Pasta alla Norma

This dish sparked my obsession with ricotta salata.

Ricotta salata is ricotta cheese that has been pressed, salted (hence the salata) and dried. It's also incredibly cheap for the flavor it brings to a dish. It's got to be the cheapest cheese at Brooklyn Larder.

It's nothing like the ricotta we think of in cheesecakes and lasagna. Instead, it's a firm block of cheese that's easily grated. The Kitchn calls it cheese that can't stand alone, and I tend to agree with that description. It's a bit too salty to make it onto your cheese plate.

Get a bigger piece of ricotta salata than you need for this pasta dish and experiment with it. Grate it over your salad. Use it in place of feta in an omelet. Grate it over a delicious veggie burger. Try it with this raw kale salad and smile.

Ricotta salata is perfect in this pasta alla norma recipe. It contrasts with the heat of the red pepper flakes in the sauce, and the saltiness is a great contrast to the sweeter tomatoes.

The eggplant is microwaved before it is sauteed, which helps cook the eggplant through but requires a lot less oil to be used, making the dish considerably healthier. It's great reheated for lunch--just add the ricotta salata before serving.

Fresh Vegetable Pasta, Risotto Style

I've been on a bit of a pasta kick lately. I know it's summer vacation, and I should have time to cook myself elaborate dinners each night. But I just can't bring myself to turn my oven on. Our kitchen has only one window, and if our bedroom doors are closed, the hot air just hangs there and quickly heats the kitchen.

So, I've been making pasta. Big batches of pasta that I can eat for lunch and dinner for a few days. Pasta I can reheat if I have an easy-to-please guest over for a meal. Pasta that is even good cold if you don't want to unplug the one fan in the kitchen so you can plug in the microwave.

This pasta is a definite winner. It's the most fascinating cross between pasta and risotto, and it's prepared in a risotto style. The pasta is toasted in oil, wine is added and cooked until it is absorbed, and then enriched vegetable broth is added. The pasta is stirred and stirred and stirred until all the broth is absorbed. The remaining pasta is rich and creamy, without the addition of any cream, and only a bit of parmesan cheese is mixed in at the end.

The finished pasta is just loaded with lightly cooked vegetables. Leeks, asparagus and baby peas are lightly sauteed together and finished with a pinch of red pepper flakes for that perfect suggestion of heat.

And the campanelle pasta! Cook's Illustrated described it as "ruffled, bell-shaped," and I'd call it just adorable. It holds on to the sauce well, and the pieces remain separate so you can enjoy them one by one.

Although the process is much more time consuming than your typical pasta dish, it's certainly worth the extra time, and you'll be left with a rich, flavorful and unique dish.

My Go-to Pie Crust with a Secret Ingredient

Pie crust can so easily go wrong. One week, your favorite recipe yields a flaky, tender pie crust. The next, an overworked, tough crust that distracts from the pie. The crust might crack while rolling out or break apart when transferring to the pie plate.

Cook's Illustrated just wasn't alright with the major variations that crop up when pie crust recipes are made on different days. They set about creating a foolproof pie crust, and, I think, they nailed it.

They use a combination of butter and shortening. Butter has a lower melting point and a higher water content than shortening. Shortening is just the opposite. Shortening provides that great, flaky quality in a crust, but butter contributes rich flavor.

They blend their flour into the fats in two batches. The first batch of flour is blended thoroughly with the fats, creating a fat/flour paste. The rest of the flour is barely pulsed into the fat/flour paste, ensuring that there are still bits of flour that can bind with water to form gluten.

My favorite pie crust recipe calls for a secret, surprising ingredient: vodka. Yes, you read correctly. Traditionally, pie crusts use water (in addition to fats) to bind the flour. Gluten forms as water mixes with flour. Unfortunately, too much gluten makes pie crust tough, and not enough water makes the pie crust impossible to roll out.

That's where the vodka comes in. Vodka is eighty-proof, meaning it's made of 60 percent water and 40 percent alcohol. Gluten has a hard time forming in alcohol. Vodka works perfectly because even though it provides 4 tablespoons of liquid to bind the pie dough, it only contributes 2 1/2 tablespoons water, limiting gluten formation and ensuring the crust stays tender.

