Cold Ramen Salad with Egg

Noodles are one of the first foods on my mind once the weather reaches “Feels like 15 Degrees”. I love a hot bowl of thick, buttery ramen at Chucko Ramen in Prospect Heights or a pile of pad thai at Cheers Thai in Williamsburg. My brother’s been raving about Tasty Hand Pulled Noodles in Chinatown which I’m hoping to try soon. Here’s a cold noodle salad I made with some leftover ramen; it makes for an easy lunch. What's your favorite noodle shop?

Lemon Spaghetti

When I worked at Wish Cafe, a fusion restaurant in Stamford, Connecticut years ago, my co-worker used to order the lemon papardelle whenever she was off duty. The dish sounded tempting to me, but I always opted for the truffled potato pillows and fried calamari watercress salad, menu items that I couldn't or wouldn't make at home. When Alan ordered spaghetti with lemon at our neighborhood restaurant a few weekends ago, I tried a bite and was surprised how something so simple could be so pleasing. However, making it at home wasn't as simple as I assumed it would be.

Chicken Pad Thai without Fish Sauce

I’ve always loved pad thai, but I never realized that fish sauce was a staple in Thai cooking until I met Alan.  He’s allergic to fish.  Actually my mom and one of my best friends is also allergic to fish.  I thought, how unfair that these folks have to miss out on such a thrilling noodle dish.  With that thought, I set out to find a recipe for pad thai that doesn’t involve fish sauce so that Alan and I could have a pad thai date night at home.  Enter Martha Stewart’s Vegetable and Tofu Pad Thai recipe, which I tweaked a bit.  On a weekend in Chattam, NY, I found some mushroom soy sauce at a market and thought it would add the depth of flavor that fish sauce usually provides, so I took a bottle home.

Pappardelle with Bolognese Sauce

On Valentine’s Day, Alan and I decided to stay cozy at home and make some homemade pasta and bolognese sauce.  How romantic-o. Plus, I’d been craving a hearty meat sauce all week.  As the sauce simmered away, we cranked homemade pasta dough through the pasta maker he gave me for Christmas.  The dish turned out really good and we were so stuffed, we could barely move.  

Faux Pho

I crave pho all winter long.  I've probably never had truly authentic pho, but I just love a nice big bowl of broth with rice noodles and the exploding flavors of cilantro, jalapeno, lime and ginger...whatever you wanna call that.  I call it "faux pho".  Top that off with the crunch of bean sprouts and the heat from a squirt of sriracha and I’m in love.  I tried this soup using some boxed chicken stock but many of them are bitter tasting.  My parents turned me on to Better Than Bouillon Chicken Base many years ago and it never fails me, so I decided to use it for this soup and I got a nice clean, sea-salty broth.  I highly suggest you go grab some at your local grocery store, or order some online.  I stock up on it in the colder months.  However, don’t go for the organic or the kosher variety because they’re just not as tasty in my opinion.

Pappardelle with Kale Pesto

I was flipping through Rachael Ray Magazine a few weeks ago at the nail salon and stopped dead in my tracks on her kale pesto recipe.  I took a picture of it on my phone and would not rest until I tried it.  And why not make homemade pappardelle while I’m at it, I thought? When I was little, I often made pasta with my mom and my nonna.  We laid strings of spaghetti on blue and white striped kitchen towels draped over every surface of the kitchen.  If I remember correctly, we had a pasta machine.  I don’t have one now; I don't have the space and I don’t make pasta often enough.

Simple Chicken Soup

When you're sick, canned soup just won't do the trick like homemade soup does.  I know that cooking is the last thing you want to do when you're infected with the office bug, but if you make a big pot of soup, you'll have homemade soup for days and you can go right back to the couch for your Breaking Bad marathon…no, I've never seen the show…yes, I'm serious.  You don't have to add in both parsnips and turnips, you can pick one.  You can also choose between parsley and dill, although I recommend choosing dill for that classic chicken soup flavor.  Make your soup as easy or as complex as you want to.  I made mine recently with no parsley and no parsnips and it was soup-er dooper.  You can also chop the vegetables any way you like.  I always leave my vegetables in large pieces that I cut through with a spoon as I eat my soup; it’s the way my mom makes chicken soup, so naturally I do it the same way.

Ricotta Ravioli with Blueberry Pan Sauce

I had a childhood friend whose father went to a candy trade show every year and got to take home tons of the hottest new candy for her.  I loved candy so much that I had a candy wrapper collection in a shoebox, so naturally I was incredibly jealous of my friend and wished that I could go to a place filled with free candy.  Last week, the adult version of my childhood wish came true in the form of an invitation to Brooklyn Eats, a food and beverage trade show which supports Brooklyn’s food manufacturers and businesses.  I got to sample chocolate, jerky, cookies, sauces, jams, wraps, pastas and hors devours.  Needless to say, I didn’t need lunch that day.

Mascarpone and Lemon Zest Gnocchi

Working on the deck in a tank top under the warm sun while guzzling Mexican Cokes is enough to make me want to call in sick for the whole summer.  All I want to do is drink cocktails on a lawn chair, cook up a storm and garden until I pass out.  We took a ride to Home Depot this weekend to buy a big box of starter plants and a car load of wood to build new planters.  Alan power-sawed the planks behind a cloud of wood dust as I dug dirt out of planters and nudged baby plants into the holes.  

