anna cooks - clams al forno w pasta

I went to Block Island this weekend with some friends. The weather was beautiful, and it was even warm enough to go swimming in the ocean.

On Saturday night, we made Clams Al Forno with pasta. The recipe comes from the restaurant Al Forno in Providence, RI. They serve it as an appetizer, but we decided to make it into an entree by pairing the clams with spaghetti - a twist on Spaghetti alle Vongole dish.

All we did was clean 35 littlenecks (this is enough for 4 ppl), place them in a baking dish with cut up onion, jalapeno peper (seeded), cut up tomatoes in puree, minced garlic, white wine, water, and a stick of butter, and bake for 20 minutes at 500F. Meanwhile we made a lb of spaghetti.

Garnish with thinly sliced scallions and lemon wedges.

Photo credit: Susan M.

We put some marinara sauce on our pasta along with the clams, but the butter/wine/tomato/lemon sauce from the clams would have been tasty alone on the spaghetti. 

For an end-of-summer dinner, seafood dinner, this was very simple and very delicious!

anna cooks - going vegan and not

My roommate and I had some friends over for dinner last Sunday. One of our guests was Yifan Luo, the author of the vegan food/ fitness blog, vegandurance. As you may have guessed from her blog, Yifan is a practicing vegan.

As a host cooking for a mixed crowd of vegans, vegetarians, and meat-eaters, deciding what to cook was even harder than usual. I ended up going with a vegetarian main-course that could be served vegan or not, depending on if you added cheese.

Since I had been craving pasta, I turned to an old Giada De Laurentiis family favorite: Rigatoni with Eggplant Puree. The recipe is available on the Food Network website, and is very easy to follow. 

I paired the pasta with a coleslaw I made using a light dressing of (vegan version) white wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, dijon mustard, sugar, salt, pepper, olive oil, and (added only to not vegan version) a little mayonnaise.

The dinner was lots of fun, and I'm excited to try out some new vegan recipes in the future! I might start with Yifan's recipe for Raw Kale Fuel Bars (did I mention she is a triathlete!) on the blog Yum Universe.

anna cooks - pasta fritta

My roommate made a wonderful pasta dinner for us two nights ago. She used fresh pasta and a sweet pepper and olive sauce from Williams-Sonoma, which she had gotten as a gift. There was some pasta left over so the next day I decided to make pasta fritta, or fried pasta.

I first saw this recipe on the show David Rocco's Dolce Vita on the Cooking Channel. I then bought his book, which included the recipe. It is a very easy dish, devised by Italians to use up leftovers, but it is truly delicious.

Pasta Fritta - A Photo Recipe.

The exact ingredients and measurements can be found here.

Inspiration

Preparation

Execution 

Here is the clip from David Rocco's show where I originally saw this recipe: