An amazing salad featuring raw brussel sprouts

I love the fall. Real field tomatoes and freshly picked brussel sprouts. I managed to put both into tonight's dinner. Judy gave my effort a two thumbs up.

The brussel sprouts were inspired by a recipe found online in the Cooking section of the New York Times. The writer of the piece thought the recipe a winner but many of the comments said otherwise. Many folk found the dish boring as published. I kicked it up with lemon, green onions and pan roasted minced garlic.

Ingredients

• Two dozen brussel sprouts, stems removed, exterior leaves peeled, and then coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup of very coarsely chopped, pan-roasted, walnuts
• 1/4 cup of Pecorino Romano cheese, again very coarsely chopped
• 4 coarsely chopped green onions
• 1 minced garlic clove, pan roasted in a little olive oil
• 3 Tbsp good extra virgin olive oil
• 3 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
• salt to taste

1. Remove the stems of the brussel sprouts and the exterior leaves. Coarsely chop the raw sprouts and place in a large bowl.
2. Mix the olive oil, lemon juice, pan roasted minced garlic, coarsely chopped green onions, Pecorino Romano cheese and walnuts.
3. Add olive oil mixture to brussel sprouts and mix well. Feel free to use your hands. Salt to taste.

I served this with some slices of roast chicken on a bed of Basmati rice with fresh field tomatoes on the side. At the table I sprinkled some grated Parmesan on both the brussel sprouts and tomatoes. The Parmesan was an afterthought. I had some grated Parmesan in a bowl in the fridge. It looked nice on the plate but it wasn't necessary.

The bread, by the way, came from Angelo's on Wonderland Road North in London. For good bread, I always go to Angelo's. The bread featuring sun-dried tomatoes is now available only on weekends. It is one of my all-time favourite breads.

Garlicky pasta & lemon: served daily but always different

Tonight I made the garlicky pasta with lemon recipe that I have been making every night for dinner for the past few evenings. Each night I add different ingredients to play with the base flavour. Tonight I added coarsely chopped tomatoes, two kinds, about three tablespoons of coarsely chopped hazelnuts, some chopped basil and, of course, grated Parmesan, about a quarter cup. At the table I added some extra dried pepper flakes and more grated Parmesan.

The trick here is to use richly-flavoured field tomatoes. If your tomatoes are the hard, tasteless variety form Mexico, this dinner will fail. It desperately needs the strong, fresh tomato flavour. I also used about ten cherry-sized yellow-cream tomatoes. All in all, this had lots of tomato flavour.

One often reads how hard it is to feed oneself on a budget. No it isn't. Not if one knows a little about cooking. If you insist on opening a can, you had better be prepared to open your wallet.

I bought my pasta on sale for 89-cents for a 900g bag. My tomatoes and broccoli came from Thomas Bros. Farmer Market on highway 4 south of London. (I used one, large, red tomato.) Parmesan is expensive but I buy it in big blocks from Costco. It's a lot of cheese but it keeps and goes a long way. The hazelnuts came from the Bulk Barn in the Smart REIT run mall in London's northwest.

I'm still tryng variations on garlic, oil and pasta

If you read the post before this one, Garlic plus pasta can almost carry a meal, you will know I am experimenting with flavour riffs based on garlicky pasta. Tonight it was the usual dinner for two starting with 150g of small penne flavoured with a tablespoon of pan-roasted minced garlic and quarter teaspoon of dried hot red pepper flakes.

To the garlicky pasta base, I added:

• 1/4 cup pan-roasted pine nuts
• 1/3 cup coarsely chopped artichoke hearts 
• 1/4 cup coarsely chopped black olives
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 cup of pasta water (reserved before draining pasta)

Originally, I was going to use coarsely chopped hazelnuts but Judy convinced me to use the pine nuts in our fridge instead. She wanted to cut into our growing list of leftover ingredients. She was right.

To get an idea how to proceed with this dinner, please read Garlic plus pasta can almost carry a meal. But don't let yourself get bogged down in following the recipe. Be bold. Invent your own riffs on this solid, basic pasta recipe. Tomorrow night I am going to try basil and coarsely chopped field tomato as the additions to the garlicky pasta. I think it will be wonderful.

Garlic plus pasta can almost carry a meal

I love pasta. 75g dried pasta almost makes a meal, at least for me. A 900g bag can be found for under a dollar. That's enough pasta for a dozen healthy dinners at little more than 7-cents a piece. Pretty inexpensive, eh?

Of course, pasta alone does not make a meal. But it doesn't take much to turn a plate of  pasta into a pleasant dinner, especially when accompanied by a glass of white wine poured from a box.

Before boiling the pasta, take one tablespoon plus a little extra of fresh, minced, Canadian garlic and  brown it in a couple of tablespoons of good olive oil. Don't use too high a heat. You don't want to burn the garlic, just turn it golden brown. When done, if you'd like a little bit of spicy heat, add some red pepper flakes to the pan. A quarter teaspoon, or a little more, should suffice. Now, set all aside and turn your attention to the pasta.

Cook the pasta in a little less water than the instructions on the package suggest. This will increase the starch in the water. Reserve about a quarter of a cup of the pasta water immediately before draining.

With the pasta drained, add the remaining, raw, minced garlic. Half a teaspoon is about perfect. If you are not as fond of garlic as I am, add a little less. Raw garlic is more pungent than the pan roasted garlic. Roasting mellows the strong garlic flavour.

Toss in a teaspoon of grated lemon zest, a tablespoon of fresh squeezed lemon juice and add the reserved pasta water. Stir over medium heat until the water has almost completely cooked away.

Finally, add a quarter cup of chopped fresh basil, an ounce of grated Parmesan and 2 ounces of pan roasted pine nuts. Salt and pepper to taste. Have extra grated Parmesan available at the table.

Ingredient list - serves two

• 150g  dried pasta. I favour pennine (small penne).
• 1 Tbsp plus one and a half tsp of minced garlic
• 2 Tbsp good quality virgin olive oil
• 1/4 tsp dried red pepper flakes
• 1/4 cup chopped basil
• 2 ounces grated Parmesan
• 2 ounces roasted pine nuts
• salt and fresh, grated pepper

If you don't feel like basil and pine nuts with your pasta, add something else. For instance, when the minced garlic is golden, stir in a half teaspoon of coarsely ground fennel seed along with the red pepper flakes before setting aside. Then, when the pasta is al dente, drain and add 8 ounces of coarsely chopped artichoke hearts in place of the basil. I'm partial to the artichoke hearts packed in water and bottled not canned. Finally, add two ounces of chopped, roasted hazelnuts and stir over medium-high heat until the pasta water has disappeared.

Try thinking of other variations on this garlicky pasta theme. I have tried substituting four ounces of pitted, black olives and adding these along with the garlic and Parmesan to the drained pasta. I also add two ounces of chopped, pan-roasted walnuts for a bit of crunch.

How would you make this garlicky pasta theme your own? Any ideas?

For a vegetable with this pasta dinner, I'm partial to asparagus but I'm sure there options here, as well.