For the first dinner we cooked we had some unusual requirements. First of all it had to have beef! Secondly cheese! Thirdly Pasta! Fourthly fresh salad! Lastly we wanted lots of leftovers. All things we didn’t have a lot of in India!
We had a brand new cookbook: A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes by David Tanis. We decided to make Orecchiette al Forno. One of the fun things about making it is the recipe calls for you to make your own fennel sausage. It is very easy to make. We doubled the recipe and made a lot! It was very good and lasted for several days. We didn’t get tired of it.
We started with a fresh salad made with blue cheese and candied walnuts that we had purchased from the Cheese Store of Silverlake. To the salad we added fresh pear slices from the pears that Gerry and Nancie had sent to us. Delicious!
It was good to cook again. We did miss Bea who often joins us. She is in the hospital with a broken foot.
Orecchiette al Forno
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If you choose a sturdy dried pasta type like orecchiette (little ears), you can cook pasta ahead without compromising quality. For a vegetarian version of this baked pasta, omit the sausage and add crushed fennel seeds to the greens. Other greens can be easily substituted for the rapini, if you like.
2 pounds orecchiette
2 teaspoons finely chopped rosemary
Olive oil
Red pepper flakes
2 pounds rapini (broccoli rabe), washed
Salt
1 pound Fennel Sausage (recipe follows)
1/2 pound fresh ricotta
Butter
4 garlic cloves, chopped
Grated pecorino
Have two pots of well-salted water boiling briskly. Cook 1 pound of pasta in each pot until extremely al dente, about 9 minutes. Lift the pasta from the water and spread on baking sheets to cool; drizzle lightly with olive oil to keep it from sticking together.
Using the boiling water, blanch the greens for 1 minute or so. Drain in a col¬ander. When they are cool, roughly chop the greens and set aside.
In a large skillet, lightly brown the sausage meat, breaking it up with a •wooden spoon as it cooks so it crumbles into small pieces. Remove the browned sausage from the pan.
Pour off any fat from the pan and return the pan to the stove. Add 2 table¬spoons olive oil and heat over medium heat. Warm the garlic in the oil, but don't let it brown. Add the chopped greens, rosemary, and a little red pepper. Lightly salt the greens, stir them around the pan, and turn off the heat.
To assemble the dish, put the cooked pasta, cooked greens, and cooked sausage in a large bowl and mix gently. Add the ricotta and mix again.
Butter two shallow earthenware gratin dishes. Put half the pasta mixture in each dish. Sprinkle lightly with grated pecorino. Cover and keep at room tempera¬ture for up to several hours.
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Shortly before serving time, bake the pasta for 15 minutes. Uncover and bake for 5 minutes more.
Serve the pasta in warmed soup plates. Pass grated pecorino at the table.
fennel sausage
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Much commercially made sausage is of dubious origin, filled with preservatives and odd synthetic seasonings. It's very easy to make fennel sausage at home. This recipe yields double the amount of sausage needed for the orecchiette. Of course you could halve it, but I suggest you make the whole recipe—just wrap the remainder well and freeze.
2 pounds ground pork shoulder,not too lean
2 teaspoons crushed fennel seed
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons salt
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
Working quickly, to keep the meat quite cold, mix all the ingredients well. Refrigerate immediately and use within 2 days, or freeze in small packages for later use.
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