Warm Summer Pasta

The recipe for February in my lovely De Bortoli calendar is a beautiful tomato pasta. This dish couldn't have come at a better time for us, given the hundreds of tomatoes our little plants are producing at the moment!

I often make tomato based sauces for pasta, but I've never made one using balsamic vinegar as the main sauce ingredient. I thought it might have been a bit too acidic, but combined with the sweetness of homegrown tomatoes and the spicy salami, it was absolutely delicious.

Marinating the tomatoes in the vinegar, gave it a lovely intense flavour and made the whole dish very easy to put together. For an easy weeknight dinner, this was perfect.

This pasta will certainly become a regular in our household. My fruit bowl is still full of our ripe, red tomatoes, so I have a feeling I'll be making this one again very soon.

Warm Summer Pasta

5 tomatoes, chopped

8 semi dried tomatoes, sliced

60g pitted black olives, halved

3 Tbs basil, chopped

2 Tbs balsamic vinegar

300g fettucine or long pasta

1 Tbs olive oil

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 Tbs fresh sage, chopped

6 slices of spicy salami, cut into strips

Pepper to taste

Parmesan cheese to serve

Place tomatoes, olives, basil and vinegar in a bowl and stand for 30 minutes.

Cook pasta in boiling water until tender, drain and keep warm.

Heat oil in a large pan and fry garlic, sage and salami until golden.

Remove from the heat and toss through the pasta with the tomato mixture.

Season to taste with pepper and serve with parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!

And To Drink....

The wine matching suggestion for this pasta dish is the De Bortoli Yarra Valley Estate Grown Chardonnay. The grapes from this wine come from the Dixons creek vineyard, which is a cool climate region of the Yarra Valley. These vines are low yielding older vines and so produce wines with a beautiful complexity and richness. 

The wine is made with minimal intervention to ensure that the true Chardonnay flavours shine through. The grapes are hand picked, whole bunch pressed and then fermented in French oak barrels.

This Estate Grown Chardonnay is a light yellow in colour with aromas of stone fruits and brioche. To taste, it is lovely and rich with a slight butteriness, a little minerality and acidity and beautiful fruity freshness. It was a perfect match to the sweetness of the tomatoes in the pasta. I thought that the vinegar might overwhelm the wine, but it was complex and bold enough to stand up on it's own.

The De Bortoli Yarra Valley Estate Grown Chardonnay was beautiful drinking as a current vintage, but would further develop over another couple of years. I might just have to go out and buy another bottle to try again in a few years time!

Walnut And Basil Pesto With Roasted Tomato

Basil would have to be one of my all time favourite herbs. How can you possibly resist that gorgeous smell? I love it in salads, particularly with fresh tomatoes from the garden and some bocconcini, goat's cheese or feta. Delicious!

Tomato and basil just scream summer to me.

Last week I bought a massive bunch of basil for a salad I was making and had lots left over. Not wanting to waste it, I thought I'd make my second favourite basil dish - pesto. Normally I'd use toasted pinenuts in pesto, but they can get rather pricey.

A few weeks ago I saw a recipe for a basil pesto using walnuts, so thought I'd give this a go instead. In my version, I toasted the walnuts first to give them a bit more depth of flavour and nuttiness and added lots of garlic and lemon juice.

The result was delicious! I'll definitely be making my pesto this way again. Combined with the beautiful sweetness of the roasted tomatoes, this pasta dish was fantastic for an easy mid-week vegetarian meal. Alternatively, you could serve the pesto and roasted tomatoes on toasted sourdough as a bruscetta. A lovely light lunch.

Bright, fresh and tasty. What more could you want?

Basil And Walnut Pesto With Roasted Tomato

70g walnuts
3 cups basil leaves
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/3 cup grated parmesan plus extra to serve
juice of 1 lemon
1/3 cup olive oil plus extra for drizzling
salt and pepper to taste
200g tomatoes, quartered
250g pasta

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
Place walnuts on a baking tray and bake for 5-8 minutes, or until lightly golden. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.
On another tray, drizzle tomatoes with oil and roast for 20 minutes or until soft. Remove from the oven and set aside.
In a small food processor, combine walnuts, basil, garlic, parmesan and lemon juice. Blitz until a course paste forms. You'll probably need to scrape down the sides to make sure everything is combined.
Add the oil and season to taste and whiz again until the desired consistency. I like mine to still be a little chunky.

