Italian Stuffed Pepper Soup

We had a late lunch with our friends Sharon and Jim in Upton, MA on Tuesday, February 20th - a few days before leaving New England and the late winter behind. What a perfect meal with the Campbells!

Sharon's Stuffed Pepper Soup was so good that I asked her for the recipe. She replied with a list of the ingredients that she throws together. I tried duplicating it and it was almost as perfect as hers. We had Tim and Julie over on a breezy, warm evening in Verandah here in Florida.  Everyone loved this bowl of comfort served with fresh bread, red wine and a salad.

Sauté some shallots and chopped sweet onions in a bit of oil in a Dutch oven (or any other pan.) Add 12 sausages (out of the casings) and use a spatula or other utensil to break them up as they cook. Add 4 cans* of fire-roasted tomatoes. Sharon added some tomato sauce, but we were unfortunately out of tomato sauce so I added the *fourth can of tomatoes. Add some Italian seasoning and dried thyme, a generous T. of fennel seed, a tsp. of dried thyme, and a bit or garlic salt. Add three multi-colored peppers, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces. When the peppers are just cooked, if the Dutch oven is big enough, add 8 cups of beef broth and about 2-4 cups of cooked brown rice.

Or add everything to another pot that will hold everything. (I actually cooked the 2 cups of rice in 4 cups of beef broth until almost done and added everything to a crockpot. I cooked on high four about 3 hours.) If not soupy enough, add more beef broth.

Serve with warm bread, a salad, and a bowlful of freshly grated Parmesan/Pecorino/Romano cheese.

So good!

If you'd like a recipe with more exact ingredients, I found a ton of them online. Just search Stuffed Pepper Soup. Here's one I found while I was uploading Sharon's recipe.

Roasted Yellow Beet Fresh Pasta with Sage Butter

 Today I made roasted yellow beet pasta by adding only 1 whisked egg to the flours and a few tablespoons of pureed roasted yellow beets. I added water to the dough in the pasta machine until it was the consistency of dried peas.  This was a bit tricky, but it worked.

To 1/2 cup of Italian butter in a hot pan, I added about 30 sage leaves of all sizes that I had picked from the herb garden. I turned the heat down to simmer and cooked it for about half an hour until the sage leaves had shrunk considerably in size.  I turned the heat up and watched it carefully until the sage leaves turned crispy and the butter turned light brown. 

Using a very small strainer, I strained the butter from the leaves. I then used the butter on the pasta after it cooked.

Spinach Fettuccini with Pine Nuts, Creme Fraiche, Bacon and Pecorino/Parmesan

Using the homemade fettuccini I'd made earlier, we had Julie and her family for dinner last night, I cooked the fettuccini for a few minutes and drained it in a colander, Because I was adding it to a heated sauce, I left it to cool. (Don't forget to save a cup of the pasta water!)

I had cooked bacon earlier and left the bits and some of the fat in the pan. To this, I added some good butter, a bit of pepper-flavored olive oil and about a cup of pine nuts. I tossed in some herbs d'provence and left these to simmer. Right before serving dinner, I added 1/2-3/4 cup creme fraiche*, a cup of cooked and crumbled bacon and one cup of finely grated Pecorino and Parmesan cheeses.  I added a bit of pasta water to thin it out and then added the cooked pasta to the hot sauce.

I served it immediately with chopped parsley on top and a bit more finely grated cheese.

We served this with grilled thickly cut tuna steaks, seasoned with Kinder's Butter Steakhouse and butter on top at the end.

Gerry made yummy St.Elderberry martinis and his famous guacamole. We had fresh ricotta bread, salad and a trio of ice creams for dessert. Happy birthday, Julie!

*My creme fraiche hack is 1/3 Greek yogurt, 1/3 Mascarpone cheese and 1/3 sour cream. Using blender or immersion blender to cream together.

Dirty Martini Pasta

Danish Creamery.com (Photo)

I found this recipe online and decided to purchase some large Martini glasses to serve it in. In looking again for the recipe I learned that it is a popular thing! I found the original recipe and tweaked it, having read that Castelvetrano olives are the very best to use. They are a beautiful green and the brine is lovely in the recipe.

The recipe I used was from Danish Creamery and asked to use Danish butter. I bought some Italian butter* instead and used it. I didn't use the crab meat recommended, but it might be pretty tasty with any kind of additional seafood, fish or meat. *I used some chilled American butter (Plugra) and it was just as good  

Cook and drain a pound of pasta. I made fresh Angel Hair pasta. Reserve 1 cup of the water!

Melt 2 T butter in a large skillet over high heat. Add 1 cup of torn pitted Castelvetrano* olives - reserve a few whole olives for garnish (see above photo) and 2 minced (or more) garlic cloves. Cook olives and garlic about 1 minute in the butter.  *Also reserve 1/3 cup of the olive brine.

Add 1/3 cup of gin and cook about three minutes until liquid is reduced by half. Tonight added one pkg. of quickly sautéed cubed prosciutto.  Last week I added about 1/3 pkg of cooked crumbled bacon. 

Whisk in the reserved brine, 1/2 cup of creme fraiche** and 1/2 cup of the pasta liquid. (Note: I whisked these three ingredients together before hand.) 

Transfer pasta using tongs into the skillet and toss. Cook until everything is nice and thick. Add in 3 T. cubed cold butter, zest of 1 lemon, 1/4 c. chopped fresh parsley, and half a cup of pecorino/parmesan. If using seafood, toss it in. Add another splash or two of the pasta water to loosen the sauce. Add salt and pepper, swirl into glasses, garnish and serve immediately with warm bread and butter|olive oil. 

**I made my own creme fraiche using 1/3 full-fat sour cream, 1/3 Greek yogurt and 1/3 mascarpone to make 1 cup and used half of that. You can add more if you feel it is needed.

Tonight I added a butterflied grilled shrimp or two to each filled glass. 

 

Homemade Spinach Fettuccini

 

I'd never tried any other pasta dough in my Phillips pasta maker other than plain semolina/white flour -- that is, until today.

We cooked dried spinach pasta from our favorite Italian deli (Mario's Meat Market in Fort Myers) this past week. I wanted to try it fresh (hard to find.)

I read several recipes online (I think my Philips cookbook is home in Massachusetts). The recipe I liked the best used pasta "juice" and explained it as fresh spinach and just a little water, blended and pureed. In other words, the spinach was raw and fresh.

I used about a cup and a half of fresh spinach, compressed tightly in the measuring cup. And 1/3 cup of water placed in my Ninja juice maker. I ending up adding more spinach and a bit more water. I had a very deep green thick smoothie-type puree. The juice is simply a replacement for the water usually added to the egg as the liquid for the dough. This juice made three batches of pasta.

I placed 3/4 of flour and 3/4 cup of semolina with a few dashes of salt into the pasta machine bowl. My Phillips machine weighs the dry ingredients so this was about 275 grams. 

I cracked one egg into the liquid measure supplied by Phillips and 1/4 tsp olive oil.  I then added enough of the puree to meet the required mls of fluid (95) and started the cycle, adding the wet to the dry and waiting for it to extrude. I cut the pasta at about 10 inches as it extruded from the machine.

More spinach juice could have been added as the extrusion was a tad dry, creating little sharp ridges on the pasta that came from the very center of the fettuccini die. That said, it looks pretty much perfect!

Fresh pasta cooks in just a few minutes and is delicious!

I made roasted yellow beet pasta using the pasta machine and plan to make other flavors as it really is so easy.