Cheesy Carbonara

It’s been some months since I’ve posted a recipe here. The time now is early February, and it’s raining, as it often does in Honolulu during the winter and early-spring months. The Koolaus are deep green from trade showers that blow over the mountains onto Makiki Heights and (pictured above) into Manoa Valley. The weather feels humid and slightly cool, as it did last March, when mainland friends visited us. Our friends don’t mind rain, so the weather didn’t worry me, but what to feed them did. Over the years "S" has become a lacto-ovo vegetarian, while "M" remains a peanut-butter-grape-jelly / meat-and-potatoes kind of guy.  They're willing to make do, but I wanted to fix something delicious for dinner that we’d all enjoy. I made burgers--beef for three of us, and Portobello mushroom for S--and we ate in restaurants and at a conference dinner. Toward the end of their visit, while leafing through a pasta cookbook from the Italian company Barilla, I hit upon Cheesy Carbonara--al dente spaghetti mixed with a couple fresh eggs, three kinds of cheese (I used Havarti, Butterkase, and a mild cheddar), salt, and pepper. Alongside the carbonara, I served eggplant in tomato sauce and mushrooms sautéed in olive oil and let everyone help themselves.

I hope the Barilla folks will forgive the liberties I took with their beautiful photos and recipes. Cheesy carbonara is an easy, delicious, and wonderfully adaptable meal. Almost any kind of cheese, vegetable, or--for those so inclined--meat or seafood would be good.

The following serves 2-4 people, depending on appetites:

For the eggplant in tomato sauce, you need: one 14-ounce can Italian-style tomatoes, 2 small or 1 medium-large eggplant, 1/3 cup chopped onion, 1 minced garlic clove, 2 to 4 tablespoons olive oil. For the tomato sauce, cook onion and garlic in 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil for a few minutes, and then add salt and pepper to taste along with the tomatoes. Cook 10 to 15 minutes, until tomatoes break down and form a sauce. Keep warm. Second, cut the eggplant into ½-inch pieces and, in a separate pan, sauté the pieces in 1 to 2 tablespoons olive until tender and lightly browned. Add the eggplant to the tomato sauce and continue to keep warm.

For the mushrooms, you need: 8 ounces fresh mushrooms of your choice (I use Portobello, crimini, button, or a combination), a few tablespoons of fresh chopped herbs (I use rosemary), and 1 to 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Slice the mushrooms ¼-inch wide, sauté in olive oil until tender, and keep warm.

For the carbonara, you need: 4 to 8 ounces dried spaghetti, ¾ to 1 cup grated or diced cheese or cheeses of your choice, and 2 to 3 fresh eggs. Cook the spaghetti until al dente and drain, reserving ½ cup of the cooking water. Return the spaghetti to the pan and immediately stir into it the fresh eggs, cheese, and enough of the cooking water to make a loose sauce. Return the pan to burner and cook another minute or so, stirring all the while to mix the spaghetti and sauce together. Serve in individual pasta bowls with the vegetables and / or meats of in separate platters on the side, or serve family style in a large bowl with the carbonara in the center and the vegetables ranged along the sides (as appears below).

Here are most of the ingredients:

The eggplant cooking, followed by the tomato sauce:

And to serve:

With a sprig of fresh basil or other green herb, that’s it!

Salad of Bitter Lettuces with Avocado and Parmesan

I used to have a community garden at a park near our apartment--a ten-foot-by-ten-foot plot, set in a row of like-sized plots, each bordered and separated from the others by a chain-link fence. It was hot there--the nearby apartment buildings blocked the trade winds--but the mosquitoes, bumblebees and carpenter bees, white butterflies, and hungry birds that frequented the garden didn’t seem to mind. My husband did most of the heavy work--adding soil to what was basically a raised-bed, mixing in EM solution and fish-oil fertilizer, and patching fence holes. I tended to daily chores--planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting. Not that there was an awful lot to harvest. We were able to grow basil, cilantro, Swiss chard, now and then a tomato, rosemary, dill, broccoli (leaves at any rate; somehow no flowering heads developed), and lilikoi. Lilikoi--or passion fruit--was our best crop. Its sturdy green vine covered the fence and fruited wonderfully. For some reason, the birds left the fruit alone. Every year for several years, we gathered about a hundred lilikois. We ate them with yogurt; made pies, salad dressings, and ice-cream toppings with them; and froze what we couldn’t use right away. Aside from the lilikoi, the garden produced enough herbs and edible leaves (young broccoli leaves are particularly good) for a number of dinner salads. One evening I found my husband--not known as a salad lover--leaning over the sink, salad bowl in his hand, picking out and eating the last leaves. “They’re so good,” he said, “and we worked so hard to grow them.”

We no longer have the garden, but we recently joined a community-supported-agriculture group. Our first box came yesterday! It had no lilikois in it, but there were various leafy greens to eat raw and cooked, a few Tahitian limes, and a Hayden mango. Those will make wonderful salads too.

The salad given here is one of our favorites. Any lettuce will do--even a mix of sweet and bitter. The recipe is more a guideline than anything. I sometimes put a fried egg on top; chicken or seafood (or breadcrumbs or toasted nuts) would also be good.

For two people, you need a small head of baby Romaine lettuce; a quarter or half head (depending on the size) of radicchio; two shallots, minced; one avocado, diced and squirted with lemon or lime; and two to three tablespoons of grated Parmesan. Wash the salad leaves, roll them in a clean dishcloth, and place them in the refrigerator while you make the dressing.

