Farfalle with Savoy Cabbage, Pancetta, and Mozzarella
Everytime we make the Tuscan Bean Soup, we end up with a bunch of left over cabbage. I don’t have a wide range of cabbage recipes for the left over cabbage, so I am always in search of new ones. I never would have thought to combine cabbage and pasta, but it definitely works. I am sure the bacon, which we used instead of pancetta, didn’t hurt. The one thing I learned is that you have to use fresh mozzarella or some other really soft cheese. I substituted some packaged mozzarella and it didn’t melt. Also, I wouldn’t skip the pine nuts, they add a ton of flavor. I know they can be pricey, but it is pretty cheap to buy a couple ounce if they have them in the bulk section of you supermarket.
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Farfalle With Savoy Cabbage, Pancetta, And Mozzarella
Ingredients:
- 10 strips pancetta or lean bacon, thinly sliced
- Olive oil
- 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
- 1 good handful thyme, leaves picked from the stem
- 1/2 large Savoy cabbage (outer leaves removed), quartered, cored, and finely sliced
- Handful grated Parmesan cheese
- 1 pound dried farfalle
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- Extra-virgin olive oil 7 ounces fresh buffalo mozzarella, cut into 1/2-inch dice
- 2 handfuls pine nuts, lightly toasted
Directions:
- In a pan fry off pancetta in a little olive oil until lightly golden. Add garlic and thyme and cook until softened. Add the Savoy cabbage and Parmesan, then stir and put the lid on the pan. Cook for a further 15 minutes, shaking every now and again, while you cook farfalle in salted boiling water until al dente.
- When the cabbage is nice and tender, season and loosen with some nice peppery extra-virgin olive oil. Toss the drained farfalle pasta into the cabbage and at the last minute mix in mozzarella and pine nuts. Serve immediately.
We need your feedback
Over the past couple of months I have been working on a recipe sharing website, noshBot.com. I know there are TONS of recipe sharing sites out there, but I wanted to create one that catered to Food Bloggers. I love posting recipe to Cookography, but I have always been frustrated with the blogging software; it gives recipes no respect! Blogging software doesn’t “understand” recipes and all their information and treats them the same as a post about kittens.
This is where noshBot comes in. In addition to letting you enter in, search for and manage recipes like a traditional recipe site, noshBot can integrate with your blog. It is possible to post recipes to your blog directly from noshBot and you easily can import existing recipes from your blog back into noshBot. My thought is that noshBot can server as a recipe database for Food Bloggers. Using noshBot to manage your recipes gives you a couple benefits:
- It automatically formats them
- Makes it easy for you user to print, email and bookmark them
- Lets you track how many times a recipe gets view, printed or emailed on your blog
- Could help drive people looking at recipes on noshBot to your blog
I really need y’alls feedback though! Is this something you would use? Is it actually useful/helpful? Is there something that needs to be changed or added before you would think about using it? I built noshBot from scratch, so can in any cool features you guys come up with… assuming I have time! Also, since it is a work in progress don’t be too surprised if everything is layed out perfectly, well documented or doesn’t work the first time.
Checkout: noshbot.com
Thanks,
Luke
Camera Question: Photographing in a Restaurant
Here is a question I got on one of our posts:
I have a Nikon D60 and use a 18-200mm VR 3.5-5.6 lens. I am taking photos of foods for a book I am writing and need some help to choose the right lens.
The foods I photograph are at the restaurants that I buy them at, so lighting is dependent on each restaurant. I suppose I could use flash, but I don’t really want to get into flash photography inside the restaurants I visit.
I noticed with my lens that I have to zoom in to get the AF to work best. Also, the depth of field is pretty shallow, and shutter speeds become slow.
I started to consider using a macro lens, but I’m wondering if I really need one. I don’t intend on shooting anything smaller than a muffin.
My goal is to be able to shoot a plate of food and to have most or all of the food in focus. And to be able to do this in a restaurant where the lighting will most likely be less than perfect.
Can you give me some advice?
Hi Eddie,
Good questions! I sound like you are running into two different things. The reason you have to zoom in, in order to correctly focus has do with your lens minimum focusing distance. When you are zooming, what you are actually doing is moving the camera farther away from the food, but keeping the image the same. Lens have a minimum distance they need to be away from the subject in order to correctly focus. Most Macro lens don’t enlarge things any more than a regular lens. The difference is that they have no minimum focusing length. You can get as close as you want to, which works out great for shooting in a cramped environment(restaurant).
Both Nikon and Canon have a 100mm~ & 60mm~ lens. I have the 100mm Macro lens from Canon and I sort of wish I went for the 60mm version. With the zoom factor of my Camera (50D) that 100mm lens ends up being about 160mm and that is a lot of zoom. In order to fit plate in, I have to back up quite a bit. That said, it is an amazingly well made lens and great for taking close-ups of things. If you have a camera that does not have a full-sized sensor, a 60mm macro should be about perfect.
As for the shallow depth of field,that has to do with the amount of light in the restaurant. In order to increase the depth of field, you have to increase the f-stop number. For that to work though, the camera needs more light. You have a couple of options here. The easiest is to increase the ISO setting on the camera. That makes the camera more sensitive. The other option is to increase the amount of time the shutter is open, but that means holding the camera really steady. A small tripod might come in handy.
One other thing to look at is bring a piece of printer paper or a reflective disc. You can uses these to better help bounce light and fill in any shadows if the light is not right.
Here are some things you might want to check out:
Macro Lens -
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens
Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM Digital SLR Lens
Nikon 105mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor Lens
Nikon 60mm f/2.8G ED AF-S Micro-Nikkor Lens for Nikon DSLR Cameras
Tripods -
Joby GP1-EBEN Gorillapod Flexible Tripod
Lastolite 12″ Circular Collapsable Disc Reflector, Silver / White
Another Cook in the Kitchen: Introducing Elena
Well, the Cookography staff just grew by one. Carolyn and I had a beautiful baby girl last week, named Elena. Posts may slow down a little as we get used to this new eater and her demanding feeding schedule. We will keep Cookography going though and promise not to have too many baby food related posts.
“Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father’s Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater” (Matthew Amster-Burton)
That said, I just finished a great book on the adventures of infants and toddlers. Hungry Monkey is written by a dad in Seattle who has a daughter that is an adventurous eater. It was a very encouraging read and he has great advice on foods that both you and your kid can enjoy. Basically, just try mashing up food into non-chokable pieces and see if the kid likes it. His daughter even liked hot food and sushi! It is a great story of how you can share things you like with kids even if they are very young. The copy I read was from the library but I am going to buy one because it is full of easy recipes and cooking tips for harried parents and an adventurous eater kid. He also has a great blog here, which is worth the read.
Best of Cookography 2009
Each year we compile our favorite recipes from the year into a sort of cookbook. The Best of Cookography 2009 is ready, so check it out! It’s tough narrowing down which recipes to include, but we try to provide a good variety. It’s a way for us to reflect on the year and remember all the tasty meals we’ve enjoyed! Happy New Year to all!
