Nomming with Nate, edition 214159:
Tonight I had an unexpected host family in Salt Lake. By “family”, I mean my former roommate/best photographer on the planet, the one and only Mr. Kuhns. In light of the situation, I offered up my only half-hearted gift to the general public - cooking. Sadly, the kitchen in my temporary abode is slightly…ill-equipped (Hey dude, do you own a colander?), so it was a little seat-of-my-pants.
As is typical of my culinary creations, I took a recipe I located online and bastardized it until it was my own. In this case, the offering of Deb at Smitten Kitchen.
Ingredients:
- 1 lb twisty pasta
- 1 lb asparagus, trimmed and chopped
- 3.5ozish of herbed goat cheese (soft)
- 2T butter
- 2T olive oil
- 1 lb veal stew meat, cubed into cm-sized chunks (optional, and any meat with a lighter flavor/fat content would do, chicken breast, lean pork, etc)
- 1 lemon worth of juice and zest
- 1/2c gin
- 2T fresh minced dill
- Salt & pepper to taste
Boil really salted water in a saucepan suitable for pasta and asparagus. As it comes to a boil, add olive oil to a large hot skillet on high, get it to smoke point. Toss chunked veal in and brown it. Reduce heat to medium, add gin and braise veal for a couple minutes, or until it looks damned good. Let it simmer as you boil the pasta. When the pasta has a couple minutes to go to al dente, add the asparagus. Drain off when the pasta has cooked and the asparagus is still snappy. Throw asparagus/pasta into the veal braise, add goat cheese/butter/lemon zest/juice/dill/s&p. Melt butter and goat cheese, mix, and kill the heat. Serve immediately.
Had it with a bacon “IPA vinaigrette” spinach salad I made - not terrible. I was a little heavy on the lemon, but with a little less the gin/dill would come out and juniper would make itself known. Give it a shot - it’s easy.
7 notes |#