Juice Shares Pasta Recipe So Tasty It Will Make Your Eyes Go Googly

I've been a subscriber of Lynne Rossetto Kasper's Weeknight Kitchen newsletter for years; each week is a great new simple recipe, most of which I never make. But this pasta! Alas! My mouth waters just looking at the stained and crunchy paper on which the recipe is printed. I get lots of requests for the recipe so I thought I may as well post it, eh?

PASTA WITH TOMATO-GORGONZOLA CREAM
© 2004 Lynne Rossetto Kasper
Serves 2 generously; multiplies easily

For Sauce:
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 large shallots, finely chopped
Generous pinch hot red pepper flakes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 large clove garlic, minced
1/4 tight-packed cup chopped fresh basil leaves
1 generous tablespoon tomato paste
1/4 cup dry white or red wine
1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes, drained and crushed
1 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup creamy Gorgonzola or blue cheese, crumbled

3/4 pound pasta such as corkscrew, fusilli or rotelle

Heat oil in 10-inch straight-sided sauté pan over medium high. Add shallots, red pepper flakes and black pepper and sauté about 3 minutes until shallots are softened and starting to turn clear. Adjust heat to prevent browning. Add garlic and basil and sauté over medium heat about 30 seconds. Add the tomato paste, blend in and sauté 30 seconds.Add wine and simmer over medium-high until reduced to nothing. Stir in tomatoes and simmer, uncovered, at a lively bubble over medium-high 21/2 to 3 minutes, stirring often, until thick and rich tasting.

Remove from heat, cover and let stand 5 to 10 minutes. Can be made ahead to this point and refrigerated up to 2 days.

Bring 4 to 6 quarts well-salted water to a rolling boil. Add the pasta and cook, partially covered, about 10 minutes or until just tender. There should be a little bite to the noodle. Drain in a colander.

Bring sauce to a simmer while pasta cooks. Stir in 1/2 cup cream and simmer 1 minute. Taste for seasoning. Hold, covered, until pasta is done.

Add drained pasta and remaining 1/2 cup cream to sauce; stir over medium heat 1 to 2 minutes. Add cheese and stir gently just until combined and cheese is melted. Taste for salt and pepper. Serve hot.

Blogger Bombards Readers With China Photos (Part 1: Beijing)

Beijing

We left Minneapolis at 3 p.m. Sept 16 and arrived in Beijing at 7 p.m. Sept 17, after gaining 13 hours. The first day we wandered around the city and visited Zhongshan Park, The Forbidden City, and Tiananmen Square.

On Wednesday, we hiked The Great Wall, and were gimpy for about three days after. Six or seven miles of stairs. Awesome. It was incredibly beautiful.

No pictures of the incredible zip line, unfortunately. Below is my happy face after zipping down the mountain. We were riding a boat back to our bus.

The next day we decided to cab around the city to see different sites. Hoping to take an architectural tour of the new Olympics buildings, we started out at Olympic Park, which unfortunately was very much under construction and we were unable to get close. I did see the two that I was most excited about, though, the main stadium and the aquatic center. (If you are unfamiliar with the extreme coolness of the aquatic center, click here.)





More to come!

Blogger Bombards Readers With China Photos (Part 2: Beijing, Xi'an, Chongqing)

Lama Temple









I end up in a Chinese Prison



Summer Palace









We were staying in this cute little hutong in Beijing. Hutongs are the city's famous little neighborhoods, made of narrow alleyways and side streets, where extended families often live together around courtyards. Our hutong was so darn charming that we decided to go on one of the city's organized "Hutong Tours" via rickshaw.



The "Tour" was the bullshittiest bullshit ever. While we had walked through some very colorful and fun hutongs on our own, the "Tour" brought us through areas that had all been redone. Everything was new, painted a uniform gray, and bo-ring. Aside from aesthetics, though, it was really sad, because it was apparent that the government was destroying people's homes and their way of life. We saw rubble everywhere...





