Ricotta-Stuffed Shells with Burrata, Mushrooms, and Herbs & Perfect Herby Salad

I put this recipe off for as long as possible. Not because it didn’t sound good, but because it has more dairy than anyone should eat in a single meal. I’m talking heavy cream, ricotta, parmesan, and mozzarella all filling every imaginable nook and cranny of a 2 quart dish. A delicious stomach ache just begging to happen. 

Well I certainly wasn’t going to eat this one alone. We invited two dear friends over, Elli and Christian, to help us eat it and make it. Why not make the Great Dairy Assembly, as I’m now going to call it, a communal activity? 

Before our friends arrived, I went ahead and started the mushrooms roasting in the oven as well as bringing a pot of salted water to a boil for the pasta. Alison recommends a variety of mushrooms, but I just went for the straightforward pre-sliced baby Bella mushroom cartons at TJ’s. I’ve cooked a lot of her mushroom recipes lately, and I was honestly over spending $7 for 5oz. of little shiitakes. 

I scored some gluten free shells on Amazon, Tinkyada Brown Rice Grand Shells. The packaging says to boil the shells for 15-16 minutes for al dente, so that’s what I did. The edges of the shells were very cooked by that point, but the centers were a little tougher, harder. I definitely didn’t cook them perfectly, but once you’ve poured out the pasta water, it’s hard to go back. Oh well. I did as Alison instructed and poured the newly cooked shells onto an oiled baking sheet to help them cool and not stick together. This mostly worked. 

Now for the Great Dairy Assembly. Elli took each shell and filled it with the Great Dairy Mixture, consisting of ricotta, heavy cream, shaved parmesan, salt and pepper. One by one, she placed them in the baking dish while I desperately tried to arrange them without letting them tip over and spill their filling. Which turned out to be very difficult. Despite the rather al dente state of the pasta, the shells wanted desperately to let the cheese run out. We made a valiant effort to keep them all intact, but it sure was messy. With the shells filled and haphazardly arranged, we stuffed torn pieces of a mozzarella ball into whatever crevices we could find. Next, we poured heavy cream over the dish, followed by the roasted mushrooms. We baked the dish as instructed, about 35 minutes in total. 

Meanwhile, Elli and I prepared the herbs and lemon zest for topping the pasta, as well as Alison’s Perfect Herby Salad. We used lots of parsley, tarragon, and chives. For the salad, I threw in a bag of mixed greens. Alison’s perfect salad dressing is exactly how I dress my salads 90% of the time anyway: olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. It’s truly all I need to enjoy a salad. 

The shells came out bubbling hot and the mushrooms had turned an even richer brown. We topped them with the fresh herb mixture, and yes, more parmesan. The four of us finished off every shell but one, which wasn’t a Minnesota-nice move, I swear — we were just too full to fathom eating one more shell.

206 and 207 recipes cooked, 18 to go.

Savory Barley Porridge with Parmesan and Soy by Alison Roman

Jordan and I spent our first two years of marriage living in Berkeley, CA. We rented an apartment that was approximately 400 square feet, which we lovingly called “the shoebox.” It should have been a studio, but in classic Bay Area fashion, they put a wall in the middle so they could call it a one-bedroom and charge more rent. The kitchen had a small stove and oven with one rack that couldn’t fit standard-sized baking sheets. Cooking took longer with less oven space to work with, but we made do. We shared one tiny closet, had no heating or air conditioning, and still, loved living there. 

Most Saturday mornings, Jordan could be found at his desk (it took up a third of our living room) studying. These were some of my favorite mornings because I could spend them any way I liked. Sometimes I’d go to the farmer’s market, sometimes Philz Coffee, but more often than not, I walked over to Acme Bread. Acme is primarily a bakery with a constantly long line of people waiting to purchase bread, no matter the day of the week. They converted a small room off the side of the bakery into a coffee bar where you can order from a very short, locally-sourced food and drink menu. Most weekends, I ordered coffee and sweet porridge, a blend of various grains, cooked in whole milk with housemade jam and shaved almonds on top. I ate it slowly and read a book or people-watched after the many characters that came to stand in the bakery line. 

a polaroid of me at Acme Bread

Acme also served a savory porridge, but I never had the guts to try it. I just couldn’t get behind eating salty grains for breakfast. Which is why it took me eleven months to finally cook Alison’s savory porridge. Of course, I’m going to say that (surprise) it’s actually really good, and I wouldn’t mind making it again. But you knew that was coming. To me, savory porridge is the right breakfast for mornings when you don’t want to eat right away, but you have the energy and the time to stand by the stove for a while. Personally speaking, I don’t have many mornings like that, so porridge will have to be a rarer occasion. 

Alison provides us with many topping options for this porridge, most of which I followed to great contentment. While the barley and millet cooked, I assembled the toppings. I had leftover mushrooms on hand from Alison’s Chicken Soup, which I sauteed. I had an extra leaf of swiss chard from re-making Alison’s Harissa-Rubbed Pork (a true winner). I tossed in some leftover scallions and some briefly toasted buckwheat groats. I tried to poach an egg, to great failure. I salvaged the yolk, but most of the egg whites were scattered about in the water. Someday I’ll figure out how to properly poach an egg, but this day was not that day. 

