Fried Sage Leaves with Mozzarella

Ever since I learned about fried sage leaves they have become my favorite garnish for many dishes. Each year I cannot wait until fall to make the familiar and try some new dishes with fried sage leaves. And although sage can be harvested almost the whole year and can sustain not too harsh winters, nothing tastes better than fall dishes finished with sage leaves. I like particularly all pumpkin family vegetables to be enriched with the sage aroma.

Today's recipe comes from the Italian cuisine. It is a snack featuring sage as a main ingredient. It reminds me a little bit of another Italian speciality--fried zucchini blossoms--that are almost nothing than just a snack but at the same time taste so good and sophisticated that makes them more remarkable than just a snack deserves to be.

The other week I harvested a bunch of the sage leaves and made my first batch of fried sage with mozzarella. It was a delicious snack, which even my picky son complimented. Sage leaves were very crispy, mozzarella almost running, and everything was coated in a delicate, fried batter.

If you are a lover of fried zucchini blossoms, here is another dish to fall in love with. Serve it as aromatic fall party snack with a glass of wine.

Fried Sage Leaves with Mozzarella

Ingredients:
About 30 large sage leaves,
7 oz (usually 2 balls) of mozzarella, preferably, mozzarella bufala,
2 eggs,
4 tbsp all purpose flour,
1/8 tsp dried yeasts,
1/4 cup dry white wine,
2 cups olive oil for frying.

Preparation:
1. To make a batter separate eggs. Place yolks in a medium bowl and whites in the other. Add flour, yeasts, salt, and white wine to yolks and beat together until smooth. Set aside for about half an hour.
2. Cut mozzarella into slices than cut into halves (to make about 15 pieces).
3. Place each piece of mozzarella on one sage leave and cover with another. You can use wooden toothpicks to fasten mozzarella and leaves together.

4. Beat the whites and fold in into yolk mixture.
5. In a small heavy duty pot heat the oil until very hot. Dip sage leaves with mozzarella in the batter and place in a bubbling oil. Fry on each side until dark gold.

6. Dry on a paper towel, season with sea salt, and serve warm.

Spaghetti Squash with Fried Sage

Last month, for the first time ever, I bought a spaghetti squash and it became my latest food addiction. Spaghetti squash makes a wonderful, very easy, and all vegetable dinner dish. It is very delicate and after cooking, when scrapped with fork, creates spaghetti-like strings. Not only it can make a vegan, low calorie dish but also just with one serving provides a lot of valuable nutrients, such as beta carotene, folic acid, potassium and vitamin A.

Trying to get an opinion on the best way to serve spaghetti squash I looked for different suggestions and recipes. Most of them called for traditional pasta sauces on top. But I find Alfredo or meat ball sauces too heavy for such a delicately tasting vegetable, whose taste should be enhanced by but not lost in the rich topping.

Following this principle, I first made a delicate tomato sauce with shallots and parsley. I used fresh tomatoes which I cooked briefly. The dish turned out to be delicate and quite different than a typical pasta dish. You could still taste squash while tomatoes added extra sourness to the mild taste.

But today, exploring further the potential of the spaghetti squash, I have tried a different idea. I like to use sage for dishes made with squash family vegetables. I did so for gnocchi, pumpkin ravioli, or risotto. So I took a bunch of fresh sage leaves from my herb yard and fried them in butter. I drizzled squash with sage-infused butter and finished with fried sage leaves. I think this combination turned out to be absolutely perfect--a delicate squash, strong sage flavor, and contrasting textures of the soft squash and crispy sage leaves.

Spaghetti Squash with Fried Sage
(Serves four)

Ingredients:
1 spaghetti squash (3-4 lb),
1 bunch of fresh sage,
1 stick of butter,
freshly grounded pepper and salt.

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 400F.
2. Cut squash in half and using a spoon or an ice-cream scoop remove the seeds.
3. Place halves of squash on a large baking form, skin up. Poke it a couple of times with the fork to pierce the skin.
4. Bake for about 40 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, prepare sage. Melt the butter in a small heavy duty pot, on a high heat. When it starts bubble add sage leaves, turn the heat to medium high and fried until leaves twiddle and turn dark green. Drain the leaves on the paper towel. Reserve the butter.
6. Remove the baked squash from the oven. Turn it flesh up and using a fork scrub the spaghetti-like flesh out.

7. Place the squash spaghetti on a serving plate. Drizzle with butter, finish with sage leaves, and season generously with salt and pepper. Serve hot.

