Mini Shell Pasta with Smoked Bacon and Peas

We've passed the middle of winter and fresh, local food is becoming thin on the ground. (Ok, I did manage to buy onions and turnips and cabbage and sweet potatoes and honey at the farmer's market the other day - I even passed on the apples and kale - so we haven't hit rock bottom just yet.) Still, it's time to start feeding ourselves from our own larder.

If you look back at my October canning round-up, you can see some of the food Jeff and I managed to put up this year. We also have a freezer stocked with asparagus, edamame, frozen greens, pumpkin puree, roasted peppers, oven-dried tomatoes, and other goodies. We're starting to arrange our menus around these items, trying to enjoy the bounty we worked hard to preserve. This recipe used up our frozen peas and a few handfuls of leftover baby spinach. Frozen greens would work really nicely in here, too - I just had some fresh stuff on hand that needed a job.

This is a great dinner for a weeknight because it came together so quickly and effortlessly. I was shocked at how little work went into it - the ingredients were prepped and my kitchen was cleaned up in no time at all. It's not the healthiest dish, but it's hearty and satisfying - and what is life without a creamy bacon sauce once in awhile?

Mini Shell Pasta with a Creamy Smoked Bacon and Pea Sauce
Slightly adapted from Jamie's Food Revolution.

3 slices thick-cut bacon, chopped
1 lb mini shell pasta
1 tbsp olive oil (optional)
2 c frozen peas
1 c baby spinach (or 1/2 c frozen greens)
2 tbsp creme fraiche
1/2 lemon
6 oz Parmesan cheese

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the pasta according to the package directions.

Heat a large, high-sided pan over medium-high heat. Add the bacon and cook until crispy. Add the peas and cook a minute or two, until heated through.

 

 Add the spinach and stir until slightly wilted. Add the creme fraiche, stirring well, then add salt and pepper to taste. 

Drain the pasta, reserving about 1 c of the cooking water. Return the pasta to its pot, then pour the bacon mixture over it, stirring well to coat the pasta in the sauce. If the sauce needs to be thinned out, add some of the pasta water. When the pasta is coated, squeeze the lemon half onto it and sprinkle with Parmesan. Toss well to combine and serve.

Stuffed Curry Sweet Potato

I totally wish I had one of these right now. This delicious sweet potato was made and consumed over a week ago. I sneakily stocked up on stuff to blog about, knowing I had many long hours of train travel to fill. So I sit here, rocking to the rhythms of the last car of the train somewhere between Buffalo and Rochester (actually, we seem to be passing near Attica - I'll be on the lookout for escaped convicts), mentally drooling over this healthy, flavorful lunch as I try to write about it.

Actually, my lunch today wasn't half bad. I got a pretzels and hummus snack pack on the train and followed it up with some vegetable crudites I got to take home from the conference yesterday (it pays to get to know the local grad students). But there is no question that I would rather have had this potato.

When this recipe showed up on Naturally Ella, I spent some time drooling over it, but for one reason or another months passed before I actually tried it. Warm, mashed sweet potato blends with dense chickpeas and a pile of curry powder for a healthy, tasty and well-balanced entree. It's a great go-to recipe to keep in your repertoire - the most time-consuming part is baking the potato. The first time I made it, I forgot how long that can take. Just make sure you plan ahead and you'll be fine.

I think I'm going to have to make one of these for dinner tomorrow. Or maybe lunch - dinner's too far away!

Stuffed Curry Sweet Potato
Very slightly adapted from Naturally Ella.

1 medium sweet potato
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/3 c frozen peas, thawed slightly
1/2 c chickpeas
2 tbsp vegetable stock
1 tbsp curry powder

Preheat oven to 400°F. Poke some holes in the sweet potato and place it on a baking tray. Bake 45-50 minutes, until softened. Remove from oven and set aside to cool slightly.

Heat the olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat. Add in onion, pepper and garlic and saute a few minutes until translucent. Add in chickpeas and frozen peas and cook until heated through. Set aside.

Lower the oven temperature to 375°F. 

Slice the sweet potato in half and scoop out the insides, leaving 1/4" or so around the edge (I like to use a melon baller for this). Mash the removed sweet potato well, then add curry powder and stock. Set aside about a third of this mixture, and combine the rest with the chickpea mixture. Stuff the sweet potato shells with it, then cover (as best you can) with the reserved sweet potato mixture. Place back on the baking tray and return to the oven for 15-20 minutes. Enjoy!

Vegetable Samosas

Who needs to order out when you can make your own samosas? This was fairly quick and quite easy - the next time I have extra mashed potatoes lying around, I'm definitely going to do these again. Other than the egg roll wrappers, and perhaps the lentils, these are easy to throw together from ingredients that you probably already have in your pantry!

Anything wrapped in dough is a good call, in my opinion. These are comforting little packets of Indian flavor, ready for an appetizer, side dish, or even a snack. They were great with a little of our homemade spiced apple chutney, canned earlier in the season. Since the process was fairly quick, I would consider bringing these to a party as a crowd-pleasing appetizer.

