Orecchiette a la Funghi

Very simple and tasty meal. Again, made at a time we didn't have a lot of different ingredients around. I basically looked in the fridge and used what was there.

Ingredients:

Orecchiette--I had about 6-7 cups cooked
Quite a bit of butter (maybe 2 T?)
1 T olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
3-4 cloves of garlic, diced
Splash of white wine
1 cup frozen mushrooms*
1/4 c shredded Gruyere cheese
Small bunch of fresh basil** chopped

*Ours is a mix of chopped wild mushrooms--of course if you have fresh mushrooms, go for it!
**Actually mine was frozen, as this was again done right after a trip. I always freeze whatever fresh before I go away on a trip.

Method:
Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. When it comes to a rolling boil, you'll add the pasta. While the water is coming to a boil, start the sauce: in a saucepan, melt the butter with the oil. When heated, add the onion and saute until soft and translucent. Add the garlic, saute a minute or two more. Add the mushrooms and the wine, and about 1/2 c of the pasta cooking water. Allow to simmer on the lowest heat while waiting for the pasta to finish. Season with salt to taste. As soon as the pasta is finished, drain it, add to the saucepan. Add the basil and the Gruyere at this point as well. Toss everything together well, and serve!

Notes: I thought maybe some cream would be good, but we didn't have any. It was very nice with just the butter and the cheese, though, still tasted creamy. I think the key was A LOT of butter.

Serving Suggestion: White wine?

Orecchiette a la Vodka

Vodka really brings out the taste of tomato sauces. I especially like tomato-vodka sauces with peas. Traditionally, cream and bacon are also added. (Disclaimer: When I say "traditionally", I mean I've seen it done this way in many restaurants.) We just got back from a week-long conference and had almost no food around, especially no fresh food. This is what I made in that situation.

Ingredients:
Orecchiette pasta--I think I had about 6 or 7 cups cooked
2 small onions, diced
3-4 cloves of garlic, diced
3 canned roma tomatoes + a bit of the juice from the can
1 T tomato paste
A splash of vodka
1 t of sugar
1 c of frozen peas
About 2 T olive oil
A generous pat of butter*

*The butter is optional. Leave it out for a vegan meal. Maybe add a little more olive oil in that case.

Method:
Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. When it comes to a rolling boil, you'll add the pasta. While the water is coming to a boil, start the sauce: in a saucepan, melt the butter with the oil. When heated, add the onion and saute until soft and translucent. Add the garlic, saute a minute or two more. Add the tomatoes and juice, chopped, the tomato paste, the sugar and the vodka. Allow to simmer for a couple of minutes. The pasta's probably almost done (you don't want to over cook it). Add about 1/2 c of the pasta water to the sauce, and the peas. Let it simmer on the lowest heat while you wait for the pasta to finish. Season with salt to taste. As soon as the pasta is finished, drain it, add to the saucepan and toss well with the sauce. Serve!

Notes: The pasta water part really is important. It makes the sauce stick to the pasta. I saw it on an old-school Italian cooking show on PBS when I was about 16, and have always remembered it since then. Orecchiette is probably my favorite pasta. I've heard it's traditionally served with broccoli, but I like it with anything. My BF thought it wasn't the best for this dish, he thinks that orecchiette needs a creamier sauce. I think it would go nicely with many different types of pasta, for some reason I think that short ones would be better than long ones (linguine, spaghetti...).

Serving Suggestion: Maybe garnish with a little parsley? I thought it was a very tasty dinner. Since we visited Italy I've been inspired to try and do more interesting things with pasta lately.

Tasty (and very Swiss-French) White Pizza

This is my attempt at imitating a pizza I've seen on to go menus here. It's not anything like pizzas I've seen on American menus, but it's really good! The real Swiss-French version of course includes lardons, i.e. bacon. But I don't eat a lot of meat, and I especially try to avoid pork (paranoid about tapeworms).

Ingredients:
Ready made pizza dough or pizza shell
Creme fraiche or sour cream (about 1/4 c)
2 medium mushrooms, washed and sliced
1 medium potato, baked
3 cloves of garlic, diced
1 small onion, sliced thinly
1/2 c shredded Gruyere cheese

Method:
Preheat oven according to instructions for your dough/shell. You can certainly use home-made dough if you want. Place the dough on whatever you'll cook it on. Cover with the creme fraiche, leaving the amount of crust you prefer along the border. Sprinkle with the garlic. Sprinkle about 1/3 of the cheese on top. Arrange on the pizza: onion slices, mushroom slices and slices of the baked potato. Now sprinkle with the remaining Gruyere. Bake until crust is done, it will be enough time for the cheese to get melty and parts of the pizza to be golden brown.

Notes: I can't tell you how tasty this was! Of course you can add more garlic or mushrooms. That's never a bad thing. I also think it would be tasty with wild mushrooms, but I just used champignons de paris (standard button type).