(If you're interested, Peter Hessler's book, Oracle Bones, has an interesting segment about an old man who is trying to save his home from being demolished in one of the city's hutongs.)

Moving right along... you may note that the picture below was taken from right in the middle of traffic, a place we unfortunately found ourselves in quite often. This particular picture was taken while we were riding the rickshaw.








I guess we booked our train tickets to Xi'an a little bit late, because there were no sleeper cars available. We ended up on a hard seat for the overnight train ride. It was so terrible it was hilarious. People were loud, slurping noodles, kids puking, impossible to get into a comfortable position to sleep, hot, stuffy, stinky, bright lights on all night, people sitting and sleeping in all the aisles, legs tangled with the passengers sitting in the seats facing us, seats too close together and obviously not made for long femurs. Honestly, if there were only a few chickens and a goat on board, the experience would have been perfect. For all of the above reasons, we were delighted that we ended up traveling hard seat. It was fun to be among all the Chinese, and it was so bad it was great. Who needs to sleep, anyway?

Oh! And security! This was a hilarious joke. Thousands of people streaming into the Beijing train station. Literally. It was like a U2 concert. Everyone tossed their bags on the security screening thing, but it was obvious they weren't checking, since the bags were piled three wide and four high, and everyone was walking right through the security screen without stopping. I don't know why they even bother, it was hilarious. There were like 100 people walking through the thing every minute, I'm not joking. Total zoo.

Anyway, we had made a friend in the train station the night before, and he asked us if we had brought any food along, which of course we hadn't. In the morning, he walked down to our car and gave us a moon cake and this amazingly huge grapefruit-like thing, which was super delicious (you can see how huge it is from the segment in his hand).



So, we arrived in Xi'an, home of the tomb of China's first emperor and the terracotta warriors. Our trip here was a complete debacle, and for reasons I would rather not get into, we did not get to see the warriors.



Except for this one, which was outside of a bank or hotel or something.



And then, Chongqing! A wee little village of 31 million people. Why hasn't anyone heard of this place? It is so huge; I have never seen anything like it in my life. High-rises as far as the eye can see, for miles and miles and miles. Our minds were officially blown.

Body Declares War on Minneapolis Woman

Sunuvabitch, I knew this was going to happen. I start my new career tomorrow, and here I am all laid up with the Black Lung. Or Dengue Fever. Or something. Of course I knew that as soon as I bragged about being all healthy on the trip something like this would happen.... Urrggghhhhh. And I still haven't kicked my jet lag (13 hours). After sleeping until 2 p.m. the past two days I forced myself to get out of bed at 9 this morning. Then I dragged my feverish body over to Byerly's to pick up enough fixins to fill my 20-quart stock pot with chicken noodle soup. Wish me luck today. I am going to be slurping soup and guzzling Dayquil and hopefully will successfully roll out of bed fresh-faced tomorrow at 7 a.m....

The Juice Returns

I'm back! We had an amazing time and it feels like we've been gone for eight years. Will post details and pictures when I get a chance...



We toured the Yangtze river on a Chinese cruise ship, which was super fun. On the first night, a Chinese dude asked me to sing "My Heart Will Go On." Someone requesting that I sing?!?! I thought I was living in a dream. In this video you can see our new Chinese friends playing cards while some dude sings karaoke in the background. The white folks at the end of the video are our new pals Andreas (Swiss) and Stacey (North Dakota).



We hopped on a smaller boat to tour little gorges off the Yangtze.



Um, sorry all my videos are lame. I was just capturing random moments. There were two videos that I really wanted to make, but didn't: (1) Chinese person spitting (should not have been difficult; it happened ALL THE TIME); and (2) Us teaching Chinese people to say "Anna and JoLynn are the best" which I could have done, but when we had the chance, I didn't because it seemed kinda mean. Which it wouldn't have been. But whatever.

