Tag Archives: rosemary

Leeky Pasta

Leeky Pasta

This dish was inspired by something I had at a restaurant many years ago. I had never had rosemary or leeks in a pasta like this. While often considered ‘fall’ flavours, the combination of the woody rosemary and leeks with the fresh tomatoes and light olive oil sauce is really interesting. Topping it off is some crumbled chèvre that melts into the hot pasta. This dish is best when you can get fresh local tomatoes.

This is an olive oil sauce, the flavour of which is balanced with salt. This is more salt than I usually add to a dish, but it is actually important.

Since I usually make this dish from the top of my head, I decided to try to flesh out an actual recipe. I laugh at myself, because I actually bought too few tomatoes for the dish. Had I figured out a recipe years ago, I would have known how much to get. I also had a hard time guesstimating how much pasta to make. I found this neat page, on the Barilla website, to help you figure out how much pasta to cook (based on a 2oz serving size). In the end, I just estimated based on the amount in the package – I used half of a 900g package, so it’s just about a pound of dried pasta (or a 6-inch bunch, when you measure the circumference).

This recipe will feed 4-6.

Ingredients:

  • 1LB Fettuccine or Linguine
  • 3-5 Tbsp olive oil
  • 2 Tbsp chopped shallot or onion
  • 1 Tbsp chopped fresh garlic (appx 1-2 cloves)
  • 1 Tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped (plus some for garnish, optional)
  • 2-3 cup chopped mushrooms
  • appx 3 tbsp white wine
  • 1 medium leek, green part separated from white, halved and thinly sliced crosswise
  • 1LB cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
  • appx 4 Tbsp chèvre (goat cheese)
  • 1 Tbsp sea salt
  • pepper, to taste

Preparation:

  1. Cook pasta in a large pot. Drain, toss with 1 Tbsp of olive oil, and keep hot (this is important).
  2. In the meantime, heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a deep sauté pan, or large sauce pan. Sauté shallot/onion until translucent, for approximately 1 minute.
  3. Add garlic, rosemary, and mushrooms. Sauté until mushrooms reduce in size and begin to brown.
  4. Add the white part of the leek, and saute for another minute or two. Add a couple of tablespoons of the pasta cooking water, if it’s looking dry.
  5. Add the tomatoes, and about 1/2 of the green part of the leeks.
  6. Add the rest of the olive oil, the salt and stir.
  7. Add the pasta and toss.
  8. Serve hot, topping each plate with some crumbled chèvre, freshly ground black pepper, and some of the green leek.

Recipe Mashup: Baked Sweet Potato Pasta

This is my usual way of dealing with recipes – I steal from them and I smash them together.

Until I started my blog, I didn’t really follow recipes closely. I usually just use them for inspiration. I figure out what ingredients I have on hand, and I Google my way to a few recipes that sound neat. I take a little bit from one and a little bit from another, and there we go!

Tonight’s dinner was fueled by my wish to bake a pasta dish, and the sweet potatoes that were waiting to fulfill their delicious destiny.

I took most of my inspiration from Martha Stewart: Baked Mushroom Linguine and Butternut Squash and Sage Lasagna. Some people like to mock Martha, but honestly I’ve had great success with recipes from her website. I’m not embarrassed to say that I enjoy her show (on the rare occasion I’m able to watch it) and it’s now one of my go-to sites when I can’t think of what to make for dinner.

On that note, I think I need to add her link to my blogroll. Done!

Pasta Mashup - Oven Dish

Mashup Pasta & Sweet Potato Casserole

Soo… here’s what I did: I cooked up some rotini (ok, not either of the recommended types of noodle); baked my sweet potatoes as suggested in the squash recipe; loaded up a cheese sauce with some cream cheese, some Fizzy cheese from Quebec, herbes de provence, thyme, rosemary, nutmeg, cayenne and tangy mustard powder; sauteed some mushrooms and onions with mushroom broth; tossed it all together and threw it back in the oven topped with breadcrumbs. Whew!!

Pasta Mashup - Plate

Pretty yummy!

So, how did it turn out? Not bad! The cheese sauce is a little different from my usual (shock! I didn’t put any anise in it!) and I’m usually too lazy to make a meal and THEN put it in the oven to bake. I ended up putting in too many noodles, which meant the sauce wasn’t as vibrant and saucey as it should have been. Blerg! I didn’t think the breadcrumb thing through – it ended up being a little too dry, because the sauce was mostly absorbed into the pasta. So I had to add a little more liquid and stick it back in the oven. Live and learn.