Good Bite: Everyday Meals with a Twist (Orzo Salad with Pesto)
July 6, 2010 by Andrea 
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Filed under Announcements, Pasta, Salads
GoodBite.com has a new video series called Everyday Meals with a Twist sponsored by Heinz 57 sauce, and I shared one of our favorite easy recipes for the series. My dish with a twist is Orzo Salad with Pesto, a simple salad that you can serve warm or cold anytime of the year.
We make basic basil pesto and sun-dried tomato pesto with our homegrown basil, but you can also use purchased pesto. Just toss with the cooked orzo, tomatoes, and kalamata olives, sprinkle a little Parmesan on top, and it’s ready to serve.
Pasta with Chicken, Garlic Scapes, Tomatoes, and Basil
June 28, 2010 by Andrea Print This Post
Filed under Grow Your Own, Main Course, Pasta, Poultry, Vegetables
The garlic only has a few more weeks in the ground, then it will be time to dig it up, and if the flavor of the scapes is any indication, we are in for some spicy garlic this year. We harvested the scapes over the weekend and made three different things with them: pesto, cannellini bean dip, this pasta with chicken, tomatoes, and basil. We saved the pretty flowers and curved parts for the pasta and use the stems for the pesto and bean dip. Read more
Zucchini Soba Salad
August 28, 2009 by Andrea Print This Post
Filed under Asian, Grow Your Own, Pasta, Salads
My introduction to soba noodles was actually on a plane flying from Tokyo to Honolulu, admittedly not the best place to get good food. The flight attendants came around with breakfast and asked if I wanted the Japanese or the American breakfast, and I chose the Japanese because I could see the noodles that someone else already had on their tray. I swirled them in the sauce and enjoyed the slippery sensation and flavor while the American woman next to me eyed them with a look that said, “I can’t believe you are eating that.” I just smiled and enjoyed my breakfast. Read more
The Daring Cooks Make the Zuni Cafe Ricotta Gnocchi
May 14, 2009 by Andrea Print This Post
Filed under Pasta
The Daring Cooks have begun! An offshoot of The Daring Bakers, group members strive to hone our skills by tackling one cooking challenge each month. For this inaugural challenge, our founders Lis and Ivonne chose the Zuni Cafe ricotta gnocchi from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, by Judy Rodgers. I was thrilled to try the challenge because we dearly love gnocchi and though I’ve never been to the Zuni Cafe, I’ve heard wonderful things about it and have had the cookbook on my shelf for some time.
The ricotta cheese makes this gnocchi lighter than the traditional Italian potato gnocchi and the flavor reminded us of a very light omelet. Because we have plenty of chives and sage in our garden, I added both to the gnocchi and use more chives for garnish, a combination we thought worked well. We usually toss gnocchi with our homegrown basil pesto or sun-dried tomato pesto, but this time I decided to keep it very simple and made a browned sage butter. Read more
Mediterranean Orzo Salad
August 14, 2008 by Andrea Print This Post
Filed under Grow Your Own, Pasta, Salads, Vegetables
Simplicity has been our theme this summer. I went back to work in June and realized that I wasn’t superwoman. Oh, I knew it way before then, but adding big deadlines to my juggling pile made me think less about what I wanted to do and more about what I could realistically do, and the first thing on my list was to make our meals easier and faster to prepare.
We’re still cooking from scratch; no take out, no pizza delivery guy ringing our doorbell, we’re just making our weekday meals less complicated. Not that I was serving cordon bleu before, but now we are even more mindful of our menu and time required to prepare food. The season is in our favor, with so many fresh fruits and vegetables available it’s easy to pull together a quick meal. Our tomatoes are ripening beautifully, and we gathered some of the fresh grape tomatoes and parsley and basil from the garden and added all of it to the bowl.
Zucchini and Mushroom Pasta with Lemon Basil
July 31, 2008 by Andrea Print This Post
Filed under Main Course, Pasta, Vegetables
With zucchini in season and a garden full of herbs, I had plenty to work with for creating a quick and easy meal. For this dish, I sauteed shallots and garlic, tossed in some baby portabella mushrooms and julienne zucchini, added some lemon basil chiffonade, then finished it off with a dry white wine and some grated Parmesan.
Using julienne and thinly sliced vegetables makes the dish cook up faster and adds some visual interest as well. You can find julienne peelers or mandolines at many stores or online, or you can use a very sharp knife and cut thin slices and then stack the slices and thin slice again lengthwise for julienne. To chiffonade the basil, lay the leaves on top of each other, then roll them into a cigar shape. Using a sharp knife, slice across the cigar starting at one end and working your way to the other, making very thin cuts.
You can user either lemon or Genovese basil, though we liked the fresh light flavor from the lemon basil. Read more
