Orecchiette Pasta with Goat Cheese and Roasted Asparagus with Salmon

This was a pretty good and not too difficult dinner we had last week. The orecchiette http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orecchiette was cooked al dente and then mixed with a small package of goat cheese and 1/2 cup of the pasta water and some butter to make a sauce. I grilled the asparagus for about 5-7 minutes and then cut into 1 1/2" lengths and mixed in with the pasta. Garnish with fresh chopped chives if you like. The salmon was simply prepared by seasoning with Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper and drizzled with olive oil before grilling 7-8 minutes.

Eat Your Vegetables!

A few weeks ago my wife had roasted cauliflower at one of our favorite "slow food" restaurants. It was really tasty so we tried to find out what they used to flavor it just in case we wanted to attempt our version at home. We knew there must be turmeric or saffron in it because it was this cool golden color.

I went ahead a bought a big head of fresh cauliflower from our local farm stand. Then I found an interesting recipe in March issue of Food and Wine magazine for Thai-style turmeric-roasted cauliflower. This is a little bit gourmet but I decided to go all out to make it.

It was delicious! Since cauliflower is practically tasteless on it's own, it's sort of like a blank canvas for whatever flavors you want to add to it. I didn't think I would like it. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I tried cauliflower, but I would definitely make this again. It was quite spicy so I would use less red pepper flakes next time. Also, instead of adding the shallot slices raw, I caramelized them in a small skillet in olive oil and a bit of butter while the veggies were roasting and just added them at the end.

I'd definitely recommend trying this and tweaking it to your taste. Here's the link for the recipe: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/turmeric-roasted-cauliflower

By the way, we served it with a Thai-style boneless chicken breast marinated in mixture of canned pineapple juice, brown sugar, soy sauce, garlic and fresh lime juice.

Artichoke

We bought some fresh artichokes from Trader Joe's today! Thought I'd try 'em fresh to see if they're any better than the canned or frozen ones. They were O.K. but I think it's too much prep work. I did make a yummy dipping sauce you might want to try:

2 tablespoons of good quality (preferably organic) mayonaisse
1 tablespoon of sour cream (lite is O.K. too)
1 med. clove of garlic minced and zapped in microwave for 30 seconds on high (be sure to cover)
Juice from one lemon wedge
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients well and let sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes.