Pea Pasta

Fresh snap peas are in the market. They are very sweet and they peas don’t have to be extracted from the pods! It is a very easy pasta to make.

We started with a simple salad with some of the first tomatoes of the season.

A wonderful recipe is Orecchiette Carbonara with English Peas and Pea Shoots from the book Sunday Suppers at Lucques. We decided to make it with Sugar Snap Peas from the Hollywood Farmer’s Market instead of English Peas. One advantage is the peas don’t have to be shelled. The tips of the peas are cut off and then the pods with the peas inside are sliced in ½ diagonal slices. It is very easy. The pasta recipe is delicious and can be found in our blog of: April 28, 2009. Click the date to get the recipe.

Cat and Jason

We decided to invite two of favorite chefs, Cat and Jason from Palate over for dinner. It is challenging inviting professional chefs over, but they appreciated it and didn’t put pressure on us.

They said they would make the salad and we watched them to learn techniques. One thing that I learned  is they gradually whisk the oil into the vinegar emulsifying it into a creamy texture. By making it thicker when added to the lettuce the dressing clings much better to the leaves than simply pouring oil and vinegar separately on the lettuce. We have an old salad spinner that apparently you can’t buy anymore. They really appreciated using the classic tool.

We of course had to start with Crab in Creamy Spicy Sauce. We love it as a starter. The recipe can be found in our blog of: September 5, 2010. Click the date to get the recipe.

We had purchased a White Salmon at McCalls Meat and Fish. This is a rarer type of salmon and is lighter in color do to being raised in areas that don’t have shrimp. Jason had a clever idea that we would never have come up with. We planned to cook the Salmon in the Egg on a rack. He placed small potatoes in a pan, put the rack on the pan, then covered the rack with asparagus and finally placed the salmon on the asparagus to go into the Egg. The juices from the salmon marinated the asparagus and potatoes as they cooked, it was a very good idea. We will do it again that way.

The dinner was a hit and they left us to go to a concert downtown: full, happy and floating.

Yakisoba

We had some leftover pork and decided to make Yokisoba With Pork and Cabbage. This is another recipe from the New York Times. You can find it in our blog of: March 7, 2010. Simple click the date to get the recipe.

Pasta

We made Zuni’s Café’s version of the much-loved dish from Abruzzo, PASTA ALL 'AMATRICIANA. The exceptional cookbook by Judy Rodgers is called: The Zuni Café Cookbook.

You can find this recipe in our blog of: Nov. 21, 2007. Click the date to get the recipe. One of the joys of the pasta is that it is made from canned tomatoes making it a year around treat!  We prefer the Pecorino cheese, which we always buy at The Cheese Store of Silverlake. The choice of pasta is critical with this dish. Even though the recipe says you can use alternative pastas we would only recommend using: bucatini. It really soaks up the pasta sauce.

We made this with a very unusual bacon. Nathan at McCall's Meat and Fish recommended it, even though he doesn't carry it. You need to order it from Bishop Smoked Bacon. It isn't as smokey as some bacon but it has a texture that is very much like Pork Belly. We order it again.

Salads

We are loving the spring vegetables in the market. Asparagus from the Delta this year is especially good: they are very thick and tasty.

The simplest preparation of all is simply asparagus topped with prosciutto.

Cathy found a recipe for a topping for asparagus that we have never tried before: Fried Eggs in Bread Crumbs. It was in the Zuni Cookbook by Judy Rodgers. I really liked this topping for the asparagus. We can apply this on several other salads in the future.

We have been eating a lot of Smoked Salmon. We had left over Potato Gratin and it was a perfect topping for the re-heated potatoes.

We also made one of our favorite salads that we call "The Hungry Cat Salad". We first saw it made at The Hungry Cat Restaurant in Hollywood and asked them for the recipe, which they were nice enough to give us. We don’t use a lot of avocados and that might be the reason I like the salad. You can get the recipe, such as is on from our blog of: Nov. 21, 2009. Click the date to get the recipe.

Fried Eggs in Bread Crumbs

Zuni Café Cookbook – Judy Rodgers

I like these crunchy eggs for dinner with a salad of bitter greens. At Zuni, they appear on the Sunday lunch menu accompanied by house-made sausage or bacon and grilled vegetables or roasted mushrooms. This is a very easy dish and fun to eat when you are alone, so I provide proportions for one person. For more people, make it in a larger pan, in batches of four to six eggs.

FOR 1 serving:

3 tablespoons packed, fresh, soft bread crumbs made from slightly stale, crustless, chewy, white peasant-style bread

Salt

About 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

A few fresh thyme or marjoram leaves or coarsely chopped fresh rosemary {optional}

2 eggs

About 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, or sherry vinegar

Sprinkle the crumbs with salt, then drizzle with enough of the oil to just over saturate them.

Place the crumbs in a 6- to 8-inch French steel omelette pan or nonstick skillet and set pver medium heat. {If you like your fried eggs over easy, reserve some of the oiled raw crumbs, to sprinkle on the top of the eggs just before you flip them over.} Let the crumbs warm through, then swirl the pan as they begin drying out-which will make a quiet staticky sound. Stir once or twice.

The moment you see the crumbs begin to color, quickly add the remaining oil, and the herbs if using, then crack the eggs directly onto the crumbs. Cook the eggs as you like.

Slide onto a warm plate, then add the vinegar to the hot pan. Swirl the pan once, then pour the drops of sizzling vinegar over the eggs.

Note: If you are preparing the eggs for more than a few people, it is a little easier to toast the seasoned, oiled crumbs in advance in a 4250 oven instead of in the skillet. In that case, toast them to the color of weak tea. Then scatter them in the skillet, add the remaining olive oil, and proceed as described above.