Parmesan and soy sauce are what make this porridge from a flavor standpoint. I even found myself adding more soy sauce than is called for to my bowl. All in all, it was a delightful breakfast, not to mention a filling one. I felt very “Bay Area” while eating it. 

Pro tip: If porridge leftovers aren’t exactly something you want to eat, then I recommend dividing the recipe by the exact amount of people who will eat it. I.e. If you’re going to eat this by yourself, I think it’s safe to make a fourth recipe. 

195 recipes cooked, 30 to go.

Whole-Wheat Pasta with Brown-Buttered Mushrooms, Buckwheat, and Egg Yolk by Alison Roman

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this recipe. Pasta with buttery mushrooms and parmesan is a nice, mildly flavored dinner. It’s filling, pairs well with red wine, and makes for nice leftovers. Egg yolk adds a creamy element, balanced by the nutty flavor of buckwheat groats (Alison’s mark on this classic recipe). Gluten free noodles work just as well here. 

In lieu of a full essay, here’s a haiku: 

Sometimes I don’t have 

Much to say about cheesy 

Rigatoni pasta

193 recipes cooked, 32 to go.

Tiny Creamy Pasta with Black Pepper and Pecorino by Alison Roman

I really enjoy tiny kitchen things. Tiny forks for eating grapes, tiny spoons for eating ice cream, tiny knives for cutting fancy cheese, tiny cups for juice, tiny plates for biscuits, and tiny bowls for everything! (I have four of them and affectionately call them my ‘mini bowls’ in a very particular voice intonation). 

So of course I was giddy when I saw a recipe for tiny pasta! Now, GF tiny pasta is hard to find. The best I could do were these tiny pasta shells by Jovial, which let me say, were delicious. I couldn’t tell they were GF - they held their structure, toasted nicely in the pot at the beginning, and their texture was like authentic pasta, no mushiness or mealiness to be found. 

I made this warm, wintery meal for my mother and sister who came to visit me in Chicago. It was a perfect weekend together, full of Christmas-y activities, including wearing matching pajamas. After spending much of the day walking around in the cold, our final evening consisted of this tiny pasta in my apartment with the heater on blast. 

It’s a simple and surprisingly creamy endeavor. In my Dutch oven, I toasted sliced garlic (from two extraordinarily large cloves!). Soon after, the pasta joins and the goal is to toast the shells in the garlicky oil so they develop a slightly nutty flavor. Once I could smell the toasting pasta, I added salt, lots of black pepper, a cup of finely grated Parmesan (this works if you don’t have pecorino) and several cups of water. The water needs to simmer for about 22 minutes, until fully absorbed and reduced to a creamy, cheesy sauce. Alison instructs us to stir frequently, which encourages the pasta to release its starch, thickening up the sauce and turning the water an opaque white. 

I plated (or should I say bowled?) the pasta and topped it with chopped chives and more black pepper. On most days, I would have chosen to add the raw egg yolk like Alison, but on this day, I just wasn’t in the mood. I served the pasta alongside Alison’s Raw Broccoli Salad with Shallots and Peanuts — a vegetable dish that completely surprised me. That one’s coming up next. 

This pasta is like a sophisticated, slightly more complicated mac and cheese, and it still only takes 25 minutes. Let’s just say I won’t be making regular mac and cheese again any time soon.

185 recipes cooked, 40 to go.

Seeded Breadsticks with Parmesan by Alison Roman

I don’t think I’ve ever fully bought into the idea of the breadstick. What about the shape of a stick makes bread any better? Though a thinner cylinder of bread may be easier to bite into than a loaf, will you at least grant me the point that a bread stick dries out much faster than a round or rectangular loaf of bread? I like bread crust as a general matter, but will you not concede that the inner parts of bread, aka everything but the crust, is the best, softest, loveliest part of bread? And do you not also see that breadsticks, given their shape, inherently require a higher crust to inner bread ratio? Thus, making breadsticks inherently inferior to a normal oval loaf of bread? I don’t mean to be aggressive, but I can’t help but question the philosophy of going out of one’s way to make breadsticks, when clearly a loaf is better AND less work. 

To all the Olive Garden lovers who rave about their bottomless breadsticks, I tell you now, that OG is just not that good. The food is subpar and the restaurant lacks any charm. If the only thing you can love about it are their breadsticks, then there must be something wrong with the restaurant to begin with because breadsticks are also not very good. May I suggest, instead, Panera? If you’re going for a chain restaurant that specializes in carbohydrates, why not go to one that at least has fantastic loaves of sourdough, wheat, and just about every other kind of bread on tap. Plus, at Panera, you can order a cup of their tomato soup, which is my favorite. But that’s besides the point. 

Clearly Alison’s breadsticks did little to sway me. I appreciated her additions of sesame seeds, poppy seeds, and parmesan, which made them a little like everything-bagel breadsticks. But sadly, they dried out after just an hour and a half of sitting on the table during dinner. This was a product of the sticks being so thin -- she instructs you to cut the dough into 1/4th inch thick strips. Also, because they’re so thin, the breadsticks completely forfeited one of the most important functions of bread with dinner: dipping. There was simple not enough surface space to soak up and absorb the short rib juices (the main course). 

Sadly, this side is one of those that I made for the project, but don’t see the point in making again. I think I’ll stick with my bread loaves for dinner. 

166 recipes cooked, 59 to go.