use real butter

I’ve been busy this weekend with visitors. My aunt (one of my dearest friends) and her family are staying with us. They’re in the Denver area for some business and I am delighted to have our first guests in many many months. It is the first time I have seen her since my diagnosis and we had a tearful, heartfelt reunion on the sidewalk outside of Sushi Tora in Boulder. Yes, we had sushi. She is as much a sushi whore as I am (we are related, mind you).

So I wasn’t able to get online until late last night when to my delight, I learned that beloved Chuck of Sunday Nite Dinner has revved up Food Gawker, a budding replacement for Tastespotting. Good on ya, Chuck, and thank you thank you thank you for stepping up to the plate. A lesser cook could not have done this so quickly, so elegantly. You are superfly, babe.

Now, I have to be quick with this recipe because I need to make brekkie shortly and I am still managing random and annoying side effects (yes, they linger long after chemo - stupid chemo…).

I chose my partner well, this is obvious. Jeremy is never a cause for strife or stress in my life - he always makes everything better. But you can’t be guaranteed the same for your partner’s family. Luckily, my in-laws are incredibly sweet and loving people who treat me as if I were their own daughter. And they love to cook! Every time I see them, MIL and I always wind up exchanging recipes and sharing new dishes. We’ve been doing this for over 15 years and some of my favorite recipes come from the early days.

pasta, chicken, sun-dried toms, pesto, parm, roasted peppers, garlic, pine nuts

A lovely pasta dish that my ILs served us years ago had such fresh and delightful flavors that I had to have the recipe. It is incredibly simple to throw together, incredibly satisfying to eat. They didn’t have a name for it, really - so I dubbed it Darling Pasta. Did I mention everything about Jeremy’s family is just Darling? It’s true - and it’s their surname!

sauté chicken with garlic and oil

While this isn’t a cold pasta to cool off with (sorry, my East Coast friends who are sitting in the heat), it is perfect for any season and I make it year-round. I’ve used rotini of various flavors/colors and cheese tortellini for this dish, but it is flexible - very flexible. Often, we will make the pasta without the chicken for lighter, vegetarian option.

add sun-dried tomatoes and roasted peppers

Many of the ingredients are easy to come by at the supermarket today (this wasn’t always so a decade ago in Ithaca, New York). Of course, the purists can roast their own peppers, dry their own tomatoes, make their own pasta, and make their own pesto. It’s whatever you want to make of it. Considering this is on my list of quick meals, you can hazard a guess as to how I prepare it.

smell the love - add the pesto

Darling Pasta is terrific with a salad and bread, or served as a side pasta at a potluck, or as a one-bowl meal as we hunker down to watch a streaming episode of BSG (Battlestar Galactica, for those unfortunate souls not in the know).

colorful, flavorful, beautiful

Darling Pasta
1/2 lb. chicken breast, diced
1 lb. rotini or cheese tortellini, cooked
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup sundried tomatoes, rehydrated and cut into strips
1 cup roasted red peppers, diced
1 cup pesto
1/2 cup pine nuts
2 tbsp vegetable oil
parmesan, grated

Heat oil over high heat in a large sauté pan. Add garlic when oil is hot and stir until fragrant. Add the chicken and sauté until just cooked. Stir in the tomatoes and peppers. Mix in the pesto and pine nuts. Toss the drained pasta into the pan and stir together. Remove from heat and serve with grated parmesan.

the ski whore report
Can I say w00t?! I went ski whoring this morning. I just love being a local. There were some decent freshies with a few inches of the sweet stuff, but the groomers were nice too. I hit the blacks in the back and caught up with some of my tele betties. Oh! Babes who tele are hot! Okay, but seriously - men who tele well make me swoon. Our local hill has a huge number of ski patrol on teles and I get my jollies when I see the tall ones ski, strut, or just stand around. Oh my. *fanning a blushing face* And today while I was contemplating more moguls on a favorite run, a gentlemanly hottie in his late 20s paused next to me and said, “after you” except I was still catching my breath so I told him he could go ahead. We exchanged polite greetings and he was off in the most graceful yet athletic tele turns - like silk. I had to catch my breath again.