Sage Fried in Butter--To Top Fall Dishes

Even though I try to make my recipes as simple as possible and easy for everyone, I feel rather uncomfortable sharing such an obvious idea as my today's post. But it is worth talking about, as long as there is at least one person who has never tried fried sage leaves. They are absolutely lovely and worth trying especially if you happened to grow sage or have some spare sage leaves.

Sage is my favorite fall herb. I grow three large bushes of it in my garden and use for many seasonal recipes. When fresh, it is very aromatic and I like it just chopped, for instance added to meat sauces. Fried sage is crispy and still very fragrant and could provide a very intriguing finishing to many dishes. I particularly like it with all the pumpkin family vegetables, as a topping on some other vegetables, such as carrot or puréed potatoes, and of course on pasta and many Italian family noodles, like gnocchi. Try, experiment, and you cannot go wrong. If you ever wonder what to do with sage this may be the answer.

Sage Fried in Butter

Ingredients:
one stick of good quality, high fat content, butter (about 115 g),
a bunch of fresh sage, about 20-30 leaves,

Preparation:
1. Place butter in a small non stick pot. Heat it until it bubbles and turns slightly gold.
2. Add sage leaves to the hot butter and fry them turning them with a wooden fork, until they curl and become kind of dried and light brown in color.

3. Drain the fried leaves on a colander.

Pasta with Walnuts, Sage, and Fresh Ricotta--Flavors of Autumn

Even though I do not post pasta recipes every week, in my kitchen I make it at least once a week, often even twice when kids ask for it. We all love it! I cannot imagine my life without pasta. Whenever I give a choice to my kids what to eat for dinner the answer is always pasta.

I always make my own fresh sauce and if possible I try to make it from seasonal ingredients. So during the course of the year my pasta could be topped with mushrooms, herbs, fresh tomatoes, creamy lemon sauce, but most often it would be with our favorite sauce made with roasted red bell peppers. Sometimes I do it with salmon but hardly ever with meat. I often serve it with fresh cheese and always with glass of wine (for grown-ups). And nothing tastes better or more comforting than pasta, and there is no home-made dish that is easier to make in no time.

Last week, I bought a bag of walnuts in shells, mostly to put them on a wooden plate as a seasonal decoration. But they reminded me of a pasta dish that I usually make only in the fall--pasta with walnuts. And I don't even remember where I got this recipe from.

I toast walnuts and sage leaves in butter. When toasted, walnuts become even more aromatic and crunchy. If I have them, I use black walnuts, which are more aromatic than the regular ones and remind me more of those I used to eat in Poland. Then I mix them with hot pasta and fresh creamy ricotta cheese. It is important to use fresh ricotta--pasta does not taste half that good made with the regular supermarket ricotta, which is too dry and chewy. I buy mine at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, or at the Italian delicatessen. I love this contrast of the almost sweet, smooth cheese and spicy, very flavored taste of nuts and herbs that all come from a fall harvest and smell like autumn. To spice it all up a bit it is good to add a few hot pepper flakes. But also it takes hardly ten minutes to have a wonderful dinner.

Pasta with Walnuts, Sage, and Fresh Ricotta
(Serves four)

Ingredients:
1 box (1 lb) penne pasta,
1 cup roughly chopped walnuts,
1 large bunch of sage leaves, chopped crosswise,
15 oz (425 g) fresh ricotta cheese,
6 tbsp butter,
4 garlic cloves, chopped,
1 tsp red hot pepper flakes,
salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Preparation:
1. In a large pot bring water to boil with one tablespoon of salt. Add pasta, bring it to boiling, turn down the heat and boil until al dente for about 8-11 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, heat a large frying pan. Melt butter and add garlic. Fry them for about 2 minutes, then stir in the walnuts and sage. Fry them for about 5 minutes, until the nuts are toasted and sage leaves get darker and crispy.

3. Drain pasta and add to the frying pan. Mix well. Turn off the heat and add fresh ricotta. Season with hot pepper flakes, extra salt--if you need to--and generously with freshly ground black pepper.

Serve immediately and enjoy.

Festive Potato Wedges--Thanksgiving Snacks and More

I know that this time of the year I should try to do something with sweet potatoes, but I have not yet found my way of preparing them. But since Thanksgiving cooking is all about hearty, traditional food, I felt that instead of trying harder than I should to figure out what to do with sweet potatoes, I could offer you a snack made of ordinary white potatoes, which could be easily incorporated into this holiday's menu.

