Pasta with Pesto and Peas

When I was reviewing The List, I was surprised that I hadn’t blogged about this recipe yet, because I made it long before this blog was even imagined.  This is not your grandmother’s pasta salad.  I should know – I’ve perused enough old church cookbooks to know what your grandmother’s pasta salad probably contained.  The pesto gives this dish a nice, summery flavor, and it could easily be replicated in the dead of winter when you miss fresh basil, as pesto can be easily frozen.  It’s also a nice way to sneak some spinach into a dish without making it overly spinachy.  It could be combined with grilled chicken or salmon, served as a side dish at a barbecue, or just used as a meatless meal on its own, which is how we ate it.

Recipe from Barefoot Contessa Parties!

PS  It must be P week here.  First Peas with Pancetta and Pecorino, and now this.  Peter Piper picked a peck of…

Spinach Gratin

Barefoot Contessa Parties!

Dinner Spanakopitas

I firmly believe that there are two kinds of people in the world:  those who can work with phyllo dough, and those who can’t.  The former are probably all of Greek descent, and I fall into the latter group.  If you, too, fail at phyllo, I only recommend this recipe if you feel like recreating those moments in junior high when you were the only kid who couldn’t do a chin-up (or was it called a pull-up?) in gym class or thread the sewing machine in home ec.  (Hours – DAYS – of my life were wasted away trying both of those activities, when I could have been perfecting my phyllo-handling abilities.)

Anyway, the final product turned out well, even though the aftermath in our kitchen ended up looking like someone took a paper shredder to the preservation project for the Star Spangled Banner.  Sorry, Betsy Ross.

Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics

Italian Wedding Soup

Christmas Eve at our house is a grazing event, and always has been.  I grew up in a clergy family and married into a clergy family, so we always have people coming and going at odd hours, and needing a little bite to eat on their way out the door, or after shoveling, or between toy assembling sessions.  This soup fits the bill nicely, and it even made a nice Christmas Day lunch before the gorge-fest later in the evening.  I like that it’s a little bit light and has lots of veggies in it, since I’m always paranoid about getting sick this time of year.  The recipe (Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics) calls for making 40 meatballs, but I only made two dozen large meatballs, because the meat mixture was so sticky that I couldn’t separate them very well.  They turned out fine, and actually didn’t take any longer to cook than the recommended time for the smaller meatballs.

Garlic Sauteed Spinach

If you’ve never sauteed spinach before, you might be surprised at how quickly it wilts down to a fraction of its original size.  I don’t remember when I first sauteed spinach, but it very well could have been while following the recipe on p. 124 of Barefoot Contessa Family Style.  I’ve made it countless times since then, and it’s become my go-to last-minute side dish.  The lemon juice adds a nice zing to it, but it isn’t absolutely necessary if you don’t have a fresh lemon on hand.  I’ve been told tat this is good eaten cold, as leftovers, with a dash of rice wine vinegar and some sesame seeds.  I wouldn’t know firsthand, though – we’ve never had any left over to try it that way!  You could use pre-washed baby spinach from the supermarket (as I’ve done dozens of times), but this batch came straight from the farm in our CSA box.  It was a bag of mature spinach, so I rinsed it and picked the tough stems off first.  Popeye would be so proud.