Put the minced shallots and diced avocado with lemon into a wide bowl. Mix together two tablespoons of olive oil, one tablespoon of white balsamic vinegar, salt and paprika to taste, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, and a quarter teaspoon of Dijon mustard. Pour the mixture over the shallots and avocado. Add the chilled salad leaves, sprinkle on the grated Parmesan, toss well, and serve, with or without the optional egg.

Here are most of the ingredients for the salad:

The avocado and dressing in progress:

The salad ready to toss:

And with an egg on top:

Sunset Scallops

Our good friend E, a colleague of my husband’s, has many talents. He is, among other things, a biologist who studies octopus, a nature printer in the Japanese style, an excellent cook, and a cheerful, kind fellow who is lots of fun to be around. Not long after I first met him, E came to Hawaii to go on an oceanographic cruise with my husband. The day he arrived, dinner was to be hotdog enchiladas, my husband’s specialty (basically, wieners and refried pinto beans wrapped in flour tortillas, topped with enchilada sauce, and smothered in cheddar cheese). I’d forgotten to buy wine or beer on the way home from work, but there was a bottle of California “champagne” in the refrigerator and E offered to make a fruit salad. I figured dinner was in hand. Then I saw E’s salad. It was a work of art--too pretty to eat--but we devoured it in no time, along with the hotdog enchiladas and the champagne.

E and our mutual late friend K (of the Mangold steak recipe featured earlier on this blog) came up with the basic recipe below while working in Banyuls-sur-mer, France, where mussels are plentiful. They called it Moules de Banyuls. In Honolulu, good mussels are hard to find, but, as I’ve mentioned before, there are nice frozen, wild-catch scallops, so I use those instead. If you can get good mussels in the shell, double the weight of mussels, clean and cook them (discarding any that don’t open), shuck them, and then place the cooked mussels singly on an intact half shell, top with the sauce, and broil for a minute or two until bubbly. The sauce is really delicious. I want to try it with mild white fish fillets like halibut or sole, with chicken cutlets, and, when I can find good ones, with moules. The adapted recipe follows (with apologies to E for liberties taken).

To serve 4 to 6 as an appetizer, or 2 to 3 as a main course, you need:

1½ pounds of scallops (without shells), 4 tablespoons olive oil, 2 to 3 cloves minced garlic (about 1 tablespoon), 1½ cups finely sliced green onions, 1½ cups diced fresh tomatoes (or a 15-ounce can of diced tomatoes), 1 tablespoon finely chopped cilantro, ½ teaspoon saffron, salt and pepper to taste, Italian herbs to taste (oregano, thyme, rosemary), and ¼ cup heavy cream.

To prepare the sauce, heat the olive oil in a medium-size skillet. Saute the garlic and onions at medium-high heat until soft. Add the diced tomatoes, cilantro, pinch of saffron and other desired seasonings. Continue cooking at medium-low heat for about 10 to 15 minutes. Add the cream during the last few minutes of cooking. When the sauce is done, remove it from the heat and set it aside in a bowl. This stage can be done 2 to 3 hours ahead of time and the bowl placed in the refrigerator until ready to use. Makes about 2 cups of sauce.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Farenheit. Place the raw scallops in an ovenproof dish, top with the tomato-cream sauce, and bake for 5 to 10 minutes, until the sauce is bubbly and the scallops are cooked through. Take care not to overcook the scallops. Serve as an appetizer with crusty bread to soak up the sauce or as a main course with rice.

Here are the basic ingredients:

The tomato-cream sauce on the stove:

And the Sunset Scallops ready to serve:

Petrale Sole

For a time I lived in Monterey, California. I was studying nursing and working part time at a seafood restaurant. The restaurant was in a Victorian house built by a ship captain named Perry, whose wife, it was said, used to pace the long seaward-facing balcony as she watched for the captain’s return. Now the house is a museum, but when I lived in Monterey a husband-and-wife team operated a restaurant there. The husband kept the books and managed the staff; the wife, E, ran the kitchen. I waited tables. Late weekday afternoons and early Saturday mornings, in the upstairs dining room, I polished glassware and silver, folded napkins so that they appeared tufted like birds, and set flowers on white-clothed tables. It was calming work, often done after a day of classes or hospital training, and for the most part in view of that long balcony walk overlooking Monterey Bay.

E was a marvelous cook. One Saturday for my lunch, she pan-fried Petrale sole bought that morning at fishermen’s wharf. I told her I didn’t like fish; she said I would like this one. And I did. It tasted sweet and fresh and smelled like the ocean. Years later in Honolulu, I came upon fresh Petrale sole flown in from California and brought some home. E prepared her sole simply--dusting it with flour, frying it in olive oil, and squeezing fresh lemon onto it before serving. I complicate mine a little, dipping the fillets in beaten egg (after dusting with flour), rolling them in cracker crumbs, and then frying them in olive oil.  My sole is not as delicious, not as fresh, as the sole E prepared for me that day, but it is still delightful. I look forward to having it whenever I find the fish in the market.

For two or three people, you need 1 to 1 ½ pound Petrale sole fillets (Dover sole is good too), two tablespoons flour, two beaten eggs, a half package Italian-style crushed salt-and-pepper crackers, two tablespoons olive oil, and fresh lemon or lime. Wash and dry the fillets. Dust them with the flour, dip in the beaten eggs, and turn each side of the fillets onto a dish holding the crushed crackers, pressing to coat the cracker crumbs to the fillets. Fry the fillets over medium-high heat for 2 to 3 minutes each side, until they are golden brown and cooked through. Do not overcook. Serve with the lemon or lime slices, tartar sauce (if you like), and a salad.

Here are most of the ingredients:

The fillets in the pan:

And ready to serve: