Penne pasta with asparagus, lemon, and tomatoes

Bunches of asparagus look irresistibly fresh and appealing in May and June, and lend themselves to grilling, broiling, or pasta primavera. This dish resembles a warm pasta salad, equally vegetables and pasta. I chose penne because it's roughly the same size and diameter as thin asparagus spears, and I cut the asparagus into penne-length pieces to emphasize the effect. Lemon brightens the whole thing up for early summer.

You will want (makes leftovers or can be easily halved):

• 1 bunch asparagus
• 1 pound pasta
• 1 tomato
• 1 lemon
• 4 cloves garlic
• olive oil
• parmesan

Begin boiling salted water for your penne. Once boiled, add the pasta and cook until al dente, then drain and set aside.

Wash your asparagus, trim the bottom 1" from the stems, toss in olive oil, and either grill or spread out on a baking sheet to broil 5-15 minutes. I've burned dishes numerous times while broiling, so check on these every five minutes to avoid burning!

Meanwhile, finely chop four cloves of garlic and sauté in olive oil in a large frying pan. Add one chopped fresh tomato and cook until slightly soft, then turn off the heat.

Once the asparagus is no longer stringy, remove from the oven, cool, and cut spears into penne-length pieces. Toss the penne and asparagus into your garlic-tomato sauce, add the juice of one lemon, grated parmesan, and black pepper. Enjoy!

Cold-weather vegetarian

To continue the theme of beautiful vegetables, last week I bought some baby eggplants and large cherry tomatoes, which have been almost too beautiful too cook. Before putting them under the knife, I took some still life shots.

Like brussels sprouts, roasted tomatoes and eggplant can be made to feel hearty, satisfying that wintry desire for heavy food, without the meat. I roasted these veggies with garlic: the fragrance filled my apartment, and a taste on the spoon revealed tangy, naturally sweet-and-sour tomatoes that melted and coated the eggplant.

Roasted tomatoes and eggplant:

• several baby or japanese eggplants, sliced in half; or one large eggplant sliced about 1-cm thick
• cherry or regular tomatoes, sliced in half
• several garlic cloves, skins on
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• couscous or pasta
• feta or goat cheese and/or fresh herbs as garnish

Preheat the oven to 325 or 350 degrees. In a large baking dish, toss the eggplant, tomatoes, and garlic with the olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roast 30-45 minutes, tossing occasionally and checking frequently to make sure the tomatoes don't burn. You may want to turn down the heat if you find the tomatoes are cooking faster than the eggplant. 

Serve on top of couscous or tossed with pasta. You may want to add crumbled feta or goat cheese and fresh herbs such as mint, cilantro, or basil for additional flavor.

Tomato sauce in less time than it takes to boil water

Are you the kind of person who, like me, dances around the pasta pot waiting for water the boil, munching on uncooked noodles?

Sometimes I pretend that I am going to memorize flashcards during this waiting period, but instead I end up tiptoeing over to the pot every few minutes "just to check on it."

Well tonight I learned that by being extra lazy, it is possible to make a delicious fresh tomato sauce during this awkward gap between stove-lighting and pasta-box-emptying.

Whole cherry tomato sauce (two servings):

• 1/2 pint cherry tomatoes, washed
• teaspoon-ish butter
• teaspoon-ish olive oil
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• dash white wine
• few sprigs parsley
• chili flakes, black pepper, salt
• parmesan
• 1/2 pound pasta

Judges, start your timers! (Turn on your pot of pasta water.)

Heat the butter and olive oil on high heat. Peel and mince the garlic and add to the pan, cooking for a minute. Dump in your cherry tomatoes. Dash your white wine over the top. Push everything around with a wooden spoon. Stab the cherry tomatoes with a fork, then smash them with your wooden spoon. Add water as needed. Cook until sauce thickens, without burning in the pan. Mince the parsley, toss in along with seasonings, and turn off the heat.

Is your water boiling yet? (Why yes, it just started to boil!)

  

Feel free to study flashcards as you wait for the pasta to cook...

Has anything changed?

Back at school, I am amazed at how much everything appears to be the same: social cliques, study habits, daily routine. How did we pick up so smoothly exactly where we left off? We strain to ask each other about summer experiences, but quickly the conversation veers towards apartment redecorating, upcoming dinners out, and lecture content. And yet I get the sense that many people feel changed by their summers, and are keeping that feeling within.

