Orecchiette and Chicken Meatballs

I made pasta with chicken meatballs for my little dinner party on Sunday. It took a long time and rendered my kitchen a big mess of dirty pots and dishes, but it was worth it because it was surprisingly good. There's something really satisfying about making meatballs....mixing the lifeless ground meat with breadcrumbs and parsley and turning it into something that's hearty and satisfying is really fun.

I've never made a pasta dish with orecchiette...it seems like it's always placed on the highest shelf in the grocery store...the shelf that i can't reach. It's got an interesting texture and a bit more interesting looking than your everyday ziti or rotini.

Ingredients:
1 box of orecchiette pasta
1 pound of ground chicken
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup of bread crumbs
1 tablespoon of ketchup
1 tablespoon of milk
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 cup of grated parmesan cheese
5 cups of cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cup of chicken stock
1 tablespoon of cornstarch
a bunch of basil leaves, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper

Meatballs:
Mix the ground chicken, 1/3 cup of parmesan cheese, parsley, bread crumbs, eggs, milk, ketchup, salt and pepper together and mix well
Heat the olive oil in a large pot, roll the mixture into small balls, fry on both sides for two minutes each, in batches

Sauce:
Add the tomatoes and chicken stock in the same pot and bring to a boil
Return the meatballs back into the pot, simmer sauce and the meatballs for another 15-20 minutes.
Add the cornstarch to thicken the sauce

Pasta:
Cook the pasta according to the instructions, drain the pasta and reserve a 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid
Add the remaining parmesan cheese to the pasta and add a little bit of the cooking liquid
Add the meatballs, sauce and chopped basil leaves and mix well

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

This is my second ever rhubarb dessert and it was much better than my first try. I got two stalks of rhubarb in my csa share a few weeks ago and I used it to bake a rhubarb and chocolate cake...which was ok but too dense...it looked like one large thick cookie. I definitely preferred the rhubarb/fruit combination over rhubarb with chocolate. I adopted this recipe from Simply Recipes and it came out really well...it was a bit on the tart side, so next time i increase the proportion of strawberries to rhubarb. Served with a big scoop of good vanilla ice-cream....it is really delicious.

Ingredients:
2 frozen pie crusts
3 cups of rhubarb cut into smallish pieces
1 cup of strawberries, halved
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons of quick cooking tapioca
1 tablespoon of lemon zest
pinch of salt

mix all of the ingredients together
fill one pie crust with the mixture
cover the mixture with the other pie crust, crimp the edges of the two crusts together and slice a few vents on the top
Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes and then another 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees

Treats Truck

I finally caught up with the elusive Treats Truck this afternoon. Parked down the street from my office, at the corner of 6th Ave and 19th street, it was a silver gleaming thing of beauty. For a mere $1.50, I got a "chocolate trucker treat", or as the Treats Truck lady described it, a home-made oreo cookie. It's a generous-sized cookie, consisting of a thick slab of vanilla buttercream sandwiched between two moist chocolate chip cookies, which had the consistency closer to a brownie. I chatted with the lady briefly and she'll be parked at this corner for the most of the summer from 12-3 on Fridays. Hooray!

Garlic Scapes

From my CSA share...doesn't have much flavor, kind of like green beans.