EIGHT Years???

I cannot believe I started (and abandoned) this blog EIGHT years ago.  Wow has life changed since then! We are living in a brand new world (oh yeah, and there is that pesky pandemic to deal with.)

My husband and I are now officially empty nesters.  We unfortunately lost our oldest son Justin last year.  Our middle son Matt graduated from college and we are gaining a daughter, Emily, on December 5th.  Our youngest, Reed, is living on his own and attending USC (the REAL one, in South Carolina.)  We lost our fur baby Baxter but now have a new one, Jaxon.  He is a 10-month old beagle and it's like having a toddler in the house!

It took me awhile to get used to cooking for two.  If you ask my husband he'll say I still haven't gotten used to it!  Cooking is my passion and my therapy.  Give me a glass of wine and let me loose in the kitchen and I'm a happy girl.

I've decided to start this blog back up.  I am on my 1,000 quest to get healthy, so a lot of my recipes will be on the healthy side.  If you know me at all you know I can't abandon my pasta or sweets completely, so there will be some "good" stuff too!

If you stumble back across this blog, please leave me a comment.  Just say hi, let me know what's going on in your life, tell me to kick rocks, whatever!  Stay tuned....

Sunday Fall Roast Dinner

I returned to my blog to find this post still in draft status.  It's from 2012!  This roaster has been replaced by my new favorite appliance, the Instant Pot.  I still wanted to post for nostalgia's sake.


My favorite cooking appliance to use during the cooler months is my roaster/slow cooker.  It was a Christmas present from my mother-in-law years ago.  As you can see by the picture below, it gets plenty of use!  I use it to cook so many things:  roasts, soups, chili, stews, etc....



One of my favorite Sunday meals is a roast and veggies cooked in my roaster.  Such an easy meal to prepare, just a little prep work, throw everything in the roaster and you have a hearty meal that looks like you slaved for hours.

This past Sunday I made a pork loin with veggies.  I don't really have a recipe for this.  I browned the loin on both sides and put it in the roaster.  I preheat the roaster first on 375 degrees and then set it on 300 degrees.  I added water to cover the bottom third of the pork loin and then added worchestershire sauce, garlic salt and black pepper.  I also added a diced onion and some sliced carrots.  After a hour of cooking, I added sliced baby bella mushrooms.  You can add potatoes, celery, tomatoes or any other kind of veggies that you like.  My 4 pound roast took about 2 hours to cook, then I just set the roaster on low until ready to serve.  I served it with some corn muffins.  It was a great meal for a cool fall evening!

Simple Italian Supper

This meal was inspired by an episode of Anthony Bourdain's show No Reservations.  I am totally enthralled with anything having to do with Italy and in this particular episode he visited Rome.  This meal combines two  classic Roman dishes featured on this episode, Cacio e Pepe and Bucatini all'Amatriciana. 

Since the dishes are classical Italian, who better to get the recipes from than Mario Batali?

A cautionary note for the Cacio e Pepe:   unless you like very peppery food, only use half the amount of pepper.  I stopped at half and it was still pretty hot

Guanciale is traditionally used in the Bucatini all'Amatriciana.  Guanciale is an unsmoked Italian bacon.  The butcher shop recommended salt pork as a substitute and I think it worked well.  Pancetta would be a good substitute also.   I also couldn't find any bucatini so I used ziti.
I added a link of Italian sausage to round out the meal.


Linguini with Cacio e Pepe 
Kosher Salt
1/4 cup coarsely ground black pepper
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 pound dried linguini
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano plus extra for serving
1/4 cup grated pecorino romano

Bring 6 quarts water to a boil in a large pot and add 3 tablespoons of Kosher salt.

Meanwhile, set another large pot over medium heat, add the pepper, and toast, stirring, until fragrant, about 20 seconds. Add the oil and butter and stir occasionally until the butter has melted. Remove from the heat.

