Pine Nut Worship Pasta

This is a slightly more complex bit of cooking than last time, but it takes almost no skills cooking-wise and it is somewhat derived from a great recipe by Dave Lieberman, who is scandalously not available at my local library (I am going to see if I can change that). His has grape/cherry tomatoes sliced in half in place of peas, mine is more about pine nut worship (pine nuts being a main ingredient of pesto in the first place), thus the name.

Pine Nut Worship Pasta

Get some bowtie aka farfalle pasta and cook it; while doing so, get some pesto and put a good spoonful or so in a mixing bowl. While the pasta cooks (farfalle takes a little while) get some pine nuts* - a handful will do - and set them aside. Get the feta cheese out and either crumble it up a little or have it cubed up already (either by yourself or ready-made) at hand. When the pasta is almost done, cook your peas (again, a goodly handful here - more than the pine nuts) in whatever way you choose - I do it in the microwave.

When the pasta is done, drain it, make sure it is dry and then put it in the mixing bowl and start adding all the ingredients, making sure the pesto coats all the farfalle and the feta, peas and pine nuts are mixed in evenly. Serve immediately with grated parmesan on top.

*If you want something to do while waiting for the water to boil, toasting the nuts is a great idea. Just make sure they don't burn!

(If you wanted to make this more carnivore-friendly, which I understand, you could substitute the feta for pancetta or bacon.)

Crouton Bread

It has occurred to me that I don't post here nearly enough, and that I have yet to write down one single solitary recipe as well, so here goes: what I call Crouton Bread and what you may call whatever you like. It's as easy as cooking gets, if you consider toasting bread cooking, and I do:

Crouton Bread

Get a good piece of bread - something reasonably substantial, a French or Italian bread works best. Toast it well. Put some olive oil on it (about a tablespoon I figure, and if it's extra virgin olive oil, all the better) and then sprinkle with some salt, any salt. Eat immediately and repeat if you wish, though I made this as I didn't want to peel yet another clove of garlic as I was a bit tired after making the meal in the first place (this happy accident coming while I was recuperating).

The olive oil can and will run through the bread on to whatever is beneath it, so you may as well do it right there above your plate, esp. if you are eating pasta with salad, or something else olive-oil friendly...

The greatness of this recipe is that it takes three rock-solid classics and bluntly puts them together - the better the bread and oil are of course the better it will be, but it is up to you to choose them, and if you wanted to put some pepper on here that would be fine too.

(N.B. As you can see I am putting a blogroll together; if there are any food blogs you think I should add, please let me know. Thanks!)

Listen To Your Body

Well now folks, it has been long enough without my writing here - in part because when I began I had just come out of hospital after an operation and my energies have been mainly focused on getting better, and part of those energies have been put towards eating well.

In some ways there is no better time to get to know yourself - your actual body - than when you are ill. Not death-defyingly ill, of course, but just recovering without incident from an operation. You know you are getting better because you are hungrier; because your ability to eat itself grows in appetite and what you are interested in eating.

Cooking Without Looking's philosophy - which is to say mine - is that in order to eat well you have to listen to your body. Turn your ear around metaphorically for a moment or two and listen to what your palate and stomach have to say. If you have a craving for something it is usually - though not always - because in some way your body needs it to balance itself out. Thirst and hunger in the extreme cancel out such ability to listen (the body at that point is just about screaming and doesn't really care what you eat or drink) - but if you have a glass of water and a plain biscuit and are in a good quiet state, you are ready to listen.

Of course, what your palate and stomach might want is up to them. They may want something new, something they know well, something salty or sweet or crunchy or smooth or complex or simple. The brain of course might think they need something different - but the body won't know what an artichoke or a parsnip or duck taste like and the brain might have to humor them along, throwing enough salt, oil, fruit and so on into the mix until the body says "okay." That is one hell of an intimate conversation, and I think in order to be happy foodwise you have to have such conversations - maybe not every day, but at least once a week, so you can really know at any time what your body wants vs. what you are missing out on sensually (and I am using that word literally). Too many people wolf their food down or don't really care about what they eat in that intimate way - they get that you are what you eat, to be sure, but they don't marvel at what they eat nor who they are, let alone the whole chain of events that brings the food to their mouths.

Well, I do.

I also believe that if you go beyond just getting something to nibble on or drink in the kitchen, you are cooking, even if you're just adding ketchup to some leftovers or mixing up a drink. Cooking means altering something fundamentally to make a new thing to me - not just turning an appliance on and waiting for something to start beeping or steaming. So some of what I write here may not seem like 'cooking' to a chef, but to those who are modest or phobic or reluctant or nervous - this blog is for you, along with everyone else who cooks.

A Mission Statement - Welcome to Cooking Without Looking!

Hello and welcome to the blog about food by someone who is learning to cook and eat new things - I'm no chef, I have no training and have minimal skills; but my mouth and mind want to learn new things all the time. I cook in an average kitchen and collect whatever cookbooks I can find (and recipes within them) that are easy, cheap and give great satisfaction (to me and my husband). I love to read as well, so I will be reviewing cookbooks and trying to cook as much from them as possible. Thanks for reading and I will be back soon!