Welcome! This is “Staying In,” a Sunday newsletter with recipe ideas for your week ahead. Every other Thursday I also publish a “Going Out” edition where I review a restaurant, bar, or activity here in Portland. Know someone who might like Riley’s Recs? Get your share link here! And don’t forget to check out pdxrecs.com for even more recommendations and follow RR on Instagram at @rileysrecs. Enjoy!
If you’re looking for Valentine’s Day plans, consider making ravioli. Whenever I want to celebrate a special occasion but don’t want a fixed price meal in a crowded restaurant, ravioli is the answer. Opening a bottle of wine and settling in for a long night of pasta making can be verryyy romanticccc.
But despite its virtues, fresh-made pasta is admittedly not that easy. I’ve had full-blown meltdowns following a failed dough. So to avoid ruining the occasion, I only recommend making homemade ravioli on Valentine’s Day to seasoned cooks. That is, unless you’re very brave and looking for a relationship stress-test to spice things up. In that case, here’s a solid pasta maker you can buy ahead of time.
Please remember that wine glasses are not suitable ravioli cutters. Learn from dumb dumb Scottie Scheffler’s mistake and avoid a trip to the hospital by using a knife or a ravioli stamp like this one.
If I’ve sufficiently talked you out of pasta making and you’d rather go out, then I recommend Someday, No Saint, or Luce. Salt and Straw is also doing a buy one, get one offer on Valentine’s Day that you can sign up for here.
Whatever your plans are, I hope your week is full of good food.
✨ Inspo ingredients: butternut squash ✨
DINNERS
Butternut Squash Soup with Browned Butter
Butternut Squash Ricotta Ravioli | Kale Salad
Spice-Rubbed Steak with Chimichurri | Smashed Potatoes
Thai Green Curry Noodle Soup
DESSERT
Perfect Tangy Chocolate Tart
DRINK
Negroni Sour
Notes:
The Negroni Sour is from Cooking with Rel, my favorite Portland food/recipe influencer.
I’ll explain this more below, but you can use leftover puree from the butternut squash soup as the ravioli filling.
Butternut Squash Soup with Browned Butter
Thomas Keller | New York Times (Gifted Link)
This soup is a labor of love and, therefore, on theme. It takes two hours to make, but if I tell you that one of those hours is just the butternut squash roasting in the oven will you still make it? I hope so because this is one of my all-time favorite soups. Its rich flavor comes from a base of sage, leek, carrot, and onion, and a broth enriched by a bouquet of thyme, parsley, and bay leaf.
The recipe calls for straining the soup after you puree it. But don’t toss those strained scraps! One clever NYT reader pointed out that the strained squash makes an excellent ravioli filling. Since reading that comment, I’ve made butternut squash-filled ravioli several times and can vouch that it’s incredible. So, if you’re making pasta for V-Day, please remember to store and refrigerate whatever you strain!
Butternut Squash Ricotta Ravioli
Niki Achitoff-Gray | Serious Eats
This is a reliable recipe for ravioli. But to make it even better, I modify by mixing about a third of a cup of the leftover butternut squash puree from the soup into the ricotta. You’ll end up with a higher volume of ricotta filling, but whatever you don’t use for ravioli can be frozen and used again in the future. It will be a little liquidy from having been frozen, but you can just strain that out.
Spice-Rubbed Steak with Chimichurri
Catherine Smart | Smart Cooks
If fresh-made pasta feels like too much of a chore for Valentine’s Day, you can’t go wrong with steak. Theoretically, steak is easy to make. But there’s so many ways to go wrong: overcooking it, not getting the right sear, under seasoning, etc. It’s understandable why steak might be intimidating to home cooks (including me). I found Catherine Smart’s quick guide to steak to be a helpful tool. Serve this skirt steak with chimichurri, smashed potatoes, and a Negroni Sour, and you can’t go wrong for Valentine’s.
Smashed Potatoes
Alison Roman | New York Times (Gifted Link)
Smashed potatoes are a revelation. They’re crispy and salty and addictive. They’re also not that hard to make. You’ll essentially boil small yellow potatoes until they’re “al dente,” smash with the bottom of a cup (again, not wine glass), and then fry in a cast iron with oil. Alison Roman’s recipe also calls for frying up some onions alongside the potatoes, but I’ve found that the onions don’t get an even fry and some end up burnt. So I typically omit and just make the potatoes.
Thai Green Curry Noodle Soup
Hetty Lui McKinnon | ABC News
This rich green soup has everything you need in one bowl: noodles, vegetables, and aromatics. I love soups with green broths and am curious to see how this version of a curry works out. The recipe calls for lemongrass, which you should be able to find at Safeway or Fred Meyer, but H Mart is your best bet. Get a drink before you do your grocery shopping at Bar Loon across the street and make it a full event.
Perfect Tangy Chocolate Tart
Alison Roman | Sweet Enough
This is billed as the chocolate tart for chocolate skeptics. It uses a mix of bittersweet and milk chocolate, meaning it won’t end up being as rich and intense as most chocolate desserts. I’m definitely someone who prefers fruit, vanilla, and citrus over chocolate, so I’m eager to see how this turns out. I’ve liked everything I’ve made from Alison Roman’s newest cookbook, Sweet Enough, so I have high hopes. Tarts, by the way, are an easy way to get into baking since they don’t require rolling out or shaping dough. Just press the crust mixture into a tart pan and bake.
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