I tried a couple of different dishes this week. The first was from Fine Cooking and it was an orecchiette pasta with Brussels sprouts, Gorgonzola, and brown-butter pecans. It was very good, and a nice hearty, rich pasta for a cold evening. Here is the recipe.
In the future, though, I might make some adjustments to the recipe. First, before roasting the Brussels sprouts I think I would add a bit of sugar along with the oil when coating them to enhance the browning and give it a slight sweetness.
Also, I wouldn’t add the pasta back into the same pot that it cooked in as the heat dried it out somewhat, and with all the Gorgonzola it became a bit ‘gummy’. There was no real need for a hot pot, and mixing it in a serving bowl would have been just fine.
I also forgot to reserve some pasta water, which I would make sure to do in the future. Instead I added some water to the cheese mixture pan, heated it, and used that for extra moisture. For the leftovers, I also added about a half cup of this water.
And though I liked the pecans in the dish, the next time I might try rendering the fat from a few slices of bacon and make some crispy bacon instead. Then I would use the bacon fat to saute the onions and the crumbled crispy bacon for a garnish instead of the pecans. If I did this, I would also probably reduce the Gorgonzola a bit. Bacon makes so many things better, but this dish is already rich with the cheese and cream.
The other dish I cooked was a beer-braised roast with onions that was featured in Gourmet magazine. Here is the recipe from epicurious.com.
I followed the suggestions from the website comments and added some carrots, smashed garlic, and then I also put in some leaks instead of a third onion.
The meat turned out a bit dry in my opinion, but that was my fault and I used the wrong type of roast and pan. The sauce, though, was absolutely wonderful. I wish I would have had a 5-1/2 quart Le Creuset dutch over for this dish.
Anyhow, it was a fun cooking week with some good results.