JoLynn Saves Juice From Death by SuperBug

We just arrived in Yichang after a super fun and hilarious cruise down the Yangtze river on a Chinese cruise ship. We got a hotel room for the night in Yichang, and we were pretty pleased with the place; it seemed clean, huge windows, high ceilings, full of character. I decided to lay down for a little nap while joLynn took a shower. Suddenly I hear this sound--ftt ftt ftt--I didn't open my eyes; sleepily I wonder what it could be. I hear it again--ftt ftt ftt--its, its, uh, right next to my ear. I open my eyes and see huge bugs, like 2-3 inches long, crawling on the bed next to my face. My heart jumped into my mouth; I shrieked and ran into the bathroom where I could cling to joLynn for protection. After a few moments I calmed myself--just a bug, bugs can't hurt you, go check it out, you pansy--and returned to the room to investigate the blankets. I didn't see the bugs on the bed. I turned over the bedspread and suddenly this big bug-like thing flew up in my face and started zipping around the room. Another shriek and I'm back in the bathroom, feeling pathetic. Finally joLynn got out of the shower and began hunting the creatures for me. Only one turned up. She caught it under a cup and we freed it out of our ninth-floor window, which of course has no screen or anything. We did not find any other bugs. She is trying to convince me that in my fright I imagined there were more bugs than there actually were. I have to sleep in that bed tonight I guess. Gulp. Tomorrow we fly to Shanghai to stay with Amy's aunt at the posh downtown five-star Marriott hotel where she has been living for the last year or so. No bugs there, I should hope.

I've been in great health, by the way. The trip has been the best. I will have lots of pictures to post when I return. I'll be back in Minneapolis Thursday evening, and start my job on Monday.

Hikers Consider Spending Entire Day at that Super Cheap Massage Parlor Down the Street

We just had the most amazing and exhausting day. We hiked the Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai, a distance of somewhere between 6-7 miles. The vistas were incredible, the air was clear; it was all so breathtakingly beautiful. The hike was one of the most physically taxing things I have ever done--we were climbing and descending (often steep and crumbly) stairs the whole way. Plus it's in the mountains, so the air is thin. It was so intense. Looking at pictures of the great wall, I had no idea how difficult (VERY!) even getting from one tower to the next could be--and we crossed 30 towers in today's hike. It took a little over five hours. At the end, we had the option of hurling ourselves across a gorge attached to a piece of rope sliding along a cable (ugh, what is that called? fox fly? rappelling? my brain is not working so well...) to get down the mountain, rather than hiking down the trail. Obviously, we did that, clinging to each other, screaming, legs dangling hundreds of feet above the ground... Thrilling!

Tomorrow night we take an overnight train to Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors. We are planning to go to Chingqing from there to book a cruise up the Yangtze River. We have not booked those tickets yet, and are just hoping things work out. The train to Xi'an ultimately ends up in Tibet, so I sure hope we don't fall asleep at an inopportune time...

Ni hao from Beijing

joLynn and I have arrived safely in Beijing. It was a long flight via Narita, Tokyo. We left Minneapolis at 3 p.m. Sunday and arrived in Beijing at 9 p.m. Monday (I believe we are now 13 hours ahead of Minneapolis).

I had arranged for people from the hostel to come pick us up at the airport, and when we stepped out of customs, we scanned down the huge line of people holding name cards. Finally I see my name, held by what appeared to be a 12-year-old boy. Brain quickly scans list of Chinese trivia--one of most unsafe places in the world to drive/most traffic accidents. Great, and now we are being toted through Beijing by a kid. Happily by the time we met up with them at the end of the line, we saw that an older person was with him, and that dude drove. We did not die. After driving for a half hour or so, he turned into a hutong, with very narrow alleys. It was rainy, and there was a lot of mixed traffic--mostly bicycles, some mopeds, some cars, pedestrians--zipping through this alley which is approximately four feet wide.

