I love pasta. It’s easy to cook and you have to work really hard (or use guanciale) to make it taste bad. This particular one is new to me, contains at least two ingredients I used to refuse to touch and I want to shove it in my mouth all the time.

I’ve mentioned the knife skills class pretty frequently, and I feel like I learned a lot from it though since my retention is so awful I should really take it again, and I celebrated the purchase of a new chef’s knife with recreating the pasta that Chef Bob served to us with the fruits of our labor…with one small problem. He wouldn’t give me a recipe.

Now, he had no problem telling me everything that went in it, but as I know some of you are aware I function best with a specific set of instructions, ESPECIALLY with a new recipe. Not having portions or measurements of any kind broke my brain a little bit but I am totally pleased with the outcome, it tasted exactly like I wanted it to, and now I’m going to share it with you.

You will need: (note, these portions are for two people and a toddler, adjust as needed)
Linguine
3 Tbsp olive oil
3 Tbsp butter (or margarine)
1 medium zucchini, quartered
1 red bell pepper, cut in 1/2" strips and sliced across into thirds
2 sticks celery, halved lengthwise and chopped
3 or more crimini mushrooms, halved and sliced
1/3 to 1/2c white wine
Basil and rosemary, fresh and chopped fine if you’ve got it (worth it if you ask me)
Salt and pepper to taste

First, if you ask me the mushrooms are more for texture than taste, so don’t feel like you can’t make this if you don’t like mushrooms. Second, I wish this sauce had a name. It’s sort of like a modified beurre blanc, I guess, but nowhere near as complicated. Third, even if you don’t like zucchini, try it. Seriously. It’s like summer in your mouth and if your weather sucks as bad as mine, you pretty much want summer any way you can get it.

Onward!

Put some generously salted water on to boil for your pasta. You don’t have to use linguine, Chef Bob used spaghetti. I just try to mix up my pastas every now and then and especially now since the next two weeks are chock-full of Italian food, sez my Bi-Monthly Menu of Doom. I prepped my veggies while waiting for the boil. I like it when nothing has to be peeled. Take a minute during chopping to heat 2 Tbsp oil and 2 tbsp butter over medium-high heat in a saute pan.

(your vegetables should look something like this. If they don’t, who cares, this isn’t a Tuesday night a Le Bernardin)

When your veggies are all chopped and your oil is hot, go ahead and chuck your peppers and zucchini in the pan with some salt – have I mentioned that I like kosher salt for cooking and sea salt for finishing? Kosher is coarse, comes in a big box, is dirt cheap and tastes better than table salt. The only thing I don’t use it in is baking. Anyway, give your zuke and your pepper3-4 minutes before adding in the celery. After 2-3 minutes, add your mushrooms. If your water is boiling, throw the pasta in, it takes in the neighborhood of 8-10 minutes for al dente, if I remember right.

Here’s where it comes down to personal taste. I didn’t measure my wine, I just poured from the bottle until the amount looked "right" to me. This may be trickier for you because you’ve never had the pasta, so I’m estimating 1/3 cup. This kind of sauce lightly coats the pasta, it doesn’t pool or saturate like a tomato or cover heavily like an alfredo, and since you’re cooking it there will be a bit of reduction in the volume. So as you cook, add a glug or two more of wine and/or oil as you see fit. For the curious, I used a bottle – magnum – of Sutter Home sauvignon blanc that has been sitting in the cabinet since around Christmas half-consumed. Sometimes it’s hard to be this gourmet.

Hopefully since I failed to tell you to do so you’ve been stirring your vegetables frequently. No browning should be occurring, just softening. It should also smell divine. In a perfect world your pasta will be done at the same time as your vegetables – if you’re unsure, try a piece of the zucchini, it should be somewhat firm but tender. Add the herbs, salt and pepper, and remaining tablespoon of butter, melt, stir, and combine with the drained linguine in a big bowl. Mix everything together and chow down.

I keep mentioning being behind on posts and I am, in fact, still behind in posts. I know I’ve sent photos to Flickr for at least three other meals and those are just the ones that have made it through processing. I’ll get around to those empanadas eventually!

We could categorize the fact that I haven’t posted in 3 days as a failure as well, but I’m trying to be nicer to myself – if you had this kind of wicked awful heartburn, you wouldn’t want to sit here and type about food, either.  But in addition to the lemon tart, I think the Sole a la Grenobloise needs to be discussed as well, because like the tart it was really only a partial failure.

The recipe itself is really quite simple despite the fancy name – and if we’re being honest, I love the fancy name, I’m 89% convinced the fancy name improves the taste somehow, just like Tar-ghey makes Target more than just a slightly upscale Walmart – but the problem is that while the recipe is simple, and fast, especially for something coming from Saveur, it does require clarified butter and if you have never made any I am here to tell you DO NOT TRY SHORTCUTS.

2 whole skinless sole filets (about 4 oz. each),
   halved lengthwise down center line
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
   to taste
1?4 cup milk
1 lemon, peeled
1?2 cup flour
2 tbsp. clarified butter
2 tbsp. unsalted butter
2 tsp. capers, drained
2 tsp. coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley

1. Season sole filets with salt and pepper; put them into a shallow dish. Cover with milk; set aside.

2. Using a knife, cut white pith away from lemon; remove segments by slicing between membranes. Cut half the segments into 1?2" pieces. (Reserve the other half for another use.) Put flour on a plate; season with salt and pepper; set aside.

