More Fun Playing with Ohio City Pasta and Cleveland's West Side Market

Among the many treasures at Cleveland's storied West Side Market is Stand E-3: Ohio City Pasta. In April 2010, I won a random-draw contest OCP ran on its Facebook page, and became entitled to one pound of pasta and one sauce, butter or oil, each month for a year. More than being a tasty prize - the opportunity got us back into the habit of visiting the West Side Market and it was a habit we'd forgotten.

As I documented in the first two blog installments about my luscious prize (here and here), some things at  the WSM change, and others stay the same year after year - it is worth a bit of your time to venture there and play with the food and related offerings. Following are photos from the four months that followed those first two posts, together with some of the meals to which the OCP pastas and toppings contributed.  The narrative resumes with June 2010, and another peek into the OCP case at the Market:

Our sauce/oil/butter pick for June:

Orange Basil Spaghetti

Garlic Chive Linguine

Whole Hawaiian Snapper (Kate's Fish)

 Stuffed with Herbs and Grilled

OCP Orange-Basil Pasta and Garden Green Beans with Roasted Shallot Red Wine Butter, Grilled Hawaiian Snapper

We basically rinsed and repeated for the next dinner, using the linguine pictured above.

July 2010:

OCP Wheat Somen

Cooked

Whole wheat somen under Duck Curry made with Roasted Makinajian Farms duck (LI/NY), garden corn and tomatoes

I believe that we froze the second package of OCP from our July prize because we were going out of town. That pasta (and my apologies that I don't have the variety), appeared in a melange of garden vegetables and cheese a few weeks later:





We didn't get back to OCP until the very last weekend in August. We had just returned from visiting family in NY, and had brought back some lovely ingredients to complement the fresh pasta and our burgeoning garden.

Chicken-Apple Sausage (CZUCHRAJ meats, WSM)

Ohio City Pasta, Garden Tomato, CZUCHRAJ meats chicken sausage, Richter's Orchard (LI) peaches (latter 2 on the grill)

Freshly made mozzarella (AS Pork Stores, 530A Larkfield Road, E. Northport 11731, 631-266-1540)

OCP, Garden Tomato, Garden Italian Beans, Fresh Mozzarella, Garden Basil, EVOO

September is the last month to be covered in this post (I'll try to take the second six months of the prize in two three-month intervals; we'll see how that goes). 

Pumpkin-Saffron Pasta

Pumpkin-Saffron Pasta with Lobster Cream Sauce, Garden Red Onion, Hot Pepper and Italian Green Beans

Whole Wheat-Fennel Pasta

Cooked

Whole Wheat Fennel Pasta with Lobster Cream Sauce

As of this point in the timeline, we had obtained but not yet sampled a roasted tomato-basil oil, and a Cajun Cream Sauce, which lived in our freezer until a couple of weeks ago. More on those items later. The lobster cream sauce and shallot butter were both lovely. Don't expect a lot of lobster pieces (and at the modest price point it sells for, quite reasonable), but the sauce sings with delicate lobster flavor.

We had fun playing with every variety of OCP pasta that we've tasted, as well as the toppings. Hope you've enjoyed reading about them - you can get them at the WSM and at most Heinen's Supermarkets in the Cleveland Area, as well as at the  Shaker Square and Crocker Park outlets of the North Union Farmer's Markets, as well as at Buehlers Grocery Stores (Store Locations) and Whole Foods (Store Locations).

In the next installment - something new for OCP and for us - freshly made extruded pastas - can you say awesome Mac N Cheese? I can!