• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Mind in the Butter

Food for taste, buds, and family

  • Recipes
    • Appetizers & Snacks
    • Breakfast
    • Desserts
    • Dinner
    • Drinks & Cocktails
    • Instant Pot
    • Pasta & Grains
    • Salads & Vegetables
    • Seafood
    • Sides
    • Soups & Stews
  • Entertaining
    • Holidays
  • Life & Travel
  • Food & Sustainability

tofino

So…this happened: Epic Crab Pasta with Vodka Sauce and Garlic Breadcrumbs

February 24, 2014 by Eva Louise Leave a Comment

 DSC_0644DSC_0647

Stingray is coming home from Ethiopia soon and I can tell he’s seriously hankering for some of my homemade cooking.  I thought it would be fun to drive his belly bonkers by posting this epic crab pasta with vodka sauce that I made for the family a while back. It’s a Serious Eats’ recipe for Pasta with Crab, Tomato, and Chilies and it’s a knockout. It’s a simple set of ingredients with a medium level of difficulty (you need to blend the hot tomato sauce which I find to be challenging to do without incident), and one of the few recipes I actually followed entirely. The recipe is made extra delicious with the addition of homemade garlic breadcrumbs; with these I can assure you, there will be no leftovers. I’m sorry to report (not!) that my version was made with fresh dungeness crab that Dad caught earlier in the day. Brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. Enjoy this beauty.

Pasta with Crab, Tomato, and Chilies

DSC_0646

 Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons  butter
  • 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
  • 3 medium cloves garlic, minced (about 1 tablespoon)
  • 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • 1 (28-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes, drained and roughly broken up by hand
  • 1/3 cup heavy cream
  • 1/4 cup vodka
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 small red hot chili, finely sliced (optional)
  • 2 slices rustic bread, roughly torn
  • 2 tablespoons minced fresh chives
  • 2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves
  • 1 pound fresh spaghetti, fettucini, or tagliatelle (dry pasta can also be used)
  • 1 pound lump or jumbo lump fresh crab meat (get the good stuff)

Instructions

  1. Heat butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat until melted and foaming subsides. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant but not browned, about 1 minute. Add tomatoes and heavy cream. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly reduced, about 10 minutes. Add vodka and simmer for 4 minutes longer. Don’t blow up the kitchen!
  2.  Transfer mixture to a blender and blend on high speed until completely smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper and transfer 2 cups to a large saucepan. Reserve remaining sauce for another use. Don’t burn yourself!
  3.  Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Combine bread, a garlic clove and remaining olive oil in a food processor. Process until fine crumbs are formed. Transfer to a medium skillet and cook over medium-high heat, stirring and tossing constantly until golden brown. Transfer to a small bowl. Season bread crumbs to taste with salt and pepper and add a pinch of parsley and chives. Toss to combine. Set aside.
  4.  Add crab and optional sliced chilies to saucepan with sauce and stir to combine. Cook spaghetti in boiling salted water just until it is barely cooked through, about 2 minutes (if using dry pasta, cook according to package directions). Drain pasta, reserving 1 cup of cooking liquid. Transfer pasta to saucepan with sauce stir in remaining herbs. Heat over high heat until sauce is simmering and pasta is completely coated, adding reserved pasta water as necessary to thin sauce to desired consistency. Serve immediately, topping with bread crumbs.

 

Filed Under: Dinner Tagged With: crab, dinner, pasta, seafood, tofino

Lend me your ears!…for some Eva-style Elote

August 29, 2013 by Eva Louise 9 Comments

DSC_0543DSC_0544

I don’t really like ears of corn. There’s something so cumbersome about the way they look that turns me off…as in, they look like a real commitment to prepare and eat. You know? No? OK, yea, I forgot that everybody else on the planet freakin’ loves corn…Which means I need to have a few corn recipes in my repertoire. FINE.

Luckily, my Mom decided to buy a million ears of it for our recent trip to British Columbia, so this was the perfect time to practice. I decided to do a riff on elote, Mexican street corn and used our BBQ to char the corn before preparing the dish. Not revolutionary, but it took the dish to a totally stellar level.

