In addition to fun anniversary celebration like things, we did some non-anniversary things Monday and took advantage of the fact that we weren’t at work. One of those things was shopping at PCC. Yep. We grocery shopped on our anniversary! It was great fun! (We also went to the bookstore where we acquired “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day” if we start looking fat larger soon, take away the book and erase the very easy recipe from my memory).

Anyway, one of the items we purchased at PCC was farmer cheese. We’d never heard of it before! It’s delicious! It was for the recipe: Pasta with Winter Greens and Walnuts from Every Day with Rachael Ray February 2009 edition. We were also introduced to escarole. (It’s much easier for me to type this because I’m still pretty fuzzy on the pronunciation)

Here’s a photo of our new friend the escarole:

Ingredients:
1 (7.5 ounce) package farmer cheese
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Grated peel of 1/2 lemon
3/4lb of fusilli (corkscrew) pasta
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 large head escarole, coarsely chopped
Salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, toasted

 

1. Have Jonathan, world’s best husband, combine the cheese, 3 tablespoons olive oil and the lemon peel in a small bowl.
2. In a large pot of boiling, salted water, cook the pasta until al dente. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup of the cooking water; return the pasta to the pot.
3. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and crushed red pepper and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the escarole and cook, stirring frequently, until wilted but still crisp; season with salt. Stir the escarole and the reserved pasta cooking water into the pasta. Transfer to a platter (or put it in a bowl like us); dollop with the cheese mixture and sprinkle with the walnuts. Toss lightly just before serving.

And because it’s fun, here are the photos of our sweet times in the kitchen for this one:

Jonathan expertly crumbles the farmer cheese.

The freshly washed and cut escarole

The finished product, delicious!

A big thank you to the cheese monger at PCC! She knew what we were looking for and gave us free cheese that had a sell by date of the day prior! YAY!