Pasta Primavera and Garlic Bread and Guns, Germs, and Steel

A lot of the things I cook take awhile, but this dish is healthy and quick and tasty, for the sevantless American cook. Like the trifle, it is particularly nice for farmer's market groceries, which are fresh and spring-y. I used an onion, carrots, broccoli, snap peas, bell peppers, zucchini and mushrooms. I also made garlic bread from scratch, which is less quick and easy, but you could buy a baguette and that is good too.

I started the garlic bread first, mixing 3 1/2 cups of bread flour with 3 tablespoons sugar, 1 tablespoon salt, 2 tablespoons shortening, and 4 1/2 teaspoons yeast. Add 2 1/4 cups very warm water and stir with a spatula. Continue adding the flour and stirring, 1 cup at a time, until the dough is easy to handle (up to 6 or 7 cups total). Spill it out of the bowl and knead it for about ten minutes until it is springy and nice.

Wash the bowl and put the dough back in. Cover it loosely with plastic wrap and let it sit for the length of one Dr. Who episode on instant Netflix (45 - 55 minutes). Grease two bread pans (I like using shortening and then a bit of flour) and punch the inflated dough. Tear it into two pieces, each of which you should roll into a 18" by 9" rectangle. I spread a few cloves of crushed garlic over the rectangle so it nice and flavorful. Roll the rectangle up and pinch it periodically so the air gets out and place it in one of the bread pans.



Let warm for the length of another Dr Who episode and then place the pans in an oven preheated to 425 and let cook for 25-30 minutes.

After I put the bread in to bake, I started the pasta boiling. We had some fun shapes and colors which definitely made everything prettier and more tasty. I cooked about 2 pounds to feed our house of 6 with some left over.



After about 12 minutes, I drained it and left the colander in the sink, covered with a large pot lid to keep most of the heat in.

As the pasta cooked, I chopped up all the veggies and started the broccoli, onion, and snap peas sautéing with a couple tablespoons of oil. I was pretty generous with the oil because I didn't use any other sauce on the pasta. Robbie had steamed some carrots the night before and I used the leftovers so they were already soft, but if yours are not, you should put them in with this first round of veggies. They sautéed for about 7 minutes.



Then I added the bell peppers, mushrooms, steamed carrots and zucchini with a bit more oil and let them sauté a few minutes more.



Finally, I melted about 1/4 cup of butter and mixed it with 3 cloves of crushed garlic for an extra garlic-y taste sensation. I sliced some of the freshly-baked bread (I have a bad habit of not letting it cool, it's too tempting) and laid out the buffet spread for my hungry roommates.



Gun, Germs, and Steel is a book by Jared Diamond about why European people were able to conquer and exterminate and enslave so many non-European people. The short answer is that they had guns, germs, and steel, but the longer answer explores why they had those things and many of the non-European people did not. It is fascinating and readable and extended over lots of interesting disciplines, sometimes discussing how wheat and bananas evolved and other times discussing how good hunters coming from Africa killed off all the large mammals on not-Africa. It's excellent and I, of course, recommend it highly, even for people (me) who aren't crazy about non-fiction. So check it out!

Fun Dessert Times! Featuring: Trifle!

A couple weeks ago, I embarked on a delicious culinary adventure - Trifle! If you do not know what that is, it is a layered dessert with whipped cream, custard, some sort of cake or cookie thing, and various fruit. It even has a special bowl that I bought from Target to display all the delicious layers. This was inspired by my mom, who made a trifle because she "had some leftover egg yolks". Other people make omelets, we apparently make trifle.

So I'll start with the difficult part - making your own custard (you can also totally buy this at the store, but that doesn't require reading a cooking blog either). This recipe is stolen from a book called BakeWise by Shirley O. Corriher. If you interested in the science behind baking, you might want to read it. Personally, I like the idea of learning the science behind baking better than actually learning it. Anyway, custard.

You start with a vanilla bean, which is one of the coolest things in a spice cabinet. You awkwardly pry it open to reveal the pretty black stuff inside, which you scrape into a saucepan. It's very satisfying.



Then you drop the rest of the bean in there (to be fished out later) and 1 cup of whole milk and 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream. Heat these over medium heat until it just begins to steam.



While that's happening, stir 1/3 cup of sugar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 3 tablespoons cornstarch in aother saucepan. Also, get a bowl and mix 5 large egg yolks together in it. (The whites make a nice healthy omelet for later). Put that bowl aside.




Return to the first saucepand and take out the vanilla bean (which can probably be used again, if you want to save it). Drizzle the hot liquid into the second saucepan, which whisking. Return the saucepan, which now has all the delicious things in it, to the heat. Stir it constantly until the mixture thickens.




Once that's happened, scoop about 1/4 cup of the hot mixture and mix it in the with egg yolks, then put it all back in the saucepan. Return everything to the heat once more and bring it to a boil. Stir constantly and let it boil for a couple minutes (apparently, says Shirley, this kills the enzymes in the egg that make the custard thin later).

When it is thick and smooth and all the enzymes are dead, transfer it to a bowl, cover the surface of it with plastic wrap, and refrigerate. This is also the time to add any extra flavors if you want to. Let it cool for a couple hours and then come back and do the rest of your trifle



...


Now the super-easy-fun-part!

Take the rest of your carton of whipping cream (or a new carton of whipping cream, if you want lots, like me) and pour it into a nice, big bowl. Add some powdered sugar, to taste (I did 3 tablespoons). Turn on your electric mixer (or get a friend with a whisk and lots of endurance) and mix the cream until it forms peaks in the bowl that can stay up but are still delicate.



Take your cake/cookie/bread and cut it up into cubes. Traditional things for this layer are ladyfinger cookies or angel food cake or pound cake. I used Greenlee's Cinnamon Bread, which is some delicious bread from a nice bakery in San Jose. I also toasted it to make sure it didn't get soggy, which worked very well (I don't know if it would have gotten soggy anyway, but I really hate that so it was good to be sure).



Finally, cut up your fruit. I used strawberries and raspberries, but you can really use anything. Mine were farmer's market delicious, which is a benefit of spring-time trifle.



Such bright and delicious friends! Soon we will grow some in our garden and eat them too!



Now, you assemble it layer by layer in a trifle bowl or some other, less awesome bowl. I don't know if there is some special patterns for the layers, but I just did them randomly and it was fine, especially because I had disproportionate amounts of each thing.



Tada! This was crazy good, you should definitely try to make some!