The other night we went to our friends, Cherrie & Bud’s house, for dinner. We used to have a more regular get-together where we both cooked the dinner together and our husbands got to enjoy the results. We always tried new things. Seems like we’ve both been busy; too busy to even plan it ahead. Cherrie made the entrée (a chicken Mediterranean dish – delicious), Israeli couscous (a Trader Joe’s box mix that was just really good), and a Sticky Toffee Bundt Cake with a rum sauce (more on that later in this post). I brought the ingredients to make salad (a fennel and orange one) and a vegetable side dish.
We enjoyed some champagne and appetizers on their back deck, then I started working on my part of the dinner. Let me start by saying that this dish is really very, very good. I’d make it again. BUT, to hand cut the zucchini and yellow crookneck into little, tiny linguine-like strips was tedious. Cherrie couldn’t find her mandoline (she has one hiding somewhere), but finally I needed to get started. She helped too, but still, it took us both about 20 or more minutes to carefully slice the squash. WAY too much trouble. If you want a very impressive looking dish, though, use your mandoline and make those little julienne slices. Much of it can be done ahead – there’s no reason it couldn’t be, although the recipe didn’t indicate it. The recipe came from the August issue of Food & Wine, from a Cleveland chef named Douglas Katz.
You blanch the squash in boiling water, remove to drain, then mop it with towels or paper towels to absorb the excess moisture. Meanwhile, you prepare some sliced shiitake mushrooms, shallot, garlic. Those things get sautéed, then you toss the “linguine” with a light oil dressing, toast up some pine nuts, combine things, sprinkle the pine nuts on top and put some little blobs of goat cheese on top too. I have some suggestions – I thought the flavors were wonderful – I’d make it again, but would probably just do it as a much quicker sauté and forget the linguine cutting, even if I do have a mandoline. It’s very colorful, and very tasty. It could even be a vegetarian entree as far as I’m concerned. I could have just had that for dinner.
So, the ending of the evening. . . Cherrie is the first to admit that she’s not the best baker out there. She says she has more failures than successes. Cookies she can do (and does almost every Christmas season with her sister Laurie), but just about anything else she’d rather buy than even try. This dinner we planned, however, Cherrie and I agreed we were going to use things from our pantry – that we had on hand. (Well, I couldn’t because everything I made was with fresh produce). But Cherrie did – chicken from the freezer, the couscous mix, and the dessert. The cooking school Cherrie and I used to visit with regularity, is no longer in business. We were so sad to see it go. The place sold some great boxed mixes, the Sticky Toffee Bundt cake was one of them. So, with trepidation, Cherrie decided to bake the cake. Even SHE was amazed that it turned out – looked beautiful on the elevated cake stand.
After we cleared all the dishes, Cherrie began slicing the cake and asked Bud to go out to the garage to get the special frozen yogurt they’d gone out to buy – from a new place called Juice? Or Juicy? Can’t recall the name. Bud returned to the kitchen as we were scooping the warm butter sauce over the cake slices. He had a rueful expression on his face. With long, drawn out words he explained . . . slowly . . . each word separated . . . “I … put … the … frozen yogurt … in … the … refrigerator.” Cherrie’s face fell. She said WHAT? She said “What ever were you thinking?” He just looked at her. No words from his mouth. No explanation. When they’d gotten home with the frozen yogurt it was his job to put it in the FREEZER. Nope, for whatever reason, he put it in the refrigerator. Needless to say, after several hours, the frozen yogurt was a kind of thickened sauce. Cherrie was more than a little bit upset – at first. But, we ventured on, just adding this “sauce” on top of the hot butter sauce. We returned to the dining room and began eating the cake and drinking good hot coffee. Cherrie was still niggling Bud about his mistake. But you know what? The yogurt “sauce” was really good on it – it was cold, liquidy, and a nice side note to the cake – which was sweet and rich. Eventually we all agreed it was almost BETTER than the frozen yogurt. Sometimes kitchen disasters turn out to be winners.
Squash and Zucchini “Linguine” with Goat Cheese
Recipe: Douglas Katz, a Cleveland chef, published in Food & Wine, August ’08
Servings: 6
CHEF’S NOTES: If you don’t mind a structure change, just cut the squash in regular coins and forget the stages. Sauté the shallots and garlic in some butter or oil, then add the raw squash. Cook until the squash is barely done. Make the dressing separately if you wish, or just sprinkle the ingredients onto the squash as it’s finishing, then add the goat cheese (stir it in) and sprinkle pine nuts on top – maybe with a bit of minced Italian parsley. It will taste the same. Just won’t look as spectacular. If you DO the julienne cut, the recipe says use just the outer sides of the squash and discard the inner/seedy parts. I used it all.
DRESSING:
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon Italian parsley — chopped
1 tablespoon chives — snipped
SQUASH:
1 1/2 pounds yellow squash
1 1/2 pounds zucchini
4 ounces shiitake mushrooms — stems discarded and caps thinly sliced
1 small shallot — minced
1 garlic clove — minced
1 pinch crushed red pepper
1/4 cup pine nuts
4 ounces goat cheese — crumbled
1. In a large bowl, whisk the lemon juice, salt and pepper. Whisk in 1/4 cup of the olive oil and add the parsley and chives.
2. Using the julienne setting on a mandoline or julienne peeler, remove the outer layer of the squash and zucchini in long, thin strips. Reserve the seedy core for another use.
3. Fill a bowl with ice water. In a large saucepan of boiling salted water, blanch the squash and zucchini until slightly wilted, 30 seconds. Drain and transfer to the ice water to cool. Drain and pat thoroughly dry. Add the squash and zucchini to the dressing and toss to coat.
4. In a medium skillet, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add the shiitake and cook over high heat until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add the shallot, garlic and crushed red pepper and season with salt. Cook until the garlic and shallot are fragrant. Add the shiitake to the squash and toss. Wipe out the skillet.
5. Add the pine nuts to the skillet and toast over moderately high heat, stirring, until golden, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a plate to cool. Scatter the goat cheese over the squash, sprinkle with the pine nuts and serve right away.
Per Serving: 293 Calories; 19g Fat (54.9% calories from fat); 11g Protein; 24g Carbohydrate; 6g Dietary Fiber; 20mg Cholesterol; 74mg Sodium.
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