Serving Suggestion: This was eaten for dinner, but I want to try it for a dinner party as an appetizer, cut into small squares.

Really fast/easy dinner for 4

So tonight we had 2 friends over (another couple) for dinner ... I had like 30 minutes notice to make something, with no help (my bf had to go get them from the airport). But it turned out pretty well, thank god for pasta. :-)

And this tasty herb butter I had made in advance also helped. A few weeks ago when I was chopping a bunch of herbs to season some fish, I chopped way too much. So I mixed them with softened butter and diced garlic, then spread the butter into a thin stick on some parchment paper and froze it.

Today I was able to make a tasty main course by thawing some chicken legs, seasoning with salt and pepper, then putting a generous piece of the butter under the skin of each leg. I put the legs in a glass baking dish, dumped some frozen wild mushrooms on them, added a little white wine and just baked them for an hour.

We also had spaghetti noodles, a simple tomato-feta-red onion salad, krakowska sausage (from Poland, traded for some Ukrainian kvass), Gruyere cheese, and pickles. Dessert was chasselas and muscat grapes, store bought butter cookies, and store bought Gateau St. Amour. With tea, of course.

I really adore the grapes in this area. The chasselas are commonly used for making wine. They're small, perfectly round, and range in color from bright, pale green to golden brown. They're transparent, which is so cool! The muscat grapes are heavenly. They remind me of Concord grapes, but they're better. I'm not even sure how to describe them, they have a strong, distinct taste that I love. This variety is dark purple. They both have seeds, which I don't mind. Crunchy!

Geneva Restaurant Review: Cafe de Paris

Cafe de Paris is a Geneva institution, absolutely famous for it's sauce, which many people love. We decided to go there last night, because after being here a long time we hadn't actually tried it yet.

Service: Not great, even by Geneva standards. Not bad either, but definitely nothing remarkable.

Wine: We had a Gamay de Geneve. I don't know any more about it as it was served in a pichet, not in a bottle, but I'm sorry I didn't ask to see the bottle because it was a very nice wine! For 50 cL we paid 16.50 CHF, which I thought was a pretty good price considering how much I enjoyed it.

Dinner: This began with a green salad. The greens were nice, not limp and lifeless like in some places (although I encounter yummy salad greens more often here than in American restaurants, anyway). The dressing was not like the typical French-restaurant-dressing, which is kind of creamy in consistency and very mustardy tasting. This was much more like an oil and vinegar kind of dressing. I liked it. The bread they brought us was normal, rolls that were crisp on the outside, soft inside. They were served at room temperature. Next came the entrecote. We had both ordered it cooked saignant (rare) as we do at all restaurants. When it came it was instead quite bleu. It was served on a heated trivet, sitting on top of the famous sauce, and we were given plates of frites. Before trying the meat, I first dipped a little bread in the sauce, really excited to try it. Hm, I thought. It tasted strange. Right away, I remembered the first bite I took of the brownies that I made a year ago, inadvertently with butter that had gone rancid. Yes, that's right, I thought that the renowned sauce tasted like it was made with rancid butter. That can't be right, I thought. It must be some weirdness, I'll try it with the meat and the fries instead and then it will taste like it's supposed to. I tried it with the (very undercooked, and just a little tough) meat and the fries. Still tasted rancid to me.

It wasn't just me. I asked my BF how he liked it, and his response was, "It's ... interesting." We both agreed we didn't like it. I am hoping that that isn't how it's supposed to taste. He said that he didn't think it tasted like the butter had gone bad, that it was probably just some strange ingredient we didn't like, but I don't think he's every tasted butter like that before. I certainly hadn't until the brownie incident.

Additionally, the sauce was VERY salty, and had a little bit of a fishy taste, but not in a pleasant way. I consider "a pleasant way" to be as in the subtle taste of anchovies in a nice Caesar salad dressing.

The fries were quite standard. They give you more if you still have meat left but have finished your first portion.

The whole salad + fries + steak combo is 41 francs. I would say it's about 200 grams of meat per person.

We declined to take dessert. They were pricey. 10 francs for a coupe of fresh raspberries. Ice cream more expensive than you can get at Movenpick two blocks away. The people next to us got creme brulee and it looked pretty normal, nothing special.

Overall impression: Very disappointing! I will not go back. The salad and the wine were quite enjoyable, but the steak and sauce, just bad. I can understand they undercook it because it "cooks" some more on the hot trivet, but then you just end up with raw on top and well-done on bottom. If you want steak frites in the Geneva area, much, MUCH better to visit Cafe de l'Aviation in Vernier. Their sauce is spectacular (if also a little salty). It's served on a plate, and so it stays at just the "doneness" it's supposed to. There they give you endless refills on frites AND sauce. And the price is the same or cheaper. They also have excellent wine!