The Odd Fork

They say it's an exaggeration to eat pasta with bread. But if you like to do that, don't feel anymore strange or odd because the Odd Fork presents today this recipe especially for you!
Fresh ravioli here is served with a rich -vegetarian however- milky sauce with whole grain bread, walnuts and parmesan cheese.
The key ingredient though, is fresh sage and it shouldn't be omitted!

If you like to try it, use the following:

- a small packet of fresh ravioli (about 250 grams)
- a slice of whole grain bread
- a cup of milk (fresh milk or evaporated, anything you like)
- a tbsp of butter
- 3 to 4 fresh sage leaves
- 1/3 cup ground walnuts
- salt, pepper, ground nutmeg
- ground parmesan cheese to serve

Start by cutting off the bread crust, as you 're going to need only the breadcrumbs for the recipe. Grind the soft breadcrumbs with your fingers and soak them in milk.
Boil the ravioli (the Odd Fork used spinach and ricotta filled ravioli, but feel free to choose your favorite) and strain. Fresh ravioli take only a couple of minutes to cook.

Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat and add the sage leaves. After a while, the kitchen will be filled with a lovely fragrance so add the ravioli and mix, to give it this nice sage butter flavor. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a medium pot, at medium-low temperature bring milk with soaked breadcrumbs to a boil, add the walnuts (you don't want walnuts to be ground in powder, the texture should be a little bit chunky), salt, pepper and a little ground nutmeg and by stirring frequently to prevent mixture from sticking to the pot or from getting a crust, let it thicken.
Add sage buttered ravioli to the pot stirring softly with a wooden spatula, until mixture thickens more.
Remove from heat, sprinkle with parmesan cheese and serve immediately.

Sticking to pasta recipes, the Odd Fork pinches pasta like there's no tomorrow! However, the Odd's Fork pasta recipes may be odd but they 're tasty and healthy as well!

There was half a packet of whole wheat penne pasta left from the previous post's recipe, so when the Odd Fork also discovered in its kitchen a can of smoked tuna in olive oil, it came up with the idea for the following pasta dish.

It boiled the pasta in salted water adding also some broccoli cut in small pieces. It drained, keeping aside some of the water.
It opened the can of tuna, drained it from the oil and put the tuna oil in a clean pot. It heated the oil and added a clove of garlic finely chopped and some lemon peel strips (only the yellow part of the lemon peel), mixing only for a few seconds.
The Odd Fork just wanted to give the tuna oil some extra flavor and taste, not to fry the lemon and garlic. Quickly it added in the pot the juice of half a lemon, the boiled pasta and the broccoli, the tuna, fresh oregano from its garden, salt and pepper.
It mixed all the above over medium heat (the water from the boiling pasta can be added to this point if necessary -the Odd Fork didn't use this water after all) and served the pasta immediately hot, adding some extra fresh lemon zest.

Pasta recipes are to be continued of course, all forks stay tuned!

The Odd Fork continues with joy its tribute to pasta and today it will pinch a light, summer pasta salad. In the country where the fork is located, bread, grapes and cheese is a common quick snack, especially in the summer.
So, the Odd Fork came up the idea of making a salad using penne pasta instead of bread. It preferred to use wholewheat pasta since as it believes, it is a healthier option and the taste is still great.

It boiled the pasta, strained and washed it with cold water. The Odd Fork washes the boiled pasta with cold water only when it is going to become a cold pasta salad. For a warm pasta dish, rinsing the boiled pasta with cold water is not suggested.
It continued by mixing the penne pasta with grape seeds, small pieces of Greek kasseri cheese and fresh chopped basil. For a vegan option, the Odd Fork thought to use walnuts instead of cheese.

For the salad dressing, it prepared a vinaigrette whisking in a bowl olive oil, lemon juice and lemon zest, ground fresh ginger and some honey. It mixed the salad with the vinaigrette (salt and pepper are missing on purpose here, but you can add if you want to) and let it covered in the refrigerator for about an hour. This way the dressing marinates the salad and the taste completes.
The Odd Fork pinched the above fruity, aromatic pasta salad and was satisfied enough to share the recipe!

