Archive for the 'Pasta' Category

©2008 Harry Kenney

Have you ever gone to the market, brought something home and said now what am going to do with this? I’m sure we’ve all done that. I certainly have. I’d love to say I always shop with a plan. I would have to say I partly do. I often buy food with some recipe or some idea at least vaguely in my mind. But not for the entire shopping experience; the rest of the shopping goes by what I see, what’s on sale, what looks fresh, what looks not so fresh, and what just generally grabs my attention. And this time it was the on-sale bag of frozen bay scallops.

And then I got home and thought “now what?” You see, I know what to do with the larger scallops. You know the one’s I mean that are the size and shape of big marshmellows. Pretty much you sear them on one side, then the other, bang, they’re done. Well, you’re certainly not going to do the same with what amounts to 60 or 70 miniature marshmellow-sized scallops. We’re talking just slightly larger than pencil erasers after all. So, what to do?

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Ok, this is a super easy recipe and a great one for turning that holiday turkey into a delicious leftover dish. The recipe is simple, and there isn’t much to say even as a preamble, believe it or not. I have maybe two items to mention. First, this is one of those recipes where it’s difficult to separate the sauce from the rest of the dish as they basically come together as one. Therefore I’m just following the natural flow and present them together as one.

Second, at this very moment in time I’m just so very tired of turkey … I even want to just get this recipe published and out of the way so I don’t have to think about or even look at turkey for a few weeks. That is just me in the wake of Thanksgiving. In a few weeks I’ll actually be debating do I want ham or turkey again for Christmas. And if it turns out to be the latter, I’ll definitely be looking up — I do that, you know — my own recipe here to make it again.

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I’m noticing as time goes on and, especially with pasta dishes, when you interchange different ingredients, it becomes tougher and tougher to come up with the actual names of the recipes. To me, my short-hand for this dish is “Chicken Z-and-Z” for Zuccini and Ziti. Of course if I actually named it that, you would be going “huh?” and either turn away. Or maybe it would conversely grab your attention. But you surely wouldn’t know what it was until — and if — you started looking closely. And if you were specifically looking for a chicken and squash pasta dish, you might not find it here either.

No wonder Rachel Ray and others come up with crazy names after a while for things. I mean I love pasta simply because you can put sooooo many different ingredients, meats, seafood, proteins and veggies in it. And then the number of sauces as well are staggering. But then with all those mixes and matches, naming does become difficult.

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What’s to say about this meal? Other than it’s light and delicious? Dunno. It’s not that I’m in any way “tired” of writing openings — I have way too much to say, generally, for that ever to be the case. It’s just that sometimes, there is no back story, nothing that went wrong the first time to warn you about. Very little to inform you about.

Other than use fresh seasonal ingredients whenever you can and come up with something special. One can argue if this dish is a pasta primavera or not. I say it is as it’s mostly about the veggies (even though hey, who can ignore shrimp?). Other’s might debate that saying instead of blanched or raw I did a saute or pan roasting of my veggies. Still other’s say, this isn’t spring, certainly the use of a summer squash negates that. I say argue until the moon turns blue and take a chill pill. It’s all about the food, folks.

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