Eva-style Elote

Ingredients

  • 3 ears of  corn, husks off, stub on (makes it easier to BBQ)
  • 1/2 medium red onion, diced
  • 1 bunch cilantro, rinsed and roughly chopped
  • 1 can black beans, rinsed
  • 2 heaping dollops of crema (Mexican sour cream), creme fraiche (French sour cream) or just regular sour cream
  • 1 heaping T mayonnaise
  • 1/4 cup crumbled cotija cheese or grated Parmesan
  • juice of 1 juicey lime
  • pinch of cayenne pepper
  • 1 ripe avocado

Char the ears of corn for about 8-10 minutes on a seriously hot grill or griddle pan, probably, 375-400 degrees. Let them cool long enough to take a knife to chop off the kernels.  Reserve a small bunch of kernels, cotija, cilantro and avocado for garnish later, then mix corn with all of the other ingredients EXCEPT the avocado.  Careful on the mayo and crema to make sure you don’t add too much. Taste and adjust flavors accordingly. Fold in the diced avocado near the end so it doesn’t squish. Cover and refrigerate for about 30 minutes. Garnish the mixture with the remaining corn, cotija, cilantro and avocado, then serve!

DSC_0542

Filed Under: Life & Travel, Sides Tagged With: British Columbia, Canada, cheese, cooking, corn, Elote, food, Mexican food, recipes, salads, sides, summer, tofino, vegetables

Put this in your pipe and smoke it! No, no, please just eat it with some cream cheese

August 23, 2013 by Eva Louise 4 Comments

candy1candy2

So you’re probably wondering, Evey, what’d you do with that Coho you slaughtered in your last post? I’ll tell you what we did, we made smoked salmon of course…we’re Jews after all…! Our smoked salmon is insanely delicious, meaty, brine-y and flavorful, not those slimy, thin, hot pink lox you get at the deli.  

accoutrements

All the accompaniments are just as essential as the smoked salmon: cream cheese, capers, red onion, tomatoes and lemons.

Obviously I’ll never make this in my New York apartment, but I would like to have this recipe on file. It’s funny because as I’m typing, I’m looking in the guest book of our Tofino house (we keep a guest book/journal every year so we can remember everything, recipes included) and apparently Dad calls this recipe his “Lil’ Chief Smoked Salmon Deluxe,” so we’ll continue to call it that.

Lil’ Chief Smoked Salmon Deluxe

salmonsalmon2

The process is quite long (about 13 hours door to door NOT including actually catching the fish) but nice and easy if you have the time and a smoker.  We start with a super intense brine with the ingredients below. Mom and Dad will adjust the recipe depending on what’s in fridge but you get the idea.  We leave the fillets to brine for about 4 hours in the fridge, then leave it to air dry on the counter until it forms the pellicle – that glossy, salty seal on the top of the fish which apparently helps the smoke adhere to the fish more effectively. Then we smoke it in our smoker (looks like a mini-bar fridge) for 6-8 hours at different temperatures (below). I might not be able to smoke the fish back in New York but I sure can eat it back in New York! Going to have to have you all over for brunch soon…

For the Brine

  • 1 cup water
  • 2 cups soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup non-iodized salt
  • 1/3 cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup dry white wine
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • crushed garlic (knowing my family, a whole bulb)
  • onion powder or chopped onions

Smoke for:

  1. 1-2 hours at 100-120F
  2. 2-4 hours at 140F
  3. 1-2 hours at 175F

Filed Under: Breakfast, Dinner Tagged With: British Columbia, Canada, cooking, fish, food, recipe, salmon, seafood, smoking, tofino, tofino time

Sharpening My Dad Skills

August 22, 2013 by Eva Louise 3 Comments

blankcanvas

Let’s get started

Omelettes, baking (of any sort), pivot tables, PowerPoint presentations, refraining from opening other peoples’ mail,  picking up my dry cleaning when it’s actually ready, controlling my hanger (that special type of rage you get when you’re starving), cheese-making, sushi rolling, running…

These are all things I’m not particularly good at; the most devastating addition to this list is fish filleting.  It’s kind of pathetic given my family’s fishfolk status but my dad spoils me and presents me with perfectly filleted kitchen-ready salmon all the time…So, hey! What’s my motivation to figure out how to cut these damn things myself?!  In efforts to be more self-sufficient,  I finally tried my hand at filleting a whole Coho, under Dad’s direction of course.

