Andrew Carmellini's Bow Tie Pasta with Tomato, Arugula, and Mozzarella

Café Boulud Cookbook: Recipe 5

This was a mistake.  I should have known better.  I had such poor results with the Urban Italian cookbook, why would I take on another Carmellini recipe?  Is his food better under the wing of Daniel Boulud?  No.  As a side note, however, this is not to say I wouldn't go to his restaurants, I just can't trust him to write a recipe for the home cooking audience.  That said, this did not come together, quite literally.  Boulud praises the sauce, says that that is what this dish is all about, but it was not special and  it was not even that good.  The small bow ties did not hold the loose sauce well at all, and I had to think the sauce should have been thicker, but it doesn't stay on the stove very long.  Too much olive oil is used throughout the recipe which I think adds to the loose consistency. You add the cooked pasta to the sauce and then, after plating or bowling, add the cherry tomatoes, arugula, and mozzarella on top of it.  This is not what I call a recipe.  This is what I call making pasta and putting things on it.  It tasted fine, but only just that and I had a difficult time finishing my portion.  Glad there were no leftovers.

Corn Soup with Nutmeg

Boulud Recipe 4

Making this recipe was sort of cheating because it is from a different Daniel Boulud Cookbook, Cooking with Daniel Boulud.  Being somewhat discouraged with the three "Café" recipes I have made, I thought going a step up to a more "restaurant" type of focus that I might have better luck.  And I did.  Since I moved back to New York (state) I felt like I could start eating corn (on the cob) again.  Sorry midwest, but I don't trust you when it comes to corn.  Your fields are too vast and the sacks your corn comes in, even at the farmers market, seem a little too corporate to be non-gmo or monsanto or both.  But back here in the empire state, Hand Melon Farm in Greenwich grows a number of varieties of corn, all unsprayed.  The variety I bought for this soup was Providence, and it was sweet.  Best eaten uncooked.  But cook it I did, because though Boulud's recipe makes a cold soup, I wanted a hot soup.  He offers in his introduction to the recipe that you can throw in the some aromatics, celery, carrots, onions, perhaps some potatoes, and make this into a corn chower.  Corn chowder was just what I wanted, but how to make it come together as a chowder is information that is not offered.  Undeterred, I simply cooked the vegetables in butter until soft and set aside, following the recipe the normal way, then adding the vegetables back into the mix at the end.  This worked just fine.  And it wasn't difficult.  The soup had good corn flavor, though less strong than I had expected. The chives were a nice touch as a garnish, and my only qualm was that the nutmeg was barely discernable which is easily resolved by adding a little more than called for in the recipe.  Overall, this was a success and enjoyable to eat both hot and cold, as well as a few days later as leftovers.

Heirloom Tomato and Goat Cheese Salad

Café Boulud Cookbook: Recipe 3

Made this back on July 22 and it was not a recipe to repeat.  For something as simple as tomatoes and goat cheese with a pesto vinaigrette, it was way too fussy.  Had the recipe been straightforward this could have worked.  Instead, Boulud has you marinating the tomatoes in a pesto.  But this pesto is thick and terrible, really.  Had the pesto been the simple basil, pine nuts, parmesan, olive oil variety then all might have been well.  In addition to the pesto, you throw parsley and oregano into the salad, which is not necessary as the herbs add little to nothing.  This was a complete flunker and I think even the worst cook could have put together a more successful version of this salad by just using common sense.  Please note that I photographed the salad before adding the goat cheese.  The goat cheese covered a lot of the salad and it is easy to imagine what goat cheese would look like on this.