Goat cheese, pesto and swiss chard pasta

Hope everyone had a great Memorial day weekend. Mine was great, at the beach with friends, great food, a lot of sand and water. I really did not want it to end. It did end though only to make me realize this was only the beginning, the beginning of summer, my most favorite time of the year! Having grown up in Bombay, heat is only second nature to me and I don't mind it in the very least. In fact I quite love it. 

Also another thing I love about summer is the fresh produce. This year we signed up for the summer CSA with Coon Rock Farms, which started a few weeks back. Coon Rock is a local farm an hour away from Raleigh, NC. Theirs is a great story which started with the owners walking away from highly successful careers to work on a farm. For the six years that this farm has been in existence, its grown into a completely self sustained farm which produces the best tasting vegetables, eggs and meat.To more read about their amazing story, check this great write-up NY Times did on them.  When you do what you like best, it makes a huge difference. With Coon Rock, it shows in the excellent produce. 

The CSA box is a true indication of the seasons. For the last weeks, it has been mostly cooler weather greens and lettuces. It has also consistently featured one of my favorite vegetables, chard. Either swiss or rainbow varieties. I have been putting the chard to good use and now have enough recipes for a chard 1-2-3, which I am about to embark on! The first recipe in this series is a pasta in a pesto and goat cheese based sauce enveloping some sauteed chard. I also added some pistachios for a little crunch and also because I think anything can be made better by adding pistachios! The creamy pesto sauce works perfectly with the pistachios and chard to make a healthy, tasty and quick one dish meal. I am going to send this recipe to Presto Pasta Nights which is being hosted by Ruth of Once Upon a Feast.

Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat penne pasta

1/4 cup or more goat cheese

3 tablespoons pesto

half a bunch of chard, swiss or rainbow, cut into ribbons

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons white wine (optional)

1/4 cup pistachios, toasted

1/4 teaspoon salt

pepper to taste

2 tablespoons shredded parmesan 

- Boil pasta according to directions till cooked, drain and set aside. Reserve some of the pasta cooking water.

- In a bowl, mix together the goat cheese and pesto. Add in a couple of tablespoons of the hot pasta cooking water to make a sauce. Add salt/pepper to taste.

- In a separate pan saute chard with olive oil, salt and pepper. Cook covered with a little water till tender. Season with white wine if using.

- Combine pasta and chard with the pesto sauce, adding pistachios and topping with some shredded parmesan. Serve warm.

Makes 4 main servings.

Pasta and bean soup with pesto

Pasta, beans and pesto are three of my favorite foods. Last night I had a brainwave! Use all of these in a single soup. Why didn't I think of this earlier? The best part of this soup? It can be made start to finish using ingredients from the pantry or refrigerator. That is if you are a good grocery shopper and have pasta, beans, canned tomatoes, pesto and assorted spices in your fridge or pantry. I am not, so I did have to make a grocery store run but I thought I would mention it for the benefit of all of you good grocery shoppers.

The combination of pesto and tomatoes was inspired by this Spaghetti recipe on one of my favorite blogs, The Perfect Pantry. Actually, ever since I saw this recipe I couldn't wait to try out these two flavours together. The rest of the ingredients were only an excuse to bulk up the soup. I used Trader Joe's Genovese pesto (some of you know my obsession for this) but I think any store bought or fresh homemade pesto would work great, which reminds me that making pesto from scratch is high on my list this summer, when basil is in abundance. So if any of you have a good tried and tested pesto recipe, I would love to try it. I might even send you a container :).

Coming back to the soup, it was quite easy to put together. Other than pesto, I used oregano and crushed red pepper flakes for extra flavour. I was quite thrilled at the result, which had nice hints of pesto combined with the heat of red pepper and the tartness of tomatoes. Also the beans and pasta made it a satisfying one dish meal. It even tasted great cold! Now thats a winner.
Now that you are done reading the post, I would urge you to look around and ask yourself does the blog look different? We just redid the design and would love to hear your thoughts/suggestions.

