Cheever Sauce

The holiday season has been in my rear view mirror for about a week now, and while most Americans are looking to ring in 2012 with their soup fasts, juice fasts, slim fasts, or raw food fasts, I welcomed the New Year with carbs, carbs, carbs. Whoops. Now I’m all about healthy eating, but certain circumstances led this dish to fall into my lap whether I liked it or not (I liked it). 

The photographer I represent is in the middle of shooting an amazing portrait series of the top chefs in America, a.k.a a food bloggers paradise. Being on set with these people is probably how CW actors feel at the Academy Awards. When it’s brought up that I write a food blog, I nervously laugh it off “Ha, oh that? ha..oh it’s silly really…nothing compared to what you do…hah…(eye wander around the room during an awkward moment of silence)…Oh but if you want to check it out, link it to your website, or give me a shout out in your next Food and Wine interview, its C as in cat-H as in Harry-E-E-V…yes that’s V as in Victory-E-R-S-A-U-C-E.com.” 

As luck would have it, last week, chef Missy Robbins brought over some of her favorite ingredients for the photo shoot, and before I knew it, I had $200 of shaved truffles on my hands. This is what I know about truffles: 1. they are very rare and thus very expensive, and 2. I absolutely love how they taste. Cooking with truffle salt or truffle oil is always an added treat to any dish, but I had an inkling this would be the first, and possibly last time I would cook with fresh truffles. And when life gives you truffles…you make pasta. Starchy foods and liquid fats perfectly compliment this fancy ‘shroom, and you typically want to keep your ingredients simple so that no strong flavor overthrows the truffle, which typically infuses its flavor and smell to everything around it.

So how convenient it was that Chef Robbins also left me with some wonderful homemade pappardelle. This wasn’t any ordinary pasta. Her famed Italian dishes are known to be some of President Obama’s favorites, so when she offered me pappardelle made fresh that morning in the A Voce kitchen, it was something I just couldn’t turn down…I don’t care how many articles I’ve read telling me how bad white carbs were for me. 

I had the perfect recipe to compliment my ingredients - another Bethenny Frankel “healthier” spin on a classic Italian dish. I prepared my version a little different than hers, by melting the small amount of butter she called for in a separate pan, allowing it to brown so I could add the nutty flavor and aroma of browned butter to the sauce. I also let it reduce for about 15 minutes longer than she called for and added some sage to the mix. Overall the recipe was extremely easy to make, and bursted with flavor, tasting ten times more indulgent and decadent than it was. The dish can be made with just truffle oil, which is sold in most supermarkets these days, and I would recommend using whole wheat fettuccine when you make this at home, that is unless you have some of your own homemade pappardelle on hand :) . 

Onto the recipe adapted from Low Fat Creamy Mushroom Pasta: 

This weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to cook a fabulous feast with the one and only Maria Taylor. This really just consisted of me sitting at her kitchen table with my computer, typing out her instructions as she cooked - but hey, I stirred the pot for a little so I feel like it’s ok for me to post the meal here. 

The morning this meal was made, I woke up at my friend’s house on Lake Waramaug and felt ambitious enough to tackle an early morning run with my friend Pat. What started off as an easy breezy 3 mile run turned into:

Me: “Oh my goodness, this is just like the most perfect morning, and it is SOOOO beautiful out here. Pat - I feel like we might just need to run the whole lake.”

Pat: “Yeah sure, I could do that.”

Me: (Sudden intense moment of panic and regret where I realize Pat just completed a triathlon and the last time I ran the 8 mile lake run was my senior year in high school…barely.) “…Ok let’s do it!”

Needless to say, 2 more miles in, Pat left me in the dust and I was left to fend for myself for another 5 grueling miles. For some, this is an excellent time to for self-reflections and soul searching. For me, this was an excellent time for me to figure out what I wanted for dinner. While I ran (slash walked - who are we kidding?) around probably the most beautiful lake in CT, all I could think of was one thing: PASTA. The lake inspired me to run (pun intended!) with the idea of a shellfish based dish (and yes I know clams and mussels don’t come from lakes), so afterwards, I let Maria know what was to be the dish of the night. 

To Make Marinara Sauce: 
I have never made a homemade tomato sauce in my life. It always just seemed silly with all the rows and rows of tomato sauce jars at the supermarket. I decided it was time to learn and I thought who better to teach me then an Italian mother. A chef from the South of Italy taught Maria that you NEVER make marinara sauce without your hands because you will completely bruise and take all of the flavor out of the tomato if you use knife or blender. So…