Cooking Light

Well, Spring is here.  And, for me, this presents some mealtime challenges.  Because as you can probably tell from the contents of this blog so far, I like cooking big pots of warm comforting wintery things.   I am a fan of soups and stews and heavy pasta dishes.  I am not crazy about cold meals and salads and crisp raw vegetables.  But, I am determined this year to find some new lighter easy meals for warmer weather.  And I am going to try to take advantage of things we have in the garden or can buy in season at the farmer's market. 

We started yesterday by making a nice light springtime pasta:  Linguini with a mushroom lemon basil sauce.  It was really easy, and it turned out great.  But when I decided to make it, I had a feeling Daphne would refuse to try it, because she has turned against mushrooms, which she used to love.  I had to be strategic. So I went into the playroom looking exasperated, and asked her if she knew anything about zesting lemons, and telling her I needed help inventing dinner.  Inventing was the magic word - Daphne loves inventing -so we got right to work.

Before we started cooking, I let Daphne play around with the ingredients a little.  I sent her out to get some basil leaves, and had her invent a "Daphne Sample."  (Daphne Samples are little one-bite things she likes to put together with various ingredients we happen to have at mealtime.  She wants to sell them someday at something like a lemonade stand as her "business.")  She jumped at the chance.  First, she just put some salt on some raw mushroom slices and ate those.  She liked them!  Then, she decided to get fancy, and rolled up a mushroom slice and grape tomato in a basil leaf with a little salt.  She was about to eat it, but Kev came home so she gave it to him.  But that's OK...by then, she was TOTALLY into cooking this meal.

Here she is, finishing the sauce with a little fresh basil.  That's my girl!

We had to serve this meal three ways.  Kev's dish had the works.  Mine had no tomatoes but lots of parmesan, and Daphne's had no tomatoes or cheese.  But it worked out nicely, everyone liked it, and we'll definitely make it again.  And it was VERY springy!

Linguini with Mushroom Lemon Basil Sauce
 Ingredients:
Linguini noodles (I used Wegman's fresh pasta)
1 stick of butter
2 cloves of garlic, minced
10-12 large button mushrooms, sliced
salt
1/2 cup white wine
3-4 Tbsp lemon juice
fresh basil
lemon zest
parmesan cheese
grape or cherry tomatoes

For the sauce:
Melt the butter is a large saute pan.  Add the garlic and mushrooms (and salt) and cook until softened, about 10 minutes.  Add the white wine and gently simmer the sauce to reduce.  Meanwhile, boil some water for the linguini, add salt, and cook the pasta.  When the pasta is almost done, reduce the heat on the saute pan and add the lemon juice to the sauce, tasting as you go to make sure it isn't TOO lemony.   Reserve some pasta water, drain the pasta, and toss it into the sauce.  Add a little pasta water to bring it all together (maybe 1/3 cup).  Add a little bit of lemon zest and fresh basil (we just tore it into small pieces and dropped it in), and toss.  Serve with parmesan cheese and tomatoes if you like.  Yum!


As Kev said, this would be good with shrimp.  Maybe next time!