Red Pesto Linguine

Bright in color and flavor, this red pesto linguine is a spicy bowl of deliciousness made with anchovies and Fresno peppers. It’s even great as leftovers so make the whole recipe. 

I keep a lot of pantry staples on hand but one of my favorites is anchovies. That little can adds so much flavor and salt to almost any savory dish from a classic Caesar dressing to a simple caramelized shallot tart. If you have olives and peppers as well, which I almost always do, you can make gildas, which are a Spanish appetizer that goes great with a glass of something chilled. 

I’ve also been known to add anchovies to Dauphinoise potatoes, turning those creamy spuds into a Swedish dish called Jansson’s Frestelse and I have used them, along with bacon and olives, to top a traditional Liguria pissaladière. In short, if I can work some anchovies into a recipe, I'm going to try! 

Today, anchovies are the star ingredient of this red pesto. 

Red Pesto Linguine

This recipe is adapted from one on the Bon Appetit website where they used a scant six anchovies and, it would seem, none of the good and flavorful olive oil the anchovies were packed in. This is a missed opportunity which I have rectified. You can, of course, use whatever pasta shape you prefer but in my book, linguine is the best. 

Ingredients

1 can (2 oz or 56g) olive oil-packed anchovy fillets 

4 garlic cloves

About 1/2 cup or 120ml extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 cup or 60g walnut pieces

3 tablespoons double-concentrated tomato paste

2 fresh Fresno peppers

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

3 oz or 85g freshly grated Parmesan, plus more for serving

1 lb or 450g linguine or your favorite pasta shape

Sea salt for the pasta water

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Method

Tip your can of anchovies into a measuring vessel and top up with good quality olive oil until you reach 2/3 cup. Use the side of your knife to smash the garlic and then chop it roughly. 

In a small pot, cook the anchovies, oil, garlic and walnuts over a medium heat, stirring often. 

Take it off the heat as the garlic is just beginning to turn golden. This takes several minutes but don’t walk off and leave it because you do not want the garlic to burn. 

Add tomato paste.

Cook, stirring often, until the anchovies have completely broken down, if they hadn’t already, and the mixture is a deep red. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool. 

Cut the stems ends off of the peppers and then cut them in half lengthwise. Use a spoon to remove the seeds, then cut the peppers into smaller pieces. 

Transfer walnut mixture to a food processor. Add chili peppers and lemon juice. Process until completely smooth. 

Add in the grated Parmesan and process again until you have a thick paste. If it’s too thick for your processor, add a tablespoon or two of warm water and process again. 

Meanwhile, cook your linguine according to package instructions until al dente, lightly salting the water. Remove and reserve 1 1/2 cups or 355ml of the pasta water with a ladle. Drain the pasta in a colander. 

Scrape the pesto into the warm pot and add the butter. 

Pour the drained linguine back in along with a 1/2 cup of the pasta water. Use tongs or two wooden spoons to toss the linguine in the pesto until the butter is melted and the linguine is covered in sauce. Add more pasta water as needed. 

Serve the linguine topped with extra Parmesan. Because the more cheese, the better. 

Enjoy! 

It’s the third Friday of the month, the day my Fish Friday Foodie friends share seafood recipes. Many thanks our host, Sid of Sid’s Sea Palm Cooking who challenged us to use canned, frozen or pouched seafood to make appetizers or a meal for a theme she named Shortcut Seafood. Special thanks to Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm for stepping up to help with behind the scenes work. Check out the links below. 

• Culinary Adventures with Camilla is plating an Ensalada de Atún y Pimientos
• A Day in the Life on the Farm is serving up Linguini with White Beans and Tuna 
• Sneha's Recipe cooked up Prawn and Onion Stir Fry
• Food Lust People Love made some Red Pesto Linguine 
• Palatable Pastime is giving us a Tea Room Tuna Salad Plate
• Karen's Kitchen Stories is ladling out a Smoked Salmon Bisque 
• Making Miracles shares her recipe for Tuna Patties

Are you a food blogger who would you like to join Fish Friday Foodies? We post and share new seafood/fish recipes on the third Friday of the month. To join our group please email Wendy at wendyklik1517 (at) gmail.com. Visit our Facebook page and Pinterest page for more wonderful fish and seafood recipe ideas. 

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Passionfruit Pound Cake #BundtBakers

Tart and sweet with a tender crumb, this passionfruit pound cake is topped with an equally flavorful passionfruit glaze.

