Foody Friday - Salads/Greens

It's the 4th of July! We should have done Red, White, and Blue foods. I didn't even think of how it would be the 4th ON Foody Friday this week. So, This is NOT a political statement, just so you know :) Not "Green" on the 4th of July.

Happy Birthday, America! Eat some Greens!

This ain't yo mama's iceberg. How many of us grew up on iceburg lettuce? So funny how times change. My kids have never eaten iceburg, except maybe in a restaurant meal. Or occasionally I'll buy it to put on tacos or for asian lettuce wraps. But otherwise, it's romaine, red leaf, green leaf, or a boxed spring mix (affectionately called "twigs & sticks" at A Latte House).

I've mentioned this before, but we're splitting a CSA share this year with Sarah, and we're getting weekly bags of local, organic fresh-from-the-farm produce. It's all what's in season so far here, and this is Minnesota, where it's only been warm for about a month, so it's mainly been greens. And, may I say that fresh from the farm lettuce is BEAUTIFUL. I'm not kidding, I've never had such nice looking lettuce before in all my life.

Included in last week's bag was about a pound of arugula. Arugula has a very intense flavor, it is STRONG. And I had an entire BUNCH of arugula to use. I was a little nervous.

We used part of it as an arugula salad, which was good... here's the link to that recipe. It was ok, but the arugula was raw, so it had quite a bite to it.

What was amazing and spectacular and so delicious that everyone was oohing and aahing over it was this recipe below. I adapted this recipe to suit our tastes. Here's my version:

Goat Cheese and Arugula over Penne

INGREDIENTS

5 1/2 ounces goat cheese
4 cups coarsely chopped arugula, stems included
1 cup quartered cherry tomatoes
1/2 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup olive oil, divided
2 teaspoons fresh minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 ounces penne pasta

DIRECTIONS

Toast pine nuts at 350 for 10 minutes. Cool.
Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until al dente.
In a skillet, saute garlic in 2 T of oil. Turn off heat and immediately add arugula. Stir until wilted.
Crumble goat cheese into a large serving bowl. Add arugula/garlic mixture, cherry tomatoes, pine nuts, remaining olive oil, and salt and pepper.
Drain pasta, and toss with goat cheese mixture.

YUMM-O. This was so good! It actually got groans out of Corene. She has my disease. The "food-tastes-so-good-it-hurts" disease.

Which is nice for me the chef, because Matt has a different kind of disease. It's the "doesn't-give-a-reaction-to-any-food-unless-it's-sushi" disease. Which is unfortunate, because I don't make sushi.

And at dinner, I'm always like "MMMMMMM. OOOOOOH, this is SOOOOO GOOOOOOOOD"

And He says, "Yah. Good." in cave-man speak.

Enjoy!

Just a quick friendly rule to remind you of:

Make sure you link to your actual post, not your general blog url. This is so that in 2 months when I remember your fantastic sounding recipe for spinach quiche, and I click on the link, it will take me right to your post, not to your home page which I have to dig through to find the right post. I had to do that this week, I'm not naming any names, muahahaha, but it was annoying. :)