3. Heat clarified butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Remove filets from milk; fold the thin, tapered ends under to create an even thickness. Dredge both sides in flour, shake off excess, and add to skillet. Cook, turning once, until golden brown, about 2 minutes per side. Transfer to plates; cover with foil to keep warm.

4. Add whole butter to skillet; cook, stirring, until it turns a deep brown and smells nutty, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in lemon pieces, capers, and parsley; swirl skillet to combine. Spoon sauce over sole. Serve immediately.

My first obstacle was that my grocery store did not have two 4oz sole filets – they had 4 2oz filets, so that’s what I got. Second, they were quite narrow to begin with so I did not halve them lengthwise. This put me into a mild panic already as I do not cope well with deviating from a new recipe. Third or fourth time I make something, sure, I can fiddle with it. First time? It transforms me into someone, well, let’s just say even the dog leaves the room when things go awry for me with a first-time recipe. I just know my limitations in the kitchen, that’s all.

Actually, let me go back. The smaller filets is actually the second obstacle, the first is that I do not eat fish. I probably haven’t touched anything outside of tuna salad in a good decade, possibly longer. You might rightfully wonder why on earth I’d make a fish dish and the answer is that I am testing my limits and acknowledging that a lot of the food I “don’t eat” has less to do with what I know I don’t like and more to do with what I think I don’t like. For instance, I “don’t eat” guacamole and yet I could not tell you for certain if I’ve ever had any. So in this case, I did some research, read that white fishes are mild in that fishy flavor, and found this recipe which is essentially piccata without the white wine.

So now that we’re back to obstacles, let me tell you about my experience with clarified butter: I once saw Alton Brown make it. That’s it. But I remembered that it looked easy enough so it didn’t worry me until I looked up how to do it* and realized that it didn’t fit into my time schedule at all. I also don’t seem to have a fine mesh sieve which I can guarantee you will be rectified in no time at all nor do I have any talent or know-how when it comes to skimming, well, anything. So I tried just melting 2 tbsp of butter in a Pyrex cup and “straining” it through a coffee filter. This did not work out as well as I had hoped. And by hoped I mean at all.

(* – there are several methods to clarify butter, nearly all of which are mentioned in the comments, but the cooking for engineers site tickles me so much I had to go with it)

I try to be June Cleaver and have dinner on the table by 7 and almost always greatly underestimate how much time I’m going to need for prep. I managed to get it on the table in the neighborhood of 7 but there were casualties – namely, two of the filets. I didn’t have enough butter in the skillet and in addition to that, the milk fats I didn’t get out of the butter burned onto the pan, so the second set were not so much golden brown and delicious as they were scorched and falling apart. My son, being two, was kind enough to eat the shredded mess of one of them and my husband liked the sauce enough to eat the second.

The recipe itself is delicious, and the fish is light, flaky and fall-apart tender. I served mine with roasted red potatoes and steamed broccoli, both only lightly seasoned with salt and pepper since the fish was taking center stage.

As an extreme novice home chef, I’ve been generally operating under the concept that the more complicated and time-consuming the recipe is, the more I’ll learn from it. Mark Bittman, aka The Minimalist, from the New York Times tells me I’m a moron and I can accept and partially agree with that. I still feel like if  a recipe is too simple, or too easy to prepare, it’s a copout of some kind, but in the interest of making sure my kid eats what we do (to try to encourage an adventurous palate) and feeding the one I’m pregnant with more than just Otter Pops and Doritos, I’ve been trying to add simple, fast recipes to my Bi-Monthly Menu of Doom. The past two weeks have featured more of the fast pastas, soups and this is one of them.

You will need: (for 3 servings)

• 3 servings fresh or frozen tortellini (the bag I used had 3.5 servings)
• 4-5 Tbsp. butter
• 13-16 fresh sage leaves
• Lemon juice to taste
• Black pepper to taste
• Pinch of salt (omit if using salted butter)
• Parmesan cheese (optional)

Slice up your sage leaves into strips or leave them alone, as far as I know it’s purely aesthetic. To share my experience with you, let me tell you that I first tried to slice these with a serrated knife, and it doesn’t really work like that, it just tears the leaves up. A paring knife proved to be perfect for the task.

Boil your pasta according to the directions. If you happen to be using the awesome SuperTarget store brand like I am, it’s 3-5 minutes. I went ahead and put the butter on at this point to start browning, but in reality you could do it about when the water hits a simmer and the two would time out damn near perfectly.

Maybe it’s just the South in me, but bubbling butter looks so pretty to me. You should be melting your butter over medium heat in a small skillet of some variety – stainless steel or some other non-dark material may be easiest so you can see when the butter starts to brown. You don’t want to to get dark or else you’ll hit beurre noir territory and that’s not really what we’re going for here.

You can see it’s gotten darker here, and the bits of milk solids on the pan have browned. It’s a thin line now, I left mine on just a tiny bit longer before removing it from the heat, but I think you could safely do so if yours looks like this photo.

The finished product. See the brown bits in the bottom? Delicious browned milk solids. After you remove your skillet from the heat, add your sage leaves and allow them to fry a bit in the butter, until they’re crispy. Add your lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste here as well.

Pour your sauce over your tortellini and add parmesan if you choose to. Stir it up and serve. This whole process should take you less than 10 minutes start to finish – we chose to have ours with a salad on the side and it was delicious, nutty & flavorful. I wouldn’t call it a subtle flavor but if you are used to the boldness of a tomato sauce or the richness of an alfredo-style sauce, it may take your taste buds a minute or two to get used to it. Definitely a keeper recipe for us.