The perfect dish to make when you want to impress someone….
On Baubles, Bubbles, and Beautiful things:
Whole-wheat shells with asparagus, feta, and mint
Pappardelle with duck ragu
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Category Archives: Pasta
Dinner, My Place: Baking, Science, and Killer Pasta
Aw yes, lobster mushrooms. They look like cooked lobsters on the outside and they have a nice meaty texture when cooked…..
Put some salt and pepper on the ox tail and braise it with some veal stock and smoked ham hock…..yes, excellent. It’s going to be a ragout for the pasta.
Make some fresh rosemary pasta then cut it and work on something else. (Duck eggs, rosemary, “00″, Semolina, Contadina, Water)
Mushrooms, golden beets, and butternut squash go into bags so they can have a meeting with the immersion circulator for a while. I made a terrine with that carrot ginger soup using agar, took about 3 hours to set.
Well, I’m ready to go so let’s start cooking stuff!
First up is a brown butter brioche with sauce rouille and pickled vegetables.
Next is a carrot/ginger terrine with sous vide butter poached lobster mushrooms, golden beets, butternut squash, and shaved fennel served with a caramelized fig sauce with reduced sherry and contadina extra virgin olive oil.
Finally, an ox tail and smoked ham hock ragout over rosemary/duck egg pasta.
Another successful dinner at my place. See you next week!
Eric
Sockeye with Cherry Prep. and Menesha/Puttanesca Pasta…..a.k.a. practice practice practice
When I’m not at work I usually come home and practice what I made at work so I can get up to speed with everyone else on the line. I’m the least experienced person there so I’m doing my best to make sure every dish I put out is worth the money someone is paying for it as well as puts Blueacre in a positive light (brown noser, yup!).
I love where I work and I want to keep doing cool things there so I practice. Mindy’s parents are in town and they brought home a couple of nice pieces of fish from Pike Place Market. When they got home I was just waking up and I saw they had fish and said, “you guys hungry? I can cook this now if you want”. They let me!
This is a take on the cherry prep at work. It goes on the King Salmon but I had Sockeye…no worries! I added some herbs from Mindy’s farm (green onions, and rosemary) and proceeded to dish it up. I included a pasta from my 2AM meals which was about 8 hours before. The base is from our minestrone, which I love, and then I finished it like a puttanesca pasta because Eric is crazy like that. Practicing is awesome.
Bring Eric fish, he’ll cook it for you…it’s that easy.
Eric
Mangalitsa Speck Penne and Cheese
Base sauce is a heavy cream bechamel with a ton of Beecher’s cheese and some rendered fat from the speck. Seasonings are in play here but nothing more than salt, black pepper, and crushed red pepper. Penne is cooked al dente then stirred in the sauce to finish….more speck is added to the mix. Contents are removed from pan then placed in ramekin then more speck and cheese is placed on top. Placed under broiler then brought out and torched because my stove sucks.
Eric
Saffron/Oregano Pasta
When I was out on Orcas Island I learned how to make some pasta that would be edible. I have made it a few times before but it never turned out the way I wanted……in steps Chef Nakamura. After a few tips and making 12 orders (24 sheets total) I got it down.
Thanks Chef!
Eric
Spicy Italian Sausage Pasta with Fried Basil Leaves
Fried basil….pretty cool stuff.
Thyme, Basil, Chicken stock, Spicy Italian Sausage, Crushed red pepper, olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, cerignola olives, sweet onion, chardonnay, sel de mer, garlic, and mangalitsa fat.
Eric
Wild Alaskan King Salmon Pasta
Was given some salmon trim from work so I decided I would take it home and create something spectacular. This is the best salmon you’ve never had……that’s right……Mindy said so 
Golden Glen Creamery’s basil cheese, Beecher’s cheese and some Golden Glen Creamery Butter then some heavy cream. Wild alaskan king salmon, sel de mer, black pepper, white wine, capers, homegrown tarragon, and some spaghetti noodles…….all of these ingredients are out of order…it’s your job to experiment and unlock the awesomeness for yourself.