Drop the pasta into the boiling water and cook until just al dente. Drain, reserving about a 1/2 cup of the pasta water.

Add 1/4 cup of the reserved pasta water to the oil and butter mixture, then add the pasta and stir and toss over medium heat until the pasta is well coated. Stir in the cheeses (add a splash or two more of the reserved pasta water if necessary to loosen the sauce) and serve immediately with additional grated Parmigiano on the side.


Bucatini all'Amatriciana

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
12 ounces thinly-sliced guanciale
1 red onion, cut lengthwise in half and then into ¼-inch-thick half-moons
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1 ½ teaspoons hot red pepper flakes
2 cups basic tomato sauce
1 pound bucatini
Freshly grated pecorino romano
Bring 6 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot, and add 2 tablespoons salt.

Meanwhile, in a 10- to 12-inch sauté pan, combine the olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes; set over low heat and cook until the onion is softened and the guaniciale has rendered much of its fat, about 12 minutes.

Drain all but ¼ cup of the fat out of the pan. Add the tomato sauce, turn up the heat, and bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer and allow to bubble for 6 to 7 minutes.

While the sauce simmers, cook the bucatini in the boiling water for about a minute less than the package directions, until still very firm; drain.

Add the pasta to the simmering sauce and toss for about 1 minute to coat. Divide the pasta among four heated bowls and serve immediately, topped with freshly grated pecorino.

Basic Tomato Sauce

Makes 4 Cups
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 spanish onion, cut into ¼ inch dice
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
½ medium carrot, finely shredded
Two 28 ounce cans whole tomatoes
Salt

In a 3 quart saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook until soft and light golden brown, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the thyme and carrot and cook until the carrot is quite soft, about 5 minutes.  Add the tomatoes, with their juice, and bring to a boil, stirring often. Lower the heat and simmer until as thick as hot cereal, about 30 minutes. Season with salt. 

 

Easy Breezy Empanadas

Every so often I make an effort to use up items that have been sitting in my pantry or freezer.  I make myself do this by only buying perishables at the grocery store that week, so I have to use what I have on hand.  This meal was made completely with items I had on hand.  The idea came from both Paula Deen and Sandra Lee, they have both featured this idea on their TV shows.

I am not the neatest cook, so my empanadas don't look nearly as nice as Paula's or Sandra's, but they sure did taste good!  I made 16 and had no leftovers, so I'd say that's a pretty good endorsement from my guys!

Easy Breezy Empanadas

Ingredients:

2 refrigerated pie crusts
2 cans of chicken breast or three cups of shredded leftover chicken
1/2 block of cream cheese, softened
1/2 large can of enchilada sauce
1-1/2 cups shredded Monterey Jack and Cheddar mixed cheese plus extra to sprinkle on top

Mix together the chicken, cream cheese, sauce and shredded cheese.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Sprinkle some flour on a surface that you can roll the crusts out on (I just put wax paper on my counter).  Roll out one of the crusts and cut into circles using a 3" cookie cutter.  I am not a baker so I don't have a cookie cutter.  The can the chicken came is was 3" in diameter so I used that!  6 You should be able to get 6 circles out of the crust, and two more out of the scraps, for a total of 16 cirlces out of the two crusts.  Roll each circle out to about 4".  Put a spoonful of the mixture in the center of each circle.

Fold the top of the circle over to meet the bottom and press edges with a fork all the way around to seal.  The recipes I've seen say to brush the edges with water before sealing but I didn't find this to be necessary.

Put empanadas on a cookie sheet sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.  Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes until crust is browned.  Sprinkle with shredded cheese and put back in oven to melt the cheese. 
I served the empanadas with sour cream and picante sauce on the side for dipping and a side dish of black beans with a can of Rotel tomatoes (diced tomatoes with green chiles mixed in for you non-Southerners) mixed in.   Next time I make these I think I'll jazz them up with some peppers or maybe use picante sauce instead of enchilada sauce.