As I said when I shared my lemon drizzle version, pound cake is one of the most dependable cakes you can make for any party or occasion. It’s simple but elegant and everybody likes it.

You can gussy it up by serving pound cake with fruit or a scoop of ice cream on the side but I think a simple glaze is perfection, especially if it complements the flavor of the cake, like this one does. 

If you are fortunate enough to find fresh passionfruit in your local market at a reasonable price, scoop the pulp out and freeze it in an ice cube tray for storage in a freeze bag or airtight container. You’ll thank me later when it’s out of season and expensive!

Passionfruit Pound Cake

I use my Nordic Ware 6-cup anniversary Bundt pan (<affiliate link) for this twist on a classic pound cake but feel free to use your favorite. 

Ingredients

For the cake batter:

1 1/2 cups or 190g all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the pan

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup or 125g plain yogurt

1/4 cup or 60ml fresh passionfruit pulp

1 1/4 cups or 250g granulated sugar

1/2 cup or 113g unsalted butter, softened, plus more for buttering the pan

3 large eggs

For the passionfruit glaze:

3/4 cup or 95g powdered sugar

1 tablespoon fresh passionfruit pulp

1 teaspoon milk, plus a drop or two more, if the glaze is too thick

Method

Preheat your oven to 325°F or 163°C. Lightly butter and flour a 6-cup Bundt pan. 

Scoop the seeds out of your passionfruit with a spoon. 

Strain out the seeds from your passionfruit pulp and then put a spoon or two back in. I like the look of them, but too many make their crunch unwelcome. 

Whisk together your yogurt and passionfruit pulp in a measuring bowl and set aside.

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together your flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. This incorporates air in the mix and saves you from needing to sift the dry ingredients.

With electric beaters or in your stand mixer, beat the sugar and butter until they become pale yellow and fluffy.

Scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula, then add in the eggs, one at time, beating briefly, until each is incorporated.

Add half of the flour mixture along with half of the yogurt mixture. Beat at low speed until just incorporated.

Scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula then repeat the process with the other half of each mixture, beating again on low until just mixed. Pour or spoon the batter into your prepared Bundt pan and smooth out the top.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 35-40 minutes, checking it about three-quarters of the way through. If the top is browning too quickly, cover it with foil for the remaining baking time.

Remove from the oven when a wooden toothpick comes out clean and the sides are pulling away from the pan slightly.

Leave to cool for about 10 minutes then invert the Bundt pan on a wire rack. 

Cool completely before drizzling with glaze.

To make the passionfruit glaze, mix the powdered sugar and the passionfruit pulp until all the sugar has dissolved. Spoon on to the cooled cake. 

Enjoy!

This month my Bundt Baker friends are celebrating fathers everywhere with beautiful Bundts! Many thanks to our host Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm. 

• Culinary Adventures with Camilla: Carrot Cake Mini Bundt
• Sneha's Recipe: Date and Walnut Bundt Cake
• Magical Ingredients: Eggless Basundhi Bundt Cake 
• Making Miracles: Fresh Apple Bundt Cake 
• Palatable Pastime: Lemon Raspberry Marbled Bundt Cake 
• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Oreo Bundt 
• Food Lust People Love: Passionfruit Pound Cake Bundt 
• Patyco Candybar: Sangria Bundt Cake 

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.
Updated links for all of our past events and more information about BundtBakers, can be found on our home page.

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Sausage Stuffed Sourdough Crescent Rolls #BreadBakers

Made one day and baked the next morning, these Sausage Stuffed Sourdough Crescent Rolls are the perfect breakfast at home or on the go.  

I had a very different kind of breakfast bread planned for this event but for the first time in a very long time, much to my disappointment, the recipe was a complete failure. Honestly, I’m not sure where I went wrong. 

Fortunately, these guys came out so good that I ate two back to back. I’m not kidding! Smoked sausage in sourdough crescent rolls may be my new favorite breakfast.

Sausage Stuffed Sourdough Crescent Rolls

This recipe is adapted from An Italian in my Kitchen. Use your favorite cooked sausage in the rolls. Mine is smoked jalapeño sausage. 

Ingredients

3 tablespoons unfed sourdough starter (discard) 

1/4 cup or 60ml lukewarm milk, plus extra for a milk wash before baking 

1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled

1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1 cup or 125g all purpose flour plus more for rolling out the dough 

1/4 teaspoon salt

8 cooked sausages (I used smoked jalapeño ones.)

