Tonight I continued my experiments with “unusual” noodle dishes, albeit still Western in style and flavor (see my other published experiment on curried spaghetti here: http://panlogicsoftware.com/wordpress/2008/11/curried-spaghetti/
I started by dry roasting a single layer of large pine nuts in a 14” pan. That usually leaves enough to put away in the fridge, and still have some for the current dish. You have to watch this carefully, as the nuts will go from white to “burnt-through” black very quickly, and taking away from the flame (I use gas here) doesn’t help because the pan is hot! Fortunately, they start to glisten early on, and you can stir and scoop and flip them over repeatedly to keep from scorching them. It usually takes a couple minutes for this.
At the same time, I usually start the water heating, although with gas, it heats quickly, and one could wait until the nuts were finished to start it.
I peeled about 6 pieces of garlic (about 1/3 head) and sliced into thick slices. Thin slices burn, and also loose flavor, I think. I wiped out the pan from the pine nuts, to remove little bits of nut (so it wouldn’t have a burnt taste), and then added some olive oil, and the garlic slices. I washed up about 4 green onion stalks, breaking then in to pieces by hand (not cut). This leaves both small and larger “tubes” of onion, giving a good range of taste in my opinion.
When I started cooking the garlic, I also had the water boiling already (so, I guess start it with the roasting … you can always turn it down), and I added enough elbow macaroni for a couple meals. I’m using a small jar of coriander pesto, and I decided to use the whole jar, hence the extra noodles. It makes two meals, and I don’t have to cook up noodles, etc. for the second meal this way.
After onion and garlic have cooked to a nice brown garlic and somewhat clear onions (translucent I guess), then I added the pesto to cook a bit. I also added a small handful of the pine nuts, and a little extra “spaghetti spice” from a jar, since I like to improvise. I learned THAT from my wife! It’s a good way to learn what spices will do to the food, as long as you don’t add too much! (Been there, done that! 8^) )
When the noodles are finished, drain in a colander and shake to get out extra water. Wash the colander immediately, because the starch from the noodles is hard to clean off if not done right away!
Put the noodles in the large pan with the pesto, garlic, onions, nuts, etc. and stir it up until all the noodles are well coated. You could add a little butter and a little milk but I didn’t do that this time.
Oh! almost forgot the cranberries! I added them before the pesto, and let them simmer with the garlic and onion.
Finally, I cut up some small squares of a soft creamy cheese (don’t know the name since I threw the outside package away a week ago). That turned out to be a welcome surprise. It gave unexpected creamy and a little sweetness to the taste at times. The cranberries also gave occasional tastes of, well, cranberry. I learned that trick in a restaurant (that I was eating at) about 20 years ago. They really add taste to both pesto and curried dishes.
The dish was exceptionally good. Comments?