Broccoli and Bowties

"There’s a lady I know.  If I didn’t know her, she’d be the lady I didn’t know.  And my lady, she went downtown.  She bought some broccoli.  She brought it home.  She’s choppin’ broccoli."  If you don't know what I'm going on about, just click here.  I’m willing to bet my Metrocard that you have pasta, olive oil, grated parmesan cheese and a head of garlic in your kitchen.  Was I right?

Semolina Dumplings with Broccoli Rabe

One college winter in Ohio, I made such a fine igloo on the quad that a few students used it as a marijuana-smoking hut by night.  There’s more than enough snow piled up on our deck right now for me to recreate that igloo, but unfortunately this snow is the powdery kind that’s better for skiing.  I don’t ski.  There’s something I find claustrophobic and frightening about strapping my feet to long boards and throwing myself down a hill.  So the snow’s not sticky, but it did bust me out of work early on Friday and put me in one heck of a pasta-making mood on Saturday afternoon. 

Orzo, Spinach and Feta Salad

If you’re like me, you let last weekend's gloomy New York skies discourage you from kickboxing, going jean shopping and doing laundry.  Instead, you watched episodes of Lost that you’ve already seen, suffered through a good chunk of the Miss America pageant, flipped through US Weekly and waited for your homemade pickled carrots to pickle.  You’re excited because they pickled nicely with a perfect balance of astringency and sweetness.  You might have also eaten way too much pizza and a few too many slices of last week’s date cake.  Oh wait, that was my weekend.
  

Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter

The end of October brought a fright-filled trifecta: the presidential debates, Halloween and Hurricane Sandy.  After the light drizzle that was Hurricane Irene, I was not too concerned about Sandy until the MTA shut down all public transportation.  I’ve never seen my city burdened by flooded subway stations, piles of upturned boats and cars, looting, gas shortages, week long power outages and whole blocks burned down and washed away.  My mom's neighborhood in Long Island is a mess of fallen trees, my Dad has been standing on hour-long lines everyday for gas to run his generator and my cousin unfortunately lost her house in the flooding but thankfully got out safely.  I heard one report of someone pulling a gun at a gas station in a fight for fuel and another report of Rockaways residents barricading their homes to protect themselves from looters.  I couldn’t help but think of the post-apocalyptic setting in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.  Hard hit areas including Red Hook, the Rockaways, Staten Island and parts of New Jersey are still in need of all the help and supplies they can get.  You can find information on donating and volunteering here.  I hope you can help bring some comfort to the victims of Sandy.

Tofu and Herb Ravioli

My mom has been whipping up these tofu ravioli lately and tricking everyone in the family into thinking that they’re ricotta-filled.  Everyone has been getting ravioli Punk’d.  I decided to drive to Long Island to be her ravioli assistant, snag the recipe and get a taste of this mock ricotta.  Below is a picture of our final product.  They do have a surprising similarity to regular raviolis, especially when bathed in tomato sauce.  This is a perfect dinner for lactose intolerants or people trying to stay away from cheese for any reason.  You can also swap out the tofu for a 16 ounce container of ricotta if you prefer a classic filling.

Sicilian Spring Vegetable Pasta

My mom was born in Sicily and would make this Sicilian Spring Vegetable Pasta for our family often.  It was one of my absolute favorites and still is.  When I was little, I was always the designated pea shucker, shucking every other pod into my mouth.  She always bought double the amount knowing my love of fresh peas.  Often recipes that call for fava beans require that you remove not only the pod, but also the outer skins of the beans which is not only incredibly tedious but also wasteful.  My mom never removes the skin of the beans and we love the chewy, hearty texture of them.  As long as the bean is fresh and no larger than a lima bean, they should be tender enough to eat with the skins on.  They should be easy to find in summer time at farmers markets and stores like Whole Foods, and sometimes you can even find them frozen.  I like to break the pasta in thirds before cooking as we used to do and I recommend that you use DeCecco or Barilla pasta because they’re the best of the top brands on the supermarket shelves.  Don’t let me catch you with any Ronzoni! 

Orecchiette with Broccoli Rabe and Kalamata Olives

This olive oil coated pasta with bitter greens and salty olives is an easy, hearty dish that I’ve made for at least ten years after a family friend made it for us on a spring afternoon.  It’s wonderfully filling and must be enjoyed with a big glass of wine. I hope you enjoy one of my long time favorites!

Use What You Got: Cannellini Bean, Escarole and Egg Linguini

Tonight I returned from work way too lazy to go to the market and figure out what to make so I decided to create dinner out of whatever ingredients I had laying around the kitchen.  Here’s what I had:  ½ can of cannellini beans, small head of escarole, chicken stock, basil, eggs, parmesan cheese, garlic and a shallot.  So I invented this pasta dish which came out pretty darn good and decided to share it with you all.

Fresh Handcut Pasta for One

When I looked up recipes for fresh pasta dough, I saw that most of them called for only two ingredients; eggs and flour.  So I cut down a simple pasta dough recipe to a yield of one serving.  If you've got a hankering for fresh chewy pasta without leaving the comfort of your home, this recipe is for you.