Wild Mushroom & Pumpkin Pasta

October! You’re here! I love you! I love hot cider at the pumpkin patch. I love pumpkin cakes and cookies and soups and chilis (and beers). I love sunny but crisp days, and orange leaves, and red leaves, and scarves. Guys, I have a serious scarf problem (I have like… 35 scarves. Yikes!). I love cinnamon and nutmeg so, so much.

But what I really love…are scary movies and haunted houses! I know it’s only the first of the month, but… Halloween. Do you guys have your costumes or party food picked out yet? Please tell me your house is covered in fake blood and fake cobwebs.  

I’m so excited! I have a major urge to watch Are You Afraid of the Dark right now. Did you watch that as a kid? We didn’t have cable tv, so I only watched 5 episodes that a friend recorded (on VHS) for us. Amanda and I watched those 5 episodes a hundred times. Here are my top 5 (and only 5) favorite episodes:

1. The Tale of the Lonely Ghost: By far the best episode! An old haunted house, a creepy-ass child ghost, a bitchy but super popular teenage cousin. All keys to a good story.
2. The Tale of the Twisted Claw: “It’s the clor of a vulchah!” Amanda and I know this one pretty much word for word.  
3. The Tale of the Prom Queen: Um, who doesn’t love a ghost prom queen from the 50s. I know I do!
4. The Tale of the Pinball Wizard: The entire mall turns into a deadly pinball game. And there’s obviously a teenage love story in here. Enough said!
5. The Tale of the Phantom Cab: Brothers get lost hiking and a creepy old dude in the woods who holds them captive… um. It’s more PG than it sounds.

I may have also spent an entire Saturday a year or two ago watching YouTube recordings of AYAOTD. Just sayin’.

Anyway, that was worthwhile! Also, to celebrate the amazingness of October I made pasta with pumpkin (fall, check), wild mushrooms (fall, check), and sage (yep, check, check, check!). It’s sort of loosely based on a Rachel Ray recipe, but don’t let that stop you from making it.

Wild Mushroom & Pumpkin Pasta
Adapted from this recipe

I used lobster mushrooms and chanterelles, but also threw in some crimini for bulk. The wild guys add in all that wild, earthy flavor I love, and the crimini are the work horse, ensuring that you have a little bit of mushroom in every bite (without costing a million dollars, because let me tell you, wild mushrooms aren't cheap!). But, feel free to use whatever you can find, afford, forage. I also added in a splash of truffle oil, because it just brings out the flavor of the 'shrooms even more. It's totally optional though. This makes a bunch, so it's great for a crowd, or for leftovers. I tossed some diced dry-cured Spanish chorizo into my leftovers, which was pretty tasty! 

1 lb pasta (shells, mac, etc)
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 lb wild mushrooms, roughly chopped
2 cups chicken broth
1.5 cups pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie mix)
3/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon flour
pinch nutmeg
pinch cinnamon
pinch cayenne
8-10 sage leaves, sliced thin
salt & pepper to taste
truffle oil (optional)
Grated parmesan

Heat water for pasta, salt it and cook penne to al dente. Reserve a cup of pasta water, drain and set aside. 

Heat the butter and olive oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add mushrooms and saute until soft and golden, about 6 minutes (add more oil or butter if they stick), sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper. Whisk together broth, pumpkin, milk, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, cayenne, salt and pepper. Add to mushrooms in pan, and when everything starts to bubble, reduce heat to medium low and simmer 5 to 6 minutes to thicken. Stir in sage and truffle oil if using. Add in pasta, and reserved pasta water if it's too dry. Serve with cheese. 

Weeknight Pasta with Artichokes, Olives, and Sausage

On Friday, along with a bunch of total wackos, I'm going to get in a van, drive up to the Canadian border, and spend the next 24 hours and 200-ish miles competing in a relay race back toward Seattle. It's Ragnar time! This is my 5th year running in the Ragnar Relay! Team Chafin' the Dream, represent! 

