Food • Photography • Life
It’s been a great first year for Gastography and I am happy to announce that I finally got off my butt and registered my very own blog domain. If you are visiting from http://www.cpluscdesign.com/gastography, welcome!
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Thank you for your continued support!
Clear & red glass bubbles, part of the new sofa back display.
Surprise hit from our first new restaurant try in 2012. Ma Pao tofu from Lung Gong near FIU.
This is a riff on one of my favorite uses for canned pumpkin. I make this pasta a thousand different ways – with fresh pasta, with wontons, with greens or without, but always with pumpkin and nutmeg. The combo is great, and a perfect light weeknight meal.
Taste of Fall Pumpkin, Arugula & Pecan Ravioli in Brown Butter Sage Sauce
1/2 can pumpkin puree
4 oz. goat cheese
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 bunch arugula, finely chopped
4 leaves fresh sage
1/2 c. pecans, chopped
olive oil
butter
Approximately 30 wonton wrappers
Combine the pumpkin, goat cheese, nutmeg and 2 big handfuls of arugula in a small bowl. Stir, mashing with the back of your spoon, until the mixture is integrated well.
Put a large pot of salted water on to boil.
Arrange your wontons in a single layer on the countertop. Fill each wonton assembly style with 1 tsp or so of the filling (place the filling in the middle of the wrapper. Dip your finger in a shallow bowl of water and lightly moisten 3 sides of the wonton wrappers. Fold the edges of the wrapper together so you have a rectangle ravioli. Make sure to press out any excess trapped air.
When the water comes up to a boil, add the raviolis in batches of 6 or less at a time. You don’t want to dump them all in at once, or they will stick together in a soggy messy lump of grossness. As each batch floats to the surface, skim off with a slotted spoon and run under cold water to stop the cooking process. I then moved each batch of six to a plate so there was no chance of stickage, which worked great.
While your last few batches are cooking, put a large pan over medium/medium-high heat. Add the butter. I used a little less than a Tablespoon for serving 12 wontons. When the butter is starting to brown and turn nutty, add your ravioli. Cook, swirling in the pan with the occasional flip until the bottoms just start to brown. Add the remaining arugula and sage and cook, continuing to stir occasionally until the arugula wilts, approximately 3 minutes. Add a shot or so of olive oil if the sauce looks lacking and serve.
30 wontons serves 2 for a light dinner or 3 for an appetizer. I served 12 as a stand-alone dinner and was hungry an hour later.
We kicked 2012 off by doing something new and taking a touristy boat cruise around Biscayne Bay. We saw mansions (and ex mansions) of the rich and famous, beautiful blue skies, and plenty of waving passersby.
Living it up on New Years Eve with a Harry Potter marathon and lap companion (Dar) who currently feels fireball hot.
Salsa Party!
Sunset
Black Spanish Radishes through the Lensbaby Sweet 35 optic
Week 5 share from the Little River Market Garden CSA
CSA Share 5
5 bananas
1 lemon
1 black sapote
1 head Napa cabbage
3 black Spanish radishes
1 bunch collard greens
1 bunch baby mustard greens
1 yucca
What I Made With My Share
I made a baked pasta casserole type dish with the cabbage, which was pretty great.
I made an inedible tart with the mustard greens. Just… yuck. The crust was decent; the greens, not so much.
Grits & greens – Collard greens with roasted tomato, buttermilk grits and bacon.
The Best Thing I Made This Week
Instead of boring you with another grits & greens recipe featuring tomatoes and bacon, I will instead dig into the archives for this week’s recipe and share something I made with the watermelon radish from last week.
Roasted Sesame Radish Soba with Kale
Up Next Week
Next week, we’re taking a CSA vegetable break. No veggie share this Saturday, so I will have to be creative on my own. I see a lot of grains and veggies in my future in a futile attempt to balance out our ‘retro midwestern appetizer night’ on Christmas Eve, and obscene amount of beef (and Yorkshire pudding) on Christmas day. Cleansing grains & veggies in preparation for one last indulgence night (dumplings on New Years Eve) before the reforms of January roll around.
I have the Spanish radishes and yucca leftover to play with.
New To Me Veggies
Spanish Radishes
I’d seen these radishes but had never cooked with them. Apparently these are popular among food bloggers and CSAs, the top page of Google results brought up blog after blog. From what I’ve gathered (and was told by my CSA grower), black radish works just like regular radish, but is spicy and zippy.
Yucca
I’ve had this in Cuban restaurants, but have never cooked with it. Yucca root is actually named Cassava and isn’t related to the Yucca plant. It is a woody South American shrub prized in tropical and subtropical regions for its starchy tuberous root. According to Wikipedia, dried cassava is used to make tapioca. Apparently, Yucca must be cooked in order to get rid of its toxic cyanogenic glucosides. (Again according to Wiki) Improper preparation can leave enough cyanide to cause “acute cyanide intoxication and goiters, and has been linked to ataxia or partial paralysis.” Well, then. I guess I’ll be cooking mine. Yucca can be used as a potato substitute, served as tapioca, fufu, a flour, or a syrupy juice. You can also turn it into a liquor.
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