Tortellini Salad

Lucky me, I got the "pasta salad" assignment for two different get-togethers a week apart, and some of the same people will be at both events! This means I can't just make two big batches of my delicious Party Pasta Salad - I need to find a new pasta salad and hope to impress with it!

I got it in my head to do a tortellini salad, but the recipes I found online all included several ingredients that would be picked out by various party-goers, as we're generally a fussy bunch when it comes to food.

Because my other pasta salad is always well-received, I stuck with similar ingredients. This isn't a "recipe", because nothing was measured out, but I'll do my best to show you how to recreate it.

Frozen (or fresh) cheese tortellini

Italian salad dressing

Red onion

Cherry or grape tomatoes

Parmesan cheese

Cook and drain about 2 pounds of frozen tortellini. I used a little under half of the giant 5-pound bag of Seviroli brand frozen cheese tortellini from Costco, which is where I'm getting that "2 pounds" from. Rinse with cold water to cool them down, then drain well or dump into a large, clean dish towel to dry the pasta. Put into a bowl and douse with Italian dressing of your choice. I used about half a cup of Ken's Lite Northern Italian with Basil and Romano, but it's hard to say exactly how much to use, so assess your salad and adjust accordingly. Then I halved a pint of grape tomatoes and thinly sliced 1/4 of a red onion and tossed those in, immediately followed by some grated parmesan. The longer this stuff sits in the fridge, the better it tastes, so make this the night before you plan on eating it, if you can. Test it before serving it, and add some extra dressing if the pasta has soaked everything up and the salad has dried out.

What's for Dinner - One Pot Mac and Cheese

It has happened. I have found the perfect mac & cheese recipe. I thought for sure it would take me several years of recipe testing before I finally stumbled on the cheesy holy grail, but this recipe fell into my lap (well, my Gmail chat window) recently and I am happy enough to end my search right here.

Like the caramelized onions, this recipe comes from someone's blog. This is One Pot, Stove Top, Creamy Mac and Cheese from White On Rice Couple, and they completely nailed mac & cheese. I'm talking out-of-the-park, 110% deliciousness here. I could decide to never try another mac and cheese recipe in my whole life and would likely not have any deathbed regrets.


The magic? Cooking the noodles in the milk. Genius! It keeps things super creamy, and it also keeps cleanup easy since you're only using one pot. They warn you to stay nearby and stir constantly, and I will back that up. I let it sit for 30 seconds while I grated cheese, and got a layer of scorched milk - it happens quickly and you need to stay around and watch. My only change to the recipe was my noodle choice - I went with mini spirals because they were adorable. I needed to add more milk near the end, because the pasta soaked a lot up, but that may happen with any noodle type, I'm not sure. I love their recipe, because it's so flexible. Need more milk? Dump it in. Cheese? Whatever you've got, nobody's here to judge you. I used a mix of one part asiago to three parts monterey jack, and it was perfect. I'm actually nervous about changing up the cheeses, because this combination worked so well!

Making it superperfect, though, was a simple matter of adding caramelized onions to the bowl. I suspect bacon would have a similar effect.

What's for Dinner - Smoked Gouda Mac & Cheese

I started with a Food Network recipe and played around with it a little, as usual. The comments section on the website hinted at the recipe being a bit dry, so I tried to fix that with more liquid and cheese. And then I added bacon, the king of meats. Here's the final list of ingredients I ended up using in my version:

1 box medium shells
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
2 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup light cream
1/2 pound smoked Gouda cheese, grated (not sure how many cups it made, I just used half of the one-pound block of cheese)
1/4 cup grated monterey jack cheese (because I had extra and figured hey, more cheese can't hurt)
6 slices bacon
Salt and pepper

Fry the bacon really crispy - it's for making bacon bits to add to the mac & cheese.

Get your noodles boiling while you make the sauce: melt the butter in a pot until it's frothy, and whisk in the flour. Cook that for a couple of minutes until it darkens a little, then whisk in the milk and cream. Keep whisking so nothing burns, and let it bubble for about ten minutes, until it thickens up. The recipe said to stop when the sauce was as "smooth and thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon", so I was dunking a wooden spoon in it every couple of minutes. I'm sure I looked like a dork.

