Enslaved by Peer Pressure

The horrors persist, so I have a pot of jambalaya bubbling away on the stove. We actually had chicken and shrimp and sausages in the fridge all at the same time, even if the sausages were technically brats instead of andouille, and the Bay Area's under some kind of historic extreme cold weather warning; a nice big warm pot of comfort food seemed called for. (Realfeel when I left the house this morning for coffee ride was 31F; I actually needed my full-finger gloves for biking.)

Re our jambalaya: red bell peppers, not green, I know that's blasphemy against the holy trinity. Celery, yeah yeah, I hear you and your passionate defenses of said aromatic, kallmir2000 and heathers. ;) But we did have some to use up from our produce box. And instead of chicken broth this time, we took advantage of having a bunch of crab and shrimp shells in the freezer and made shrimp broth instead.

I have so many things I want to make this year, as evidenced by my last post (artichoke cupcakes, Dubai chocolate ensaymada my way, sourdough starter, ricotta?!). And YouTube steered us the way of the pavé potato again this week, which we haven't yet made, so that is currently in progress as well.

But we're also, as a bigger project, going to try to cook our way through Pasta Friday this year as well, albeit as a weekend thing. We riffed on last week's "crispy chickpeas with cencioni and sausage" based on what we had in the pantry after being away the previous weeks, and ended up with "not-crispy white beans with strozzapreti and sausage." hyounpark thinks it's because white beans have thinner skins than chickpeas that they didn't crisp up in the pan, but aside from that texture mismatch, the flavor profile of Italian sausage, a dry white wine (chardonnay my dad had brought over), butter, sage, and rosemary felt cozy for the endlessly rainy nights we've had lately. We also had to substitute parsley for arugula, but overall the results weren't bad considering what we had at hand, and we got a couple of actual vegetables in, go us.

Somehow, I have accumulated multiple pounds of strozzapreti (and cavatappi, probably my fave pasta shape), but have zero boxes of small shells on hand despite it being what we consider a baseline pasta for us to stock? (Our pasta pantry baseline: cappellini because it's fast, orecchiette or conchiglie because their shell shapes hold chunky sauces better than cappellini; anything beyond that is gravy. Other loved pasta shapes: bucatini (hyounpark: "Italians finally figured out an udon counterpart!"), pappardelle (me: "pasta ribbons!"), cannelloni/manicotti for stuffing.)

Looking forward to next week's "garlicky conchiglioni with spinach and cheese." Though there will, again, probably be some swaps (see our current lack of shell-shaped pastas of any size, but more than enough pasta in general to make acquiring additional pasta feel greedy). But I appreciate Allison Arevalo offering alternate pasta shape suggestions that would go well with the sauce (in this case, paccheri, fusilli giganti, or rigatoni), even if ... yeah, once again we don't have any of those on hand. 99% certain I'll be using the cavatappi here. And I also appreciate her wine suggestions for both red and white each week, even if we may not necessarily keep up with them. (I don't even know what a barbera wine is besides it being red and Italian, but we probably have a pinot grigio around, and thankfully my recipe database has plenty of suggestions calling for a cup of the likely leftover wine!)

Just so you don't get the idea it's all cooking successes around here, I tried to bake a hazelnut-frangipane galette des rois for choir this week, and it was a massive fail; my puff pastry never decided to behave, and then when I baked it up, the whole thing smelled like cheese - in a bad way - despite zero cheese in the ingredients. Alas! I will try again, hopefully before Mardi Gras, probably when it's the sopranos' turn to supply snacks at break.