My one complaint is that, in trying to keep things light, Cooking Light doesn't call for enough oil to get these truly crispy. You can see in the pictures the nice crispy spots where each samosa touched the pan - other than that, they got a bit doughy. I think some extra oil in the pan would fix this, however. And if you want to keep them light, just stick with the original recipe.

Vegetable Samosas
From Cooking Light's Way to Cook Vegetarian.

1 1/4 c mashed potatoes (we used two medium-sized, peeled russets with a little butter and half-and-half)

1/4 c cooked yellow lentils

1 1/4 tsp curry powder

1 tsp butter, softened

1/4 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1/2 c frozen petite peas, thawed

12 egg roll wrappers

1 egg, lightly beaten

cooking spray (or a few tbsp oil)

Combine potatoes, lentils, curry powder, butter, salt, and cumin in a medium bowl. Fold in peas gently.

Slice each egg roll wrapper into two long rectangles. Brush the edges of each wrapper with egg. Add about 1 tbsp of filling near the bottom edge of the wrapper. Take one of the bottom corners and fold up to the opposite edge, forming a little triangle. Seal the edges well. Continue to fold like you are folding a flag, sealing the edges tightly as you go. Repeat with remaining egg roll wrappers.

Heat a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Coat the pan with cooking spray (or add oil, if you'd prefer). Lightly coat samosas with cooking spray and add to pan. Cook about 1 minute each side, then drain on paper towels.

Serve with your favorite chutney!

Curried Potato Fritters

Two posts in one day? And so close together? What could prompt this?

Well, I finished posting before and then immediately went to the kitchen with Jeff to work on dinner. And what a dinner it was! We made these deep-fried curried potato fritters and they were awesome. The outside was golden brown and crispy, but the cheesy filling was soft and gooey. The sweetness of the mango and heat of the ginger in the chutney complemented the spiciness of the curry beautifully. Even though I had no intention of blogging this one, once we'd tasted the first batch, I had to grab my camera and document as much as I could.

I think this is only the second time ever that we've deep fried something, primarily because it seems like a waste to me to use so much oil for one recipe (and, honestly, we even didn't use enough this time to make the oil as deep as it should have been), but for this recipe, I think it's worth it.

The recipe said that it should make 24 small fritters, and we managed to make exactly 24 (I'm pretty sure that's never happened to me before - it's because Jeff was forming them). Now that's too many fritters for two people in one meal, and our oil started to get a bit low, so we decided to experiment with them. We ate a third of them for dinner, fried another third and put them in the fridge, and froze the last third unfried. We're going to try baking the pre-fried ones in the toaster oven for dinner tomorrow. The frozen ones will be fried at a later date. I'll check back in and let you know how those go! I think this would make a fantastic party food - and an even better one, if it turns out they can be prepped in advance!

**We had the rest of the fried fritters the next day for lunch. We popped them into the toaster oven at 350° for ten minutes or so and they were nearly as good as the day before. We'll be frying up the frozen ones next week.

Curried Potato Fritters
From Food Network Magazine July/August 2010.

2 medium russet potatoes
1 c 4% cottage cheese (this is a substitute for the more traditional paneer)
1/2 c frozen peas, thawed (we used full-size peas, rather than petite)
2 tsp curry powder
1/2 c + 2 tbsp flour
2 tsp kosher salt
vegetable oil for frying (depends on your pot size, but you should definitely have a lot - we had a small bottle and used a small pot and it wasn't nearly as much as the recipe called for)
4 eggs
2 c panko
mango chutney, for serving

Prick potatoes all over with a fork and microwave 8-10 minutes, until tender. Peel the potatoes (I tried to just peel the skin off with my hands to mediocre results. Surprisingly, a vegetable peeler worked better - I had thought the potatoes would be too soft for it, but not so). Transfer the potato to a large bowl and mash with a fork until mostly smooth. Mix in the cheese, peas, curry powder, 2 tbsp flour, and salt. Let the mixture cool to room temperature.

Heat about 2" of vegetable oil in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat until it reaches 375° F (a deep fry thermometer would help with maintaining this temperature - although we let the temperature drop quite far - below 300° - and the fritters still came out fine. They just took a much longer time to get to that golden brown color).

Meanwhile, whisk the eggs in a shallow bowl. Add the 1/2 c flour to another bowl and the panko to a third. Form the potato mixture into about 24 golf ball-sized portions, then flatten each one into 2" patties. Dredge each patty in the flour (dusting off any excess), then the egg, then the panko (we had some trouble getting the egg to stick to all the flour - try to keep those bare spots to a minimum, though, because the cheese will leak out when they hit the oil).

Fry the patties in batches until golden, turning as needed. Each batch should take about 1-2 minutes, if your oil is properly hot.

Once the fritters are golden, transfer them to a paper bag or paper towels to drain. Once they've drained, serve with mango chutney.