Day Eighty

She Said:

Again, we are forcing ourselves to cook. Energy levels are at an all-time low. But we press on. Mostly 'cause I went shopping and we have fresh veggies we need to use up. Certainly not because we feel like cooking!

This one counts toward our own Julie/Julia Project and it's from Serving Up the Harvest by Andrea Chesman.

Pasta With Green Clam Sauce

1½-2 pounds fresh spinach, tough stems removed (we used baby spinach)
⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 bottle (8 ounces) clam juice
1 cup chicken broth (or substitute another 8-ounce bottle of clam juice)
2 cans (6 ounces each) chopped clams in clam juice
½ cup dried bread crumbs
1 pound vermicelli
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the spinach and cook until wilted, about 30 seconds. Remove from the water with tongs or a slotted spoon and let drain in a colander. Let the water return to a boil.

2. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant but not browned, about 1 minute. Add the clam juice and broth. Strain the clam juice from the cans of clams into the saucepan. Add the bread crumbs and let simmer. (At this point, we said "What?? Add the bread crumbs to that much liquid?" But we did. We think it's just for thickening but I've never used bread crumbs to thicken a sauce before.)

3. Squeeze the excess water from the spinach. Transfer to a cutting board and coarsely chop.

4. When the water returns to a boil, cook the pasta until just al dente. Drain the pasta, reserving 1 cup of the pasta-cooking water.

5. Return the pasta to the pot. Add the clams, spinach, and simmering sauce. Toss to mix. Add enough of the reserved pasta cooking water to make the pasta very moist. Season lightly with salt and very generously with black pepper. Serve at once.

We didn't need the reserved pasta water for the initial meal but I saved it and when we were packing up the leftovers, I threw it in then. After having the leftovers last night, I should have only thrown in about half of it. I think there was a lot of clam juice in the canned clams we used.

This meal was really good. I thought the first bite was odd but I think I was expecting linguine with white clam sauce and this definitely has spinach in it. After my first bite, I ended up shoveling this into my mouth. We all loved it. Oh, and we topped it with some fresh grated Parmesan, 'cause you hafta, right?

Easy, easy meal - quick and delicious. I recommend it!

Day 80/365:Recipe 37/175

Valentine's Day Dinner

She Said:

In years past, we have gone out to a restaurant for Valentine's Day and in other years past, it simply wasn't important. Valentine's Day is really one of those made-up holidays and we don't normally fall into the whole cards-flowers-chocolate thing. But we do try to get a nice meal out of it!

Last night, we decided to stay home and cook, which is really becoming more and more prevalent in our lives. We do like our home-cooked meals! But we had been running around like crazy people all day so we sort of took a few short cuts. But not completely.

Our meal started with some baked clams (already prepared and ready to cook from Wegmans, our favorite grocery store - ever!) and Champagne. We went with our standard, Moet & Chandon White Star. It's tried and true.

For dinner, we had a twice-baked potato - absolutely heavenly with green onions, bacon, and Cheddar cheese - a small Spring mix salad with a tarragon vinaigrette, and a crab cake (also, already prepared and ready to cook from Wegmans). While Wegmans' crab cakes are only second on the list of best crab cakes (the ones we make are the best), they were still really, really good. We complemented the dinner very nicely with a Gary Farrell Sauvignon Blanc.

For dessert, we had some pre-made individual trifles (yes, from Wegmans). He had a chocolate/strawberry trifle and I had a vanilla/raspberry/white chocolate trifle. We paired them with a Stump Jump Sticky Chardonnay, which, admittedly, went better with my vanilla trifle than with His chocolate trifle. His would have been better with a glass of port, I think.

All-in-all, a fabulous dinner and remarkably well put-together for as little time as we spent planning it.

Happy Valentine's Day!