When your wooden spoon test is positive, celebrate by dumping the grated cheese into the pot and pulling it off the heat. Keep whisking! Your whisk will become unwieldy due to the glob of cheese that is sure to form inside it, but smacking it against the pot and/or poking it with your sauce-coated wooden spoon will help. Add some salt and pepper.

Add sauce to noodles, or the other way around, in a casserole dish. Then stir in the bacon. Mmmmm, bacon. I was going to add a breadcrumb topping but didn't have any left in the pantry, so it went into the oven naked. After 20 minutes at 375F, it was bubbly and smelled great!

Alas, my tweaks didn't quite save the recipe. It was good, but still a bit dry and not as cheesy as I'd hoped. The smoked gouda didn't melt well at all, leaving a chunky sauce instead of the creaminess you'd expect from a mac and cheese dish. Next time I'll try using smoked cheddar instead, because I liked the "smokiness" (and the bacon! Lord, did I love the bacon!) and I want to give it another shot. Why is it so hard to find the perfect macaroni and cheese??

What's for Dinner - Lasagna

It was nearly an all-day project. Yet, despite knowing it would tie me up for the last half of the day, I pulled out my Kitchenaid mixer and started making a batch of pasta dough for my first ever made-all-by-myself-totally-from-scratch lasagna.

For the pasta, I stuck with the same recipe I used for my ravioli, but stretched it out even thinner, to level 7 on the pasta roller. My goal was to make a multilayered lasagna with paper-thin sheets of pasta: a lasagna soft as butter that you could melt through with a fork. Mom generously gave me her awesome lasagna recipe to work with, and as usual I played with it a little, getting something different but delicious. I hope she doesn't mind!

2 big cans of tomato sauce
1 small can of tomato sauce
1 small can diced tomatoes

1.5 lbs ground beef

1 1/2 tbsp basil

4 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp oregano

1 tsp thyme

4 medium cloves garlic

1 large onion, diced
1lb mozzarrella cheese grated

15 oz 4% fat cottage cheese

15 oz ricotta cheese

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

For the meat sauce, I started with about 1.5lbs of lean ground beef, which I browned in a pan with 2 chopped garlic cloves, the diced onion, and dashes of pepper and salt. I drained off the fat and put in a huge pot, adding the cans of tomato sauce (and diced tomatoes) on top and setting the heat on low. The basil and oregano I used came straight from my garden - I used about a dozen chopped basil leaves and half a dozen sprigs of fresh oregano (I tore the leaves off). This step went rather slowly because I kept stopping to sniff my herbs. I added sugar, thyme, and two more garlic cloves and let everything simmer for an hour or so to get delicious.

I grated the mozzarella and set half aside for the topping. The rest went in with the ricotta, cottage cheese, and parmesan, mixed up with a generous crunch of black pepper, and then the cheese layer was ready for...

Assembly!

Spread a glop of sauce onto the bottom of the baking dish, then a layer of noodles. With my fresh noodles, I needed two noodles per layer because they were very wide, but if you're using boxed noodles you'll probably need three or four, depending on how wide your dish is. You'll want a little bit of overlap so it all holds together. More sauce. More noodles. Some cheese mixture - drop blobs onto the noodles with a spoon and then spread gently with your hands, or you'll tear the noodles. More noodles. Sauce. Noodles. Sauce. Noodles. Cheese. You see how this goes. I ran out of noodles early and had to pause assembly while I made up another batch, and even with the extra noodles I didn't reach the very top of the baking dish! The very last layer was heavy tomato sauce covered with the shredded mozzarella.

*Note - fresh pasta sucks up a lot of liquid, so use more sauce than you think you should. I used what I thought was way too much, and it ended up being nowhere near enough. Use a lot.

Into the oven, 350F for 40 minutes. I covered it in foil, then pulled the foil off at the end and switched on the broiler to brown the cheese on top, because browned cheese is happy cheese. Then - and this is important - I let it sit on the stove for half an hour. If you cut into it too early, it will fall apart on the plate, but if you can be patient and wait a little, you'll get a nice block of lasagna instead of lasagna soup.

This is what I had for dinner, after all that work.

