Thank you, Lydia
Jul. 2nd, 2012 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osodecanelaAs I have posted in the past, I am often awake during hours of the early morning and, when programming on TV is frequently lackluster. (What was the song? 54 Channels with Nothing on ?)
Sometime in the last few weeks, I saw Lydia Bastianich on the tube. she's a celebrity chef with a couple of different restaurants, and a series of cooking shows about Italian food, all on PBS. I believe she's originally from that section of Italy to the far northeast that has been passed back and forth between Italy and Slovenia over the years.
She was preparing gnocchi with her grandchildren and she put them into a Gorgonzola and pea sauce. The sauce was amazingly simple and the idea of incorporating the peas really appealed to me. So yesterday, when LJ mentioned that we had some fresh ravioli in the refrigerator that really need to get used and then in the same breath, added that there was a block of blue cheese in the drawer that was getting bluer by the minute, it hit me, this would be a very reasonable time to try a variation on the sauce she made. I stopped at the vegetable stand on the way home, where they had fresh English peas still in the shell. I bought a pound and a quarter, which yielded slightly more than half a pound of fresh peas.
Mushroom and Brie Ravioli in Blue Cheese and Pea Sauce
one package mushroom and brie ravioli
one sweet yellow onion, finely chopped
3/4 cup 2% milk
4-6 oz blue cheese
half a pound of fresh English peas (more or less)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
two cloves chopped garlic
1/2 teaspoons tarragon
quarter teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
While the water was heating to cook the pasta, I chopped the onion, and tossed it into the skillet with the olive oil over a medium flame. When the onions were translucent and just beginning to caramelize, I added the garlic and peas and about 2 min. later the milk. (Her recipe called for cream, but I wasn't willing to go there.) I reduced the flame and allowed it to simmer for about 5 min.
While that was cooking I took somewhere between 4 and 6 ounces of the blue cheese and crumbled it, and then stirred it into the sauce, until it was melted and well incorporated, then covered it and put it off to the side off the heat.
As soon as the water boiled, I dropped in the ravioli, and when done ladled them into pasta bowls, covering generously with the sauce.
Surprisingly, the blue cheese markedly mellowed in this sauce. I had expected a very strong blue cheese flavor, particularly having used an older blue cheese that had been sitting in my refrigerator for God knows how long, but such was not the case. My husband helped himself to two good-sized portions; for me it was the dinner last night as well as lunch today.
Sometime in the last few weeks, I saw Lydia Bastianich on the tube. she's a celebrity chef with a couple of different restaurants, and a series of cooking shows about Italian food, all on PBS. I believe she's originally from that section of Italy to the far northeast that has been passed back and forth between Italy and Slovenia over the years.
She was preparing gnocchi with her grandchildren and she put them into a Gorgonzola and pea sauce. The sauce was amazingly simple and the idea of incorporating the peas really appealed to me. So yesterday, when LJ mentioned that we had some fresh ravioli in the refrigerator that really need to get used and then in the same breath, added that there was a block of blue cheese in the drawer that was getting bluer by the minute, it hit me, this would be a very reasonable time to try a variation on the sauce she made. I stopped at the vegetable stand on the way home, where they had fresh English peas still in the shell. I bought a pound and a quarter, which yielded slightly more than half a pound of fresh peas.
Mushroom and Brie Ravioli in Blue Cheese and Pea Sauce
one package mushroom and brie ravioli
one sweet yellow onion, finely chopped
3/4 cup 2% milk
4-6 oz blue cheese
half a pound of fresh English peas (more or less)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
two cloves chopped garlic
1/2 teaspoons tarragon
quarter teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
While the water was heating to cook the pasta, I chopped the onion, and tossed it into the skillet with the olive oil over a medium flame. When the onions were translucent and just beginning to caramelize, I added the garlic and peas and about 2 min. later the milk. (Her recipe called for cream, but I wasn't willing to go there.) I reduced the flame and allowed it to simmer for about 5 min.
While that was cooking I took somewhere between 4 and 6 ounces of the blue cheese and crumbled it, and then stirred it into the sauce, until it was melted and well incorporated, then covered it and put it off to the side off the heat.
As soon as the water boiled, I dropped in the ravioli, and when done ladled them into pasta bowls, covering generously with the sauce.
Surprisingly, the blue cheese markedly mellowed in this sauce. I had expected a very strong blue cheese flavor, particularly having used an older blue cheese that had been sitting in my refrigerator for God knows how long, but such was not the case. My husband helped himself to two good-sized portions; for me it was the dinner last night as well as lunch today.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-07-03 04:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-03 09:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-03 05:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-03 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-03 05:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-03 09:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-06 05:25 am (UTC)