south arapaho peak in the distance - a great climb

in the post
My MIL is a quilting genius. She cranks out quilts in her sleep and they are all gorgeous. She belongs to several quilting groups and two of her groups back in New Mexico conspired to make a quilt for me. I have been getting so many wonderful packages in the mail since my diagnosis. My friends and family have been remarkable and supportive sending hilarious DVDs, food stuffs, handmade gifts, food mags, snuggy socks and jammies, hats, kitchen cutlery, books, yarn. We have a large room downstairs that is filled with piles of cardboard boxes! So imagine my surprise when I opened this box and unpacked this delightful quilt from 20 women I have never met (except for MIL). They pieced the blocks and MIL did all the rest.

the signature block

I am not a pink girl, but I love the quilt and especially the ice cream cone motif! How Effingham cool is that?!

cooking and more cooking
I spent my afternoon cooking and shooting a lot of dishes (and making a fabulous mess in the kitchen). I have about a dozen recipes in queue for the blog since tomorrow is my next chemo and I’ll be down for the count soon. I want to avoid long silences since I dislike discontinuities. Something I made over the weekend was a recipe I had been eying for years. I heard about it in grad school from my good friend and workout buddy, Sande - a kick ass paleontologist. It’s Martha. I mean, it’s Martha’s mac and cheese recipe. Yes, a recipe that strikes fear and an alarming desire into your heart.

macaroni

The first time I read the ingredients I thought the woman was trying to kill me. Then I realized that she was actually trying to kill us all.

start with a roux - that’s butter and flour

mix in hot milk and add some spices

I digress: Like my Peugeot automatic pepper grinder? I push a button and it grinds the pepper for me. It was a gift from my MIL for my birthday last year and it costs about as much as its automotive counterpart. I’m kidding… sort of. I got hooked on automatic pepper grinders in grad school because the stress of a friggin’ PhD caused the skin on my hands to peel and bleed so badly that I couldn’t grind pepper manually without getting blood everywhere. Gross, I know. Now chemo seems to result in the same problem, so it’s a good thing I have this handy dandy contraption. And just for the record, grad school is worse than chemo.

adding gruyère and friggin’ orange cheddar

and then the cooked macaroni

Some rant: Yup, same grocery run and so we have… friggin’ orange cheddar. Now I caught some flak for calling orange cheddar, friggin’ orange cheddar in my last post. See here, if it’s not adding any flavor to the cheese, then why the frak would we need to add it at all? But really, it boils down to choice. I am a huge fan of choice. HUGE. If I can purchase cheddar that is not orange, but rather the natural color of the cheese, then I will and that is my choice.

my own added debauchery: sliced pancetta - ooooh!

pour into a giant baking dish and top with more fat cheese

The recipe I followed says this serves 6 people. My question is this: 6 people for how many days? That’s a lot of mac and cheese, not to mention a ton of calories (straight to your ass). It’s pretty good as mac and cheese goes, but… it didn’t rock my world as I so hoped it would have. I think it’s too creamy for me and I would prefer it to be more gooey or cheesy. A local restaurant on the flats serves up my favorite mac and cheese - I wonder if they’d ever part with the recipe? Anyway, I was genuinely frightened to have this enormous dish of “increase your pant size by 2″ in my kitchen, so I sent Jeremy to the neighbors’ house with half of it (and half of that matcha Earl Grey chocolate cake). Phew! They are my licensed official taste testers, and I got the thumbs up on both.

this will tide you over for a week

here’s to you, martha

Martha Stewart’s Macaroni and Cheese
with some slight modifications

8 tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup bread crumbs
5 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, or to taste
18 oz sharp cheddar cheese, grated
8 oz Gruyère cheese, grated or 5 oz Pecorino Romano, grated
1 lb elbow macaroni
3 oz pancetta, sliced into strips

Heat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter a 3-quart casserole dish; set aside. In a medium saucepan set milk over medium heat. Melt 6 tablespoons butter in a high-sided skillet over medium heat. When butter bubbles, add flour and whisk to make a roux. While whisking, slowly pour in hot milk. Continue cooking, whisking constantly, until the mixture bubbles and becomes thick. Remove pan from heat. Stir in salt, nutmeg, black pepper, cayenne pepper, 3 cups cheddar cheese, and 1 1/2 cups Gruyère or 1 cup Pecorino Romano; set cheese sauce aside.