This month's issue of Cook's Illustrated had a great Quick Tip for getting that ice water you need for your pie crust. A home cook suggested filling a cocktail shaker with the desired amount of water, adding ice, shaking vigorously, and then pouring the water through the shaker. You get the water you need, sufficiently chilled, and the ice is left behind. If only the issue had arrived before I made this pie dough!

This pie crust rolls out like a charm. Deb from Smitten Kitchen recommends rolling the pie dough out between layers of plastic wrap. This technique made the crust easy to roll out and easy to transfer to the pie plate.

A special thank you to Nancy Jean Home for a delightful feature on my fresh fruit fraisier! Visit Nancy Jean's blog to read the delightful feature, learn about new artists and blogs, and see her beautiful art! You can also visit her Etsy page to see her delightful farms and little bird nest paintings. 

Simple Bruschetta with Artichoke Hearts and Parmesan

Bruschetta can so easily go wrong. Sometimes it's soggy and flavorless (particularly if tomatoes are not in season). Other times, the large bits of topping fall off easily, making the bruschetta hard to eat, particularly when you don't have plates.

These bruschetta solve those problems.

They've got a base of pureed artichoke hearts, basil, lemon juice and garlic. It's thick enough to anchor firmly onto the bread, and the mixture stays together so the bread doesn't get soggy. A piece of shaved parmesan cheese on top and a sprinkle of black pepper seal the deal.

They also provide a great way for those earlier-to-arrive guests to help out in the kitchen. Prepare the artichoke puree and the strips of parmesan cheese in advance and refrigerate them. Throw the bread under the broiler a few minutes before the guests are due. Those first brave kitchen volunteers (or recruits!) can spread the artichoke mixture over the toasts and top them with pieces of parmesan. The bruschetta get made, and you get to snack on them along the way!

Perfect Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I get one magazine in the mail: Cook's Illustrated. It comes out six times a year from America's Test Kitchen, just outside of Boston. When they publish a recipe, it's not just a recipe pulled out of their archives or a favorite old recipe with an ingredient or two changed. The premise is that they scientifically test recipes to come up with the best iteration of a recipe possible. I read it cover to cover (even recipes like "Rescuing Grilled Beef Teriyaki," which I never plan to do).

They baked over 700 cookies to come up with their Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. There's so much about this recipe that is better than the recipe on the back of the Tollhouse Chocolate Chips. There's more brown sugar than white sugar, which makes the cookie chewier, and dark brown sugar is used, which has a richer flavor. Instead of softened butter, the butter is melted and browned, giving it a nuttiness. An egg white is removed to make the cookies a little chewier. The cookies are larger than usual, which makes them chewier in the middle.

Best of all is the "whisk and wait" technique that Cook's Illustrated discovered (by accident, initially, when the dough was left to sit when the phone rang). The sugar, egg and vanilla mixture is whisked for 30 seconds and then left to sit for 3 minutes. This process is repeated four times. As the batter "waits," the sugar dissolves in the melted butter, vanilla and egg mixture. Dissolved sugar caramelizes at a lower temperature, creating rich flavors in the finished cookies. Moisture from the sugar burns off at the edges of the cookie, while the moisture simultaneously collects in the middle.

The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe yields the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever had. The only problem was that I wanted to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies on Wednesday night, and I wanted them to be just as good.

I searched hard, and just couldn't find an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe that lived up to my expectations (I still love this one, but it's just not the same when you know that perfect oatmeal chocolate chip cookie could be out there).

So I decided to create one. I compared America's Test Kitchen's chocolate chip cookie recipe to their oatmeal cookie recipe. The oatmeal cookies seemed to use 1 part flour to every 2 parts oatmeal. I scaled back quantities to match the smaller batch the perfect chocolate chip cookies called for, and I kept the butter and dark brown sugar and the "whisk and wait" technique that I loved.

The result was a cookie that I am delighted with. It's perfectly chewy in the center with edges that are slightly crisp. The bottom is browned, and the flavors are rich. I like it more than the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I shared a few weeks ago.