For most of
my life, I’ve been that guy who doesn’t know his way around the kitchen.
For me, the microwave was the most important advancement in the culinary arts
since the invention of fire. I used to believe that if it didn’t fit in
the microwave it was not edible. I thought the “Hot Pocket” was
the pinnacle of nutrition. Then, early this year, I decided to go to
Paris to study for this upcoming fall semester, and unfortunately (and
ironically) I’m going to have to cook for myself while I’m over there. There
would be no more relying on campus food and take-out for me. I would have
to touch up on my cooking skills if my competence in the kitchen was going to
impress the French, with their famous culinary tradition.
So, when BRO
decided to do some reviews on some of the recipes that our local supermarkets
make up for us, I jumped at the opportunity to learn how to cook some stuff.
In the end, I decided to write some reviews of recipes that can be found in
Wegman’s Fall 2009 Menu cookbook. One of these cookbooks can be picked up
at any local Wegman’s; if you can’t find one, just ask someone at the customer service desk, and they’ll get one for you. The fall cookbook costs only
$4.00, and includes dozens of recipes, $10.00 in coupons, suggestions for wine
pairings with fall foods, and top fall season beer picks.
I wanted to
review some recipes that involved locally grown produce, and Wegman’s Regional
Executive Chef Don Woods suggested a few recipes for me to try that included
some locally grown, seasonal foods. The first recipe that he suggested
was Wegman’s Late Harvest Vegetable Pasta, which he said contained many
vegetables (such as squash, zucchini and cherry tomatoes) that Wegamn’s
purchases from local growers. A link to the recipe and ingredients on
Wegman’s website can be found here, and the recipe can be found on page
43 of the Fall Menu cookbook.
I went to
Wegman’s Bailey Avenue location by Maple Road, and bought the
necessary ingredients. My bill came to $28.61 for everything I needed
(including a lot of leftovers). Although the recipe says it takes 35
minutes to make, I found that that cooking time did not include the time it
took to dice the squash and zucchini, cut up the lasagna sheets (which was made
more difficult by the fact that I didn’t have a pizza cutter, so I had to use a
knife to cut up all the sheets), and halve the tomatoes. Including the
prep time, the whole recipe took me closer to an hour to make.
The first
thing I did was dice the squash and zucchini. I immediately noticed that I had
a mountain of squash and zucchini, probably too much, and so I would say that
instead of getting two squash and zucchinis, it’s probably safe to go with just
one each.
To Wegman’s
credit though, the squash and zucchini looked great when I got them from the
store; you could definitely tell that this stuff was newly picked and in
season. One shortcut I took in the recipe was step 3, where it says to
add the butter and squash mixture to the pan. It doesn’t say anything
previously in the recipe about mixing the squash and zucchini with butter, so I
was caught off guard by this instruction. Instead, I just added the
vegetables to the pan and put slices of butter on top of them, and then let the
butter melt that way. I’m learning.
Although I
didn’t like that the recipe took me longer than I had expected and that I had
cut up too much vegetables for nothing, the end result was great. For
such a light sauce, the meal still had a lot of flavor to it, which I was
surprised by. Part of that might have been because I put a little extra
crushed red pepper in it than the recipe called for, because I’m a big lover of
spicy foods. When I did this I was kind of worried about deviating from
the recipe in this way; I feared that the extra crushed red pepper might be too
much for a dish that was supposed to have such subtle flavors to it.
Fortunately, I found that this was not the case, and the crushed pepper helped
to satisfy my taste for spicy foods without overpowering all the other flavors
in the recipe.
One gripe I
had while I was making the recipe was that I had to cut up lasagna sheets to
make the pasta in the first place. I kept wondering why the recipe didn’t
just use linguine. I’d never heard of slicing lasagna sheets into strips
to make pasta. After my first few bites though, I realized that the
strips of lasagna went perfectly with this recipe. The light sauce and
diced vegetables needed something bulkier than linguine, and the texture of the
fresh lasagna strips went great with the buttery texture of the sauce. In
the end, I found this recipe to be a really innovative and tasty way to combine
seasonal produce with a light pasta dish.
I would
definitely suggest this recipe for anyone out there looking for a healthy and
affordable way to do pasta. The actual cooking time can certainly be cut
down by doing the prep work in advance.
For wine and
beer enthusiasts, The Fall Menu cookbook also contains wine and beer pairings
for this dish. Again, one of these cookbooks can be picked up at any
Wegman’s. My next recipe which Chef Don Woods suggested to me is a fall
cauliflower soup, so be sure to look for that post as well.
As for
suggestions for new cooks, I’m taking them. If you have a good recipe,
share it here.
And if you happen to be a kitchen sort with a camera, snap a shot of your
culinary masterpiece and let us know what local or regional stores and farmers
markets you got your ingredients from.