Spaghetti With Fennel and Salami

As much as I love to spend a lazy afternoon with a pot bubbling on the stove I don't usually make red sauce for James. His inexplicable aversion to fresh tomatoes has started to creep into cooked dishes. He may eat them and even say they are good but red sauces aren't the dishes that send him back to the fridge looking for leftovers. Those are the real dinnertime homeruns.

None the less while browsing recipes online I found Jamie Oliver's recipe for spaghetti with fennel and salami. James loves all things licoricey (as much as I hate them), we still have a good pile of fennel salami in the fridge, and I can use the extra sauce for pizza later in the week (he still doesn't quite complain about red sauce pizza). Sold.

I started a pan with, as Oliver says, 2 lugs of olive oil and put in a handful of thinly sliced fennel salami and 3 sliced cloves of garlic. I cooked that over low heat until the salami just started to crisp and added one sliced small bulb of fennel and covered the pan to cook over moderate heat for five minutes. I took a shortcut here. The recipe calls for a large can of chopped tomatoes and I only had a can of sauce. So I added the sauce along with a few crushed red chiles and S&P and let the mixture simmer for about 11 minutes. Jamie Oliver's recipe cooked down the tomatoes for 25 minutes -- Muir Glen sauce might just be a better answer for a work night.

I drained the pasta, stirred it around in the sauce, and served it sprinkled with parmesan cheese and chopped fennel fronds.

Red sauce James liked and didn't tempt me to stray from my diet (I hate fennel and only cook it for him). "Easy peasy," as the chef would say.

Crispy Polenta Cakes

I like to disguise leftovers. It makes me feel clever.

James had warm polenta the other day and I took what was left in the pot, spread it on a sheet pan and let it firm up in the fridge. I cut the mixture into circles with a biscuit cutter and laid the cakes in a hot pan with olive oil and crisped them on both sides. If I'd had more time I might have coated the cakes in panko bread crumbs for extra crunch.

In another pan I heated some olive oil and added in some garlic, chopped fennel salami, and the last frozen fava beans from our most recent front yard harvest. I cooked those ingredients down with some white wine, butter and S&P to make a quick ragout. On top one of our backyard eggs (extra precious now since the girls have slowed down due to winter's chill) fried in fruity olive oil. A sprinkle of cheese brought dinner to the table.

James didn't recognize the ingredients . . . he was too busy eating and mumbling how delicious it was.

Zucchini Carbonara

A man cannot live by beans alone. And so, when James glanced wistfully towards the kitchen and asked what was for dinner I knew it was time for a change. "Spaghetti," I said cheerfully, realizing as the word came out of my mouth that we had many shapes in the pantry but no spaghetti (James' favorite). No matter, I set to work on dinner to warm his heart.

Although we are low on pasta shapes what I do have plenty of is pork -- cured pork to be specific. Pancetta, finocchiona, boar salami, Jamon Serrano, chorizo -- we're well prepared. Since I thought the salami was a little hard to eat in a sandwich I decided to use it as the basis of my quick pasta sauce. Into a pan with warmed olive oil went shreds of boar salami, 3 sliced cloves of garlic, a pinch of chili peppers, a pinch of oregano, and three small sliced zucchini. I covered the pan and let it simmer over low heat until the squash was starting to turn golden brown (about 5 minutes). I uncovered the pan and allowed the mixture to cook while the pappardelle boiled. After the pasta was drained I returned it to the cooking pot, poured in the sautéed zucchini, 1 egg beaten with a glug (maybe 1/3 cup) of cream and a good quantity of grated cheese (usually I would have used parmesan but we are still working down our party cheese so I went for the tangy sheep's milk cheese, Piedmont from Everona dairy), and about 1/2 TB of shredded fresh mint. Normally I am anti cream in carbonara but we have open cream and eggs keep longer in the fridge so a girl has to bend the rules sometimes. With a good stir the residual heat from the pasta turns the egg into a delicate creamy sauce. Carbonara with a twist.