It was wonderful. The fresh herbs made a difference, and I'm glad I added some diced tomatoes (not in Mom's original recipe). In fact, I'm doubling the diced tomatoes next time I make this. I'm also going to try making the layers even thinner, and I'll make a ton of pasta to be sure I have enough! Also, more sauce. Because otherwise, what will the garlic bread soak up?

What's for Dinner - Chicken Parm, Again

The first time I tried this, I didn't have the right cheese, and I forgot to take pictures, no doubt disappointing all three of my fans. This time I have a gorgeous picture of the end result, and an improved recipe to share. Also, I paired it with my homemade fettuccine, so I get extra awesome points.

You'll need:
Chicken breasts
1 egg
Breadcrumbs
Garlic salt
Oregano
Olive oil
Garlic cloves
Tomato sauce
Mozzarella cheese

Get out some chicken breasts, and pound them so they're evenly flat. I used frozen chicken breasts from Costco which were already flat, so I skipped that step, but if you're starting from fresh and they're those huge D-cup chicken breasts, cut them into 2 or 3 pieces, cover them with a sheet of plastic wrap, and then smash them flat with a meat pounder or a small pot.

Beat one egg in a bowl big enough to let you dip the chicken pieces in. Then fill a shallow dish with breadcrumbs - that will be step two. Add some garlic salt and oregano to the breadcrumbs and stir it all with a fork until it's evenly distributed.

Chop 2 garlic cloves into big pieces and smash them flat with the side of your knife so their insides are smooshing out, then put some olive oil (about 2 tbsp) in a frying pan and toss those cloves in. Stir them around a little and pull them out when you're ready to add the chicken.

Salt and pepper the chicken on both sides, then run them through the egg and breadcrumbs before laying them in the pan to cook. Leave them there without touching them for at least 5 minutes to get brown on the bottom, then flip them over and give them another 5 minutes. While that's happening, get some cheese ready, either by grating or slicing very thin. Slice extra if you have a husband who sneaks by and "tests" the cheese quality by eating it all.

Once both sides of the chicken are brown, check the internal temp with a thermometer. Cook them a little longer if you need to. It depends on how hot your pan is and how flat you smashed your chicken. If they're done, move them to an oven safe dish and put a glob of tomato sauce onto each piece before covering them with cheese and sticking them into the oven to get melty. Just put them under the broiler for a minute or two and they'll be perfect.

I actually sliced more cheese than I needed, overcompensating for the presence of the rogue cheese tester, so I covered the chicken with a layer of cheese, then sauce, then more cheese. Which turned out to be a great idea, because cheese is so delicious. If you want to get fancy, you can sprinkle some oregano and some black pepper onto the melted cheese at the very end to make it look special.

What's for Dinner - Homemade Chicken and Cheese Ravioli

I used the dough recipe from the back of my ravioli maker, because I didn't have enough eggs handy for the recipe I really wanted to try from the Food Network website.

Pasta Dough

2 cups semolina flour
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp olive oil
3/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp warm water

Mound the flour in a big bowl, make a well in it, and add everything else. Use a fork to mix it all together until it makes a ball. I found I needed to add 3-4 more tablespoons of water to hold it all together, so just add a bit at a time and work it with your hands until it's a nice ball. Flour the counter or a cutting board and knead the dough for 10 minutes or so, until it's smooth and stretchy.

The kneading was the hardest part. I really didn't know what I was doing, except for a vague recollection of watching Anne Burrell knead pasta dough on her Food Network show a few months ago. I looked online for "how to knead pasta dough" videos and I found this one to be helpful, although my counter is a little bit too high, forcing me onto my toes to knead the dough properly, so it was an exhausting process.

I used my KitchenAid pasta roller attachment to roll out the dough into thin sheets for my ravioli maker, and it was much easier than I expected. I worked with very small pieces so I wouldn't have to stretch my arms out like crazy to support the rolled-out sheets, and it went well. I started on level 1 to smooth it all out, then went up one level at a time until I got to level 5, which is what the instruction book said was a good thickness for ravioli.


My ravioli maker looks like an ice cube tray - you lay a sheet of pasta over it, push down with the press to make pockets, fill up the pockets with your ravioli guts of choice, then lay another sheet over the top before squishing the layers together with a rolling pin. The ravioli maker has jagged ridges between the ravioli sections, and they cut through the sheets as the rolling pin goes over them, separating the squares. I found my rolling pin to be too big to get at the middle parts, so I helped things along by running the back of a spoon along the ridges. The instructions say they're supposed to pop right out, but I had to peel them out of the mold.