Our hostel is decent and friendly. We went to sleep pretty quickly last night, and I woke up early this morning and went for a long walk. In the two hours I was walking, I only saw two Westerners, and that was right outside the hostel. It is a gray day, lightly misting. A man on the street offered me a massage for 10 yuan (like, 80 cents). I promised Shad I would not do that sort of thing. I also promised him I would not eat street foods, which was difficult because there was a place selling fried sweet breads and other dumpling-like things in one of the alleys I was walking through. I walked towards it and away from it four times--looks yummy, no I'll get a belly-ache...smells good, no, I promised Shad--. I did not buy anything. Which really stinks, because I love trying new foods, but I actually have a wimpy stomach. And Shad is not here to rub my belly if I get sick.

Did I mention that the traffic is crazy? I try to ally myself with someone who knows what they are doing when I want to cross the street. I joined a throng of people waiting to cross one of the main roads right outside the hutong this morning. Everyone walked out into the bus lane even though the light said don't walk. Bikes streamed through our group, and we had to stand in the bus lane, with a bus bearing down on us, while whoever was leading the mob decided whether we would continue on through the six lanes of traffic.

joLynn just woke up and we're going to head out for the day. On the agenda is the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and whatever else we stumble upon... Zaijian!

Kitty Spurns Woman Who Is Just Trying To Do The Right Thing

Thursday at around 6 p.m., I was walking in the door with my arms full of groceries, and The Wiz slipped past me and into The Great Outdoors. This is a cat that spent her formative years as a tough street ho before we adopted her, and as a result she has always been wary of venturing outside. The few times she has gone out, she just sits petrified on the front step until we scoop her up and plop her back in the livingroom. Since she never goes out, we haven't gotten a collar for her, dumb I know, but whatever. Anyway. I went out to find her, and she was nowhere in sight.

I would not mind not having this cat. It would be fine with me if she ran away and a nice family adopted her and I wouldn't have to deal with her fur all over everything or the smell of the litterbox. But the kitty lurves Shad, and Shad lurves the kitty, and there would be a sad void in our home if she went away, that would probably linger for at least a few days. Maybe I am just jealous because she obviously loves Shad more then me, they have these special cuddle sessions you see. I cuddle with her sometimes. I scratch her belly. But somehow she seems to sense my insincerity.

Feeling as ambivilant about the cat's presence as I do, and given my history of trying to give the cat away to every person who walks in the door, it seemed important that I at least make a show of looking for this cat so that I won't feel guilty when I tell Shad that oh man, she ran away, what a bummer, no let's not get another one, we could never replace The Wiz. So I went through the motions. I poured a cup of coffee and stood at the front door calling for her, then stood at the back door calling for her. Nothing. Then I imagined myself explaining to Shad everything I had done to find her (called her name? Twice?) and I realized I would have to go through the motions and launch a full-out search in order to fully assuage my guilt. So I refilled my coffee cup and began walking down the street and the alley, calling for the kitty, asking neighbors if they had seen the kitty, got the neighbor kids to help me look for the kitty. It was an impressive, full-on search, something I could feel good about when the kitty did not turn up.

It got dark. Still no kitty. We had been searching for about an hour. I decided to make a bonfire, thinking she would be attracted to it. I burned all the junk mail that I had uncovered while cleaning upstairs. I burned cardboard boxes. I was out there for an hour, burning, calling the kitty, and wishing I was inside reading my book. Still no kitty. At around 10 p.m., I went back inside. Shad was working late, and I was engrossed in a book until 3 a.m. Every half hour I got up, went downstairs, opened the front door and called for the kitty, then went to the back door and called for the kitty. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

I went to bed at around three. I could not sleep (things non-kitty-related on my mind). I got up three times over the next hour or two to call for the kitty. Still nothing.

This was a search I could be proud of, I thought, as I nuzzled under the down comforter and considered my future cat-free life. Surely my nice kitty was picked up by a family who will love her and care for her. A family with children who love to snuggle in a home with lots of white things for our black cat to sit on and feel content and poetic while shedding all of her fur. Shad will be sad, but hey, I did everything I could, right?

Shad came home at 5:30 a.m. I was either still awake or just barely asleep. I hear him walk in the door. A minute later, I hear a meowing outside the front door. I hear Shad open it and the damn elusive cat runs inside. That little bitch.

