6-19-2011: Pasta with Turnips and Sage

I made Pasta with Turnips and Sage from a recent Bittman column in the New York Times (“The Pasta Primavera Remix”  5-15-2011).  I used up my box of Rosette Pasta that I recently bought at The Spice Merchant.  The pasta was “produced” by Francis Ford Coppola for his line of  Mammarella” foods.  I like to try new pasta shapes when I come across them and these were certainly a shape I haven’t tried before.  They were shaped like roses and they lent a nice look to the dish.  The pasta dish itself was a bit bland looking: pasta and turnips equals a lot of white-on-white; the sage gave the dish a bit of color, but it was still very neutral.  It was tasty enough, just not too visually appealing.  I made a simple salad of lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers to go with the meal and we put ranch dressing on top of it.  I also tried to make a dessert, but my oven has just gone out and it didn’t turn out as planned.  I wanted to make an orange an cranberry crisp to use up some of the fruit I have on hand, but my oven wouldn’t get hot enough.  At one point, it said it was working fine, but even though the sensor said it was 375 degrees in there, it wasn’t hotter than maybe 150.  And turning it up didn’t help.  After an hour, I couldn’t quite take out my pyrex baking dish with my hands alone, but I almost could and the fruit wasn’t even warm (the cranberries had been frozen and they were defrosted, but not hot).  I put everything into a pan on the stove and cooked until warm, then I put it back in the pan and re-topped it with the extra topping I still had left over (I’d thrown it in the freezer for another crisp in the future).  I tried to brown it under the broiler, like a gratin, but it didn’t quite work right and the topping got a bit too dark (“burnt” isn’t quite right).  It was still edible, but it wasn’t what it should have been.  I’ll have to get the oven fixed soon.