Without much fanfare, they have launched us into second year. Oddly, because there was much more fanfare at the start of first year (the white coat ceremony), this year feels like a significant departure from the past. A series of lectures on the "principles of drug therapy" represents the study of medicine opposed to human biology.

Here's a recipe with a little tweak on the norm, a variation in honor of summer (and my CSA share). My dad, being a food purist in favor of traditional recipes, commented, "What, do you want to eat like you live on a commune?" Despite his objections, the summer squash in this recipe adds a sweetness to the sauce and lightens the dish overall, a nice summer adjustment.

Summer pasta with squash and tomatoes (feeds two):

• 2 cups large macaroni or shells
• 1 medium-sized summer squash or zucchini
• handful of cherry tomatoes
• 1/2 red onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• handful of parsley
• parmesan
• 1/2 tablespoon each butter and olive oil
• salt & pepper

Get water boiling for the pasta.

Melt butter and olive oil together in a saucepan. Finely chop the onion and garlic (both peeled), and add to the hot oil. Cook for a minute until fragrant. Chop the squash into 1" cubes (notice a pattern here?) and slice the tomatoes in half. Add the squash and cook for a few minutes until slightly soft, then add the tomatoes. Cook for just a minute and turn off the heat.

Cook the pasta in salted water. Before the pasta is fully cooked, drain most of the water and add the pasta to the saucepan with the sauce. Cook at high heat, stirring constantly, adding pasta water as needed. Stir in chopped parsley and grated parmesan. Serve hot!

+ =

So much time

A little lesson in community health: the patients here mostly come in complaining of GI distress, rashes, genital discomfort, or colds. Apparently, the main causes of GI distress are ascaris (worms), giardia, or (rarely) amoeba (I don't actually know that that means). The rashes are either fungal, scabies, or reactions to sun or use of laundry detergent as hand soap. The genital issues are fungal infections or STDs. And my "attending" claims that the colds are bacterial in nature.

The main social issues underpinning these complaints, as they have been explained to me so far, are 1) public sanitation related to food and water, and handwashing, 2) personal sanitation as the weather is damp and clothes are washed and changed infrequently, and 3) sexual behaviors aka men cheating on their wives.

Well, those are my oversimplified observations at the end of week one. Yesterday, I got home at 1pm, and having already exercised, and not feeling like reading, I decided upon a cooking project.

Butternut squash ravioli:

This recipe is really from the anti-med school cookbook, because it is relatively time-consuming and benefits from a pasta machine, which is a bit obscure as a household item. However, the ingredient list is short, simple, and cheap, and overall the process took no longer than 45 minutes. If you've ever attended a Chinese dumpling party, why not try an "Italian dumpling party"?

Filling

• 1/2 butternut squash (should make 1 cup mashed)
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 tbsp butter
• handful of fresh or dried thyme, sage, or rosemary, stems removed and chopped
• salt and pepper
• ~1/2 cup grated parmesan, or to taste

Dough

• 3 cups flour
• 4 eggs
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• dash of water as needed

Slice the butternut squash in half horizontally, and then again in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds and place face up in a large baking dish. Pour in 1/2 cup of water to surround the squash. Bake at ~400 degrees, adding more water as it evaporates, until a knife or fork slices in easily. Cool in the fridge.

Combine all the ingredients for the dough, kneading until the consistency is solid and stretchy. Roll into a ball and cover in plastic wrap, in the fridge for half an hour.

Using a sharp knife, peel the squash and cut it into 1" cubes. Melt butter in a large saucepan and add the garlic. After a minute, add the squash. Saute until completely soft, adding water as needed to keep from burning. You should be able to mash the squash easily using just the back of a fork. In a large bowl, mash the squash, herbs, salt and pepper, and parmesan. Return to the fridge.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface, using one fist-sized ball of dough at a time while leaving the rest in the fridge. If you have a pasta machine, follow those directions. Otherwise, roll the dough as thin as you can get it with just a rolling pin. Using a glass or round cookie cutter, cut out rounds. Place 1 tsp of squash filling into a round of dough, place another round on top, and knead the edges together to seal. You may need to wet your fingertips with water to get the edges of dough to seal. Store on a floured surface under a lid to keep ravioli from drying out.