We returned from Los Angeles early Thursday morning. I had such a great time.































I got to spend a lot of time with Summ, and we had so much fun. We packed a picnic and saw a movie at Hollywood Cemetery on Saturday night. So fun!



Summ also took us to get Thai Massage. Just in case you have any questions about what is involved in Thai Massage, this cutesy little sign helps clarify.





We had a big ol' party here last night to celebrate Shad's birthday. I stumbled out of bed early this afternoon. I guess the rest of the day will be spent cleaning up, unpacking our stuff from Los Angeles and packing for China. I leave on Sunday.

Juice Considers Virtues of Putting One Foot In Front of Other

I often chide myself for being esoteric and lame (a.k.a. having a blog) but one of the benefits of the blog that every now and then I can look at the archives, see what was going on in my life one year prior, and consider my progress as a human being. Never has that difference been more stark. One year ago, I published this post, in which I go shopping for bacon with my sister Greta, on a chilly Saturday afternoon, with a water bottle filled with wine in purse.

Yikes.

I generally try not to reveal my major life dramas on the blog--I live a charmed life, really, and the dramas are few and small--but I will admit now that I was going through probably the most difficult period in my life one year ago. In addition to the normal worries (law school, finances, blah blah blah), Shad was very sick, and I felt incredibly helpless and lonely, unable to make him better. I was in the dumpiest of doldrums, which seemed horrible and unfair, since he was the sick one, after all, so then I felt selfish and mean, and this made me feel even worse. Eventually it seemed best to send him to Montana to recuperate in the fresh mountain air. My sweet sister Greta came to stay with me, and I began to write a story/screenplay that I abandoned in October after realizing that it was completely autobiographical, down to the description of the narrator's cats. The story is basically about a woman who is generally happy and well-adjusted, but the people around her are falling apart, and she is unable to help them. She develops an obsession with bacon because it is so damn good and reliable (and by God, BLTs are the perfect food), and she can learn to cook it just right and it is the only area in her life in which she is able to exercise any actual control. (Sad.)

So, as I mentioned, never has one year wrought such a difference in my life. I have never felt more at peace and happy than I do right now. The next month is going to be wonderful. Shad and I leave for Los Angeles tonight--he will be attending meetings during the days, but I will be hanging out with my dear Summ and sister Greta, who is now teaching in the San Marino Valley (1 hr. east of LA). I can't wait. I will return to Minneapolis for a few days and then joLynn and I are going to China for 11 days. I am sooooo excited for the trip. I have received vaccinations for typhoid, hepatitus A, tetanus, and malaria, and I went to Walgreens yesterday and loaded up on drugs. I am generally pretty happy-go-lucky about traveling, but I must admit that I am terrified of dying on some form of Chinese transportation, returning with a terrible disease and/or, worse, unable to start work on October 1 because I'm dying of tuburculosis.

I have been reading a lot about China. One in five people is infected with hepatitis. During the Ming Dynasty, many criminals were sentenced to work on the Great Wall. (This is the period in which the whole thing was connected.) Sometimes a prisoner would be sentenced in perpetuity, which means that when he died, his child would have to serve in his place. Or a relative. Beijing is roughly the size of Belgium. Mao Zedong suffered terrible constipation and during the great march he sometimes forced his lackeys to dig the poop out of his anus with their hands.

Here is the crux my rambling message: It pays to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Things get better. (And I don't mean that to be as Hobbesian as it sounds.)

Curious Woman Investigates Magic Coffee Situation

Cheap red wine alert!

The Byerly's liquor store in Golden Valley (Hwy 100/Duluth Ave) is having a penny sale on all varieties of Red Bicyclette. You can get two bottles for $12. Load up, I say. This is a tasty one. I picked up a case (half Pinot Noir, half Syrah) this afternoon. The sale ends September 15.

In other news, I am conducting a study of the mysteriously high-voltage coffee.