The Odd Fork when not busy pinching strange, tasty foods, likes to dive in beer!
Beer is its favorite superdrink and after a good beer-bath, the Odd Fork is always ready to cook nice, unusual dishes!
When the Odd Fork visits its favorite island, the amazing Corfu, washes itself in the lovely local Corfu Beer! And today, using the ultimate summer beer Corfu Real Ale Special, is making the following light beer pasta!

If you also want to taste this easy and totally delicious beer pasta, just saute in one tbsp of olive oil 2 cloves of garlic finely chopped, add two small zucchinis cut in thin strips and some chopped nouboulo (a lovely Corfiot local product made from pork meat which tastes like prosciutto -see it here).
Add pepper, a little turmeric, some fresh chopped basil and 2 - 3 leaves of apple geranium or apple pelargonium (arbaroriza in Greek; an aromatic herb which is widely used in the Greek Ionian islands).
Add a glass of Corfu Real Ale Special Beer and let it simmer for 5 - 10 minutes until the zucchinis are tender. Then increase the heat, remove the lid and let the sauce reduce.

Meanwhile, boil half a packet of spaghetti, strain and transfer back in the pot with the beer sauce and about 1/3 cup of shredded soft yellow cheese, like Greek graviera cheese (if you can find Corfiot graviera cheese is even better!)
Stir over medium heat until cheese melts and serve immediately with BEER!

The Odd Fork celebrates its online success, introducing a theme.
The theme of the blog for a series of posts, is going to be pasta. Pasta is tasty, found everywhere to buy at a low cost, easy to cook and perhaps the most versatile dish. That explains why pasta lovers are countless and the reason that pasta recipes come in thousands.
A simple and perhaps not so strange recipe is this one.

When the Odd Fork wants urgently to pinch something, it makes the following spaghetti dish using leftovers and whatever else is in the fridge.
If you want to make it too, start cooking the spaghetti and while pasta is boiling, heat in another smaller saucepan some evaporated milk. Add a small piece of feta cheese rubbing it with your fingers and stirring with a wooden spatula so that it can melt and dissolve in the milk. Also add some Kalamata olives and dried oregano, they match perfectly with feta cheese!

Strain the spaghetti and transfer back in the pot with the feta cheese sauce, stirring for some minutes so that all the ingredients mix well together and the sauce thickens.
Serve the spaghetti warm! Wasn't that easy?

Variations: Use basil instead of oregano, sun-dried tomatoes instead / or with the olives, roasted red pepper in small pieces, capers, etc ... It is also very tasty with wholemeal pasta.
All you need is fantasy and a big appetite!

The Odd Fork has an often sweet tooth, so it pinches cookies!
Cookies which are easy to make and at the same time full of good, nutritious stuff. Another good thing is that they come in various flavors!

For this unusual -but very aromatic chocolate option, the Odd Fork used:

- a jar of good quality peanut butter, made of 100% peanuts (220 grams)
- 100 grams milk chocolate with stevia, melted
- 1/3 cup of coconut sugar
- 2 sticks or 2 teaspoons instant espresso powder
- 1 teaspoon of pure almond extract
- millet flakes
- some shredded coconut

The Odd Fork emptied out the peanut butter into a bowl and mixing well, it added the melted chocolate, coconut sugar, espresso powder, almond extract and millet flakes (about 2/3 cup or some more, until a dough was formed).
Millet flakes are gluten free, cheap to buy and they have a pleasant, mild taste, but feel free to use oat flakes, buckwheat flakes or anything you like.
Finally, the Odd Fork added some shredded coconut (found also that very moment in the kitchen shelf, so why not?).
It dropped the cookie dough by rounded tablespoonfuls about 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet and baked in a preheated oven at 180°C for about 10 - 15 minutes.

It let cookies cool for 20 - 30 minutes, carefully removed from cookie sheet and stored them in a cookie jar.
They turned out lovely, great with morning coffee or milk, or just practically any time!