Cooking time will depend on how thin your dough is. My ravioli were as thick as periogies and took at least 20 minutes to cook through, although the recipe suggested 12-15 minutes. I served mine with a simple tomato sauce and some freshly grated queso duro.

Overall a success, and now I can say that I've made ravioli from scratch!

Recipe simplified from: here for the filling and here for the dough.

Test week, stress week

In contrast to the idealistic chatter of last weekend, my mind lately has been in a bacteria-laden fog that perks up only in reference to pathogens or vectors. These days it's fungi and caffeine that make me happiest.

There has been a lot of caffeine, and around the house, each of us has just made our favorite lazy, unhealthy comfort food: hamburger helper, ramen, and Annie's mac and cheese. We could not have planned it better had we tried.

The coolest thing I've learned lately is that we are all covered in bacteria and viruses: treat a bacterial infection with antibiotics and you risk killing off some of your "normal flora" -- which means less competition for the invasive bacteria you're trying to fight! This one is reason why hospitalized patients get bacterial infections after antibiotic treatment -- opportunists rush in to fill a vacuum, so to speak. (Word of the day: iatrogenic, illness caused by medical examination or treatment.)

However, very little of this has changed the way I eat or cook.

It's time to put a stop to this store-bought comfort food with some homemade comfort food extraordinaire, my all-time favorite home dinner: spaghetti and meatballs.

• ~1 lb ground turkey or chicken
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 egg
• 2 slices bread, soaked in milk and then crumbled into small pieces
• 1/4-1/2 cup grated parmesan or other cheese
• salt & pepper
• handful of chopped parsley, optional
• breadcrumbs for rolling
• canola oil

Wash your hands with soap and water and scrub down all cooking surfaces. Remove ingredients from the refrigerator. In a large, clean bowl, mix together the turkey, onion, egg, bread, cheese, parsley, and salt & pepper. Wearing latex gloves, roll mix into balls about 1-1.5" in diameter. Spread out breadcrumbs onto a separate plate: roll each meatball in breadcrumbs and place onto a clean plate. Wash your hands with soap and water.

Heat about 1/4" of oil in a frying pan, then fry the meatballs over medium heat about 10 minutes until cooked through and autoclaved. Use two forks or a pair of tongs to turn the meatballs every few minutes, cooking on all sides. Keep warm in the oven at 200 degrees. Serve over spaghetti with a simple tomato sauce.

 

Order in a world full of chaos.

A green and fibrous feast

Theme of the day: antibiotic resistance. Do not over-prescribe antibiotics! But, wow, the main culprit is not physicians but farming practices. Pump cattle full of antibiotics and it will run off into the environment. Yet another reason to avoid beef.

Instead: finally got my hands on ramps! Perks to being out in the boonies. Found a large pile of them at the Troy farmers market for $3 a bunch (that's half a bunch pictured below), still available even as the market was closing up for the day. Added a couple to a quiche yesterday and thought they made a huge difference.

To take a page out of my dad's cookbook, tonight's dinner were those eagerly-anticipated ramps, combined with English peas and spaghetti, alongside artichokes. The star of the dinner ended up being those artichokes, cooked up by my friend Travis according to his mother's recipe. (At one point we were each on the phone with our parents, asking for cooking tips.) We ate them slowly, leaf by leaf, after the pasta as a sort of drawn-out summer dessert.

Artichokes steamed with garlic:

• 1 artichoke per person (available nearly year-round at Trader Joe's)
• 1 clove of garlic per artichoke
• olive oil, salt, and pepper

Slice the stems and tops off of the artichokes so that they resemble flowers. Slice up each clove of garlic and stuff slices in between the artichoke leaves. Place the artichokes upright in a large pot (with a lid) and fill the pot with 1-2" of water. Drizzle the artichokes with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place the lid on the pot, bring to a boil, then lower the heat and steam for 30-45 minutes until tender.

Pasta with ramps and peas (quantities for one person):

• 1/4 box of pasta
• 1/4-1/2 cup of peas or other spring vegetable
• 4 ramps
• ~1 tsp olive oil
• parmesan and black pepper

Slice the ramps, from roots to leaves. Heat olive oil in a frying pan, then add the ramps and peas. Cook for just one minute and turn off the heat. Toss with the almost-cooked pasta and serve with parmesan and black pepper.

Take that, gut flora!

