Lick the Salt: Corn and Pesto Ravioli with Parmesan Butter Sauce

I get teased all the time by friends because I don’t shop and cook like they do. What can I say, I’m just weird. I know that most people utilize processed foods for convenience sake, I just don’t happen to be one of them. Seriously, I think the only processed foods I buy on a regular basis are peanut butter and dry pasta (do dried cranberries count? If so, add them to the list). I know there is a cadre of passionate healthy-eaters who bemoan the evils of processed food. I couldn’t give a flip about that, I just don’t think it tastes all that good.

I recently picked up some prepackaged fresh pasta and sauce for the first time in ages. It wasn’t until then that I realized exactly how spoiled I have become. While the mass-produced stuff was OK, I just couldn’t get past the amount of salt that was in it. It didn’t taste salty when I ate it, but I bet I drank 3 gallons of water the rest of the night and still woke up the next morning with cotton mouth. I bet if you had tapped my vein, you could have used it to brine pickles. No offense, but I’m not sure how anyone can eat that kind of processed stuff all the time and not suffer some consequences.

My recent experience sent me back to homemade. There’s really no big trick to making fresh pasta – and it impresses the heck out of people when you tell them it’s homemade. If you’ve got the right equipment, you might have 15 or 20 minutes of active working time in it. And if you don’t have the right equipment, then you might spend twice that much time. I still think it’s pretty easy – and foolproof.

I don’t know where I picked up this basic pasta dough recipe – it isn’t mine, but I use it all the time. I also substitute some whole wheat flour on occasion (about 40% of the total) to give it a little more bite. I happen to like the texture of whole wheat pasta. I know some people don’t. Because this recipe is ravioli, I didn’t use any whole wheat flour – I figured the ravioli was chewy enough without it.

And it seems like the local corn season has hit its peak, so I want to get a little more out of it before it completely fizzles out. I figured some fresh corn inside the ravioli might be fun, so in it went. And whenever I’m doing Italian food and corn, I automatically think of pesto. But just throwing pesto sauce on the ravioli is too easy, so I decided to put it on the inside instead. (Besides, I treat fresh pesto like gold – if it goes inside, I’ll use less. That way, it will last longer.)

Since the pesto went inside, I wanted something that would be both good with the corn and simple as well. How much simpler (and better with corn) can you get than butter and parmesan cheese? (Remember how I was complaining about too much salt? You would think I’d have some issues with too much fat too, but I don’t. Go figure.)

The nice part of this is that you can make the ravioli ahead of time and just stash them in the fridge. Then at dinnertime, the whole dish comes together in just a few minutes. It’s great to entertain with – you can actually spend some time with your friends when they come over.

So throw together your own fresh pasta and leave the excess salt where it ought to be – on the rim of a margarita glass.

Recipe: Corn and Pesto Ravioli with Parmesan Butter Sauce

You’ve Been Quick-Rolled: Quick Bread Cinnamon Rolls

Ah, the weekend, the only time of the week when every-single-freaking-minute of my day is not scheduled. It’s nice to have one morning a week when I don’t have to be up and out. It gives me a chance to make something a little nice (and a little naughty) for breakfast. For that, there’s nothing like the taste of homemade cinnamon rolls – warm, yeasty, buttery bites that take a little time, but are totally worth it. Read More

Recipe: Quick Bread Cinnamon Rolls
Bonus Recipe: The Best Cinnamon Rolls - EVER

Balsamic Rosemary BBQ Chicken & Grilled Corn with Pesto Butter

This is one of my latest attempts to ‘class-up’ BBQ chicken. Now there’s nothing wrong with BBQ chicken in its everyday state – thick and spicy with a tomato-based sauce. You know, the kind that takes 3 napkins to eat. The problem is that is has a markedly casual connotation – visions of poolside eating while still in your bathing suits. I’m looking for something that feels like it could be eaten indoors, at the table with a knife and fork.

Because this sauce cooks for so long, I didn’t use the good balsamic for the recipe. I save 10-year stuff for use in its straight-out-of-the-bottle form. The balsamic I use for this is the 3-year / $3 per bottle stuff. Besides, the additional flavor components in the sauce are bold in their own right, so it would mask the deep, rich flavor a more expensive balsamic has. Additionally, I used dried rosemary instead of fresh. Make no mistake, I’d much rather use fresh herbs, but it’s one of the financial compromises I’ve had to make. If fresh herbs are in your budget, then use them. But remember that you want to use about 3 times the amount of fresh herbs as you would use dried, so bump the measurement up to 1 tablespoon of chopped, fresh rosemary – instead of 1 teaspoon of dried.

The sauce is thinner than the tomato-based, and has a mouth-feel closer to a glaze than a traditional BBQ sauce. On the other hand, the flavor is a little more adult and gives the illusion that it could be eaten in the dining room, instead of finger food in your bathing suit.

Since I already had the grill fired up, I thought I’d throw some corn on the grill at the same time. There’s nothing like sweet corn with a little char on it. I grew up in Indiana, which is basically the corn capital. Unfortunately, as a child I never had corn that was anything but boiled – and usually overcooked (I can remember corn being on the stove in a big pot of water for 30+ minutes). This is quick and easy – it takes about the same amount of time as the chicken – and infinitely tastier. The sugars get the chance to caramelize and pair with the smoky depth of flavor that comes from cooking over an open flame.

I mentioned in another post that a friend had given me a bunch of basil that I turned into unbelievable pesto. Basil is a wonderful flavor to pair with corn, so I finished up my grilling with a little compound butter to spread over the top. Delicious. I know that serving corn on the cob goes against the concept of a more upscale BBQ, so you could always cut off the corn and place it in a serving bowl before adding the pesto butter.

I hope you enjoy Balsamic Roesmary BBQ Chicken and Grilled Corn with Pesto Butter.

Just as an aside: I’ve developed my own corn husking tricks to remove all of the silks, but I know that there are many others out there. If you’ve got a foolproof one, I’d like to hear about it.