New Kitchen Tools

Well, not real new. But, I'm catching up on some blog ideas hanging in the back of my brain closet. Recently I used two new additions to my kitchen tool collection for one evening's dinner.

I made a pinenut-crusted fish using a recipe from Moosewood's "Simple Suppers". This was the product of a trip to Powell's for Norway books and maps. While Grady and Ardie were browsing in the travel section, I hung out in the cookbook department. And managed to find something that is new to me and which looked really useful.



A while back when a few of us were taking a cooking class, the chef showed us a Messermeister peeler - with a very sharp serrated blade. He used it to peel an apricot for a dessert. I have found it to be extraordinarily useful. In this case, I used it to peel some delicata squash for a risotto.


This is the squash and chard risotto with fried sage leaves - a variation on a recipe in The Farm to Table Cookbook.


Later, I'll show you my terrific new kitchen shears, but I think this is enough excitement for one evening.

Comfort Food on Cold Evening

The past two nights we have enjoyed a Baked Penne With Marinara, a recipe that Laura at (no so) Urban Hennery shared recently. She has the recipe at that link to her blog. Simple, but very delicious. She talks about cooking the sausage, onion and garlic until the aroma makes your mouth water. For me, the mouth-watering aroma came while the whole thing was cooking in the oven. It was simply a wonderful smell. Unfortunately, reheating it in the microwave doesn't give you the same experience. But, the taste is still great the second day. This recipe makes a large amount, so keep that in mind if you try it. I decided to go ahead with the whole thing so we could have it two nights and then also have a fair amount to put in the freezer for an evening when we don't have much time. One thing about this recipe that was new for me was adding pesto to the marinara sauce. I have always treated those as two separate ways to cover pasta. But, I would like to try the combined version again in other uses. It added a lovely flavor to the tomatoes, onions and garlic. I was lucky to have both tomato sauce and pesto in the freezer from last summer, so it was a partially local meal.

It was great as is, but, as I'm writing about it, I was thinking that it could also be nice to add mushrooms to the marinara. This time of year, mushrooms are one of the fairly readily available local items we can get here.