smoked sea salt – Sheetar.com

This week’s inspiration came in the form of beets. I’d seen a few recipes around the interwebs about how to make beet pasta. Having found beets at the farmer’s market the other week, I decided to give it a go. The recipe is below, but the basics are to roast the beets, make a puree, and then make pasta as usual, but use 1/4th cup beet puree instead of an egg or water. Perfect! The color came out so vibrant, but leeched a little into the water while boiling, so the finished cooked pasta was light pink instead of deep purple. Still incredibly beautiful and different. We decided to go with a cheese/alfredo type sauce to top it off (marinara sauce just didn’t seem right), and add some turkey and grilled zucchini to finish off the red, white, and green theme for this plate. Turned out amazing, and the sauce, while calorie packed full of fancy cheeses, was DELICIOUS. Just a spoon full is enough!

Beet Pasta with Cheese Sauce, Turkey, and Zucchini:
Turkey Breast – Mountain View Organics
Zucchini – Back Yard Garden
Beets – Charlestown Farm
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Onions – Charlestown Farm
Garlic – Charlestown Farm
Equinox Cheese – Birchrun Hills Farm
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Goat Cheese (Oregano & Paprika) – Yellow Springs Farm
Smoked Sea Salt – Pureblend Teas
Wine – Chaddsford Winery (Pierreno Grigio)
Non Local – Olive Oil, Pepper

Beet Pasta	Print

Ingredients
3 average-sized beets
2 tbsp olive oil
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350F. Wash beets and remove greens. Wrap in aluminum foil with 1 tbsp olive oil drizzled on top. Bake for 30-45 minutes or until tender. Allow to cool and remove skins. Process into about 1/2 cup puree. Put 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour into bowl, making a well in the middle. Add in 1/4 cup beet puree and 1 tbsp olive oil. Mix together with your hands and kneed until dough is firm and not sticky. Add water or flour if dough is too dry or wet. Either roll through a Kitchen Aid Pasta roller/cutter or by hand with a rolling pin and knife. Hang pasta and allow to dry or boil right away and enjoy!

Okay, I know I say this every week, but, I REALLY made a good one here. It’s no secret that I love garlic scapes, the spirally green vegetation that grows above the garlic bulb. In order to get a proper garlic harvest, the green shoots need to be cut back to allow the garlic bulb to grow and harden. Those shoots, or scapes, are gently garlicky, and can be cooked up much like scallions. After a little googling last week to find other uses for garlic scapes, I came to a brilliant conclusion. Garlic scapes could be steamed and blenderized and then used to make pasta (why no, I haven’t been on a pasta kick either), and then topped with a garlic scape pesto. That’s exactly what I did. I steamed the garlic scapes for about 10 minutes. Then, using a stick blender, added in a little of the water from the steam pot, and blended until I got a thick slurry of garlic scapes. Made and rolled the pasta using about 1/4th cup of the garlic scape slurry instead of water and allowed that to rest while I cooked up zucchini, diced scapes (yes, ALL THE SCAPES!), spring onions, and some crimini mushrooms along with pork sausage. The remaining garlic scape slurry was given a boost of smoked sea salt and a little olive oil to make the pesto sauce. Boiled the pasta, threw some sauce on top, added the sausage and vegetables to the plate, and there was dinner! A little chunk of cheese on the side of the plate finished off dinner – which, I’ve just finished off dinner as I’ve been sitting here typing this up for you, it was THAT GOOD.

Garlic Scape Pasta with Sausage and Vegetables:
Garlic Scapes – Jack’s Farm & North Star Orchards
Crimini Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Zucchini – North Star Orchards
Spring Onions – Jack’s Farm
Pork Sausage – Countrytime Farm
Smoked Sea Salt – Pureblend Teas
Fat Cat Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Non Local – Olive Oil

Tag: smoked sea salt

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