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Winter Citrus Pasta

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by Lisa

This recipe is an adaptation from my favorite cooking magazine:  La Cucina Italiana.  Sometimes the recipes are complicated and not friendly for weeknights or busy families, but the articles and pictures are terrific, and the recipes often astonishing.

Our orange tree is reaching its peak, and on a very rainy Saturday afternoon, this dish looked like just the warm, rich dish we needed on a very rainy Saturday night. I could make it with what I had in my pantry (& on my tree).  It’s simple enough for a weeknight, elegant and rich enough for a weekend.  Think of it as a kind of fancy variation on a Fettucine Alfredo (with an egg), which I’ll write about tomorrow. It’s another example of how seasonal eating can be serendiptious, spontaneous, and fulfilling. If you keep your kitchen stocked with ingredients available in and appropriate to the season, you can almost always whip up something great.  (Unlike, say, keeping around a zucchini in Februrary January (apparently I just lost a month…), which is what I saw an unnamed Food Network “star” cook with last night….and I nearly gagged on my cauliflower broiled w/emmenthal and cream….).

Also, in keeping with the gastronomic education of the kids, this is interesting because it pairs the familiar with a new taste.  It looks like something they’d love; it looks a little boring, maybe, but the flavors are a sunny surprise and a comfort.  More: the kids aren’t used to seeing zest in their pasta, but they loved the flavor so, as we say, they got over it quickly. It’s also more filling, so they chose to eat less of it which was fine for me. (I had a couple of warm lunches.)

This is a rich and filling dish, so adapt your side dishes or first courses accordingly.

Winter Citrus Pasta

  • 1 lb pasta
  • zest of one orange
  • 1 cup cream
  • 1 T butter
  • about a tablespoon of fresh chopped sage OR thyme
  • 1 beaten egg
  • 1/2 cup grana; parmesan, or pecorino, or more to taste
  • salt & pepper
  1. Put orange zest in cream and heat (in microwave if you like) to near boiling. Let steep.
  2. Cook pasta and drain.
  3. In pasta cooking pot, sautee sage or thyme for a minute or so to release fragrance.
  4. Lower heat and add pasta to pot. Toss with cream/zest mixture.
  5. Quickly stir in the egg and the cheese; this will make a thick and creamy sauce.
  6. Serve immediately.

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The following was appended on Jan. 12, 2010

And for those of you suitably excited about this, and not afraid of the extra eggs and cream, the recipe as originally published is below. Read it, read my quicker version, and adapt to your kitchen, time frame, your taste and tolerance for cream.  Both recipes are satisfying and delicious, as long as you  don’t leave out the egg or cream. Or, um, the zest.

  • zest of 2 oranges
  • 1 1/2 T butter
  • 1 lb spaghetti
  • 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
  • 1/3 cup chervil
  • 1/2 cup parmesan
  • 3 large egg yolks
  1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
  2. Warm serving plates in a low oven.
  3. Melt butter in a medium skillet until foam subsides. Add zest and a pnich of salt, reduce heat, and cook until zest is soft and golden.  Set aside.
  4. Bring cream, chervil, salt to a boil in a small saucepan.  Simmer for 4 minutes.
  5. Cook pasta until al dente.
  6. Just before pasta is served, spoon 3 T of cream onto serving plates. Using the back of spoon, spread the cream to cover plates.
  7. Darain pasta and toss with remaining cream, zest and egg yolks until fully incorporated.
  8. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
  9. Garnish with zest and chervil.
  10. Serve immediately.

Pasta with Lemon Cream Sauce

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By Lisa

Half citrus pasta, half fettucine alfredo, this recipe is a delicious mash up.  Inspired by the bright, cool spring we’re having–sunny days cut through with crisp wind–a pound of fresh lemon pepper pasta, a carton of heavy cream, two older recipes (here and here), and the bag and bags of lemons we continue to harvest.

It’s everything the paradox of a spring evening wants:  fresh, vibrant flavor, and a warm, rich cream to take the edge off the chill.  For a few minutes, we gathered around the counter, slurping noodles in silence, soothed and energized all at once.   Sometimes, there’s balance.

