Tomato Kumato

February 4, 2009

Pasta with Egg and Shallot

Filed under: Eggs, Pasta, Vegetarian Main Dishes — Tags: , — emiglia @ 10:23 am

In the tradition of pasta carbonara, I took cooked pasta and uncooked eggs and came up with this.

It’s not really the same as carbonara: as you can probably see, the eggs get more scrambled than saucy, although I’m sure you could avoid that if you wanted to.

As for me, it had all the perfect elements of a scramble and carbonara: I felt it was eggy enough to eat for breakfast, treating the pasta as more of an omelette filling than the main portion of the dish, but you could just as easily serve it for dinner.

I think the sweet shallots bring a great element to the dish: it’s a very delicate combination of flavors, but it works well.

Pasta with Egg and Shallot

4 oz. uncooked pasta
2 eggs, lightly whisked
1 shallot, minced
1 tsp. olive oil
salt and pepper

Cook the pasta in salted, boiling water until al dente. Reserve a few tablespoons of the starchy water.

Meanwhile, in a skillet, heat the olive oil and sauté the shallot with a bit of salt. Turn the heat off. Add the cooked pasta to the hot skillet and toss with the oil and shallot until combined. Pour in the eggs and mix together until the eggs are just cooked. Season with salt and pepper.

February 3, 2009

Cinnamon Loaf

Filed under: Quickbreads — Tags: , — emiglia @ 9:58 am

I once told my roommate my theory of the “unit:” making things where the size of “one” is bigger is best. For example, when you make muffins, you have a dozen little units. This is one pound cake. Which means that taking a fraction of the whole sounds better… at least in my mind.I absolutely love to make quickbreads. I love having something sweet to snack on during the week, and while I often make muffins, breads made in a loaf pan like this one have a special place in my heart. Maybe it’s because it’s so easy to take tiny, thin slices… because we all know that they don’t have any calories.

This particular bread really appealed to me, but I hesitated in making it because I know that, in general, the French don’t share our American love for cinnamon. To them, it often seems too spicy in a dish, and because this cinnamon loaf uses so much, it made me nervous. In the end, I had to try it, but I improvised a little bit: instead of all cinnamon, I used about a half and half combination of cinnamon and quatre épices, which contains cinnamon, cloves, black pepper and nutmeg.

It went over well: it was a little bit too spicy for one in my audience, but the rest of them loved the combination of spices with the sweet cake that holds it all together. As for me, I adored it, especially the texture: I often find that quickbreads can be so moist as to become gummy, but this one is light and fluffy.

And it’s very easy to take lots of little no-calorie tastes.

February 2, 2009

Ragú con Salsiccia

Filed under: Carnivorous Main Dishes, Pasta, Pork — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 9:19 am

Sometimes, I make recipes that I absolutely adore, and then when it comes time to blog about them, I have very little to say. This ragú di salsiccia recipe, for example, which I had bookmarked for months and finally made this summer, was a dream: I love meat sauces for pasta. They’re so much more substantial than regular tomato sauce, and pasta with sauce is a very easy meal to serve to a group. My main problem with meat sauces in general is the length of time it takes to make one, which is why this recipe appealed to me so much: it’s very quick and easy, and extremely tasty.

So why did it take me so long to write about it? I know that every time I went through my list of recipes to post, the picture attached to this one stopped me: so rarely are my tomato sauces so bright red and pleasing to the eye… usually the onions I add to mine turn the tomatoes closer to orange than bright red.

I guess it’s because I don’t know what to write when I take someone else’s recipe, make it, and don’t change a thing. I like to supply my readers with recipes that come with hints: things I tried that made the original better. As far as this one is concerned, I have nothing to add. Very little to say. Go home and make it on a night when you have to work, because a meal that tastes this slow-cooked deserves to brighten up a midweek evening.

February 1, 2009

Chili

Filed under: Beans and Legumes, Beef — Tags: , — emiglia @ 9:19 am

I have been a very bad blogger.

I apologize. Profusely. I don’t know why I do this… the second something starts to happen in my life, I drop everything, blog included.

You see, I recently came back to France and started my new job. I work at a television station, which somehow is the job I never knew I always wanted. I’m bored easily, but I love being good at things, and this job lets me always do new things, but at the same time get good at one thing: video editing. The news is always changing, so my job is always new and exciting, and yet I’m constantly editing video, getting better and better at using Final Cut (and becoming more and more of a geek in the process).

The problem with the news is that I get off work around seven or eight, so I have the energy to come home, make dinner, take pictures, and that’s about it. No more energy for blogging, reading blogs, or even creeping around Facebook, which used to be one of my favorite activities.

But now that I’ve finally gotten into the pattern of my evenings, I can share this incredible chili recipe with you. I found the recipe on Well Fed, a blog I have come to depend on for one-pot meals.

Because I do my shopping in the evenings before I come home, I make one stop, and so I wasn’t able to hit the butcher for brisket meat. Instead, I used stew meat, which didn’t fall apart like it was supposed to, so the next day, I took the cold meat out of the chili pot and cut it up before tossing it back into the pot.

I had been using the same chili recipe for years, but this one is truly incredible. I found myself using a bit more liquid than called for in the form of tomato purée and extra beer as this one cooked, but I’ve always found that chili-making is an approximate recipe.

The great thing about this recipe is that it’s even better the next day, which means that we can enjoy it on nights when I come home especially late and avoid dinners made up of boxed macaroni and cheese.

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