Revisiting Old Favorite Dishes

While I’ve always enjoyed baking and cooking I started really cooking my senior year in college when I lived in an on-campus apartment with three girlfriends.  Previously I’d relied on my college meal plan for my daily sustenance but now it was up to me to cook for myself.  I’m not sure if this is common when most people start cooking, but I had a habit of making one type of meal almost obsessively with only slight variations on a theme.  That meal was almost always a pasta dish of some sort.  Sometimes I would bake it with a plethora of vegetables and creamy layer of cheese, other times it was simply tossed on the stove top.  It was the meal that nourished me during late night study sessions and internships where I paid my dues.  And when I graduated from college and moved into my own place to take on a new job it was my dinner of choice.  It made a lot of sense for an entry level gal because it was affordable, quick, and could easily be stretched out into several days of meals and leftovers.

Fast forward four plus years and you’ll see that pasta hardly makes an appearance on my menu anymore, particularly the baked, cheese-laden versions that I was once so fond of.  There were two things that lead to its disappearance.  The first was that calories finely caught up to me after years of being a girl with a hollow leg and I knew I had to be a bit more sensible if I wanted to fit in my clothes.  The second was I found that making the same meal so repetitively was hampering my ability to grow as a home cook so I decided that I wanted to challenge myself to make as many new recipes a year as could.  Hence, those tried and true recipes that had gotten me through my last semester of college and first year in the real world fell by the wayside in favor of things that would be more challenging and palate stretching.

This weekend though I found myself with a strong craving for my old college standby.  I was left with a bounty of veggies I needed to finish up before my next week’s CSA pickup and a couple of homemade cheeses.  Baked penne with vodka sauce immediately came to mind and with the help of some Newman’s Own Vodka Sauce and Whole Foods brand whole wheat pasta I had a quick meal.  I alternated between layers of pasta, veggies, and sauteed pancetta with rich creamy cheese.  It was definitely not the most elegant or sophisticated meal I’ve ever eaten but it was insanely comforting and even a bit nostalgic to eat.  To add a bit of a grown up twist I enjoyed it with a plentiful glass of a 2005 Hartford Family Russian River Valley Zinfandel, a wonderfully complex wine with light tannins and lots of fruity notes.  Yum!  I’ve been delaying drinking this wine because it is one of only a couple that remains from my California trip and I cannot help but think that as the bottles empty the last remains of my vacation slip away.  However, I keep reminding myself that before too long I’ll be back in wine country so there is no sense in hoarding.

The remainder of my produce and cheese stash was used to whip up a simple pizza inspired by the Kale Ricotta Pizza Victoria featured on The Idle Loaf first made by Eggs on Sunday.  My version was a Trader Joe’s whole wheat crust topped with pancetta that had been lightly crisped in walnut oil with garlic and mixed herbs as well as some pea greens I had thrown in at the last minute to wilt slightly.  Also on the pizza was a mix of my homemade mozzarella and fromage blanc that made for the perfect creamy-gooey mix.  I think Victoria was definitely on to something with this flavor profile.  A nice earthy green paired with a creamy cheese is a match made in heaven.

Anyway, I’m about all nostalgia-ed out so it’s on to brainstorm what to do with this week’s CSA share, but first I would like to hear from you.

What recipes were you most likely to make when you first started cooking and do you still make any of them?

Tagged as: Casserole, Main dish, Pasta, Pizza, Random Musings, Vegetables