Go cook something. Go eat something.
Eric
Handmade Pasta Noodles with Tempranillo Puttanesca
Grow micro greens…….use them on everything!
I’m experimenting with making my own pasta noodles. I’ve done it before but I’m using different flours in order to achieve different pastas that will work with specific types of sauces. I know, that’s a little particular but that’s what this is all about.
First up was this tempranillo puttanesca sauce with a thicker noodle to soak up a medium-thick sauce…..not a cream sauce but something that has a nice texture by itself. This pasta holds the sauce nicely but there are a few adjustments that can be made, obviously.
The sauce, killer. It’s my third version of a puttanesca and this one will be the standard. Lots of ingredients but they all push and pull each other harmoniously.
Olive oil, garlic, crushed red pepper, celery, onions, tempranillo, tomatoes, rosemary, lechon, oregano, kalamata olives, anchovy, salt, pepper, basil, veal-demi, black olives, micro greens
Is it really a puttanesca? Who knows. Does it taste like one? Yes. Is it awesome? Yes.
Eric
Butternut Squash Ravioli with Veal Stock Ragout and Green Peppercorn Veal Demi Finisher
Hmmm, a little bit of this….a little bit of that…success!
I got home last night and I didn’t feel like going too crazy so I took some meat I had left from my magical empanadas and then made it into a ragout…..basically the same process to make both but this one sounds more expensive! Once the ragout was finished I folded in a veal demi-glace with green peppercorns that were re-hydrated in a red wine reduction……see, not too crazy
The ravioli are from Cucina Fresca and in my opinion Chef Brad has created a culinary juggernaut with that combination.
Fold the pasta together with the ragout and finish with some Beecher’s Smoked Flagship and you’re eating pretty well. Oh this, it’s just something I threw together, it’s nothing really
Eric
Seafood Linguine
Lots of cool stuff happening with this one. A little Cucina Fresca linguine mixed with a whole lot of awesome. I took tomato paste then did a little French style pince to it. Pour olive oil in then fried it then added minced garlic, red bell peppers, sweet onion, celery and proceeded to sweat them out. Deglazed with red wine, reduce to almost no liquid then added a lobster stock, large beefsteak tomato, thyme, anchovy filets, minced crab meat, black pepper, and salt. Let it simmer then pureed it with an immersion blender, strained it, then put it back in the pot. Cooked the shrimp in the sauce then cooked the pasta, strained it, then added it to the sauce. Adjust seasonings, add pimenton dulce, thyme again, black pepper again, salt, small pieces of butter. Plate up, then finish with thyme leaves and meyer lemon zest as garnish.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Eric
Lobster stock….always a winner.
Ghetto Sous Vide Tomato Coulis with Double Stock, Roasted Red Pepper, and Cheese Finishers over Spaghetti
It sounds so extravagant and it’s just spaghetti and some sauce. What’s the deal? Ok, I’ve been doing a bunch of research lately and I’m starting make do with things I don’t have but want really bad. I have talked about the sous vide machine that I want but can’t afford so I have been working on other avenues. I have two crock pots and I can control their temperatures on high and low heat so I started doing more research on sauces, stocks and all that stuff and just put it into this dish. Why not? I like pasta. I think this might be the last pasta dish you see for………….nope, actually I’m going to start making my own pasta pretty soon so I think I’m just scratching the surface with it all.
The sauce took 15 hours to make. Yes, 15 hours. Here is a picture of the bag once I removed it and checked the consistency of the sauce. I drained it and kept all the juices then mixed it with a batch of double beef stock (more on that later….it takes 16-24 hours to make that) and a little bit of beef demi (another 20 hours), then grated some fontina val d aosta cheese over the top and added some roasted red bell pepper and crushed black pepper.
