big shells with artichokes and arugula

Pasta names are the best. Conchiglie are shells, every type from the teeny tiny ones that can just cup a pea, up to the giant ones that can be stuffed full of some exciting filling and baked with oozy, bubbly cheesy sauce. And the giant ones look just like the conch shells they are named after If you hold a giant conchiglie to your ear you don’t hear the ocean though, you hear that scene from Lady and the Tramp when they slurp up the spaghetti noodle until they kiss.  

I have been thinking about doing a baked pasta shell dish along these lines for ages, actually since I bought the first Smitten Kitchen cookbook. And while Deb Perelman is an undisputed genius, her stance on putting cheese in the shells is hard for me to get on board with. Why would anyone want to limit the cheesiness of baked pasta?

The shells don't have to be all cheese, I put some vegetables in there too. There is cheese in the sauce and cheese on top. To balance all this cheese I have pumped up the vegetables, with a generous helping of arugula and artichokes and some grape tomatoes tucked in the spaces between the shells.

adapted from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

shells & filling:

• around 20 extra large conchiglie shells
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1 can artichokes, drained and roughly chopped
• 3 cups arugula, roughly chopped
• ½ cup chicken broth
• ½ cup ricotta
• ⅓ cup grated parmesan
• ⅓ cup grated romano cheese
• 2 egg yolks
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tbs lemon juice
• salt and pepper
•  

In well-salted boiling water and cook shells until just tender. Lay cooked shells out in a baking dish drizzled with olive oil.

Combine all remaining ingredients and spoon into the shells.

sauce:

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 cups whole milk
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup ricotta
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 tbs very finely chopped preserved lemon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• black pepper

Melt butter in a medium sized pan over medium heat. Add flour and whisk until smoothly combined. Add the milk a little at a time, stirring well after each addition. When all the milk is incorporated add the garlic and bring to a boil, whisking constantly. When the mixture begins to thicken, reduce heat and simmer for a couple more minutes. Add ricotta, lemon, salt and pepper.

assembly:

• 1 pint grape tomatoes
• ½ cup parmesan & romano cheese
• parsley, roughly chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Tuck tomatoes into the spots between the shells. Pour sauce over the shells, giving them some little pokes to distribute the sauce well. Sprinkle cheese over everything and bake, covered with tinfoil for about 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake 15-20 minutes longer, or until cheese is golden and bubbling. Sprinkle with parsley. Serve right away.

spicy cheese biscuits

There's nothing better to drive out that creeping fall chill in your bones than a flaky, buttery toasty warm biscuit, ideally dunked into hot soup. Except maybe a flaky, buttery cheesy biscuit, with a little spice to warm you. These have all the carby-and-buttery-goodness of buttermilk biscuits, with extra little puddles of gooey cheese and pops of chili heat. The leftover biscuits, should you have any, are a great base for some breakfast eggs. 

These will go with any soup you like; I ate mine with super garlicky cream of tomato soup, I'll post that recipe here soon! A biscuit or two makes a bowl of soup into a proper meal.  

spicy cheese biscuits:

adapted from Fine Cooking

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus a little for rolling the dough

• 1 tbs sugar

• 2 1/4 tsp baking powder

• 3/4 tsp salt

• 1/4 tsp baking soda

• 1/2 cup cold butter

• 3/4 cup cold buttermilk (or milk soured with a squeeze of lemon juice)

• 2 cups grated cheese (I used half sharp cheddar & half montery jack with jalepenos)

• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

• 2 tbs jalapeno slices, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 500° and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Combine  flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a mixing bowl. 

Chop the butter into pea sized cubes. Toss them into the flour mixture and use your fingers to separate them and coat them in flour. Don't smash or handle the butter too much, it should stay in little lumps. Add buttermilk and stir until the milk is absorbed and the dough comes together in a lump. 

Turn out the dough onto a floured work surface and lightly dust with a little more flour. Press or roll the dough into a rectangle about 3/5 " thick. Sprinkle 1/2 cheese, cayenne and jalapeno down the centre of the rectangle and fold the sides over to cover cheese, in the same way you would fold a letter into thirds. Roll dough out again and repeat with remaining cheese.  Roll out again into a rectangle about 1/2 inch thick and cut into squares, I made 8 pretty large biscuits, this could make 12 smaller ones.

Bake for about 12 minutes or until golden, rotating the baking pan halfway through. 

"cheater's" ricotta salata

Ricotta salata is salted, pressed and dried ricotta. It’s really tasty, a bit like feta, but it can be tricky to find in grocery stores, so I like to make it myself. I started thinking of this recipe as “cheater's” ricotta salata because I most often use store-bought ricotta when I make it-it’s a really simple process, all you need is ricotta, salt and time. 

 I have seen a lot of recipes titled "Cheater's (whatever)" or "Lazy (insert food here)". These things seem to often involve opening a box of cake mix, a packet of pudding, a roll of premade pastry, something from a tin... some kind of store bought shortcut.

There seem to be different levels of what counts as cheating. Is it cheating if you use store bought pastry? If you used a pack of cake mix? If you didn't grow and mill your own flour? There is a growing fixation with making food harder to make. I suspect this is in response to  increasing convenience; by making food really hard work and fetishizing the increasing levels of DIY production we can be rebels against mass production.

In reality, it is a huge luxury to be able to care about things like making your own pasta, making your own puff pastry, making your own cheese. That's why I don't really like the idea that some ways of preparing food are "cheating" - it elevates this luxury of preparing from-scratch, time consuming recipes to a higher moral plane.