Cook the pasta according to packet directions and drain, reserving about 1/2 cup of the cooking water.
Return hot pasta to the saucepan with the pesto and stir to coat. Add some of the cooking water to loosen it a little bit.
Once combined, stir through the tomatoes.
Serve in bowls with extra parmesan and a few chopped basil leaves on top.

Enjoy!

Salami, Feta And Tomato Pasta

As it gets closer to the crazy Christmas end of the year, I'm finding that there just isn't enough time to do everything that I need to do. Even trying to find the time to sit down and write up recipes for the blog is getting difficult.

This pasta from the other night was so easy to make and probably took less time to make than to write up! The combination of crispy salami, salty feta, sweet tomatoes and spicy rocket was beautiful.

Not just around Christmas, but any time of year, I like to try to use up what's in the fridge at least once a week, so that I don't have stuff sitting around for ages. It's a great way to stop food wastage and can lead to some interesting experiments!

This pasta was light and tasty and helped to clean out the fridge. If you wanted to add a few extra ingredients to make it a bit more fancy you could, but at this time of year when there is so much rich food on offer, as simple dish is always a good idea.

Salami, Feta And Tomato Pasta

250g short pasta
100g salami, thickly sliced into circles and then halved
2 tomatoes, diced
A few big handfuls of rocket
A handful of mint leaves, finely chopped
Juice of half a lemon
100g Danish feta, diced
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook pasta as per packet directions and drain, reserving about a cup of the pasta cooking water. Set aside.
In the same saucepan, fry salami pieces until they release their fat and become crispy.
Toss the cooked pasta through the salami fat to coat.
Over a medium heat, add tomato, rocket, mint and lemon juice and toss to combine and to wilt the rocket.

Season to taste and add some of the pasta water if it seems too dry.
At the last minute, stir through the creamy feta until it melts and creates a sauce.

Serve in bowls with extra feta and rocket on top, if you like.

Enjoy!

 

Goat And Beetroot Cannelloni

I love to play around with different flavours and combinations of foods, depending on what is in the fridge or cupboard and what looks good at the shops.

Sometimes these combinations work out really well, other times not so good. Obviously those that don't work out, you never get to read about!

This week, I had some fresh lasagne sheets in the fridge and a beetroot that was looking sad and sorry for it's self, that I'd forgotten about in the bottom of the basket. Throw in a giant bag of yellow and orange capsicums in the clearance section of the fruit shop and some herbs from the garden and I was set on making some cannelloni.

I don't actually make cannelloni very often, but when I do, it tends to be ricotta and spinach or some other vegetarian version. This time I thought I'd make a meaty version that would match nicely with the beetroot. Initially I was going to make chicken ones, but our local Middle Eastern butcher has wonderful goat mince, so I decided that was the way to go. Sweet, lean goat and sweet, earthy beetroot are a fantastic combination!

Instead of a tomato based sauce, I decided to make a sweet roasted capsicum one with dill and garlic. Roasting the capsicums brings out a lovely sweetness in them, and the yellow and orange ones I picked up tend to be on the sweeter side anyway.

To make sure there was enough liquid to cook the pasta, I added a bit of water to the baking tray with the cannelloni before it went into the oven. This didn't dilute the sauce at all, but helped to make sure the pasta was al dente once the top was a beautiful golden colour.

Since the cannelloni already had quite a lot of different flavours going on, I served it with a simple lettuce, tomato and avocado salad. You could get more creative if you like, but I think keeping it simple is better than being too overwhelmed.

Goat And Beetroot Cannelloni

500g goat mince
1 medium beetroot, peeled and grated
1 red onion, finely diced
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
A drizzle of olive oil
1/4 cup finely chopped dill
Salt and pepper to taste

6 mixed yellow and orange capsicums
1/4 cup finely chopped dill
1 clove of garlic, coarsely chopped
1 ripe tomato, quartered
1/2 cup water

1 packet of fresh lasagne sheets

To make the filling, heat a drizzle of oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the mince beetroot, onion and garlic.