I had more pasta than filling, because this recipe makes a ton, so I attached the fettuccine cutter and made a bunch of fettuccine, which I will freeze for later this week.

My ravioli filling

1 rotisserie chicken breast, diced small
1 cup ricotta cheese
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1/4 cup mozzarella
4 fresh basil leaves, chopped
3 generous twists of the pepper mill
Dash of salt

I smooshed all that together with a spoon until it was a chunky paste, and then spooned that into the ravioli mold. I tried not to overfill the mold, because that could make the ravioli pop open when I cook them. When we were ready to eat, I boiled the ravioli for about 6 minutes and added some jarred marinara sauce. I'm sure I could have come up with a better sauce option, but after three hours of work I was getting tired!


I definitely want to try this again. Now that I know what I'm doing, I'm sure it'll be a lot quicker next time. The verdict is that this is superior to most store-bought ravioli we buy, so I'll need to learn to do this faster and freeze the ravioli for later.

What's for Dinner - Cheesy Orzo with Chicken and Broccoli

At one of the restaurants in San Francisco, I had a creamy orzo risotto for lunch, and it was divine. This was my attempt to recreate it.

Cheesy Orzo with Chicken and Broccoli

2 tbsp olive oil or butter
1/2 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped (or smooshed through a press)
4 cups of chicken stock
1 lb orzo pasta
1 cup Monterey Jack cheese, grated (any cheese will do, but this is what the restaurant used)
2 cups broccoli florets
1 cup diced cooked chicken



Use a big pot - a small one will make it hard for you to stir the orzo well and you'll get a stuck-on mess at the bottom. I did!

Saute the garlic and onion in the olive oil or butter until the onions soften, about 3-4 minutes. Add the orzo and stir to coat with the oil, then add about half of the stock and stir well. Bring up to a boil and then lower the heat. Keep an eye on it, stirring a lot so nothing sticks, and add more stock, about a half cup at a time, as the liquid gets absorbed. Note: you may not need all the stock! Add as needed and check orzo (taste it) each time just before adding more! After about 15 minutes, the orzo shouldn't have any bite left to it, and the liquid should be absorbed leaving a creamy pile of tiny noodles. If it still seems too liquidy but the noodles are done, take it off the heat and let it rest, because a couple of extra minutes will help it absorb any leftover stock.

Meanwhile, steam the broccoli florets:
Put broccoli in a microwave-safe bowl, and add a splash of water. Cover the bowl and cook on high for 3 minutes. The broccoli will still have some crispness to them, so if you like mushy broccoli, leave it in for 4 minutes.

In a giant bowl, mix the orzo, cheese, chicken, and broccoli, and stir well. Eat and then put away your leftovers, because this recipe makes a lot.

Party Pasta Salad

I don't know why pasta salads only ever seem to show up at parties and picnics, because they're easy and delicious. This one, as you can guess from my title, was made for a party. My sister-in-law's baby shower, that is. Because it was made for a big party, it's a big recipe! This will serve a crowd at a party or as a side for a cookout. It's a recreation of a pasta salad I once bought at the deli counter at Giant.

1 box pasta, cooked and drained - I like farfalle or tri-colored pastas
1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
1 small red pepper, chopped into small pieces
Half a red onion, cut into rings, then cut the rings in half
1/2 cup (packed) baby spinach leaves, chopped
2/3 cup sundried tomato salad dressing
1 tsp dried oragano
1/4 cup shredded parmesan or asiago cheese
salt & pepper

Directions: mix everything, chill in the fridge a while to let the flavors mix, and then eat.

The amount of dressing you need will vary depending on your taste, and on the noodles. I sometimes find I need to add more after the salad has sat in the fridge overnight, because the noodles drink in all the dressing and leave the salad a little dry. I'm sure it would be tasty with other dressings, too, but I haven't played around with that yet.