I love to cook and to prepare food from scratch, because I find it enjoyable and interesting, not because it carries some inherent goodness. I think it would be great if we could try to stop talking about food like it’s “cheating” or that some food is “real” or “fake” or "clean".  

cheater's ricotta salata:

• one tub ricotta, homemade or store bought, of the highest quality you can find

• large supply of fine, flaky salt, I like Diamond Crystal salt

In a small bowl, mix 2 tsp salt through the ricotta.

Line a fine mesh sieve with cheesecloth at least two layers thick and place this over a medium sized bowl. Generously sprinkle salt onto the cheesecloth and spoon the ricotta into the lined sieve. Add another sprinkle of salt on top of the cheese. Fold the edges of the cloth over the cheese and place the sieve-in-bowl setup into the fridge. 

The salt will draw water out of the ricotta. This process will take several days. Each day, check for liquid in the bowl and discard it. As you check on your cheese, you can sprinkle a small amount of more salt on to the cheese and under it (you can bring the corners of the cheesecloth up and squeeze to form a ball of cheese, peeling the cloth away gently to get under it to add salt). 

If you bought your ricotta it a plastic tub, hang onto it. Puncture it with a pair of very sharp kitchen shears all over the bottom and sides. We will use that later. If you don't have a tub, you can use a small plastic container you don't mind puncturing or you can use a ricotta mold like this one or you can carry on using the sieve as your mold if you don't mind being without it in the kitchen for a while.

When the cheese no longer weeps moisture visibly; you can transfer it to your prepared mold/ or holey tub. Gently remove it from the cheesecloth, place the cheesecloth into the mold, and generously cover the cloth with salt. Place the cheese onto the salted cloth and salt the top of the cheese. Cover it with the cheesecloth edges. Fill a mason jar with water and place this on top of the cheese. This weight will help to press water out the cheese further and aid the action of the salt.

Every day or two, look at the cheese, prod it to test for firmness, salt the edges and top. Once or twice a week, take the cheese in the cloth out of the tub, flip it over so the bottom is on top, salt all over and return to the tub with the weight on top. 

This process will take between a couple of weeks and a couple of months. The amount and type of salt, the moisture content of the cheese and the humidity will affect the process. 

The cheese is finished when it is very firm, similar to the texture of feta, though slightly drier. When this texture is achieved, rinse the salt off and dry the cheese off on a paper towel or clean tea towel. The cheese will be very salty at this stage; eating a slice will perhaps taste unappetizingly salty. I keep it this way and shred the cheese with a box grater or slice it extremely thin. The small size reduces the perceived saltiness. Alternately, if you want a milder cheese, you can soak the ricotta salata in water until it reaches the desired flavour, then dry again on paper towels. 

-large supply of fine, flaky salt, I like Diamond Crystal salt

In a small bowl, mix 2 tsp salt through the ricotta, taking care to distribute evenly. 

Line a fine mesh sieve with cheesecloth, at least two layers thick and place this over a medium sized bowl. Generously sprinkle salt onto the cheesecloth and spoon the ricotta into the lined sieve. Add another sprinkle of salt on top of the cheese. Fold the edges of the cloth over the cheese and place the sieve-in-bowl setup into the fridge. 

The salt will draw water out of the ricotta. This process will take several days. Each day, check for liquid in the bowl and discard it. As you check on your cheese, you can sprinkle a small amount of more salt on to the cheese and under it (you can bring the corners of the cheesecloth up and squeeze to form a ball of cheese, peeling the cloth away gently to get under it to add salt). 

If you bought your ricotta it a plastic tub, hang onto it. Puncture it with a pair of very sharp kitchen shears all over the bottom and sides. We will use that later. If you don't have a tub, you can use a small plastic container you don't mind puncturing or you can use a ricotta mold like this one or you can carry on using the sieve as your mold if you don't mind being without it in the kitchen for a while.

When the cheese no longer weeps moisture visibly; you can transfer it to your prepared mold/ or holey tub. Gently remove it from the cheesecloth, place the cheesecloth into the mold, and generously cover the cloth with salt. Place the cheese onto the salted cloth and salt the top of the cheese. Cover it with the cheesecloth edges. Fill a mason jar with water and place this on top of the cheese. This weight will help to press water out the cheese further and aid the action of the salt.

Every day or two, look at the cheese, prod it to test for firmness, salt the edges and top. Once or twice a week, take the cheese in the cloth out of the tub, flip it over so the bottom is on top, salt all over and return to the tub with the weight on top. Keep the cheese in the fridge throughout the process.

This process will take between a couple of weeks and a couple of months. The amount and type of salt, the moisture content of the cheese and the humidity will affect the process. 

The cheese is finished when it is very firm, similar to the texture of feta, though slightly drier. When this texture is achieved, rinse the salt off and dry the cheese off on a paper towel or clean tea towel. The cheese will be very salty at this stage; eating a slice will perhaps taste unappetizingly salty. I keep it this way and shred the cheese with a box grater or slice it extremely thin. The small size reduces the perceived saltiness. Alternately, if you want a milder cheese, you can soak the ricotta salata in water until it reaches the desired flavour, then dry again on paper towels. 

Crumble it over salads, pasta or thinly slice onto sandwiches. Take care when season foods with salt-this cheese is plenty salty!