A few recipe ideas and heating instructions

Hi all,

Thanks to everyone who showed up to Wednesday's Pop-Up! We're working on some new systems to help streamline things in the future.

Here are, at long last, some cooking instructions and recipe suggestions for some of our items:

Chorizo Fresco

These pork sausages are packed with spices, sherry and garlic for optimal flavor. They are mildly spicy, but won't burn your palate. Enjoy fresh by Saturday, June 12th or freeze for up to a month.

The sausages are raw and need to be fully cooked. We recommend using a cast-iron pan or a grill. Cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes per side, until brown on the outside and cooked through on the inside.

Chorizo is delicious for breakfast or dinner with eggs and fried potatoes (and Fig & Miel's Cuban Black Beans!). You can also crumble the raw sausage onto pizza as a topping, or fry it up and add it into the rigatoni pasta with some onions, garlic and English peas for a simple meal.

Ingredients: Niman Ranch pork, olive oil, sherry, salt, paprika, chilies, cumin, fennel seed, coriander, clove, garlic.

Fresh Bronze-Cut Rigatoni Pasta

This rigatoni is extruded through traditional bronze plates, which leave the pasta with micro-grooves that encourage sauce to cling to the noodle.

Keep refrigerated. Though the pasta is fresh, it can be dried for a few days in the refrigerator and then stored in the cupboard. If you’d like to try that, then spread the pasta out on a cookie sheet, let it dry out in the fridge until it’s hard, and bag it up and store in a dry, cool spot.

The rigatoni can be cooked just like any other dry noodle you’ve made before: simply boil 2 gallons of water per pound of pasta you plan to cook, heavily salt it until it tastes like ocean water, then add the pasta. Stir from time to time, and cook until al dente, which depending on the freshness of the pasta can take anywhere from 3-10 minutes.

Serving suggestions:

Durum pasta always pairs well with tomato based sauces, so anything from marinara to puttanesca sauce would be perfect.

At this time of year, the rigatoni would be perfect with some asparagus, parmesan and black pepper. Simply snap and peel your asparagus, then slice it into 1/4-inch slices on the diagonal.

Get the rigatoni going as suggested above in salted, boiling water. In the meantime, heat a large sauté pan and add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 2 cloves of chopped garlic. When you can smell the garlic, add and reduce 1/2 cup of cream until thick. When the pasta is almost fully cooked, add the asparagus into the pasta water for about 1 minute.

Drain the pasta and asparagus when they are cooked and add to the reduced cream. Add some grated parmesan cheese, freshly ground black pepper, 2 tablespoons of butter, and some chopped mint. Toss and serve immediately.

Ingredients: Extra fancy organic durum flour, water, extra virgin olive oil.

Sweet Corn Soup

Simply bring the soup to a boil on the stove! You can thin it out with a little water if you like. Serve with a spoonful of the cilantro-jalapeño garnish.

Enjoy the soup fresh by Saturday, June 12th or freeze for up to a month.

Ingredients: Organic sweet corn, water, organic onions, butter, salt. Garnish: Cilantro, jalapeño, extra virgin olive oil, salt.

Pizza Dough

Take the dough out of the refrigerator an hour before you want to use it. Preheat your oven with a pizza stone to 450 degrees. Generously sprinkle a flat pan or pizza peel with semolina and set aside. You will be assembling the pizza on this.

Generously flour a work surface and dust the top of the dough ball with flour. To form the pizza you can either roll it briefly with a rolling pin, or stretch it by hand, or a combination of both. I recommend by hand as this will teach you how to handle the dough. Begin by dimpling the dough with your fingertips, leaving about an inch at the edge for the crust. Pick up the dough and using your fists, start from the middle and gently stretch the dough, working outward, to an even thinness. Don’t worry about the shape, it will look beautiful when you take it out of the oven. Transfer to your semolina sprinkled pan. While you are assembling the pizza, check a few times that the dough isn’t sticking to the pan by gently wiggling it. The pizza dough should slide readily on the semolina. If you have a sticky spot, just lift the dough a bit and toss some more semolina under the sticky spot.

A good base for the bottom of the pizza is a mixture of finely minced garlic in some good olive oil slathered on. Top your pizza with whatever makes you happy, but resist “loading” the pizza, a light touch with the toppings is best.

Slide your pie onto the preheated stone in the oven and bake, rotating for even brownness until desired doneness. You can use a pizza peel or metal spatula to lift the pie a bit and check the color of the bottom to help guide you. This should take about 15-20 minutes. However, pay more attention to how the pie looks while it’s baking, rather than the time. All ovens are different and baking times are merely guidelines in many cases, nothing more.

Slide finished pizza onto a cutting board, brush the crust with olive oil, slice it up and get to it!

Happy pizza making!

(This dough freezes beautifully. Just take it out of the freezer the night before and let it defrost in the refrigerator overnight. Take it out of the refrigerator about an hour before you want to make your pizza. It will handle and stretch much better when the chill is off of it.)