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 carrot, chopped
1 can of cannellini or white kidney beans
1 cup of any small pasta (I used shells)
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 and half tablespoons of pesto (fresh or store-bought)
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon red chili flakes

- Heat oil in a heavy bottom pan or stock pot.
- Add chopped onions, minced garlic and chopped carrots. Saute till soft.
- Add the pesto and saute for a couple of minutes.
- Add the diced tomatoes, followed by oregano and red chilli pepper. Add salt to taste (adjust the quantity as per the salt in the pesto and canned tomatoes).
- Add the beans and saute for a couple of more minutes.
- Add 3 cups of water and bring to a boil. Check seasonings.
- Add pasta and cook for 7-8 minutes till pasta is tender.

Makes 4 main servings.

Potato, kale and pasta salad

After all the indulgence of the Christmas break I really felt the need to make a post about something lighter and healthier. And one thing that always makes any dish healthier for me is the addition of greens. I was also trying to work through cleaning out the pantry and found some pasta and a potato who was begging to be eaten soon. So I decided to use them all together into a carbalicious salad made a little healthy by addition of kale and dressed very simply with store bought pesto. Talking about pesto, I absolutely love the Genvoese pesto from Trader Joe's. I use that for pasta salad all the time with different combinations of veggies and nuts and its worked wonders every single time. It worked equally well this time with the unusual combination of kale, potatoes and pasta. If you like nuts, pistachios would be a great addition to this salad. I didn't have any on hand so skipped those and finished this salad off with a little bit of shaved parmesan. Here goes..

This is my third entry for the Recipe Marathon on One Hot Stove.

Ingredients:

1 cup fusilli pasta

1/2 cup boiled and chopped potato

1 cup kale, shredded into ribbons

1 tablespoon pesto

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1 tablespoon grated parmesan

- Cook pasta according to directions till soft.

- Heat a teaspoon of olive oil and cook the kale with a little bit of salt and pepper till tender.

- Combine the pasta, boiled potato and kale and add the pesto. Mix well.

- Add more salt, pepper if required and top off with the parmesan.

Makes 4 side servings.

Rainbow chard and lentil pasta

A couple of weeks ago, a couple of our friends told us about Coon Rock CSA. CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) offers city dwellers an opportunity to get fresh produce from nearby farms. It's not only a great way to eat fresh seasonal organic vegetables and meat but also a great way to support local farms. The idea of getting a box of vegetables every week seemed a bit daunting at first but Coon Rock Farms makes it even more convenient and flexible. Instead of signing up for a weekly supply of vegetables, you can also create custom orders. Its really simple: join their mailing list, get a weekly list of the produce, mail them back with what you need and pick up from a location nearby!

We picked up our first custom CSA order last Thursday and we are quite excited! We have fingerling sweet potatoes, purple top turnips, rainbow swiss chard and some chorizo sausage. I have been trying to figure out ways and means of putting these to good use over the last couple of days and have come up with this pasta so far.

This pasta with chard and lentils is inspired from two different pasta dishes we had over the last couple of weeks. One was made by our friends who cooked us a wonderful Middle Eastern dinner last weekend. The pasta dish they made is a Damascus specialty and is somewhat like a pasta casserole with lentils. The second pasta dish was made by another of our friends for dinner this weekend and had swiss chard with fettuccine and walnuts. I loved both and decided to combine the lentils and chard into one dish. I tried to refrain from using any strong herbs/spices in this dish so that the fresh chard would be the star.

Ingredients

One medium onion, chopped

3-4 garlic cloves, chopped

Bunch of swiss/rainbow chard

1 cup cooked lentils

2 cups of fusilli/penne pasta

juice and lemon zest of half a lemon

lots of fresh ground pepper

2 tablespoons parmesan cheese

- Heat a tablespoon of olive oil and add chopped garlic.

- Stir garlic for a couple of minutes and then add the chopped onion.

- When the onion is soft, add the chopped chard and saute well.

- Once the chard wilts, add the cooked lentils (I boiled them in water)

- Add lemon juice, zest, salt and pepper.

- Add the cooked pasta and mix well. Cook for a couple of minutes to get all the flavors mixed in.

- Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and serve.