Pasta with cheese+pepper, pea salad

I’m a sucker for minimalist recipes (and Mark Bittman’s Minimalist column), and I couldn’t pass up a recipe that emphasized good, al dente pasta.  So, I loaded up on some 100% durum wheat semolina spaghetti, and prepared to make Smitten Kitchen’s version of Mario Batali’s spaghetti with cheese and black pepper recipe.  dsd suggested I also make a salad, and I was delighted—I love side salads.  I picked a pea salad with radishes, to use up some greenmarket radishes.

Ahh, salad

After all those Indian leftovers, we were feeling like a light, refreshing dinner.  With the last of the carrots and celery as well as everything-bagel-croutons and leftover goat cheese we managed to work in a few more New Year’s leftovers as well.

Roasted beets, goat cheese, horseradish, caviar

If you roast some beets ahead of time, this is a simple and very good appetizer.  We roasted medium-small beets in the oven, at 400 °F for 90–120 minutes, wrapped in aluminum foil.  We removed them and sliced them, and served roasted beet slices on bread, either with farmers’ market goat cheese, or with a small dollop of creamy horseradish; both were great pairings.  We also had caviar, so we put caviar (salmon roe) on buttered bread, Russian-style.  The butter balances salmon roe nicely.  Next time, we’ll see if we can use Russian black bread!