Workday Gourmet

Truffle pasta is easily among everyone's favorite memories of Italy. It is simple to make, and ridiculously expensive in restaurants, which makes it perfect for home cooking. As far as ingredients go, this recipe is a tad more costly than cacio e pepe, but very much reasonable, as it uses jarred truffle, which cost a fraction of the fresh stuff. A $20 jar of whole or sliced truffles could easily make 5~6 servings. Keep in mind jarred truffle won't be as wonderfully aromatic as fresh, and whole truffles have kind of a hard, brittle texture. They won't infuse into the pasta very quickly, yet you want to avoid tossing them too much. For best presentation & flavor, thinly shave the truffles and soak the slices in a good olive oil. Let the olive oil pick up the truffle scent and soften the slices a little. The olive oil will help infuse the truffle flavor to the pasta sauce, and softened slices are less likely to break.

Try this next time you want to impress your guests! …

I made a big-ass bone-in ribeye the day before, because I could not pass up a good sale, and there's something inexplicably satisfying about cutting into a steak that is ridiculously thick, at least to my husband. Unfortunately this indulgence left us with quite a bit of leftover.



This is my newest hack to deal with medium-cooked, not-so-easy-to-reheat leftover steak: shortcut pho with powdered spices and boxed broth. The whole thing takes less than half an hour to prepare, curbs the craving, and makes great use of leftover meat and/or herbs. This is a quick alternative to spending 3~5 hours making the real-deal broth. The spice combination will get the basic flavor profile there. Give this a try next time you crave pho on a weekday night!


Ingredients

1 tsp crushed ginger (jarred or frozen perfectly fine)
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp coriander powder
1/4 tsp star anise powder
1/4 tsp fennel seed powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tbsp oil

1 quart beef bone broth
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tsp …