Learn something new every day

I think diabetes is fascinating! Yesterday's post just skims the surface. As I learned today, chronic hyperglycemia causes all sorts of damage over time, yes. But in the short-term, hyperglycemia is barely felt -- it's the ketoacidosis that brings people into the ER. Basically, since glucose stays in the blood instead of getting into cells, cells rely on alternate forms of energy. A byproduct of these "alternative energy sources" are molecules (ketone bodies) that make your blood more acidic. Patients come in breathing rapidly to clear the acid by getting rid of carbon dioxide. Only then do they notice that they're dehydrated (dangerously so) due to the hyperglycemia.

For tonight's dinner, I give thanks to my pancreas. After many years of trying, I finally made tomato sauce that tastes just like my dad's. It's sweet without adding sugar or wine and so simple that all you taste are tomatoes and spaghetti. There's nothing daunting about it, only you can't skip on the butter.

Simple tomato sauce (makes ~2-3 servings):

• 3 cloves garlic, peeled but whole
• 1/2 onion, left whole (you can peel the outer layer or not, up to you)
• 1/2 box or 1 small can of peeled tomatoes (whole or crushed or pureed -- my favorite brand is Pomi, which comes in a small box instead of a can)
• 1 tsp butter
• 1-2 tbsp olive oil

Melt butter and olive oil in a pan over medium heat, then add the garlic and onion and leave it alone for few minutes. The garlic and onion should begin to soften and smell fragrant. Before they brown, add the tomatoes and simmer all together. If necessary, add some water to the pan to keep the sauce from drying out or burning. Simmer under a lid on to cook the onion through. My dad usually discards the onion, but I like to salvage it and eat it sliced with my pasta. Keeps the vampires away.

I may have mentioned this before, but I've learned to undercook the pasta and finish cooking it in the sauce with about 1/4 cup of the pasta water added back in -- this way the pasta absorbs the sauce as it finishes.

(Vegetarian) comfort food in under five minutes

The dad of one of my childhood friends is a famous diabetes researcher and I tend to Google him every time I'm studying insulin. I recently found this story, which I found very moving.

Melton was a well-established scientist studying frog development in 1993 when his infant son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. This more severe form of the disease requires that diabetics take daily injections of insulin to survive. Without insulin, the body can't convert glucose into energy. Hoping to find a cure for the millions who suffer from type 1 diabetes, Melton turned his attention to stem cells. "When my son Sam was diagnosed, I did what any parent would do: I asked myself, 'What can I do?'" Melton recalled. (http://www.hhmi.org/research/investigators/melton_bio.html)

The best I could do at this point is cook something delicious. Thankfully, no kids!

Mushrooms marsala:

• 5-6 mushrooms, the better the better (I used baby portobellos, which are one up or maybe just on par with white button mushrooms, nothing fancy), chopped into small pieces
• 1/2 large white onion, chopped fine
• 2 small garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp butter (optional)
• generous splash of wine (doesn't matter what kind -- I used cheap cooking sherry)
• dash heavy cream (optional -- we had some leftover from last scones weekend)
• parmesan
• black pepper
• 1/4 box pasta

As the pasta water boils, chop the mushrooms, onion, and garlic. In a frying pan over medium heat, melt the olive oil and butter. Once melted, add the onions and garlic, saute until translucent, and then add the mushrooms. Turn the heat to low and add the wine, cream, and black pepper. Simmer until the pasta is done; turn off if the liquid starts to evaporate.

Once the pasta is done, toss everything together in a bowl or frying pan and season with parmesan and black more pepper.

Not the healthiest dinner, but it can be modified to be more or less healthy -- plus, it's comparable to a mac and cheese with more fiber (and flavor) and a lot less cheese.

The play-by-play:

Spring is in the air

All the food blogs are talking about ramps today (ramp pasta, ramp pizza, more ramp pizza) and I'm stuck in the library studying endocrine hormone synthesis. 1) I can't even find ramps 2) I can't even afford ramps 3) you probably haven't even heard of ramps. Happily, we learned about erections and orgasms this morning, which is more exciting than ramps any day of the week.