If you don't know what Ragnar is, you're missing out. Or maybe you're just sane. Teams of 12 people tag team running for 24 hours straight, relay-style. So, one runner hits the road at a time, and the rest of the team hops along in the vans. Each runner runs three times, with each leg ranging between 3-8 miles. Total distance per person is anywhere from 12 miles to 20 miles. I'm somewhere in the middle. The low middle. 

Leading up to the race is always a bit crazy, as I'm trying to pull my running clothes together, pack healthy snacks, get in a few last workouts, create some crazy costumes, and of course, carb UP! Ok, that last part is a bit of a joke, because I mean, c'mon…carb might as well be my middle name. I carb up to prep for carbing up. 

With all this running around, I've been a little stressed out about getting a blog post up here. Sometimes I get caught up in wild, fancy recipes, trying to think up something you've never seen before. So I forget that simple, easy, every day recipes can be pretty damn good. Like this one. Not only does it help me hit the ol' carb quota, but it's perfect for a busy weeknight (and tastes pretty great, too). It's also perfect for last minute dinners with friends, because it makes a big pot of pasta and comes together like that. Oh...picturing me snapping my fingers when I say "like that." 

My friend Bree threw this combo together one night, and I was blown away by the simplicity and awesomeness of it. Oh yeah...people like every day recipes, too! You can add pretty much whatever you want, but I start with a box of whole wheat pasta, a big can of San Marzano crushed tomatoes, a can of artichoke hearts and black olives, an onion, a bell pepper, and some pre-cooked sausage (I used smoked garlic chicken sausages here...sorry if they look a little...pale and weird). If you wanna spice it up, add garlic and basil, and maybe some red pepper flakes. And definitely top it with parmesan. 


Eat this, and wish me luck this weekend! 

Weeknight Pasta with Artichokes, Olives, and Sausage

Serves 4-6

1 box whole wheat penne pasta (about 13 ounces)

Olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, diced

1 package pre-cooked sausage (about 4 links), sliced

1 bell pepper, diced

2-3 cloves garlic, diced

Handful of basil, slivered

1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes (I like San Marzano) 

1 normal-size can artichoke hearts, drained

1 normal-size can large black olives, drainedOlive oil

Salt and pepper

Parmesan cheese, grated 

Cook pasta according to package instructions. 

Meanwhile, heat a swig of olive oil in large pot over medium heat. Add onion, and sauté until starting to brown. Add sausage, and cook for a couple of minutes, add pepper, garlic, and basil, and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. 

Drain pasta, reserving about a half cup of pasta water. Add pasta and reserved water to pot with veggies, and stir in tomatoes, olives, and artichoke hearts. Serve with grated parmesan. 

Fresh & Green: Spring Pappardelle

Spring Pappardelle

8 oz pappardelle pasta (I like Trader Joe's dried pappardelle)

Butter, olive oil

Half a sweet onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

Handful of the sugar snap peas, asparagus, and broccolini

1 lemon (zest & juice)

1 cup trim cottage cheese

Parmesan cheese

Fresh parsley

Pinenuts, toasted

Salt & pepper

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. When water boils, add peas, and cook for about 2 minutes. Remove, set aside. Add pasta to water, and cook until done. Save pasta water.

Meanwhile, while water starts to boil, melt butter and olive oil (about a tablespoon of each) in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions to skillet, and cook until translucent. Add garlic, and cook for a minute or two, until fragrant (but be careful not to burn). Add broccolini, cook for a minute, then asparagus, cook for a minute. Add zest from lemon. Salt and pepper to taste. 

Add pasta & peas to skillet. Add half of cottage cheese, and about a half cup of the pasta water. Stir until combined, and add remaining cottage cheese and grated parmesan. Stir until sauce is creamy and cheese is melty, adding more pasta water or cottage cheese, as necessary. Toss in pine nuts, and parsley before serving. 