Because I was so busy with the party, I forgot to take a picture of the one I made this weekend, but I had a picture from the last time I threw it together:

As with all pasta salads, it's flexible and you can change the amounts of the ingredients or omit some altogether. Oh, and because this is meat-free and not made with mayonnaise, it can sit out on the table for a while without poisoning your party. A big plus!

What's for Dinner - Balsamic Roasted Tomato Pasta

Sometimes, dinner isn't great.

I bought a huge package of grape tomatoes at Costco last week and we weren't getting through them fast enough to use them all up before they went soft, so I scoured the internet for a recipe I could use them in. A couple of people had variations on this pasta with grape tomatoes roasted in balsamic vinegar, and that sounded like it might work.

While I got some water boiling for spaghetti noodles, I halved about 2 cups worth of cherry tomatoes (what I had left), added some balsamic vinegar, minced garlic, and olive oil to them, and then stirred them to coat them evenly. Instead of washing one of my mixing bowls, all of which were dirty and in the sink at the time, I took a big Glad-ware container out of the cupboard, figuring it was sufficiently bowl-like to do the job. When I picked the container up to pour the tomatoes into a baking dish, I had a huge mess all over the counter. Balsamic and oil everywhere.


After cleaning up the mess and getting the tomatoes into the oven, I inspected the container and saw that the corner was riddled with little holes!


I guess I must have melted it in the microwave last time I was reheating something. Two thoughts occurred to me. First, ew, I probably ate melted plastic. Second, I need to get some good plastic containers for food storage and stop relying on the little Glad things.

After the tomatoes were soft and slightly browned, I put them in a bowl with two cups of fresh spinach leaves, and then dumped some spaghetti noodles on top. The heat from the tomatoes and pasta wilted the spinach down to almost nothing. I added shredded asiago cheese bit by bit until I had about half a cup mixed in.


We had this as a side dish with a rotisserie chicken, and I was disappointed with it. I like the flavor of balsamic vinegar very much, but it seems weird in a hot pasta dish. It's got too much sweetness. I think this would be highly successful as a cold pasta salad, but I didn't get the chance to try it cold because the next day when I went to have leftovers, I knocked the bowl off the shelf of the fridge and had a floor full of pasta and squished tomatoes.

What's for Dinner: Hamburger Stroganoff

Hamburger stroganoff is a comfort-food classic for me, something that's un-fancy, very yummy, and easy to make. Some nights - ok, maybe most nights - I don't want to make a fancy filet au poivre with gorgonzola mashed potatoes and green beans almondine. Actually, now I do want to make that, so I'll have to add that to my to-do list.

Back to the program!

Hamburger Stroganoff

1 lb lean ground beef
1 small onion, diced
1 package mushrooms, sliced
8oz of medium-wide egg noodles, cooked and drained
1 cup beef gravy made from a powdered mix (I have a "Roast Beef" gravy mix from Canada (Berthelet brand) and I've never tried with any of the kinds available here, but that stuff is AWESOME and you all need to import some.)
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (or more, to taste)
1/2 cup sour cream

Using a deep skillet or frying pan, fry the mushrooms in butter until they're brown and soft, and set them aside. Saute the onions until they're soft, then add them to the mushrooms. Brown the ground beef, draining off any fat if necessary. Add cooked and drained egg noodles to the pan, and then add the prepared beef gravy and bring to a boil and let it simmer for 5 minutes to thicken slightly. Grate nutmeg into the mixture and stir. This really is best with fresh nutmeg - the taste is very different compared to the ground stuff in the jar. When you're ready to serve dinner, stir in the sour cream.


I personally love adding canned peas to this. Don't ask.

What's for Dinner - Baked Ziti

Ok, I'll admit it, it was baked shells. I didn't have any ziti.

Easiest thing in the world, not sure why I've never made this before!

1 box medium shells (I used whole wheat)
1 jar pasta sauce of your choosing
1 small (15oz?) container of lowfat ricotta cheese
1 cup shredded mozzarella (I used part-skim)
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
pinches of oregano, black pepper

I cooked and drained the pasta and then added the jar of sauce - I used almost all of it because I didn't want it to end up too watery at the end. There's maybe a 1/4cup left in the jar, back in the fridge. I dumped the ricotta into a bowl and mixed in a third of the shredded mozzarella, some fresh black pepper, and some oregano, then I stirred the cheese mixture into the pasta and poured it all into a baking dish. I added the breadcrumbs to the remaining mozzarella, added some more oregano and pepper, and then sprinkled that over the top of the pasta.