But I still want to celebrate spring, so here's what I'm making for dinner:

Pasta with asparagus and pesto (amounts for 1 serving):

• 1/4 bunch of asparagus
• 3-4 tbsp basil pesto*
• 1/4 box of pasta
• parmesan

Prep the asparagus as you boil the pasta water: wash, chop off the last inch at the bottom, and then chop into 1-inch pieces. There are a few ways you could cook the asparagus: you could steam it above the pasta water, saute it in a drop of olive oil in a pan, or microwave it for a minute or two it in a bowl with some water at the bottom. Cook until it no longer tastes like raw grass, but still retains its crunch (overcooked asparagus is soggy and a yellower green).

Toss your cooked pasta, asparagus, and pesto together in a bowl or frying pan, then serve with parmesan.

Doesn't that look like spring?

*About the pesto: I make my own in large batches and freeze it into single servings using an ice cube tray (tricks for keeping food from going bad!). The internet is flooded with pesto recipes so I won't include one here.

Middlesex

Hormones are nuts. The adrenal glands resemble small clumps of fat on top of the each kidney. Yet they synthesize hormones that control metabolism and sexual characteristics: and what is more important than food and sex?

I just learned that if you have a defect along the pathway that makes cortisol (a 21-hydroxylase defect, to be exact), your body will go into overdrive to produce all the intermediates in the pathway on the way to cortisol. It's like if someone doesn't return your phone calls: you may call and call again until they call you back and you know they've received your message. While the missing end-product (cortisol) is one thing, excess of these intermediates can wreak havoc all over the body: in particular, the excess testosterone in females (especially fetuses) leads to male characteristics (such as male or ambiguous genitalia). Treating the mother with the end-product -- returning the phone call -- will signal to the fetus that everything is OK. The overdrive will recede, and a female baby will end up normal.

Last night I had a pasta primavera for dinner (makes two servings):

• 4 small zucchini or 1/2 large zucchini, cut into rounds
• 1/2 cup English peas
• 2 chopped scallions or other herbs (parsley, etc.)
• 3 sliced or chopped garlic cloves
• ~1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tbsp butter (optional)
• dash of white wine (optional)
• 1/2 box spaghetti
• parmesan
• hot chili flakes
• salt and pepper

The key to this, I think, is to barely cook the vegetables. To barely cook the pasta, even. As the pasta water boils, heat the oil and butter in a frying pan and add the garlic (and wine if you're using it). Cook at medium heat until fragrant; add the zucchini and herbs and cook for 1-2 minutes. Turn off the heat and wait for the pasta to finish. When the pasta can bend but before it's fully cooked, drain almost all of the water and pour the pasta plus some pasta water into the frying pan with the zucchini. Add the peas and cook at high heat until the water has evaporated and the pasta is done to your liking. Season with parmesan, chili flakes, salt and pepper.

Walnut and zucchini pasta

There's nothing like studying the biochemistry of omega-3's to whet your appetite for some walnuts and flax seeds. Combine that with a few nutrition lectures on PUFA's and MUFA's (poly- and mono-unsaturated fats) and you've got yourself a meal.

As it turns out, cells build fatty acids as long saturated molecules like this:

Then process them by de-saturating some of the bonds (adding a double bond) to make a variety of different molecules used in the body:

But cells can't just add a double bond anywhere they'd like: in particular, they can't add double bonds 3 or 6 carbons down from the far end. Thus, we can't make omega-3's or omega-6's ourselves, but we still need them, so we have to acquire them through the foods we eat!

Salivating, I know. But don't get me started on saliva, I've just finished studying that too...

The following recipe is not particularly original (see Mario Batali's ambitious Pansotti -- ravioli -- with Walnut Sauce and Smitten Kitchen's zucchini strand spaghetti) but it's so easy and delicious that every busy cook should be making it.

For one large serving:

• 1/8-1/4 cup walnuts, toasted (good source of omega 3's)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 zucchini or 4 baby zukes, sliced into rounds
• 1/4 box of pasta
• olive oil (good source of monounsaturated fat, which lowers LDL cholesterol)
• parmesan
• red pepper flakes
• salt & pepper

Prep the vegetables as you boil the pasta water. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and add the pepper flakes and garlic for about a minute, then zucchini rounds. Cook for just a few minutes, until the garlic is toasted and the zucchini is slightly soft but still has some crunch. Cook the pasta until just before it's ready (still fairly al dente), then drain. Add the pasta and walnuts to the frying pan and toss everything for 1-2 minutes until the pasta is to your liking. Serve with salt, pepper, and Parmesan.