Blog Archives
Baked Pasta
We’ve been eating sammiches and other like things for a while so I thought yesterday, early, that I would make a real meal. It was going to have to be easy because I knew I would be tired. Boy Howdy! I had my truck guy drop two loads off as close to where I needed the rock as he could get. That, unfortunately, was not all that close. I have a little trail through the woods that I like to cruise in my quad, a scenic route and nice to give the pups some exercise. It crosses some gullies that were becoming difficult to cross with the quad, and getting the mower over them was right out. Solution-drop in a couple of culverts. Alas, they just didn’t handle the deluge we had last month. Something like 5″ in one particular nght, and over 2 feet total for the month. Washed away much of the rock. Hell, one spot it washed away the culvert as well, had to drag it back from downstream a ways. Anyway…
I got back in, tired and sweaty. Put the rigatoni on to boil and fried some Italian sausage with a nice Vidalia onion. Tossed in 2 pints of sauce from last years tomato harvest, and went out to the container farm on the patio and plucked some fresh basil, oregano, and thyme.
I can assure you that the dish turned out great! Used plenty of mozzarella and provolone cheese, and went with a nice side of garlic bread. Yum!
He’s back! Sorry-no bells on.
Sorry it’s been so long since I posted. Been having some knee troubles that are depressing me, and we are in the midst of trying to get some concrete poured. The weather isn’t being very cooperative-it looks like we will get a good soaking today, and it may well turn into snow later. We had a spell of warm spring weather last week that had me out tilling and expanding the garden plot and cruising the garden centers looking for sprouts and seeds.
That all seems like last year now.
Good day to stuff some shells with cheese.
Enjoy!
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Brussels Sprouts and Pasta
I wanted to use these sprouts up before they dried out on me. Roasted in the balsamic vinegar/oil recipe like the cauliflower yesterday would have been fine. I wanted to do something a bit different and looked at several recipes including a few that called for heavy cream. I had the carton of whipping cream out and ready but I changed my mind.
Instead of a cream sauce I went with a chicken stock based sauce with plenty of lemon juice and zest. The reason I backed away from the cream was the addition of the diced tasso. I just couldn’t quite picture how it was going to work so I chickened out. Not that I could quite figure how the lemon sauce was going to act with the tasso, either.
Anyway, I halved the sprouts and added them to a pan with red onions and several sliced cloves of garlic. Added some olive oil and butter and cooked them with salt and pepper over medium heat while the pasta boiled. I zested a lemon and squeezed the juice into the pan, added some red pepper flakes. I added a cup and a half of chicken stock with some cornstarch mixed into it. That soon thickened into a pretty decent sauce that hinted at being something you could put on a bread pudding. LOL! When the pasta was done I dumped it on top of everything in the pan and hollered in Mrs J for dinner.
She sat there looking at her plate and then said “oh, those are sprouts, I thought they were olives”. Well now, there was a good idea! Some cracked green olives and some grated parmesan worked just fine in there.
Enjoy!
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Braciole-aka Beef Rolls in Tomato Sauce
Last Thursday Night’s Menu posting brought a discussion of “gravy”-whether tomato sauces can or should be called that rather than just “sauce”. I’ve no firm opinion one way or the other on the proprieties but that’s neither here not there for what this post is about. One of the commenters, Ailuridae, mentioned braciole. That was a new one on me, but it looked pretty good. I decided then and there to try it myself. There are a ton of recipes out there (just Google “beef rolls”) and they are all a bit different although they often share the same ingredients. I ended up with a recipe that could well be considered a “generic” braciole.
Mrs J was kind enough to make a run to the store after beef and the prosciutto I needed. We had almonds (I deemed them a good enough substitute for pine nuts) and the rest of the ingredients-raisins, garlic, romano cheese, a bit of mozzarella, a can of tomatoes, the red wine and an onion. The pictures will tell the story:
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Quick Dinner
It was one of those days. When everything is stressful I need to cook. And I love to take what I have on hand and see what I can make of it. Creative cooking and quiet time in the kitchen busts stress and improves my outlook.
Tonight I had 4 tomatoes that were past eating in a salad or such and needed to be cooked soon. Some leftover fresh mozzarella from a recipe last week and some brown rice pasta. I knew the mozzarella was going to be my star here, so I whipped up a quick sauce with some ground beef and my fresh tomatoes, very light with lots of oregano balanced with a bit of basil and garlic. When you have fresh tomatoes, you don’t really need to dress a sauce up with much. I spread the cooked pasta in an oiled baking dish, topped with the sauce and covered it all generously with mozzarella and topped with grated Parmesan.
Baked it at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes, until the cheese was browned and bubbly. Served with carrots for a quick dinner.
Luckily there is leftover strawberry bread for dessert, so I didn’t have to give that much thought
Looks like JeffW has something delicious cooking in his kitchen. He’s up next, stay tuned….
