Donna Hay Photo Challenge #9 Goat Cheese, lemon and pea Pasta

June 30, 2012 By Wendy Ellen Thomas in Challenges & Round Ups, Pasta, Side dishes, Vegetables Tags: Donna Hay Challenge, garlic, goat cheese, lemon, olive oil, pasta, peas 20 Comments

***UPDATE*** I’m pulling out the pasta pea bit from my last post so it’s not smushed in between the cabin and the salmon and the …..And you may still get another one later today for the berry tart bake off! Where did June go??? Ok… just pretend like you’re surprised 🙂

Yes, I did make MORE pasta and had a lovely but challenging afternoon taking photos of it. It was like a haircut you keep having a go at and never feel you get quite right… except with less long term effect.

Here is the link to the Donna Hay photo challenge at Jungle Frog Cooking.

And here is the original picture-

The image comes from the summer issue of Donna Hay’s issue 55 (febr 2011). The photo is taken by William Meppem and styling by David Morgan.

And this is my go at it 🙂

And this is the one I couldn’t decide on…

And here’s the rest of it you’ve already seen….

Here’s the recipe but head over to Junglefrog if you want to Print. You should go over there anyway because it’s a great site.

Ingredients

400g penne
420g frozen peas (2 cups)
2 cloves garlic (crushed)
2 tablespoons lemon rind (finely grated)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
240g goat’s cheese (crumbled)
50g rocket (arugula, chopped)
sea salt
cracked black pepper

Boil up you noodles of choice… regular semolina or one of the many gluten free varieties. The recipe called for Penne but I like the twists… And get yourself some peas! I love using pea shoots for the green and Donna Hay used Arugula. I also added cut up snow peas giving it a little crunch.

I used fresh shelling peas, snap peas, and pea shoots all from local gardens. I used to love growing pea shoots for salad. You can even do this in a pot of the porch.

A little olive oil, fresh garlic, lemon juice and zest, fresh goat cheese and did I mention PEAS!

It’s a simple dish that can be made ahead of time and served at room temp or warmed up a bit…

Thanks for your patience in my need to make this happen on the LAST DAY of JUNE!

Tschüß,

Goat Cheese, Lemon and Pea Pasta, Grilled Salmon and a peak at Frog Song Farm…

June 27, 2012 By Wendy Ellen Thomas in Fish, Main: seafood, Pasta, Salad, Side dishes Tags: Frog Song Farm, goat cheese, lemon, Orcas Island, pasta, peas 46 Comments

I’d like to introduce you to Frog Song Farm, our summer digs, with a couple of photos I snapped last night. This humble octagonal structure was built by a man child at the age of 24, so the story goes. And it miraculously still stands roughly 30 years later. My first introduction was a description of Frog Song Farm posted on a small blue lined 3×5 index card in the spring of 1993 at the Seattle Tilth office in Good Shepherd’s park. “15 Acre Organic Farm, cabin, mature fruit trees” it read. I was just finishing my degree at Bastyr College. After my last class, we took a six week journey traveling up the inside passage with a VW bus on a boat, then drove back down through Alaska and the Yukon. It was the moment of our return that I found myself busting to get out of the city. Three weeks later I sat on the lawn outside of a then intact octagonal structure surrounded by a small picket fence smothered with trailing roses. Ripe fruits of mid August swooned me. Laying in the grass, cocked on one elbow twirling grass blades between my fingers, I, also ripe at 25, negotiated with the owner as to how I could make this work.

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Salad & candied pistachios… Featuring Capricorn Somerset Goat Cheese

June 4, 2012 By Wendy Ellen Thomas in Appetizer, Cheese, Salad Tags: arugula, candied pistachios, Capricorn Somerset Goat Cheese, citrus vinaigrette, goat cheese, Plate to page, Spinach 27 Comments

It was a sad moment when we savored our last round of Capricorn Somerset Goat Cheese. A cheese not soon to be forgotten, I encourage you to check out how it is produced with milk from goats in the West country of Somerset. Using a vegetable rennet, it even carries the vegetarian society sticker of approval. Generous sponsors they were of the Plate to Page Workshop, I recently attended, we even had extras to take home.

I’ve already confessed to the powers at be that I flew home with three rounds carefully boxed in my suitcase. Praying my suitcase wouldn’t be lost in route or stashed overnight as was the case on my way TO Bristol due to a canceled flight, worked. It arrived safely and we enjoyed it the following week… mostly on rye toast with fresh cherry tomatoes. But I did manage to stash one roll in the back of my small fridge that truly, only I know the layout of, in order to make something special like this beautiful goat cheese salad with candied pistachios.

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Veggie quiche and a collage

November 24, 2011 By Wendy Ellen Thomas in Brunch, Eggs Tags: brunch, eggs, food, goat cheese, quiche 1 Comment

There are many versions of baked eggs. One of my favorite cookbooks containing all egg based recipes is Michel Roux ‘Eggs’

As much as I love a light quiche, this is a denser, eggy version of quiche if you don’t want to use as much cream (or you don’t have any on hand). I started with my pie crust in the morning. See below for crust recipe.

This is a tried and true savory crust recipe from cooking school and in the crust bible:

250g flour
1/2 tsp salt
125g butter
50ml (call it a gram) cold water
1 yolk
Flour, salt, butter pulsed in cuisinart. Place in bowl or on counter.
Add water and yolk. Lightly knead to bring ingredients together and form into a disc. Wrap in plastic and let it rest in the fridge for at least 30min.
Roll out, place in pie dish, cover with parchment paper, fill with pie weights or garbanzo beans like I do.(If your fridge is bigger than my Euro under the counter you can put rolled out crust back in fridge for another 30 min or longer.
Bake at 400° for 12 min
Remove weights and paper, bake another 5-8 min.

The filling is on the collage. Except I forgot green pepper, zucchini, salt to taste and maybe a grate or 2 from a fresh nutmeg…. and since what I wanted to say is it took me as long to figure out how to do the collage as it did to make this quiche (including the crust making and resting, pre-baking, cooking the filling and cooking the quiche itself), I just thought I’d add it on here. Did I mention the app was free?