Fill a large saucepan with water; bring to a boil. Add macaroni; cook 2 to 3 minutes less than manufacturer’s directions, until the outside of pasta is cooked and the inside is underdone. Transfer macaroni to a colander, rinse under cold running water, and drain well. Stir macaroni into the reserved cheese sauce. Stir in the pancetta. Pour mixture into prepared dish. Sprinkle remaining 1 1/2 cups cheddar cheese, 1/2 cup Gruyere or 1/4 cup Pecorino Romano, and bread crumbs over top. Bake until browned on top, about 30 minutes. Transfer dish to a wire rack to cool 5 minutes; serve hot.

You’re probably familiar with artichoke dip. It’s a great goto appetizer for guests and especially when I used to host stitch-n-bitches. It really boils down to a lot of fat with fiber, I mean a lot of delicious fat with fiber! I’ve had it in restaurants and I can’t stand their versions because they skimp on the arties and load it with even more creamy filler. Blegh.

I made so much soup and stew and curry last week that we were working on leftovers when I remembered I had planned on roast chicken. The chicken wouldn’t wait and I didn’t want to chuck it in the freezer, so I went ahead and roasted it, then put it in the fridge. Instead of having it straight, I had a smack of inspiration.

preparing to harvest the meat

I stripped the bird of the meat and saved the carcass for chicken broth like any good cook would. I decided to make a twist on the artichoke dip and turn it into a hearty pasta dinner on the fly. I’m sure fresh artichokes would have been heavenly, but I was running short on time because I spent most of the day skiing with a bunch of tele babes - whoosh! I used trusty canned artichokes in the interest of time and less swearing.

quartered artichoke hearts

The dip recipe calls for blending everything together and baking it to heady goodness. I wanted to incorporate all of the flavors without baking anything. So I started with the minced garlic, except I used a lot more garlic than is called for in the dip recipe.

sauté garlic in olive oil

Once the sautéed garlic was fragrant, I added cooked penne and sautéed that for a few minutes before adding the chopped roast chicken and artichokes. You can add salt and pepper at this point, but since my roast chicken is typically well-seasoned, I don’t.

the hot mix

I removed the pot from the stove and grated about 2 cups of parmesan cheese over the pasta. I added 1.5 cups of mayonnaise as well as 1/2 cup of lemon juice. Most of these ingredients should be adjusted to your taste. I think I may have added a little more lemon juice - I love that stuff.

grating parmesan

mixing in the mayo, parm, and lemon juice

It’s a bit of a warm pasta salad dish. I guess I think of it as salad since it has mayo. It would have been great with a cream base sauce, but I’m trying to avoid dairy and the mayo lends more to the original artichoke dip.

artichoke dip as dinner

Roast Chicken Artichoke Pasta

1 lb roast chicken, chopped
24 oz. artichoke hearts, cooked, drained, quartered
1 lb. penne, cooked and drained
3 tbsp olive oil
8 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
2 cups Parmesan, grated (to taste)
1.5 cups, mayonnaise (to taste)
1/2 cup lemon juice (to taste)
1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped

In a large sauté pan heat olive oil on high flame. Add garlic and sauté until fragrant. Add the drained penne and saut&eacute for a few minutes. When the pasta is well-coated, toss in the chicken and artichokes and stir until thoroughly heated. Remove pot from heat. Toss in the Parmesan, mayonnaise, lemon juice, and parsley. Stir well and serve hot.