nathan and audrey

Okay, so I went home for the holidays and attempted to make a family favorite plachintas. Well, for some reason the whole thing was a mess. I couldn’t get the amounts of the ingredients right and the thing just didn’t work. At that moment I committed myself to overcoming my failure and make amazing plachintas someday. Well tonight was the night and it was awesome! I still have no clue why the plachintas failed in NM, but for whatever reason I have now succeeded and do not feel so bad. The Banze had a very interesting response to my success, “yay daddy! that was an exsquisite example of how to cook plachinta!”

On a side note I have looked into what exactly a real plachinta is, and it appears as though I have been a bit confused. A plachinta is a German Southern-Russina dish that is a turnover like pastry thing with filling. You can see a description of it over at fastrecipes. What I had been calling a plachinta is something a bit more like a crepe. So I’m sorry to all my friends who I have confused with my plachina talk, but nonetheless I will still considered them plachintas.

::nathan::

My first experience with pesto happened when I was in my third or fourth year of university studies. After one taste, I was shamed. Why was I not introduced to such a wonderful dish earlier in my life? While we flirted with each other over the tines of my fork, it was still another couple of years before our next encounter. Now I’m trying to regularize the connection, and learning how to make the dish would go a long way.

But pesto seemed so intimidating! So scary! So…I don’t know. My father, the amazing cook of lore, is not a pesto dude. He does not have a love-love relationship. (Which explains my late introduction, a sin for which I have nearly forgiven my father.) And when I was informed that pesto was not only super easy to make, but also contained only a handful of ingredients, I was in disbelief. (Happy disbelief, might I add.)

I found a recipe for pesto in my newest cookbook, Cook This, Not That, and went from there. By the by, this cookbook is awesome because it’s full of color and pictures, but I also find the sections at the beginning of the chapters very informative. They have a chart on grains, a chart of dairy, and a chart on meats that rank them from best to worst. For some reason, that kind of information makes me giddy with power.

The pesto I made was inspired by CTNT’s recipe:

• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp walnuts
• 3 1/2 cups fresh basil leaves
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup olive oil

Easy, right? Except I do not grow basil, and I was unwilling to spend the ridiculous amount of money my local grocery store demanded for a small handful of basil leaves. Enter The Farmer’s Market. HUGE bag of basil for $2.00. That’s more like it. And except pine nuts (which I did not have on hand) I used walnuts (because that’s what I did have). I ground everything up in my food processor and voila! I had pesto genovese.

But now that I had it…oh, what to do with it? I went back to my roots and attempted the dish that introduced me to pesto. I didn’t measure anything because I’m trying to be more fluid with my cooking, so if you try to recreate this, you’ll have to be brave. I’ll try and provide guesstimates where possible.

Chicken and Mushroom Pesto Pasta for Two

• 2 tbsp. butter, separated
• clove of garlic, minced
• 8-9 ounces white wine (I used chardonnay)
• 6-8 ounces mushrooms
• 2 chicken breasts, cut into thin strips
• enough pasta for two, any type will do
  
• 1/2 of the above pesto recipe
• parmesan to sprinkle on top
• salt and pepper to taste
  

First, I melted 1 tbsp. butter over medium heat and sauteed 1/2 clove of garlic, minced. Next, I added 3-4 ounces of white wine and let that reduce for 60 seconds before throwing in 6-8 ounces of mushrooms. I sauteed everything until the mushrooms were soft, and I was left with beautiful, tasty garlicky mushrooms in a white wine butter sauce. I threw everything in a bowl and set it aside.

I kicked up the heat to medium high and melted another tbsp. of butter in the same, unwashed pan to preserve the yummy goodness left behind by the mushrooms. I added the other 1/2 of my garlic clove, minced, and sauteed before adding in probably 4-5 ounces of white wine. That reduced for 60 seconds before I tossed in the chicken. At this point I also sprinkled a little bit of kosher salt and a few twists of fresh ground pepper, but you certainly needn’t do that. Cooked the chicken until done, set in a bowl, and put aside.

While the chicken was cooking, I put two portions of pasta into boiling water and set my timer. I used rotini, but that doesn’t mean other pastas wouldn’t be just as lovely. We eat a lot of rotini here.

Once the pasta was cooked and drained, I gathered all of my ingredients: mushrooms, chicken, pasta, a small bowl of grated parmesan, and pesto! Salt and pepper were also close at hand. I had to retire my smaller pan because everything wouldn’t fit, and I threw the chicken, the mushrooms, and the pasta into my largest skillet. I added about 3/4 of the pesto I made from the above pesto recipe, which was probably a mistake. Next time I’ll go slower and only use 1/3-1/2. (The pasta was very pesto-y.) I cooked everything until it was warm, then added the parmesan and plated it.

It was awesome. Too much pesto, but otherwise super tasty and easy to make. So make it!

I’ve been pushed and reminded–gently, of course–that having a website with my name in the title means that I should contribute. I could write about work (bleh), getting ready for the move to Illinois (tiring), or my thoughts on spending winter in a very very cold part of the country after having lived in the desert nearly my entire life (fearful), and while those things are very present in my thoughts as of late, there’s something I think about with much more joy. Cooking is so exotic! I can be wherever I’d like with the right ingredients, and I love to measure things out, combine them, and see what I’m left with. So, I figure that my contribution to this website will be about food. And to kick everything off, I’m going to start with the corn chowder I made last night.

Corn and Shrimp Chowder, adapted from Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food

A few notes on chowder: various definitions disagree, but it’s typically considered to be a thick soup with potatoes and other ingredients. The word chowder is thought to be a descendent of the Latin word caldaria, which refers to the cooking pot used to make it.

This recipe makes a very thin chowder, but it is much better suited for summer in New Mexico than its thick siblings.

Ingredients:

• 8 slices bacon
• 2 large cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 medium-sized potatoes, cut into 1/4-1/2 inch cubes
• 4 oz pancetta
• 1 teaspoon seafood seasoning
• 3 tbsp flour
• 2 cups water
• 3 cups milk
• 1 lb. large raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 2 cans sweet corn OR six ears of sweet corn with the kernels cut off the cob
• salt and pepper to season
• bread or crackers on the side, if you so desire

1) Cook the bacon until crispy in a large saucepan. Set bacon off to the side, and the grease inside becomes the base of the chowder.
2) On medium heat, add the garlic, pancetta, and potatoes, and let it all simmer for a couple of minutes. Lower your heat if the garlic begins to brown too quickly.
3) Add seafood seasoning and stir pot to ensure everything gets fully coated. Then add flour and repeat.
4) Next, add the water and milk. If you reduced your heat in step 2, kick it back up to a medium heat or even medium-high heat. Wait for the liquid to come to a boil, then reduce the heat, allowing the chowder to simmer. Cook 10 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.
5) Tear the bacon strips into small pieces. Set aside.
6) Add corn and shrimp to the mix. Cook another two minutes, removing from heat when the shrimp change from being translucent and gray to white and pink.
7) Garnish with bacon pieces and serve very hot.

Including the prepwork, the entire recipe took me about forty-five minutes to complete. We served it with thick slices of french bread, which we soaked up with broth and devoured. The meal was light, the flavors were subtle, and after eight hours of work, it was easy to make. The shrimp I had purchased for it wasn’t terribly flavorful, so I imagine that a better quality shrimp would’ve produced more of the sweet, seafood-y flavor that I love and adore. I’ve been asked to make it again.

-Audrey