Restaurant Week and Cacio e Pepe

Seattle just wrapped up another successful (for me, at least) restaurant week. Restaurant week—actually spanning 2 weeks—is when tons of local restaurants offer 3 course menus for $30. I happen to love restaurant week, although, I read in Seattle Met that a lot of local chefs don't feel so hot about it, and basically think they have to dumb down their food for cheapskates. It's really too bad they feel that way, because a bad restaurant week experience can tarnish my opinion of a restaurant from that point forward. And I throw down on good food… I just don't usually do it 3 times in two weeks. With restaurant week, I can try out a lot of spendier joints, so that I know where I want to go back to for nice dinners, and what places I want to recommend to friends.  If I get a dumbed down, half-assed meal during restaurant week… well, sorry, you may have lost one future diner. And a lot of her friends…who also like to throw down on good food. 

After last week's "try-outs," I'll definitely be going back to Andaluca and How to Cook a Wolf—two restaurants owned by Seattle 'celeb chefs.' The kitchen of one local celeb chef, however, delivered a pretty…underwhelming experience. I hate to say it, because the guy is pretty much a god among men in these parts, but sorry Tom Douglas, my meal at Dahlia wasn't too impressive. I loved my cocktail, a rosemary/blueberry shrub, and of course TD's famous coconut cream pie was amazing, but the entrees were bland, and came out so fast that it was almost like they had a line of restaurant week plates stacked up and ready to go, a la Micky D's. The whole thing felt rushed, something I don't want to feel at a nice restaurant, no matter how much I'm paying. I'm not giving up on Tom just yet (he has about 6 restaurants in Seattle), but I doubt I'll be doing dinner at Dahlia again. Andaluca and How to Cook a Wolf made up for it though. 

Andaluca's executive chef, Wayne Johnson, competed on Iron Chef…and makes a mean bowl of clams. The restaurant is a mediterranean-spanish-northwest-tapas type place, and seriously had the best clams I've maybe ever had. And I've had a lot of clams. Clams are one of my go-to dishes. Andaluca's were swimming in a bright orange, slightly creamy, garlicky bath of white wine and harissa butter, and were surrounded by big, salty, spicy chunks of chorizo, and topped with cilantro. They were salty and spicy, and seriously amazing. The sherry-almond scallops were also incredible, and weren't dry or overcooked, like a lot of restaurant scallops I've had. Aside from how delicious everything was, it was just a great experience. We were served a ton of food (which isn't typical with restaurant week), and the waiter was super nice, even though we did have a loud party of 10 that shut the place down. 

How to Cook a Wolf is one of Ethan Stowell's restaurants. Ethan is another big-deal chef around here, with a lot of big-time restaurants under his belt (don't tell him, but I may have stalked him at Burning Beast, just a little bit). How to Cook a Wold (named after MFK Fisher's book) is a fun, small space in Queen Anne, with simple, rustic Italian-style food, meant to be shared. Everything was delicious, from the burrata with grape mostarda, to the beef carpaccio, to the simple but fabulous pasta dishes. My favorite dish was the semolina gnocchi with pork sugo. The gnocchi were almost like big, fluffy polenta cakes, but made with semolina, and were covered in cheese, and sitting atop a salty, savory tomato sauce with shredded pork. To. Die. For. And, if the amazing meal wasn't enough, they sent us home with little bags of fresh-raw pasta. 

I wanted to do something simple with the pasta, so I played homage to another local celeb chef of sorts, and made Mario Batali's pasta with cacio e pepe (Batali is from Washington, and his family owns Salumi, the unbelievable salumeria in Pioneer Square (right below my office)! Cacio e Pepe (cheese and pepper) is just that—pasta tossed with cracked pepper, butter and oil, and nutty parmesan cheese. That's it! And it's so good! You don't really need to follow a recipe—boil pasta in salty water, and in a separate pot, toast cracked black pepper, and melt in equal parts butter and olive oil, then mix that with pasta water, the pasta, and a hearty amount of grated cheese. There you have it. A dinner for far less than $30, that's sure to impress. 

PS. I'm not a restaurant critic or even a "restaurant blogger," and the reviews above are strictly my opinion... though you should really get the clams at Andaluca, just sayin'.