Broccoli & red pepper pasta

You cook the broccoli for a long time. It’s way better than it sounds.

• 1 onion, chopped
• 3-4 crowns broccoli, chopped
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• Red pepper flakes
• .5 c parmesan
• pasta

Start sweating the onion. Blanch broccoli in salty water.
Add red pepper flakes and 2-3 cloves garlic to onion, cook a minute.
Add cooked broccoli to onions, along with some blanching water (~1 cup). Cook it death, adding more water as needed (~40 minutes).
~10 minutes before veggies are done, cook pasta in remaining water, then add to the veggies along with a little pasta water and the parmesan.
Variation: add egg yolk and a little more parm for a richer dish.
Optional: serve with breadcrumbs.

two frittatas

We’ve decided that we’re huge fans of frittatas (Italy, BTW, p 558). A while ago, we made the pasta version that Bittman describes, and it was great. With that success, we decided that we could be a little more ambitious. We’re about to leave town for a week, so we wanted to get rid of leftovers, and we used a frittata to do it. The ingredient list was:

• 8 eggs
• 1 filet mignon, grilled
• 1 chicken breast, grilled
• 3 slices Canadian bacon
• 1 c chopped asparagus, sauteed
• 1 c white mushrooms, sauteed
• 2 tbsp minced garlic

The Best Recipes in the World, part i

Just last week, Mom got me a cookbook: The Best Recipes in the World, by Mark Bittman. I’ve already made a number of the dishes.

• sauteed spinach with sesame (Korea, BRW, p 33)
• fleica (Romania, BRW, p 346)
• pasta with tuna sauce (Italy, BRW, p 555)
• hummus (Eastern Mediterranean, BRW, p 19)

They were uniformly delicious! I especially liked how easy the hummus was to make; I’ll a) never buy hummus again and b) always keep a can of chickpeas in the pantry.