Sesame Shrimp Linguine
This dish is like a bolt out of the blue! Where have you been all my life?!? I was puttering about in an online chat when a fellow mentioned he had had shrimp pasta for dinner yesterday. That sounded pretty easy so I thought “me too” and went to the cupboard to sort through the pasta we had on hand. I reached down a bag I had bought a few weeks ago. I’ve had some pasta from the same outfit before-I think it was mushroom flavored but the style escapes me. I was reading the back and looked at a recipe they had on there and it struck me that it sounded pretty good, and I had all the stuff I needed, mostly.
I set to work assembling the sauce: Some olive oil, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, a bit of Splenda in lieu of cane sugar, some sesame oil, and some ginger went into a bowl. Not content with those I crushed some Szechuan peppercorns, and minced several cloves of garlic, and drizzled in several tablespoons of chili oil. I decided to make the sauce double as a marinade so in went the peeled shrimp.
I opted not to put in the broccoli the recipe called for. It would have worked well. After eating the dish I had several other ingredient ideas that will be in the next batch of this I make.
Prep was fast and easy. I fired a large skillet and cooked the shrimp in the sauce, took just a few minutes while the pasta was boiling next burner over. Drained, the pasta went right atop the shrimp along with a good handful of red bell pepper slices. This stuff was great! Can’t wait for the next batch with the improvements I have in mind!
Enjoy!
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Thursday Night Menu: What’s in Your Garden Edition
From JeffreyW's garden
Tonight is about taking advantage of what is plentiful in your garden or local farm stand. So take the listed vegetables as a guideline only and use whatever makes you happy. My tomatoes are slowly ripening, about one every other day. This is better than green everyday, so I am grateful for whatever I can harvest. There is already a chill in the air- though the holiday weekend is predicted to be in the 90’s (hurray!) – but that chill means I’ll start looking at those fall menus. Let me know if you have any fall menu requests.
On the board tonight:
- Pasta w/ Marinated Vegetables
- Tomato & Olive Oil Bruscetta
- Grapes
Pasta w/Marinated Vegetables
- 10 oz Rotini pasta
- 1 tray ice cubes
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 small eggplant, peeled & chopped
- 4 mushrooms, sliced
- 2 zucchini, sliced
- 10 to 12 cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
- 6 oz jar marinated artichoke hearts
- 1 red onion, sliced in rings
- 2 oz black olives
- 2 oz grated parmesan
Dressing:
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
- 2 oz fresh basil, minced
- 1 tsp minced oregano leaves
- 1 to 2 tsp crushed garlic
- Salt & pepper to taste
Saucepan, skillet, bowl, serving bowl
Mix together dressing and refrigerate. In saucepan, cook pasta according to package directions, drain, rinse in cold water and toss with ice cubes. Set aside and let cubes melt. While pasta is cooking, in skillet, heat oil and sauté eggplant, mushrooms and zucchini until tender. Remove and cool in refrigerator while preparing remaining vegetables. In bowl, toss all vegetables with dressing. Remove any un-melted ice cubes from pasta, and toss with vegetables, refrigerate 10 minutes. Add cheese.
Tomato & Olive Oil Bruscetta
- 1 loaf Italian bread, sliced in half lengthwise
- 2 tbsp olive oil (more if needed)
- 2 tsp crushed garlic
- 4 basil leaves, chopped
- 2 Roma tomatoes, sliced
- 3 green onions, chopped
baking sheet and bowl
Gently toss 1 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tsp crushed garlic, basil, tomatoes and green onions and set aside. Mix togethere 1 tbsp oil and 1 tsp garlic. Spread on sliced sides of bread. Broil bread until golden brown on top (watch carefully). Layer tomato mixture on each half of the bread and then slice each half into quarters or eighths.
Shopping List:
- 10 oz Rotini pasta
- 1 small eggplant
- 4 mushrooms
- 2 zucchini
- 10 to 12 cherry or grape tomatoes
- 6 oz jar marinated artichoke hearts
- 1 red onion
- 1 loaf Italian bread
- Large bunch of basil
- Small bunch oregano
- 2 Roma tomatoes
- 3 green onions
- Grapes or any in season fruit
Also: crushed garlic, olive oil, red wine vinegar,
More Tomato Goodness
I dried two baking sheets worth of tomatoes today, and the romas that were excess I boiled down for a sauce. I packed the dried romas away in a jar with olive oil and garlic and was dithering over the dried regular tomatoes. By this time the sauce on the stove was getting very thick, and there wasn’t enough to jar. Oh well. Decided to just gobble everything down tonight for dinner.
Sauted some Italian sausage, sliced garlic, and some onions. I chopped up the dried tomatoes and tossed them in the pan, too. Wasn’t too sure how to handle them but this seemed to work. Sliced up some mushrooms and added those, and some fresh basil leaves from the container herb garden. More onions. This was starting to look good. Dumped in the tomato sauce I had reduced to nearly a tomato paste. Reduced the heat and covered that while the pasta finished. The tomato sauce was looking too thick so I added some white wine. Dumped the pasta atop it all when it was drained.
Plated the pasta and sprinkled some chopped basil over it, grated some parmesan and romano, and served it with some garlic bread. Yummy
Enjoy!
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TaMara
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