Ad Hoc Arugula and Pasta
Jun. 21st, 2010 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coraaShould you have beautiful seasonal arugula*, fresh and crisp and peppery, you should find some fresh, crisp, peppery use for it, like perhaps salad, and ignore me.
* - Or watercress, or mustard green, or sorrel, or other flavorful green.
However.
Should you forget about your beautiful seasonal arugula until it gets a little wilty—not bad, mind you, but a far cry from crisp—you might do this:
Boil up some pasta, whatever kind you like.
Slice some garlic, as much as looks good to you (for me, the vampire-proof woman, half a head), and soften with a bit of salt and a few good pinches of red pepper flakes in olive oil, over medium-high heat.
Add a glug of white wine and simmer until it reduces to a syrupy liquid, or, if you don't know what 'syrupy liquid' means, until there's still some liquid in the pot but barely.
Coarsely chop your somewhat sad-looking arugula or other assertive green, and drop in the liquid. Let cook until thoroughly wilted.
Throw in the cooked pasta. Add a knob of butter and a grating of hard cheese. (Parmesan and aged gouda both work well, but this is not a dish that is likely to be picky, so try whatever you have on hand.) Stir well.
If you have a bit of lemon, squeeze it over the top. If you don't, don't.
* - Or watercress, or mustard green, or sorrel, or other flavorful green.
However.
Should you forget about your beautiful seasonal arugula until it gets a little wilty—not bad, mind you, but a far cry from crisp—you might do this:
Boil up some pasta, whatever kind you like.
Slice some garlic, as much as looks good to you (for me, the vampire-proof woman, half a head), and soften with a bit of salt and a few good pinches of red pepper flakes in olive oil, over medium-high heat.
Add a glug of white wine and simmer until it reduces to a syrupy liquid, or, if you don't know what 'syrupy liquid' means, until there's still some liquid in the pot but barely.
Coarsely chop your somewhat sad-looking arugula or other assertive green, and drop in the liquid. Let cook until thoroughly wilted.
Throw in the cooked pasta. Add a knob of butter and a grating of hard cheese. (Parmesan and aged gouda both work well, but this is not a dish that is likely to be picky, so try whatever you have on hand.) Stir well.
If you have a bit of lemon, squeeze it over the top. If you don't, don't.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-22 06:20 am (UTC)As for the different terms: does that mean that it doesn't automatically occur to people that if they put some coriander seeds in a flowerpot and wait they'll get the nice leafy stuff? I'm wondering because on one comm on lj someone was complaining about not being able to get cilantro in the UK, and if they did make the connection they'd have realised what they were looking at when they saw fresh coriander in the supermarkets.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-22 06:33 am (UTC)I think part of it is a cultural thing: many West Coast Americans expect to eat cilantro/fresh coriander in Mexican (or in Central/South American) dishes, but coriander/coriander seed is expected to be in Indian (or Sri Lankan, or Thai, or otherwise Asian or Southeast Asian) food. So the divide between the idea of the dried spice and the idea of the fresh herb is one not only of form but also of context, even though the division is artificial (South American cooking uses coriander seed, and Southeast Asian cooking uses fresh coriander/cilantro).
no subject
Date: 2010-06-22 06:40 am (UTC)