creative with your cheese additions.

Next – Brussels sprouts.  Raise your hand if you like them.  Have you had the fresh ones?  If you’ve never had fresh ones and you say you don’t like Brussels sprouts, then you need to try the fresh ones and reevaluate.  Until I was a grownup, I’d only ever had frozen Brussels sprouts, and I swore I hated Brussels sprouts.  Having tried them, I actually consider the fresh ones to be an entirely different food.

In any case, this would be a good way to try Brussels sprouts if you’ve never had the fresh ones, because it’s so luscious and flavorful, you might forget they’re [shhhhh] Brussels sprouts.

I cleaned and sliced the sprouts into thin slices – you can do this with however many Brussels sprouts you have on hand – I probably had 20 left over from my CSA share.  In a large skillet, I melted approximately 1/2 T. of unsalted butter and about 1 T. of extra-virgin olive oil – I let it get nice and warm and frothy.  I threw the sprouts in there and sauteed them for a minute.  To this, I added low-sodium chicken broth from the fridge, enough so that the sprouts were submerged about 1/2-way.  I let this cook for about 10 minutes total – stirring often, so that the sprouts could cook and the liquid could cook down.  Once there was a small amount of broth left, I added a few sprinkles of the leftover 4-cheese blend, some Kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper, removed the pan from the heat, and stirred . . . the cheese melted and created a lovely sauce with the remaining broth.  Adjust seasonings, and that’s it.  They were tender, mild-tasting, and creamy good thanks to the butter/oil/cheese mixture.

Do you like leftovers?  Do you remix them or tend to reheat ‘n’ eat?  What’s the most creative thing you’ve done with food sitting around in your pantry and fridge?

© 2009 – 2010, Sarah. All rights reserved.

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Not everyone reading this blog wants to follow my current low-cal craze, so if you’ve got the urge to splurge, especially since the temps have dropped here in the Northeast, here’s a recipe for you to cook up this weekend.

My husband’s birthday was last week, and because it was chilly and rainy on Saturday, I indulged D’s love for my baked pasta.  My master recipe is below, but know that this is an easy one to riff off of if you want to.  Does your crew like mushrooms?  Quarter some nice buttons and throw them in.  Other veggies?  Zucchini perhaps?  Would be great in here.  Love a particular type of cheese?  Add more of that, please!   This is the basic version, which is what I usually make.  We have a nice spinach salad with Dijon vinaigrette on the side, and of course, crusty bread from Iggy’s.  Bon appetit!

Sarah’s Pasta Bake

Preheat oven to 350.

Remove the sausages from their casings and add them to a large skillet that’s been lightly coated with a little olive oil.  Start breaking the sausage apart to brown it, and once it’s gotten going, add the onion and garlic.  Cook this until the sausage is cooked through and the onions are translucent.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta until it’s a little less than al dente – it should taste slightly under-done.  It’ll cook up more in the oven with the sauce, and you don’t want soggy pasta, do you?  As a certain 6-year-old would say, “eeeeeeew!”  Drain this and return it to the pan.

Add the sausage/onion/garlic mixture to the pasta along with all your sauce and mix the whole mess together gently in the pot. 

Spray a 9X13 casserole dish with cooking spray.  Put a couple of spoonfuls of the pasta mixture into the pan, then scatter some of your cheeses over the top.  Add more pasta mixture, more cheese, etc. until you use up both – it really doesn’t matter if you have cheese on top or not.

Cover this with foil and throw it in the oven for approximately 30 minutes, or until it seems to be getting warmed through.  Uncover and bake for another 20 minutes or so, or until the top gets browned and crusty.

Remove from oven and eat it up!  This’ll serve approximately 6 people as an entree, depending on the appetites of those you’re feeding.

A couple of notes:  You can assemble this ahead of time, cover it, and put it in the fridge for up to 24 hours.  Remove it about 1 hour before you want to bake it and let the casserole come to room temperature.  Follow the baking directions above . . . this is great for get-togethers where you actually want to visit with your guests.  

I have two favorite sources for sausage.  Either DePasquale’s in Newton, or the garlic rosemary sausages from Formaggio in Cambridge.  Both of these are intensely flavorful sausages – you get a lot of bang for your buck with these.  Both are housemade and therefore super fresh.  But use whatever’s your favorite in here, and if you want to make your life even easier, buy bulk so you don’t have to peel off the casings.

© 2009, Sarah. All rights reserved.

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