Lemon Pepper Pasta with Parmesan Lemon Cream Sauce

  • 1 lb fresh lemon pepper pasta, or fresh fettucine
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • zest of one eureka (or meyer) lemon
  • 3/4 cup grated parmesan or grana padano
  1. While waiting for pasta water to boil, pour cream into a large, heavy bottomed skillet.
  2. Zest the lemon into the cream, add butter and heat slowly until butter melts and cream thickens slightly. Turn off heat and let rest.
  3. When pasta is done, drain and add it to the lemon cream along with the parmesan.
  4. Over medium-low heat, toss the pasta in the cream for about a minute to mix thoroughly and let pasta absorb the sauce. Serve immediately with additional parmesan, if desired.

Lemon Citrus Spaghetti

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By Lisa

This, a few tablespoons of butter, a pack of spaghetti gets you dinner for 4.

I had a tabula rasa moment on Tuesday night.  Dinner needed to be on the table quickly, but I nothing ready to cook. I had planned on making something a little more complicated, but we had been a long time picking up our kitten at the vet, and it was too late for the original plan.  We had just had the omelete so eggs were out of rotation.  We had also just finished a pot of black beans with quesidillas, so tacos were out, too.   I had no cream for Fettucine Alfredo, didn’t want just cheese and butter on pasta, had no bacon defrosted for a quick carbonara, and had seasonal fatigue for the tomato/black bean saffron thing.   I wasn’t even sure I had time to boil pasta water before the kids detonated, so tomato sauce was out of the question, but it did seem pasta was my only option.  Also? I had very little milk left.  Then I had a one of those inspired moments, and decided I could make a quick variation on this Winter Citrus Pasta that was ready in the time it took to boil water.

I had prepped some green chard earlier in the day (which I very often do)–smashing the garlic, tossing it in a pan with olive oil, washing and chopping the chard, sprinkling it with salt, and covering it up with a lid. At dinner time, I just turn on the burner and sautee.  5 minutes to food rather than 10. Less mess to clean up, too.  I put the water on to boil, sauteed the chard, whipped up a couple of tomato surprises, plopped a few carrots into bowls and sat the kids at the counter to work on their rainbow vegetable appetizer and a small slice of fresh italian bread.

Of course, they watched while I cooked the pasta, which was risky, since it was new to them. Lemon in pasta? Have we had this before? Yes, and no. They were slightly crestfallen but didn’t protest too much.  Generally speaking, it’s not a good idea to give the kids brand new things at the last minute on a school night, but I forged ahead bravely.    The result was a big hit, and Finn even remembered that he had eaten something like it before. It’s a rich and creamy dish, with a nice zing of lemon flavor.  A perfect–& fast–fall dish.

Lemon Citrus Spaghetti

  • 3/4 cup milk
  • 1 lemon (zest only)
  • 3 T butter
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2-3/4 cup grated cheese
  • 1 lb spaghetti
  1. Bring a large pot of water to boil.
  2. While waiting for the water to boil, pour the milk and butter into a saucepan large enough to contain the cooked spaghetti. Zest the lemon into the milk/butter.  Turn on the heat and melt the butter, simmer until the mixture blends and slightly thickens, 3 minutes or so. Turn off heat.
  3. In the mixing cup you used for the milk, beat the egg and set aside.
  4. When the water boils, cook the pasta until al dente, about 9 minutes.
  5. Drain pasta and add it to the milk/butter/zest in the pan. On low heat, quickly stir in the beaten egg, then the cheese. Serve immediately.

Feeding a “Picky Eater”

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by Caroline

olive pits and rice: the remains of dinner

A friend of mine is currently waiting patiently for the birth of her second son, “due” two days ago but taking his own sweet time to arrive into this world. And her waiting has me thinking about all the ways in which our children never quite do what we expect them to do, when we expect them to do so.

