two fifteen-minute meals

Well, sort of. You have to prep a little, for the salad. What I try to do is gather up the vegetables I want to roast, and roast them all at once on Sunday. This week I roasted beets, carrots, shallots, and a butternut squash not knowing what I was going to do with any of them. But they came in handy tonight when I got home from work at 8:30 and was starving. By 8:45 I was eating like a Parisian (salad look familiar, Gyps?) I made a quick dressing of raw shallots, minced and macerated in white wine vinegar. I let that sit while I sliced two fingerling "banana" potatoes and cooked them in duck fat until they were crisp (peanut or other vegetable oil will work too) and sprinkled them with lots of salt. Then I fried an egg in the hot pan. I added dijon mustard, tarragon, olive oil, salt, and pepper to the shallot/vinegar mixture, tossed some mix greens in that and then added goat cheese. I threw beats, carrots, the potatoes and egg on top and, voilà!, a meal.



For the pasta, put a big pot of water on to boil. Then cut up a slice of bacon or pancetta and cook it. While it's cooking, cut a shallot. Remove the bacon pieces and cook the shallots in the grease, adding a bit of olive oil, if needed. Meanwhile, slice up some brussel sprouts (shredding them like cabbage) and add them to the sallots. Add salt and pepper and the pasta, when it is done. Mix in the bacon and grate some parmesan on the top. Yum. This pasta shape is called trofie, by the way.