Turkey Take Two

Now that the Thanksgiving holidays are over with the big question is, what to do with all that leftover turkey?  A person can only eat so many turkey sandwiches!  My favorite turkey do-over is a dish my Mom used to make.  She would make a white sauce, add shredded turkey and mushrooms and serve it in puff pastry cups.  The puff pastry cups are hard to find though.  Pepperidge Farms makes a good one, but I couldn't find them this year.  So I moved on to my new favorite turkey leftover recipe, Turkey Chilaquiles Casserole. 

This dish was inspired by a Sandra Lee recipe, but it's my own take on it. 

Turkey Chilaquiles Casserole

Ingredients:

1 medium onion, chopped
2 tablespoons oil
1 small can chopped green chiles
1 can tomatoes with green chiles, such as Rotel
3 cups shredded turkey
3/4 large can of mild enchilada sauce
1 can black beans
4 cups crushed tortilla chips
1-1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook chopped onion in oil on medium heat until soft.  Add green chiles, tomatoes and turkey and mix together.  Add enchilada sauce until turkey is coated in sauce.  Heat through and remove from heat.

Spray a 9" X 13" dish with non-stick cooking spray and add black beans, spreading to coat the bottom of the dish.  Add turkey mixture.  Cover top with tortilla chips and then cheese.  Bake at 400 degrees 20-30 minutes, until cheese is melted and browned on top.

You can also add more veggies by adding a can of corn on top of the black beans.  This year I actually used a can of Bush's Grilling Beans Black Bean Fiesta because that's what I had on hand.  The heat in this dish is moderate, but if you are not a fan of heat at all, you can substitute regular diced tomatoes and tomato sauce. 

Crazy for Carbonara!

My all-time favorite dish to cook and eat is Carbonara.  If I was a professional chef, it would be my "signature" dish.  I learned to make Carbonara from my Mom, she made it often when I was growing up.  Carbonara is basically any pasta cooked with eggs, cheese and bacon.  The traditional Italian Carbonara is made with pancetta, which is still hard to find in my neck of the woods.  It wasn't available at all when I was growing up, so my Mom always made her Carbonara with regular bacon.  I have made it so many ways over the years I have lost count, with just about every strand pasta out there.  I've made healthy versions with egg substitute and turkey bacon which turned out pretty good.  I've added cream which turns it into more of an Alfredo type dish.  I still think the original Spaghetti Carbonara, a take on my Mom's recipe, is the best of the bunch.  The dish pictured and the recipe below is Linguine Carbonara, but you can substitute any pasta for the Linguine.  I made this version with Buitoni Fresh Pasta, a new obsession of mine.  I actually think the dried pasta is better for Carbonara than the fresh, the egg and cheese mixture sticks to the dried pasta better.  To me this is Italian comfort food at it's best, and always brings back warm memories of my Mom.

Linguine Carbonara

Ingredients:

9 Strips of Thick Cut Bacon
4 Cloves Garlic, minced
1/2 Large Onion, chopped
2 - 9 ounce packages of Buitoni Fresh Fettucine (or your favorite strand pasta)
5 Eggs
1-1/2 cups shredded Parmesan Cheese, plus additional for garnish
1 Teaspoon pepper

Cut bacon into small strips width wise (the French call these "lardons")  and cook on medium heat halfway to crisp.  Turn heat to low, add onion and garlic and saute' until bacon is crisp and onion and garlic are soft.  Cook pasta according to package directions.  While pasta is cooking, beat eggs in a medium size bowl, then add cheese and pepper.  Drain the pasta, reserving a cup of the pasta water.  Immediately put pasta back in pot, add bacon and egg mixture, stirring rapidly so eggs coat the pasta and don't cook into big clumps.  Add 1/2 to 1 cup of the reserved pasta water.  You don't want to make a sauce, just lighten the texture of the egg mixture a little. 

Serve with additional parmesan cheese on top, a nice chilled glass of wine and a good crusty bread.