What's Cooking: Pumpkin Pasta, Beef & Kale Stir Fry, Salmon Caesar & More

This is my last week of cooking without a stove as we’re moving into our house this afternoon! So from here on out, I get to cook in my new kitchen.

This past week I was still using just an Instant Pot and Toaster Oven as we already had to move our stove over for the propane to be tested for final inspection a few weeks ago. And then there was a dry section to fix and cabinet work and trim to be finished.

Radiatore with Pumpkin Sauce, Smoky Tofu, Rosemary Walnut Crispies and Salad

I have made so many versions of pumpkin pasta over the years from alfredo type sauces with long noodles to baked macaroni and cheese versions and lots of other variations in between.

For this one, I took inspiration from this Pinch of Yum recipe, but mainly for the rosemary walnut crispies. For the pasta itself, I didn’t have any broth defrosted or heavy cream, but I did have homemade roasted pumpkin puree and some homemade goat yogurt and milk. I sautéed the garlic in butter as the recipe calls for and then winged it with the sauce with what I had and it still turned out lovely. The pumpkin was so sweet that the tartness of the yogurt didn’t really come through (or rather, it balanced the sweetness of the pumpkin and wasn’t too sour!).

I also sliced up some of the fried black mushroom tofu cubes and tossed with avocado oil, coconut aminos, cornstarch, nutritional yeast, smoked paprika and garlic and onion powders. I also got this idea from Pinch of Yum’s air fryer tofu and have made it many times. It gives the tofu this crispy batter that is next level.

And then with an arugula and cucumber salad with pumpkin seeds and goat feta and Church Alley’s vinaigrette, not to mention the crispy rosemary walnuts for the pasta, it was such a delicious fall meal.

Black Pepper Beef & Kale Stir Fry with Delicata Squash

I took home Chuck Eye steaks, planning to slice up and thread onto skewers to broil, but then I realized that they would need plenty of space on the pan to actually get crispy and I was looking at multiple rounds of broiling in the toaster oven.

So I switched gears to stir fry. Chuck has more fat and a bit wider grain than sirloin tip, flat iron or round steak I often have used for stir fry. But it was shockingly tender!

I sliced it as thin as I could and marinated for a few hours in garlic and ginger and tons of black pepper. I didn’t salt the marinade because I think it can get more brown if its salted afterwards.

I had to stir fry it in a few batches in the Instant Pot, but it still went faster than broiling.

Then I sliced up some of the first dino kale of the season, added all the beef back with soy sauce and coconut aminos and a little rice vinegar and cooked until the kale was soft. We ate it with basmati rice, roasted delicata squash and chili crisp!

Salmon Caesar and Roasted Potatoes

As soon as the Cicada Calling farmers told me romaine lettuce was back, I was dreaming of a good caesar.

Even though we always have plenty of eggs and I have a fairly fool proof homemade mayo recipe, I prefer to use store bought (avocado oil) mayo for dressings like this so that I can make a larger batch and use the leftovers for a week or so. I find that using homemade mayo or emulsifying an egg yolk in a super traditional caesar dressing, well, the dressing tends to break when stored for a couple days in the fridge.

So anyway, the dressing was mayo, anchovy paste, nutritional yeast, a little dijon mustard, lemon juice and lots of black pepper. I was out of parmesan, but the nutritional yeast really did the job in its absence!

Then for the salad, I tore up the romaine leaves and also added some homemade sauerkraut. I’m sure it sounds like absolute blasphemy to some, but the sour punchy notes go perfectly with the dressing to me and you get the benefit of some extra fiber and prebiotics and probiotics. Instead of making croutons of breadcrumbs, I used the last of the rosemary walnut crispies from the pasta recipe and some fried jalapeño crisps from Trader Joe’s. Again, probably more caesar sacrilege, but it was really really tasty!

For the salmon I just seasoned with green goddess seasoning and black pepper and broiled in the oven for 12 ish minutes at 400 degrees after I had cooked around of roasted seasoned potatoes. It was a lovely combo.

And then for my pork pickup road trip to the butcher on Friday, I made a pretty bomb salmon caesar wrap with the leftovers!

Veggie-Loaded Jalapeno Popper Pasta

It’s rare for me to make pasta twice in one week, but desperate (kitchen) times call for desperate measures.

I took some of Faust Farms jalapeño peppers home, plus I had a few green bell, shishito and lunch box peppers to use up, so I was originally thinking of making a jalapeño popper dip.

But to make to make it more of a meal, I shifted gears to pasta with some canestri.

And then I also had two Japanese eggplant to use, broken summer squash and leeks from my mom’s garden, so I went with the jalapeño popper flavor them but with a lot of extra veggies.

So I roasted the eggplant and peppers in the toaster oven (adding a layer of shishitos towards the end and switched it to broil). Meanwhile I sautéed some sausage in the Instant Pot, then added leeks and then grated summer squash.

Then I took that mix out to boil the pasta and cut the stems off the peppers and pureed them with the eggplant in the food processor. For the creamy element, I used Southern Maids goat yogurt. It’s so thick that it can be used sort of like cream cheese. I was low on cheeses to add in so once again relied on nutritional yeast and between that and the goat yogurt, it came out perfectly creamy.

The final product was ugly delicious at it’s finest, key word delicious. We still had caesar dressing left, so I made another batch of romaine and kraut caesar, with some cucumbers and buttery breadcrumbs, too.