Fry until the meat is just cooked, breaking up clumps as you go. The meat will continue to cook in the oven, so it doesn't matter if it's not cooked all the way through.
Stir through the dill and season to taste.
Set aside to cool.

To make the sauce, cut capsicums in half and remove the seeds and membranes.
Place them skin side up on a large baking tray on a piece of foil. This means less cleaning up afterwards!
Grill under hight heat until the skin is blistered and blackened. The blacker the better.
Remove from the grill, wrap all the capsicums into a parcel with the foil and set aside for 10 minutes to cool and loosen the skins.
Carefully unwrap the parcel, keeping all the lovely juices inside.
Peel the skins off the capsicum and put the flesh and juices in a food processor.
Add the garlic, dill, tomato and water and process to a smooth sauce.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.

To assemble, cut the pasta sheets in half so that you have 2 squares from each piece.
Lay all the pieces out on a bench and divide the filling up between them. You want enough filling so that you can still roll and enclose the cannelloni.
Roll them all up with the seam side down.

Spread a good spoonful of the sauce on the base of a large baking dish and add 1/4 cup of water. This helps to cook the pasta.

Lay the cannelloni over the sauce in a single layer. I could fit 14 rolls into my dish.
Sprinkle an extra 1/4 cup water over the top and then spoon the remaining sauce evenly over the pasta.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Bake cannelloni for about 30 minutes, or until the pasta is cooked and the sauce has turned to a nice crust on the top.
Rest for 5 minutes in the tray before serving with a light salad.

Enjoy!

And To Drink....

There's no photo of tonight's wine because it was a cleanskin Pinot Noir with no label.  I picked it up from Hanging Rock Winery a few years ago when we went for a drive to the Macedon Ranges in Victoria. We bought a dozen of the wines in a special deal and have been enjoying them ever since. Being a cool climate Pinot Noir, there is lots of beautiful plum and red berry fruit flavours. There was no funkiness to this wine and it had nice clean and simple flavours.

The ripe red fruits matched perfectly with the sweetness in the goat and beetroot filling and the roasted capsicum sauce. 

This was certainly a cheaper quaffer, but was a great wine to have with a nice hearty meal on a cool Spring night. It certainly went down very easily!

Hanging Rock Winery make some fantastic wines, particularly their premium Sparkling, Shiraz and Pinot Noir.  If you happen to be in the Macedon Ranges, make sure you drop in. It's only an hour drive from Melbourne, so is perfect for a day trip or when you just want to get out of the city for a weekend.

Champagne and Fresh Pasta (With a Dash of Shiraz!)

It's been a busy weekend in the eat quaff laugh household. I've had family over to celebrate my little girl's 5th birthday and a couple of other personal celebrations. There has been lots of eating and drinking going on, but no time to actually write about it!

We started off the celebrations on Saturday night with an amazing bottle of 1998 Krug. What a champagne! This was certainly liquid gold! Beautifully yeasty, but still with amazing acidity and stone fruit flavours, it was delicious! My husband is not much of a champagne drinker, but definitely approved of this one. Shame it won't be a regular on the menu. If only we could win Powerball!

The Krug was too beautiful to serve with food. It was drunk with family, as a celebration of life and love, and just to savour the flavours on it's own. The perfect aperitif with loved ones.

Caught up in the wonderful champagne, and maybe a little bit tipsy, I completely forgot to take any pictures of the delicious dinner I'd made. Oops! It was a slow cooked osso bucco and red wine ragu served atop fresh tagliatelle. I didn't make the pasta myself, but the ragu slowly simmered away for 4 hours, making my kitchen smell divine! Fresh pasta definitely turns a simple dish into something sublime.

A slow cooked ragu might not look the most exciting, but what they lack in looks, they certainly make up for in flavour. If you didn't want to serve this with pasta, you could have mashed potato, polenta or couscous. Even just some fresh, crusty bread to mop up all those delicious juices would be fantastic!