I’m practcing all these techniques and I just need something to apply them all on. The final dish is a very low priority but it turned out amazing. Good food takes time or something like that. This dish took a long time to make but it was all very low maintenance techniques but used properly (well, with the exception of the sous vide….ghetto crock pot style will have to work until Polyscience decides to sponsor me…send me an immersion circulator and I’ll post a full month of recipes using that piece of equipment (60-75 posts!!)…..that’s my offer!
Anyway, I’ll break down the sauce and stock later. The sauce will be in this post and the stock will be in a sauce post….what? Just wait, you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Eric
Cucina Fresca Gluten Free Penne + Smoked Tomato Sauce + adding a few more things = Awesome
Chef Glaberson sent me a package on Christmas Eve that had some sauces and his new gluten free penne. On Christmas I cooked his Puttanesca sauce with the pasta and it was a hit. Today, I’m at home so I decided to step out of the box a little… The thing with Cucina Fresca’s products is that you don’t have to add anything additional for them to taste great. I’m an a mad man so I add things, it’s what I do.
Thanks again Chef Glaberson for the pasta and for being a kick ass Chef.
Ingredients:
- Cucina Fresca Gluten Free Penne Pasta
- Cucina Fresca Smoked Tomato Sauce
- 1/4 pound clam meat
- 1 tbsp. anchovy paste
- 2 tbsp. lobster base
- 1/2 lb. shrimp, deveined and cleaned
- Basil, chiffonade
- Lime zest
- Butter….always butter
- Alderwood smoked salt
Procedure:
- Heat up sauce then toss in the anchovy paste and lobster base and lightly stir
- Add the clam meat and shrimp…….lightly stir
- Toss in the tomatoes
- Cook the pasta al dente in salty boiling water…..it only takes a couple minutes
- Strain pasta then pour pasta into sauce and add butter…….the butter will pull the sauce tight once you plate it up.
- Add a little alderwood smoked salt, tt
- Mix basil and lime zest together then pour pasta on plate, do that crazy circle thing around the plate, place basil/lime zest on top as garnish.
- Enjoy
Eric
Cucina Fresca Gluten Free Penne
Got a little knock on the door a few minutes ago and to my suprise was a courier with a box addressed to “Chef Eric Rivera”…..I joked with the guy and told him he had the wrong place, there is no Chef here…..yet! Have I told you how much I love Cucina Fresca? They’re not paying me to say it, they just keep sending me awesome stuff to cook with!
In today’s round of Cucina Fresca awesomeness they have sent me their new gluten free penne. Fortunately, I don’t have an allergy to wheat but I know there are people that have serious problems with it so it’s awesome that Cucina Fresca has figured out a way to make great pasta for everyone! I’m going to give it a try tonight for a little Christmas dinner I’ll be cooking up tonight so stay on the look out for an amazing pasta post! I know it’s going to be great pasta already….the package says Cucina Fresca (Cheesy smile and CUT!!!….great commercial).
Thank you once again Cucina Fresca. Chef Glaberson, you’re a f’ing bad ass!
Eric
80+ years later and it’s still feeding hungry friends, family, and whoever else shows up
(Cab. Sauv. Pasta)
My mom sent me a great gift for birthday/Christmastravaganza. It’s an old pot that was her grandmother’s. She told me that she remembers her grandmother cooking all types of meals in it and she gave it to me because I could do the same. The cool thing about this is that I already have a pot that was my grandfather’s and that spoon you see in the pot was his. Good stuff.
Eric
Brussels Sprouts Creamy Basil Pesto Pasta
Ingredients:
- 1 container Cucina Fresca Creamy Basil Sauce
- 1/2 container Cucina Fresca Basil Pesto
- Brussels Sprouts, cleaned, blanched, shocked, and done vichy style
- Toasted Pine Nuts
- Cucina Fresca Pappardelle Pasta
- Parmesan Cheese
- Salt and black pepper, tt
Procedure:
- Heat up pesto and before you reach a simmer add the creamy basil sauce
- Cook pasta then strain and place in bowl
- Add sauce, sprouts, pine nuts, cheese, salt and pepper!
I really needed this, so much work to do.
Eric
