Fettucine with Sausage Alfredo

Friday 29 March

Another addition to our Passover Festival of Trafe and Chumetz, pretty much as here.

Used half a pound of Charles Bare bulk sausage and a chopped onion, which didn't need much more seasoning.

Pork with Charoses

Thursday March 28

Five thin-sliced pork scaloppine, patted with salt, white pepper, and fresh thyme leaves, quick-fried in a pan.  Served with the All-American charoses Holt made for our first seder night, as a side vegetable. 

A shonda to the goyim.

Shrimp with Tomato Cream Sauce on Peppercorn Rice

Wednesday March 27

It's the third night of Pesach, so we ate trafe.

We had an excuse: couldn't get it together to defrost anything ahead of time, which limits us to shrimp, which defrosts in a half hour.  Barbara had a vision of cooking them with sun-dried tomato cream sauce (which is yet more trafe), on rice.

So we started 2/3 cup of rice, which makes two servings.  Don't know if we've mentioned this before, but the ideal (i.e. our) way of cooking rice is to grease the bottom of a tightly-coverable pot with a little butter.  Pour the rice in, add a little salt and twice the amount of liquid as you have rice (in this case, a half teaspoon of brined green peppercorns and a bit of their juice went to make up the the 1 1/3 cup of liquid).  Bring to a boil on medium-high heat, and as soon as it boils, slap on the cover and turn down to lowest heat, to steam for 19 minutes.  Then open the top, fluff the rice with a fork, taste, and either cover for a minute more if it's not done yet, or uncover if it's done.  As it turned out, we could have used even a bit more peppercorns, as the boiling made them rather mild.

This makes rice into R*I*C*E.

Oh, and then there was the shrimp.  This too was Barbara's idea.  Stir-fry a diced onion in olive oil on medium high heat until translucent, add a pound of de-shelled raw shrimp, and cook gently, until pink and white and opaque; remove shrimp to bowl. 

Add a quarter cup of chopped/mashed/whizzed-up sun-dried tomatoes sott'olio to the pan, and sauté with a teaspoon of tomato paste.  Add white wine (and any liquid the shrimp gives off in its bowl) a quarter cup at a time, twice or thrice, to soften all the particles and cook down. 

About 6 minutes before the rice will be done, add a quarter cup of cream and simmer down until thick, adding a glugg more cream till you like  the way it looks. 

Serve the shrimp on a mound of green-peppercorn R*I*C*E, and pour yourself a glass of a provençal rosé.  The sauce is oddly meaty, but it's all delicious nonetheless.

Broccoli and Anchovy Penne

Tuesday March 26

It was the second night of Passover, so we had pasta.  Yes, we know it's not kosher for passover, despite the fact that it has no leavening.  If Moses had been Italian, things would have been different.

We made our broccoli and anchovy penne, and it was good.

First Seder Night Chicken

Monday March 25

The first night of Pesach crept up on us suddenly, when we were still disorganized from our travels.  Diane wrote us and mentioned that she was in town and missing a seder, so we asked her to come over, and then put it all together at the last minute.  Holt even had the hagaddah loaded onto his i-pad.

We disinterred our long-frozen lamb shank bone for the seder plate, and made some hardboiled eggs.  Mr. Gene Green's local horseradish was the moror, fennel fronds for vegetables, and water crackers for matzoh (since Kroger's only sold the giant 7-day supply).  The final element was Holt's All-American charoses, a quick simmer of diced cameo apples, pecans, raisins, dried cranberries, and local honey.

 

As a main dish, we made a variation on Claudia Roden's pomegranate chicken: browned lots of sliced onions, and then three chicken breasts, in purest goose fat (from Christmas goose 2006 - frozen goose fat stays good a long time!).  Then added a big slosh of wine and a couple of dollops of David Warda's pomegranate jelly, and let it braise under cover until tender and done.  Oh, and with it, we drank Wente morning fog chardonnay, and a Provençal rosé.

Holt made an exquisite dice of carrot and turnip, and sweated them in goose grease until they were jewel-like.  Our salad was a thin-shaved bulb of fennel, dressed with white balsamic and a few of its own fronds. 

For dessert, Diane brought some chocolate macaroons and Turkish delight, so traditional.  Happy Passover!