I have created three samples of this dangerous substance to pass on to unwitting subjects: I brought a bag to our dinner host last night, another to my breakfast date this morning, and a third will be given to Elissa when she swings by for drinks tonight. The subjects were/will be instructed to substitute the magic coffee for the coffee they would normally consume in a day and to report the results. Meanwhile, I intend to return to Kowalski's and clear out their stock.





Shad and I swung by an estate sale last week and picked up this nifty, kinda-ugly-kinda-neat needlepoint thing. I ripped it out of its cheap and ugly frame and am turning it into a pillow.

Cocaine-Laced Coffee Discovered in Local Grocery Store

I am not sure what kind of coffee I picked up at Kowalski's last week (I bought it bulk and didn't mark the bag--It's Peace Coffee--I think it is Nicaraguan), but I suspect it is laced with cocaine. I never sleep well anyway, but last night was particularly bad. I had two cups of this magical beverage at around 6 p.m., and could not even consider going to sleep until 2 a.m. When I was still awake at 4:30, I decided to get up and read my book for awhile. I went back to bed at around 6:30. I woke up, refreshed, at 9:30. I cleaned my spectacularly messy kitchen in 20 minutes, a job that would normally take about an hour. Then I read three books, reshingled the house, mowed all of my neighbors' lawns, disassembled and reassembled all of my new IKEA furniture, and cleaned and vacuumed both cars. All before noon.

Okay, now you know I am lying--I never clean the cars.

Good stuff, good stuff. I just brewed another pot.

Anyhoo...Whilst zipping around all hopped up on this magic coffee, I uploaded a few more videos of my niece. This babe must think we are so lame. And she would be right. All we do is sit around and look at her (see, e.g., basically all photos in next post, which follow same template of person holding baby and smiling).

This first video helps explain why Mary has started to call her "Flail"...

Juice Tests Readers' Cuteness Tolerance By Posting Gobs and Gobs of Adorable Niece Photos and Videos

I just returned from a fun and relaxing week of visiting my family up north. I spent much of the time babysitting The Adorable One. I also watched a couple of Mary's volleyball games--she's a freshman and is a setter on JV and B-Team. She is awesome. I would not want to be on the receiving end of her killer serves. Visited my grandparents and aunties, shucked and ate fresh corn on the cob, relaxed by the lake, got a tetanus shot. On Saturday, we celebrated my Grandma Bernadette's 80th birthday. That whole side of my family was in town, and we consumed massive amounts of tasty food and beverages and played one of those epic games of croquet where balls are chased out of the tomato patch and into neighboring properties. (Strangely I won, despite being the least skillful player ever.) That night we played poker at John's place and I lost everything in a high-stakes bluff. All in all it was a swell time.

The Adorable One is crawling all over the place now. And she is a total jabberbox. She isn't using any actual words yet, so she just kind of hollers in her own way, and/or launches a series of mamamamamamamaMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAmamamamamas. I love that; there is this sort of crescendo in the middle, and she speeds up and then kind of runs out of steam and trails off. So far she seems to have one vowel down--"A"--and her vocabulary consists of the above, as well as: dadadaDADADADADADAdadadada, bababababaBABBABABABABABABABABABAB bababa, and my favorite, anananananaNANANANANANANANANANANANAnananana.

Anyway. On to the cuteness:

The Adorable One Reveals Her Politics



Babe in a Blanket

Since the babe has learned to crawl, she sometimes exercises her right to move away from me and play with more exciting things, like paint cans and shoes. This hurts the ego, obviously, plus it bores me. So if she wanders away for too long, I like to catch her, roll her up in her blanket, and watch her try to get out. It's apparent that she loves this game because after her escape, she crawls away from me as fast as she can and chews on the first pair of flipflops she can find.



Sleepy But Devoted Cheerleader



Baby Attack

I hoped to create a nice little video showcasing Natz's new crawling skills. I would soon realize she was charging towards me because she wanted to eat a handful of my hair.



Puppers Taunts The Adorable One





(That cutie on the left, held by my grandpa, is my cousin Joe's son, JJ. He is one month younger than Natalie.)