A Little Zing: Creamy Lemon Spaghetti with Salmon

This dish is a little bit comfort food and a little bit for-adults-only. It’s creamy and rich but also unmistakably bright and fresh. It’s a good one to have in your back pocket for a quick weeknight dinner, especially come winter when we aren’t drowning in gorgeous produce.

I know, we’re supposed to be eating raw tomatoes out of hand, ’tis the season to be all-zucchini-all-the-time, (if you’re drowning in zukes, try this or this.) But sometimes you can’t argue with a craving.

This pasta is a spin on spaghetti al limone, zippy with lemon juice and zest, calmed with a scoop of creme fraiche (I love the Ronnybrook stuff), and elevated a bit with a few ribbons of moist, thinly-sliced smoked salmon. The salmon shouldn’t cook; just toss it in with the hot pasta to warm through. You could add some capers for a true near-bagel experience.

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A Taste of the West: Buttered Pasta with Oregon Truffles

I am from Oregon, but I am not from wild Oregon. When you get outside of Portland and its suburbs (or Eugene, Salem, Corvallis), the northwest is wild on all sides. Early in high school, I got a job working for the science museum’s summer camps and found myself headed into the green: up into Washington’s Hoh Rainforest, out to waveless Puget Sound, south to the coastal dunes and into the Redwood forests with a schoolbus full of campers. I went every summer till late in college, living in my little blue tent, hiking and tidepooling, cooking piles of pancakes and vats of chili, making sure everyone kept hydrated and wasn’t too homesick. There was usually a campfire to sing around, and every Thursday there were marshmallows to toast. Sometimes, with the sunsets, there were whales.

After too many years, I got a taste of wild Oregon again last week. My friend Hannah is from Spray (it’s past The Dalles, past Biggs, past Carlton, and Fossil, if you’re keeping track), and her parents threw her and her new husband a fantastic post-wedding party on their ranch. They built a campsite for 40 nestled into the hills, and a road to get there. They built solar showers and composting toilets and a party space with a bar and a stage for dancing. There was a solar generator to amplify the band and there was a barbecue outfit in from Bend, smoking ribs and mountains of pulled pork. There were giant bowls of onion rings. Weddings should always have giant bowls of onion rings.

There were relatives and Hannah’s elementary school teachers, and friends from Hannah and Jared’s childhood and college and graduate schools. Folks from town brought an entire table full of cookies and brownies. The sun set and the moon was full and huge. We danced to keep warm. “We seem to have scared off the coyotes,” they said.

In the morning, the wildflowers that close in the heat of day opened their bright blue faces all around our tents. We stood in Hannah’s parents’ kitchen eating leftover pulled pork with our fingers, not wanting to leave. They have a garden full of vegetables, and a stream to swim in. It’s so quiet, so far removed.

I had a few more days in Portland after: enough time to try out some new restaurants and go to the farmer’s market with my mother. The mushroom vendor had bags of Oregon truffles, five dollars apiece. She tucked an extra truffle in for me.

Heading east again always happens too soon, but a plate of this pasta is something to look forward to. Fresh pappardelle is best (make your own if you haven’t just returned from a cross-country trip), tossed with softened butter (infused with one grated truffle) and topped with a cloud of truffle shavings. It’s delicate, earthy and a little decadent. Serve it with a creamy Chardonnay or elegant California Sauvignon Blanc (and an episode of Mad Men) and settle in back home.

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Jamie Oliver’s Shell Pasta with Bacon and Peas

Sometimes I forget how few people cook. Spend enough time looking at food blogs, and you forget how many people bring home a sack of Mickey D’s for dinner (or microwave something from the freezer aisle.) When I first looked at Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook, I couldn’t help but think, none of these recipes really seem that good for you. Isn’t he trying to end obesity?

But maybe he has it right. If people think cooking is too complicated and fussy and that wholesome food can’t be as comforting as greasy delivery, the first step is to invite them into a warm kitchen. It’s to show them some satisfying low-maintenance dishes—to get them buying fresh food again, and sharing meals together with their families. Then maybe, once they’re comfortable, they’ll start getting creative in their cooking. While I balked at the richness of some of the dishes in this book, I can see where he’s going with this.

So on a night when I was a little low on steam, I put away the folder full of takeout options and pulled out my review copy of Jamie’s Food Revolution. I threw together this easy pasta, not altogether healthy but at least not deep fried. And the bacon smelled good sizzling in the pan. And even frozen peas are bright green and sweet in the winter. And I listened to the wonderful new Patty Griffin album while I stirred it all together.

It was simple, but it was good. Maybe I’ll even foray into the curry chapter next.

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Leap and look: Whole wheat pasta with pumpkin cream sauce.

You know how sometimes you kind of just get an idea into your head, and you simply can’t rest until it’s been seen to or otherwise sorted out? And you can’t stop thinking about it, it haunts your dreams and makes everything else seem sort of…beige in comparison? This recipe was one of those.

From the first second it popped into my head, it was a constant companion; the fact that my gratification was almost endlessly delayed (I couldn’t get the ingredients; then, I couldn’t schedule an evening; blah blah) made it a siren whose wail could not be ignored. I was helpless in its embrace. I had to make it, or I was going to pop. And so, not being one to tempt that fate, I succumbed to the inevitable and finally made it happen.

Yes, yes. I finally got to make whole wheat pasta with a pumpkin and sage cream sauce.  Oh! Oh, yes! And what a delight it was.

The recipe is a riff on a risotto that I developed a few years ago, made creamy and dreamy with the application of a little bit of milk and a lot of Gruyere, and possessed of a spicy warmth, courtesy of the nutmeg I recklessly tossed in. This flavor profile, when developed so many years ago, was one of my first great cooking revelations–it was the moment that I first became brave enough to toss together disparate flavors (such as nutmeg and sage) just to see what would happen, and realized that some of the world’s greatest dishes grow out of inexplicable (and sometimes seemingly bizarre) juxtapositions of flavors. It taught me that if you’re going to make something spectacular, you have to be brave enough to throw out what you know from time to time. It taught me that you have to let go of feeling safe and just fucking GO for it.

A good lesson to have refreshed upon occasion, no?

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Like Peas in a Pod: Orecchiette with Pancetta and Fresh Green Chickpeas

While we’re talking about fleeting seasonal produce, let’s talk about chickpeas. I mean, not what you think of as farm-fresh, right? Usually, I shake them out of a can, rinse, and proceed. I never even thought of what they might look like before canning.

But there they were, sitting pretty at the market: fresh, unshelled garbanzos. They look a bit like fuzzy edamame pods, stuffed full with chubby chickpeas. (Two per pod, usually.)

I had to have them. (I think you’ve heard that one before.)

Fresh chickpeas are delightful raw: a bit crispy, a bit sweet, tasting of green sweet peas almost as much as they remind you of the garbanzos you know and love. If you find them at your market, make sure to eat a few raw while you’re popping them out of their pods. Or, eat all of them that way.

That’s where the novelty is; I have to be honest. Once cooked into a pasta dish, I’m not sure these tasted that much different than my usual canned ones. They have a slightly better texture, and a slight sweetness, but I’m not sure that’s worth the trouble.

Not that this wasn’t delicious—it was rich and salty and savory and filling. Who would turn down pancetta and garlicky pasta, stirred with enough pasta water to make the sauce silken? Not you or me, we’re like two peas…

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