I don’t know about you, but trying to learn stuff from Dad is the most frustrating and painful process. Ever. Yes, I love him and yes, he has tons of knowledge to impart but man, that guy has NO PATIENCE (cut to tear-laden movie montage of me learning to walk, ride a bike, drive a car…). And as articulate and commanding as he must have been on Wall Street back in the day, when he’s trying to teach me something he makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. 

So there we were with a Coho, 2 sharp knives and my lovely sister to document the whole thing…

wholesalmon

I started off strong….goodstart

Wouldn't be lesson learned without "too many cooks in the kitchen"!

When I’m struggling, it really helps when two people start giving me competing advice. Please, please provide me with competing advice. It calms me.

I just went haywire here with my hands criss-crossed. Under no circumstance does this look safe!

I just went haywire here with my hands criss-crossed. Under no circumstance does this look safe!

Filleting towards your own fingers...also not a good idea....

Filleting towards your own fingers…also not a good idea…

goodstart

Got my groove…kind of

awww

….I could strangle him right now! Eyyy…but I did it! Daddy’s so proud!success

Filed Under: Life & Travel Tagged With: British Columbia, Canada, dad, daughters, family, fathers, fish, knife skills, salmon, seafood, tofino, travel

Tofino Time: 2012 Foragers and Fishermens’ Mashup!

August 20, 2013 by Eva Louise Leave a Comment

DSCN0788

My gorgeous dad, mom, sister and brother!DSCN0769 

It’s that time of year again…Tofino Time! The whole family made the great trek West and North to beautiful British Columbia for our week long family holiday filled with foraging and fishing adventures. My trip in particular took a whopping 16 hours…grrr…so admittedly it’s taken the past few days to get into vacation mode, but I’m in it! I’m in vacation mode….weeee!

For those of you who know my family, food and cooking are the main features of any FFV (Fowler Family Vacation). So to get my inspirational juices flowing for the week ahead, I looked back on last year’s postings. I had just started up the bloggy and I had so much fun documenting all of our delicious meals and the hilarious adventures that got the food to the table. Here are a few of our 2012 highlights; I can’t wait to share this week’s culinary delights!

Mom’s bangin’ Smoked Salmon and Clam Chowder from Clamming Leads to Clam Chowder

clam chowderclams

This video pretty much sums up the Fowler Family:

One of my all time favorites Chanterelle and Goat Cheese Tart  from What’d you do with all those Chanterelles?

mushroom tarttart

And finally, the kind of epic, kind of a fail “Shumai.” I’ve gotten a bit better, but here’s the original  Crab and Shrimp Shumai:

Crab and Shrimp Shumaidipping shumai

Filed Under: Life & Travel Tagged With: appetizers, British Columbia, Canada, cheese, cooking, crab, family vacation, fishing, food, mushrooms, outdoors, recipes, seafood, shrimp, soup, tofino

Tofino Time: Foraging for Chanterelles

August 14, 2012 by Eva Louise 3 Comments

There is nothing like chanterelle mushroom picking here in the Pacific Northwest. The thrill! the chase! associated with this gorgeous, gold-fluted fungus really cannot be replicated.  So today, equipped with plastic bags and scissors, the family and I set out to capture these curly-cupped creatures.  After picking at three locations, we returned with a hefty bounty of about one kilo. Now I just have to figure out what to do with all these mushrooms….

Filed Under: Life & Travel Tagged With: foraging, mushrooms, tofino, travel

Primary Sidebar

Don't miss a post!

Enter your email to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Welcome

I’m Eva Louise and welcome to Mind in the Butter! This is my food bloggy, showcasing my favorite dishes and recipes often inspired by and cooked for my loved ones. My goal with this blog is to eventually document every single dish I make so when I’m old and stale, I will be able to remember and celebrate memories from my favorite place…the kitchen!

Recent Posts: Mind in the Butter

Shulamit’s Unreal Lasagna with Ground Beef and Spinach

Best-ever 4 minute Instant Pot Rice

Best-ever 4 minute Instant Pot Rice

Seared Scallops and Fennel Risotto

Seared Scallops and Fennel Risotto

Palm Springs: the World’s Best Jetlag Cure

Palm Springs: the World’s Best Jetlag Cure

The Karmic Boomerang is real! New Year, new beginning for me

The Karmic Boomerang is real! New Year, new beginning for me

Copyright © 2023 · Foodie Pro & The Genesis Framework