Osso Bucco Ragu With Fresh Tagliatelle

1 Tbs butter

A good drizzle of olive oil

1kg osso bucco

2 rashers of short cut bacon, finely chopped
2 carrots, diced
1 onion, peeled and diced
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
4 sprigs of thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
500ml red wine (I used a cabernet)
2x 400g tins of diced tomatoes
1 cup beef stock
250g fresh tagliatelle or other long pasta
Grated parmesan cheese to serve

Preheat oven to 160 degrees.
Heat the butter and oil in an ovenproof casserole dish over medium heat.
Sear the osso bucco pieces, in batches, until browned on both sides. Remove from the pan and set aside.
Add the bacon, carrot, onion and garlic to the pan and cook for 10 minutes or until softened.
Add the red wine and reduce by half the volume. This should take about 5 minutes.
Stir through the tomatoes, stock, thyme and salt and pepper to taste and bring to a simmer.
Return the meat to the pan and make sure it is covered in the juices.
Place a lid on the casserole and bake in the oven for 3 hours, or until the meat has fallen off the bone.
You may need to add a little extra water if it starts to dry out.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
When the meat is cool enough to handle, remove all bones, fat and gristle and coarsely shred the meat back into the sauce.
Season further to taste.
Return the pot to the stove top to simmer gently for another 30-45 minutes, until the meat is tender and the sauce reduced.

Cook the pasta in a large pot of salted water until al dente.
Fresh pasta should only take about 5 minutes to cook.
Drain well.

To serve, place a twirl of pasta on to your plates and top with a generous spoon of sauce and a sprinkling of parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!

And To Drink....

I used a lovely Barassa Valley Cabernet to cook with when making the ragu, as I wanted something nice and rich and full bodied.  As there wasn't much of that bottle left after using 500ml in the sauce, I unfortunately had to open something else!

Turkey Flat are another great Barossa Valley winery who create a wonderful selection of red, white and rose wines. The reds are their flagship wines and they produce some pretty amazing drops!

This 2007 Shiraz was a beautiful match to the ragu. Produced from vines planted in 1847, these shiraz vines are some of the oldest in the world. Even though I'd used a cabernet to cook with, the shiraz still matched perfectly. Having seven years of bottle age under it's belt, it was lovely and smooth with a beautiful rounded mouthfeel. The tannins were low and it was very easy to drink! There was some residual sweetness lingering and big plum and blackberry flavours, which complemented the slow cooked sweetness in the beef.

Fresh Basil

I love when unexpected fresh produce comes along and completely changes my menu plans!

Yesterday when I picked my son up from childcare, there was the beautiful aroma of fresh basil in the warm, humid air. Inside the centre playground, the kids had been planting herbs and the basil plants were overflowing the wine barrel they were planted in. When I asked whether I could take some, I was told to go for it, because no one else ate it. What a bonus!

On the walk home I was thinking of all the things I could make with my basil - pesto, a tomato, basil and boconcini salad, a simple pasta sauce........

After a week of curry and chilli con carne, I thought that a nice simple pasta with beautiful fresh produce was the go. Ripe red tomatoes, fresh basil and roasted ricotta. The perfect combination!

I used a basil infused olive oil to add a bit more depth of flavour, but any good extra virgin olive oil will do.  You won't need all of the roasted ricotta for this dish, so keep the rest for breakfast or lunch. Good food doesn't have to be fancy!

Tomato, Basil and Baked Ricotta Pasta

500g fresh ricotta

250g short pasta of your choice

3 small ripe tomatoes, coarsely chopped

2 sprigs of fresh basil leaves, coarsely chopped

Finely grated rind and juice of 1 lemon

A handful of rocket

Salt and pepper to taste

A good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

Grated parmesan and extra basil to serve

To roast the ricotta, pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees. Slice the fresh ricotta into 2cm wide slices and place on a greased oven tray. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until starting to turn golden on the outside. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

When cooled to room temperature, cut roughly into 1cm dice.

Cook pasta according to packet instructions and drain, keeping about a cup of pasta water to the side.

Return the pasta to the same saucepan with the chopped tomatoes, torn basil, lemon rind and juice, oil and pasta water. Season to taste and stir gently to combine the flavours.

Add the ricotta and rocket and gently toss to combine.

Serve with some extra basil over the top and a grating of fresh parmesan, if you like.

Enjoy as a simple dinner or an easy lunch.

And To Drink....