After baking it at 350 for 30min it was bubbling and perfect. I considered putting it under the broiler to brown the top more, but I was too hungry to wait.


This one's in the "make it again" pile. Yum.

What's for Dinner: Jen's Spaghetti Sauce

Let me first say that my Mom makes the best spaghetti sauce in the world. Anyone on either side of my family would shove aside any other family member to get to it. As is usual with Mom recipes, there are no measurements. I learned to copy this recipe by watching her closely and figuring out what a "half a palmful of thyme" means. The scientist in me does not like this sort of measurement - what if you have tiny hands? Luckily, my hands are carbon copies of my mother's, so our measurements work out great. I suspect this is also a sneaky way of ensuring that nobody else but us ever gets this recipe exactly right, so everyone has to keep coming to us for the world's best spaghetti. I can only hope that I have a daughter who inherits my hands, or the secret of the sauce dies with me. And in fairness to Mom - I tweaked it and made my own version. I will try to write out a recipe so you can try to make it, but please know that it's a very "fuzzy" recipe that never comes out the same way twice.

And yeah, I'm bragging about my fabulous sauce because I love it to death, but I know it's not everyone's favorite. It's not made with fresh garden tomatoes or anything, and I know that fancy pro chefs would cringe at it. But it tastes so damn good to me that I frankly don't care. I could eat this three or four times a week for months and never get sick of it. Provided there was garlic bread available to soak up the extra sauce, of course.

Jen's Spaghetti Sauce

3-4 sweet italian sausages
1/2 pound extra lean ground beef (this is really flexible - add more if you like it meatier, less if you don't, but DO get the extra-lean because you're getting plenty of fat from the sausages)
5 cloves of garlic
2 28-oz cans of tomato sauce or tomato puree
(have an extra one on hand in case you find the sauce too thick after you add the meat)
Big palmful of oregano
Palmful of basil
Half palmful of thyme
Generous amount fresh ground black pepper


First I snip the sausages into pieces with scissors. I cut them fairly small, ending up with 8 pieces from each sausage. I fry them up until they have a nice brown crust. They don't need to be cooked all the way through at this point, because you're going to simmer them in the sauce for a while later. I put them aside to drain on paper towels, then brown the ground beef. I make sure to season the beef well with salt and pepper. Meanwhile, I've dumped the cans of sauce into a big pot and added my spices. I use a garlic press for the garlic, but I suppose you could chop it fine if you prefer. Now, the spice measurements are tricky. I basically cup my palm and pour a whole bunch of oregano into my hand from my huge Costco-sized jar. Dump that in, and then do the same with slightly less basil, and then half as much thyme. This is also where you'll want to pull out your pepper grinder and grind some coarse pepper into the mix. As much as you think you'll like - it's never the same twice, which is part of the fun!

I set the heat on low for the sauce and then dump in all the fat-drained meat and stir it all in. That simmers for at least an hour, but I usually leave it for about two on the lowest heat that keeps it gently bubbling. Oh, and keep the lid on unless you want a red-spotted kitchen. A splatter screen works well too. After about an hour I taste it and make adjustments. If it's too acidic, I am not ashamed to say that I add a little sugar. It doesn't usually need it, but I found last time that when I used puree instead of sauce, it was more acidic for some reason. Maybe it was a different brand that made the difference, I'm not sure. Let your tastebuds guide you.


When I'm finally starving and going crazy with the super smell of my kitchen and desperate to eat, I check the sausage chunks by pulling one out and cutting it in half. If it's still pink in the middle, it's got to keep cooking.

I know it's "spaghetti" sauce, but I don't think we've ever had it with actual spaghetti noodles. This needs a big noodle. I love it with rigatoni, but penne or rotini do pretty well too. Anything with ridges or spirals to really hold the sauce. You will also need pasta bowls. Big ones. Oh, and some wine.


This recipe obviously makes a ton of sauce, because my mother could only teach me to cook for a vast crowd. So, have some tupperwares handy to freeze the extras. It freezes very well and keeps for at least 4 months in the freezer... we've never had it last longer because we eat it before then.