Ordinary potatoes are a staple food to many people all over the world. They are also a great basis for many versatile dishes and I intend to post recipes for potato dumplings and noodles, which are a specialty of several national cuisines in Eastern Europe. Some of them require a bit of effort and time to make. Today, however, I chose to post something easy enough to serve it as an impromptu party snack.

I think that this recipe makes ordinary potatoes look attractive, and gives them a festive seasonal flavor. If you like potatoes anyway, you will certainly like this simple snack as well, if you don't like potatos, please give it a try and maybe you will discover their hidden valor.

Potato Wedges

Ingredients:
4 medium white potatoes,
2 brunches of fresh sage,
about half a pack of lean bacon.

Preparation:
1. Cut potatoes in wedges about 1/2-3/4 inch thick.
2. Boil potatoes in salted water until soft, but just a notch short of being perfectly soft, drain them and cool down a little bit.
3. Heat oven to 400 F.
4. Cut bacon stripes in halves.
5. Place a leaf of sage on each potato wedge and wrap around with a piece of bacon. Secure the wraps with wooden toothpicks.
6. Place potatoes on a baking sheet and bake for about 20 minutes or until potatoes turn a little bit gold and bacon becomes fried.
7. Serve as starter or party snacks with a glass of beer or wine.

Squash Gnocchi with Fried Sage--Halloween is Coming!

I am getting more and more nervous every day seeing pumpkins popping up everywhere.

When I came to America, almost from the first day, I met new qualities of life, which I embraced right away and forever--almost 300 sunny days a year in DC, smiling people (even though many Europeans may consider that superficial), 24 hour grocery stores and store return policy, the inclusive school system, and the great international diversity within the local community, just to name a few. But there is one aspect of living here that I have never really accepted--the American cuisine with its two main ingredients--the turkey and the pumpkin.

I know that as my son is getting excited about Halloween and pumpkin carving, he will eventually ask if I shared any pumpkin recipes on my blog, which I have not. I have tried a home-made pumpkin pie years ago just to discover that it was not my kind of dessert. Too bland. It could be a comfort food, but only for those who grew up here, I suppose. Back home, we ate pumpkins preserved in vinegar, as meat accompaniment, or in a sweet soup with milk and noodles, which I never liked either.

But I don't want to get in trouble with my American kids and the majority of my readers. Once in a while I try to make something new with pumpkins or their family members, hoping to be able to acquire some of the local taste. In this vein, last July, I made squash gnocchi.

I bought two squashes--acorn and butternut. At that time they were not local for sure. I used them to make the gnocchi and topped them with fried sage from my garden. They turned out to be a great hit. The sweetness of the squash was not overwhelmingly dominant and the crispy and aromatic sage helped to bring out the nuttiness of the squash. Since my family loves pasta and dumplings of any kind, this dish had a great chance to match our taste to begin with, but the result exceeded my expectation as the gnocchi disappeared in the blink of an eye.

We will certainly make them again this fall and again we will not have enough of them, especially that beautiful locally grown acorn and butternut squashes can now be found everywhere.

Squash Gnocchi with Fried Sage
(Serves four)

Ingredients:
1 Acorn and 1 Butternut Squash about 1 pound altogether,
1 1/2 cup flour,
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese plus extra for garnish,
20 leaves of sage,
1 stick (about 100g) of butter,
salt and freshly ground pepper.

Preparation:

Sage fried in butter
1. Cut sage leaves into strips,
2. Melt butter in a small pan and add sage leaves.
3. Fry the sage until it becomes darker and crispy.

Gnocchi
1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Cut squash in slices, remove seeds, and arrange on the well-oiled baking tin.
3. Bake until soft, for about 30-40 min.
4. Cool down, remove skin, and scoop up the flesh.
5. Using an electric blender turn the cooked squash into a purée.
6. Add flour and make a dough. If it is too sticky add a little more flour.
7. Make the dough into a long roll and cut it diagonally into small pieces,1/2 inch long--see picture.

8. Boil a pot of water with 1 tbsp of salt and drop the gnocchi in it.
9. Wait until they rise to the surface and, from that moment, cook them for another 3-4 minutes.
10. Drain the gnocchi on a colander, put them on a plate.
11. Serve them with the fried sage leaves and the butter in which the sage was fried, shredded Parmesan, and freshly ground pepper.