I was planning to match this simple pasta dish with a nice light, fruity pinot noir. A storm had just set in and we'd got absolutely saturated on the walk home from school. It was pouring with rain and the temperature had dropped. I was secretly looking forward to opening a bottle of red. In typical Melbourne fashion, ten minutes later, the sky had cleared, the sun had come out and the temperature and humidity had risen. Now I was hot and wanted a refreshing white!

The choice of the day was the Vinaceous 'Shakre' chardonnay from Margaret River. I came across these wines at The Fabulous Ladies Wine Society Melbourne dinner a couple of months ago. I was blown away by the freshness of the chardonnay and how un-chardonnay it tasted. Full of citrus, passionfruit and zing, it's not quite like a sauvignon blanc, but not like a rich buttery chardonnay either.

It was a perfect match to the lemon in the pasta and complimented the sweet tomatoes and fragrant basil. A lovely drop to enjoy on what ended up being a warm night.

Rocket Pesto

Our vegie garden is coming along nicely at the moment, but the thing that just grows and grows is rocket.  There is so much there and no sooner than you pick some to use in a salad, it's back again! There have been plenty of rocket, pear and parmesan salads in the eat quaff laugh household of late!

I decided that the only way to use up a whole lot of the rocket was to make a pesto. Pesto is generally made from basil, but you can really make it using any herb or leafy green. Coriander pesto with a bit of chilli is one of my favourites.

This time, I used rocket and toasted cashews, along with the regular garlic, parmesan and oil. Our rocket is quite peppery, so I didn't need to add any pepper, but if you're using younger shop bought leaves, you might want to add a bit. Instead of lemon juice, I used some verjuice. It adds a similar acidity, without being too strong.

The batch of rocket pesto that I made was more than enough for a couple of meals. If I had been organised, I would have sterilised some jars to store it in, so that it would keep for a bit longer. If you do this, make sure you cover the top of the pesto with a thin layer of olive oil, so that it doesn't oxidise. You'll still need to keep it in the fridge and use it within a few weeks, but it does store for longer. Alternatively you can actually freeze pesto pretty well. Great when you want a simple pasta dish but don't have the time to be making the sauce from scratch.

Given that I had so much pesto, I managed to get two meals out of it, with a little bit left over. The first dish was a side to go with some ocean trout. I roasted some home grown 'cranberry red' potatoes and then tossed the pesto through them while they were hot. They were delicious!

The second meal was a simple pesto pasta, with a slight twist. Before tossing the pesto through the cooked pasta, I fried up a sliced chorizo until crispy and added that to the mix, with a dash of the pasta cooking water to loosen. The smoky paprika in the chorizo was great with the peppery rocket. Sprinkled with some extra grated parmesan, it made a simple dinner a little bit more special.

You could really get creative with pesto and use it for so much more than just a pasta sauce. Marinate chicken with it, spread it on toasted sourdough and top with goats cheese or feta, mix it with ricotta and use as a stuffing for rolled chicken or pork. You are only limited by your imagination!

Rocket Pesto

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1/4 cup parmesan cheese, coarsely chopped

4 large handfuls of rocket leaves

3/4 cup cashew nuts

1 Tbs oil

2 Tbs verjuice

Salt to taste

Start by toasting the cashews. You can either do this in the oven at 180 degrees for about 10 minutes or until browned or in a dry frypan. Allow to cool.

Place garlic, cashews, parmesan and rocket in a food processor and blitz until coarsely chopped. Slowly add the oil and verjuice and blitz again until it's the desired consistency. I like my pesto to still be a bit chunky, but you might prefer it smoother.

Add salt if you need it and adjust the flavours with extra rocket, oil or verjuice as needed.

And To Drink...

This Plantagenet Omrah Rose from Great Southern in Western Australia was a lovely drop. There was plenty of red berry and plummy flavours with a bit of sweetness, but essentially a dry finish. It matched perfectly with the rich ocean trout and pesto potatoes, but also with the pasta with chorizo. The saltiness and spice in the chorizo and the peppery pesto were complemented by the slight sweetness of the wine. While the weather wasn't particularly warm the night we had this wine, to me, Rose is always great on a hot day when you want something with a bit of body, but also nice and refreshing.

I'll definitely be looking out for this Rose again, and other wines made by Plantagenet. Western Australia, particularly Great Southern, produce some wonderful red and white wines. Now to get over there to try some!