Thursday Farmer's Market and Roasted Beet Pasta

Welcome to the Thursday Farmer's Market in Manassas!

 I got up today and headed straight for the Manassas Farmer's Market (and remembered to bring my camera this time).  I got a little distracted by my shopping, so here's a couple of photos to tide you over until next week.

Cherokee Purples, Brandywine Pinks, and Stripeys, oh my!

It's a pepper explosion! 

I love the market because it's a great way to fill out what we get from the CSA -- aromatics like onions and general purpose veggies like bell peppers are currently in season but we didn't get any in our share, so this tides us over until we start getting them.  And, it's the place where we get our meat and dairy, so it's doubly important.  We will be making a pilgrimage to some of the other markets in the DC area, including the Arlington market (which is year-round, those lucky bastards!) but it's nice to have such a good, producer-focused market close to home.

So what did I buy today?  Almost two pounds of red bell peppers for $4.00, a big bag of 'second' peaches for $4.50, a pound of pork chorizo sausage for $5.70, and two gorgeous beef shanks for $7.00.  On Saturday we bought a half-gallon of whole milk for $4.25 (and a $1.75 bottle deposit), some red onions for $3.00, 4 ounces of fresh goat cheese for $4.00, a pint of Rainier cherries for $3.50, and 11 pounds of bones for making stock for $14.  We also picked up some Parmesan Reggiano and  Cabot sharp cheddar from a 'real' store for $28.  That brings our total for the week to $79.70, plus the $30 for the CSA.  So we're four bucks over for the week (Curses!), but the stock that is currently simmering on the stove will last us for the next few months.  All in all, I feel like we're not doing too badly at all.

  And here's your food porn for the day, since I've been a little spotty on posts and I'm trying to catch up. ]

Last week Joe and I were trying to decide what to do with our beets, and Joe found this gorgeous recipe for a roasted beet pasta.  The blog he found it on is called Food And Style, and it's the sort of beautiful, high-production-value blog that I aspire to some day become.  You can find the recipe and Viviane's incredible beauty shot here.  The recipe itself is vegan, but Joe and I can't see a dish of pasta without wanting to grate some Parmesan onto it, and we liked the additional depth of flavor that the cheese added.

[defensive]  I like that my homemade pasta ended up that pretty variegated red to pink to white instead of Viviane's even and lovely ruby colour.  [/defensive]

The Long-Awaited Ravioli Post!

Hi everyone!  Sorry for the gap in posts -- this last week and weekend were kind of crazy with various festivities and friends.  I'll try and catch you all up over the next week.  We actually only cooked TWICE last week, which is unusual for us.  But what we did cook was marvelous.

Tuesday was the 21st, the summer solstice, and Joe and I celebrated by making ravioli stuffed with homemade ricotta, sauteed beet greens, and Parmesan reggianio.  We sauced with a homemade red sauce, but you can also use browned butter or a commercial tomato sauce if you're not doing an experiment in sourcing your food.  Pictures for this post will be a little spotty because my camera battery died and I had to charge it so I could get the last few pictures.

I started out with making a basic egg pasta (10 oz all-purpose flour, three beaten eggs) in the food processor.  Dump the flour in and pulse it a few times to even it out, pour in the eggs while the machine is running, and when the dough comes together in a big shaggy ball, turn it out onto a clean work surface and knead any flour/scrappy bits of dough in until it's smooth.  Wrap in plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes or so. 

While the dough was resting, the beet greens were being prepped.  If you don't have beet greens but still want to make this, any substantial green will work: kale, swiss chard, etc.  You want to use the leafy bits while cutting the center rib out of the green like this:

The ones on the left have been cut, the ones on the right still need to be done, and the things in the middle are some cut out ribs.  We cut the ribs out because they are quite grassy in flavor, while the leafy bits are interestingly bitter without being too much.


Once the greens are trimmed, heat 2 Tbsp olive oil in a saute pan.  Toss in a nice big clove of garlic that's been minced or put through a garlic press and saute the garlic until it's golden and fragrant (no more than a minute).  Throw in the greens, and saute them together until the greens are wilted.  Dump the greens and garlic into the food processor and pulse it until the greens are minced finely.  Turn the greens out into a largish bowl and add 15 oz of ricotta (preferably whole milk and even better if it's homemade), 3 Tbsps of Parmesan Reggiano, a little salt, a little fresh-ground pepper, and an egg white and mix them all together.
Start a big pot of salted water on the stove -- you'll need it to be boiling to cook the raviolis.

You can roll pasta dough out by hand with a French rolling pin, but I have a pasta machine and a powerful desire to use it, so machine it was.  Divide the dough into six pieces (I use a bench scraper), and work one piece at a time while keeping the others in the wrap.  Do standard machine kneading (set machine on the widest setting, roll it through, then fold the sides into the middle, turn it 90 degrees, run it through the machine again, and repeat the fold and turn twice more).

Then roll the dough very thin -- you want it to run through the machine at the next to last setting (don't forget that you have to roll it through each setting in turn!) in sheets.  Cover each sheet with a damp paper towel to keep the pasta fresh while you are rolling the others.

 Once the pasta is rolled, put a rounded tablespoon of the filling about an inch apart on the sheet of pasta.







Fold over the top half of the dough and seal the proto-raviolis.  Make sure that you get as much air out of them as possible, because the air expands during cooking and could make the raviolis explode, losing their filling to the boiling water.

See?  No exploded raviolis here!

When they float like this, they're done.  Put a cooling rack in the sink, and use a slotted spoon to gently remove the raviolis from the water and put them onto the rack to drain a little.

Sauce them however you like -- browned butter, red sauce, whatever.  Try and keep the sauce relatively simple, as you want the flavours of the ravioli to shine through.  We garnished with more Parm, and had a nice Chianti with ours.




Happy eating!