Method

In the mixing bowl add half of the flour, the sourdough starter, milk, sugar and yeast. Whisk until combined. 

Next add the melted butter, egg yolk and beat again.

Sift in the rest of the flour and the salt. 

Knead until smooth and elastic. This is quite a sticky dough but resist the urge to add too much flour. When dough is really sticky, I use a scraper to stretch it out on a clean countertop. 

Then use the scraper again to fold it over onto itself. 

And over again. 

Repeat those three steps until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 7-10 minutes. 

Let the dough rest for 15 minutes. Line a baking pan with baking parchment or a silicone liner. 

On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a circle about 13 inches or 33 cm. Cut the circle into 8 triangles.

Place one sausage at the wide end, then roll up each triangle. Wet the point of the triangle with a little water if it doesn't want to stick. 

Place the sausage stuffed rolls on your prepared baking pan. Cover the rolls with greased cling film and put the rolls in the refrigerator to rise for 12-24 hours.  

In the morning or whenever you are ready to bake, remove the crescent rolls from the refrigerator and set them aside to warm up for about an hour. When they are almost room temperature, preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C. 

Brush the rolls with a little milk. 

Bake the stuffed crescent rolls for 20-25 minutes or until they are golden. 

Remove them from the pan and set on a wire rack to cool. 

We love them with mustard but you can eat these lovely sausage rolls just as they are as well. 

Enjoy!  

Today’s Bread Bakers’ theme is breakfast breads. Check out all the great recipe links below. Many thanks to our host, Swathi of Zesty South Indian Kitchen.

• Breakfast Garbage Bread from Making Miracles
• Danish Crisps from A Messy Kitchen
• English Muffins from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Flax Meal Breakfast Bread from Ambriosia
• Fresh Cherry Chocolate Sourdough Bread from Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Multigrain Blueberry Bread from What Smells So Good?
• Montreal-Style Bagels from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Rhubarb Strawberry Spiced Sourdough Bread from Cook with Renu
• Sausage Stuffed Sourdough Crescent Rolls from Food Lust People Love
• Spicy Masala Veggie Paratha from Magical Ingredients
• Sourdough Angel Biscuits from Palatable Pastime
• Sourdough Crepes from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Sourdough Discard Pancakes from Sneha’s Recipe


                                                     
#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.



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Icelandic Happy Marriage Cake - Hjónabandssæla

Icelandic Happy Marriage Cake is traditionally made with a rhubarb jam filling – purists take note – everyone else can use their favorite jam in the middle. 

It seems like there are as many recipes for Happy Marriage Cake as there are happy marriages but the three ingredients they all seem to include are sugar, butter and oats. They also pretty much agree on how the bottom is pressed or smoothed into the pan. After that, it’s a big free-for-all. 

Some recipes want you to crumble the balance of the “cake” on top of the rhubarb. Others suggest you try to spread it (impossible!) or even roll it into thin sausages to be put on top lattice-like before baking. I wish I could tell you my source for this pat-the-dough method but I saved this recipe ages ago and didn’t save the link. 

The origins of this recipe are likewise fraught. Some say it is from the 1950s. Others claim their grandmothers and their mothers before them made this. One blogger said the only proper time to eat/serve Happy Marriage Cake is at a wedding reception while another claimed that it got its name because it is an inexpensive treat a newlywed wife can make her husband the day after.

Here’s what I can tell you. It’s buttery. It's oaty. Love the rhubarb in the middle. It’s good! 

Icelandic Happy Marriage Cake - Hjónabandssæla

You can use store-bought jam in place of the rhubarb but choose something with a bit of sharpness. If your jam is quite thick, consider loosening it with the addition of some lemon or lime juice. This is not meant to be super sweet but a just right blend of sweet and tart. I used frozen rhubarb since fresh is ridiculously expensive where I am right now. Check your supermarket's frozen section. You might be as pleasantly surprised as I was by how affordable rhubarb can be. 

Ingredients

For the rhubarb jam:

3 cups or 325g chopped fresh or frozen rhubarb

1/4 cup or 50g granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the cake:

1 3/4 cups or 158g rolled oats

1 3/4 cups or 220g all-purpose flour

1/2 cup or 100g granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons or 200g butter, softened

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup or 240ml rhubarb jam

For serving: cream or vanilla ice cream, for serving (optional)

Method

First we’ll make the rhubarb jam, which is very much like a very thick rhubarb sauce. Combine the rhubarb, sugar, and vanilla in a medium pot. 

Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until rhubarb has completely broken down and thickened, about 25 minutes. If you can pull a spoon through it and it doesn't run back together, you are good to go. 

Remove the jam from the heat and cool completely.

Preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C. 

To make the cake dough: Combine the oats, flour, sugar, and baking soda in a large bowl.  

Mix in the softened butter until evenly incorporated.

Add the beaten eggs and mix until a stiff dough forms.

Lightly grease a 9 x 9 in or 23 x 23cm baking pan. Line it with baking parchment. You can skip the greasing step if you'd like but I find just a little butter helps keep the baking parchment in place. 

Evenly press about 2/3 of the dough into the prepared dish. My dough weighed 776g (27 oz by weight) so I used 517g (18 oz by weight) for the bottom. 

Spread with the rhubarb jam. 

Using the remaining 1/3 of dough, dampen your hands with water and take a small piece of dough and flatten it between your hands. Place the piece of flattened dough on top of rhubarb.  

Continue in this manner, using smaller pieces of flattened dough to fill in the gaps between the larger pieces, until the rhubarb is almost completely covered.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until the top of the cake is lightly browned.

Cool on wire rack. 

Cut into squares to serve.

Serve with cream or vanilla ice cream, if desired.

Enjoy!

Today my fellow Baking Bloggers are all sharing recipes made with oats. Check them out below! Many thanks to our host and organizer, Sue of Palatable Pastime. 

• Baked Oatmeal with Rhubarb by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Buttermilk Oat Flour Pancakes by The Redhead Baker
• Cherry Rhubarb Crisp by Palatable Pastime
• Chewy Oatmeal Cookies by Making Miracles
• Chocolate Cherry Oatmeal Cookies by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Fresh Cherry and Nectarine Crisp With Oat Streusel by Magical Ingredients
• Icelandic Happy Marriage Cake - Hjónabandssæla by Food Lust People Love
• White Chocolate Chunk Oats Cookies by Sneha’s Recipe

Baking Bloggers is a friendly group of food bloggers who vote on a shared theme and then post recipes to fit that theme one the second Monday of each month. If you are a food blogger interested in joining in, inquire at our Baking Bloggers Facebook group. We'd be honored if you would join us in our baking adventures.

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- Hjónabandssæla!

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Sparkling Strawberry Lemon Cocktail

Lightly sweetened homemade strawberry vodka is the main ingredient of this sparkling strawberry lemon cocktail, refreshingly cold, perfect for summer!

More than a month ago I shared the how-to instructions for making simple strawberry vodka so I hope you all got right on that! If so, you are ready to make this cocktail today. 

If not, what are you waiting for? It’s one of the easiest ways of preserving the flavor of sweet summer strawberries to enjoy all year round. 

Sparkling Strawberry Lemon Cocktail

I am not a fan of the flavored vodkas you can buy in the stores because they always taste artificial to me but if you are a fan, feel free to use one in this cocktail. You’ll need to add a little simple syrup as well though, if your store-bought strawberry vodka isn’t sweetened. Most are not. 

Ingredients

1/2 oz or 15ml freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 oz or 60ml simple strawberry vodka

2 1/2 oz or 75ml club soda

Curled lemon peel or strawberry for garnish (optional)

Method

Fill a cocktail shaker 2/3 full with ice cubes. Add in the strawberry vodka and lemon juice. Shake until well chilled, about 15 seconds.

Fill a glass with ice. Strain the cocktail mixture into the glass. Top up with club soda and stir gently. 

Garnish with a strawberry plus a curl of lemon peel, if desired.

Enjoy!

It's Sunday FunDay and it's all about berries today! Check out the recipes below. Many thanks to our host, Renu of Cook with Renu and her Sunday helper, Rebekah of Making Miracles.

• Berry Spinach Salad by Making Miracles
• Blackberry Spinach Salad by Amy's Cooking Adventures
• Blueberry & Grape Smoothie by Mayuri's Jikoni
• Blueberry Picking and a Summer Salad with Microflowers and Berries by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Eggless Strawberry Banana Muffins by Cook with Renu
• Instant Pot Shredded Chicken Sandwiches with Blackberry Jalapeño BBQ Sauce by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Kokum Sherbat by Sneha’s Recipe
• Sparkling Strawberry Lemon Cocktail by Food Lust People Love
• Summer Berry Turnovers by Karen's Kitchen Stories

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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