My older son, Ben, is 9 and a half. For the first couple years of his food-eating life, he ate whatever we put in front of him: eggplant caviar. Goat cheese. Pickled daikon. Chard lasagne. And then bit by bit, he started dropping foods from his diet. It didn’t happen when he started school, as many predicted, but it happened obviously enough that I began to think of him as a picky eater. An unusual picky eater, to be sure; he ate chard and pickled things and bitter marmalade, but no melted cheese (hardly any cheese at all), no milk except a bit to wet his cereal, no tomatoes. Birthday parties, with their ubiquitous cheese pizzas, became difficult. Eating out wasn’t so easy, either. And at home, despite our best intentions to keep cooking the foods we like and waiting for the kids to come around, we found ourselves subtly adapting our cooking to our kid’s appetite, or making modular meals of something new (a different kind of green, squash cooked a new way) topping something familiar (rice or pasta). We have fallen into ruts, and then needed to climb out of them. We get excited about new foods and then exhausted by the problem of needing to make dinner every single night.

But this week we’re on vacation. Even though you never get a real vacation from parenting, we’re all feeling relaxed, spending longer over meals, being a little more casual about breakfast for dinner or eating out. Plus, we’re getting excited about planning our summer adventure with friends: ten days in Turkey! Eli is poring over the brochure for the rental house; Ben wonders aloud what might be growing in the garden in August. Tony has wisely researched Turkish restaurants in San Francisco and last night we went to one. After studying the menu a while, Ben asked for an order of olives (marinated in herbs and citrus); we rounded out his dinner by ordering up a buffet of mezze: hummus, muhammara, haydari, falafel and zucchini cakes. We ordered extra pita and a rice pilaf, just in case.

The olives and pita were a hit. Ben picked delicately at the falafel and took a proper bite of zucchini cake. He scowled, but then said he liked the after taste. Not enough to eat more right then, but enough to try it again. We’ve all agreed to eat Turkish food once a month until we go on our big trip, and to try something new each time we do. They may still subsist on pita when we travel, but we’ll try to familiarize them a bit with the (fabulous, delicious) range of options. We had a great conversation over the meal, so even though I think my children really only ate olives, pita, and a bit of rice for dinner, the memory of the meal is a happy one, and — I hope — bodes well for our summer travels.

So, I think, does this: Midway through the meal, Ben pulled the bay leaf out of his olives and ate it. I didn’t notice until afterwards, when he said, “That leaf on the olives is really bitter!”

“That’s a bay leaf, Ben,” I answered, “It flavors the food, but you’re not really meant to eat it.”

“Oh, well, maybe it’ll flavor my water.” And with that, he stuck the bay leaf in his water and drank it down.

Melon Soup

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By Lisa


Over the weekend I went on a juicing binge brought on by an unexpected CSA delivery, which brought us an extra melon,which brought our household total to 3 ripe melons. Usually its no chore to eat one in a day, but all three of these beauties weren’t going to wait. So I brought out my Breville juicer, which is the only thing in my life I’ve ever won, and which is a pretty great machine. It’s lightning fast and powerful, and we do use it all during citrus season.  But because it takes an awful lot of (often expensive) produce to make juice, and I don’t love cleaning the pulp, I don’t use it regularly.   Most days, I’d much rather hand an apple (or plum or carrot) to the kids and just say, “Eat.”  But when I met my husband, he drank all sorts of juice and smoothies, and this was long before Kris Carr (who, for the record, I think is pretty terrific. I contributed to her site here.)   So in the spirit of economy and nostalgia, I broadened my juicing repertoire.

First, I chopped up the watermelon and passed it to Ella, who had a great time feeding it to the maw of the machine. It happened so fast I didn’t get a picture of the juicing or the juice, but believe me when I say there is nothing more refreshing on a 90 degree day than ice cold watermelon juice.

Then, we went to work on the melon, which I chilled and served after dinner with a spoonful of vanilla yogurt and a strawberry garnish.  Kory and I thought it was great. The kids, not so much.. But I saved their portions and the melon soup made a great, drinkable breakfast for me the next morning as I made the kids pancakes.  I think the soup would work nicely as an appetizer, too, served in  little shot glasses with a  garnish of creme fraiche (or greek yogurt) and some cubed, fried pancetta. I will get back to you on that.

For now, if you have any quickly ripening produce, I suggest the juicer.  I am going to get to work on those tomatoes soon.

Also: I’d love to know: what do you juice?