Spinach Stuffed Shells

This was so easy I'm embarrassed to post it. And yes it's just another variation on lasagna, but it looks cool. It's a stuffed pasta shell! I see them on menus, but I never order it - I don't know why. I want to say this is healthier than a lasagna since there is way more spinach per serving, but don't quote me on that. If you're sick of making plain pasta or lasagna, make this instead.

Home made Pasta & Scarpetta's tomato sauce

Another home made pasta recipe- this was a bit better than the other one, less egg-y. I also added some dried herbs so there was more flavor. I used the smallest/thinnest setting to make spaghetti, but it clumped up a bit while cooking.

I finally made the tomato sauce from Scarpetta. It's $24 at the restaurant- why not make it at home? I was very skeptical about the amount of oil- it just seemed like it would be an overly greasy sauce. It turned out quite good, but yes a bit greasy. I don't know how they can manage to suspend the oil within the tomato sauce. It was my first time using San Marzano tomatoes (wow they are expensive) and they were very tomato-y even after cooking for half an hour. Often the tomatoes I get, unless I get them from the farmer's market, are taste-less, bland fruits. I'm definitely going to be splurging on a few more can of these great tomatoes.

Mac and Cheese (with broccoli)

I know what you're thinking- another mac and cheese? Well this is mac and cheese, with Beecher's Flagship Cheese Sauce. If you haven't had Beecher's mac and cheese, stop and book a flight to Portland go mosey on over to Beecher's. If you're a cheese hound you will probably find yourself suddenly overwhelmed, if you are lukewarm about cheese (like me) you will be amazed and a little weirded out by all the cheese products. You can even watch them make cheese!

It's not a ground-breaking recipe by any means, but the addition of chili powder is a welcome change. I added broccoli so as not to feel so depressed about the amount of cheese + pasta consumed. Also I used a gruyere from Whole Foods and it was the smelliest gruyere I have ever used! I had to use a outdoor micowave at work. beware...

Braised Short Ribs

One of my new years resolutions is to cook more meat (even though I don't really eat meat). Braised short ribs always seemed like a complicated dish to me because the meat is so tender and flavorful. Turns out, it is incredibly easy. A few ingredients and just one pot. Unless you are like me and don't have roasting pan... then you have to take it from pan to oven-safe dish and back to pan. Either way, it is delicious.

My short ribs look a little different from the blog I got it from- I guess it's a different cut. I have no idea what part of the animal this is, I just asked the butcher for "short ribs" and he gave me these. Uhhh I will recommend trimming the fat before you cook them because these had a very very healthy amount of fat.

Butternut squash and bacon pasta

Another baked pasta recipe, this time with SQUASH! Again, it's from cooking light even though it has a lot of bacon, but at least there's no cream. This dish is really filling and heavy- definitely invite some friends to share it. The shallots were really good, glad I made the drive to Ralphs to find it.

And if you happen to live near a World Market, pick up some animal shaped pasta. Not only will your pasta be delicious, it will also be cute.

Potato Gnocchi (the 101st? post!)

I had gnocchi for the first time ever while volunteering at Food Rendevous, a great meeting of local food. A chef was demo-ing potato gnocchi and how easy it was to make and I tried some- omgggaahhhhh it was so good. It still had bits of mashed potatoes in it so it was soft, not at all what I thought it would taste like. I've avoided gnocchi for so long because I thought they were going to be chewy lumps of dough- that's definitely not the case! This recipe is great- the gnocchi were tender and had a very faint hint of potato.


I also got to use a potato ricer for the first time and I am now a converted ricer-lover. It make the potatoes so fluffy! This recipe was somewhat labor intensive, I spent just under an hour rolling and cutting the gnocchi. I youtube'd a lot of videos on how to properly roll a gnocchi on a fork... I think they came out more or less looking like proper gnocchi.

I served mine with a meat sauce (Trader Joe's spicy Italian sausage!) YUM! This would be perfect for the rainy weather in socal right now.

Bacon and Pea Orecchiette and Garlic Knots

Did you watch Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution show? I didn't see any of it, but I read about it online. It's a really great cause- I know the food I ate in school was terrible (cheese fries!), but luckily I also liked vegetables and my taste changed as I grew up (still love cheese fries though). This recipe for Pasta with Creamy Bacon and Peas is from Jamie Oliver's show and I don't really know how this is "healthy." It has peas, but it also has bacon. I guess you could substitute whole wheat pasta, but EH I'm not a fan. It was good though-


Do you see all this garlic?? That's only half of it!! I love garlic bread, but I wanted something with more oomph. This recipe for garlic knots has, perhaps, too much oomph. I tasted garlic the next day and into the next 2 meals. I probably reeked of garlic after making this. You probably want to use 2/3 of the amount of garlic it asks for unless you are hunting vampires. Very tasty though- especially when you put some butter on top.

Bolognese

Again, only an iphone photo. This recipe is for a bolognese (meat) sauce. There are a lot of different ideas about what a "traditional" bolognese sauce is- even carbonara is heavily debated. Wikipedia says "The traditional recipe, registered in 1982 by the Bolognese delegation of Accademia Italiana della Cucina, confines the ingredients to beef, pancetta, onions, carrots, celery, tomato paste, meat broth, white wine, and milk or cream." The recipe I used is fairly similar.

It's a very hearty, slightly greasy sauce that tastes better the longer it's cooked.

Wild mushroom lasagna and chicken enchiladas

This is that delicious, heavy, rich wild mushroom lasagna I mentioned earlier. It's... amazing. It's also different from the other lasagna's I've made- no ricotta. This is more like making a gratin. Thankfully there is some tomato to balance out the whole milk, but you probably won't get past the first slice.


This recipe for chicken enchiladas is great- no sour cream sauce! It was easy to assemble and pretty fast to make (except for simmering the chicken...). My first time making enchiladas and it was a big success. I didn't have pickled jalapenos so I used fresh ones- I'm starting to get the hang of chilies.

Spinach Lasagna Roll Ups

This is yet another variation on lasagna. I really love pasta + tomato + cheese. I don't even like cheese, but I like it in pasta. I want to say this is healthier, but I have no idea. It has spinach and ricotta, but no heavy cream sauce so I guess it's a bit better than the wild mushroom lasagna I'll post later on.

Somehow they don't unroll themselves.

Oven baked Ziti and Mini Mushroom Potato Pies

Just look at the buttery, flakey crust.

This recipe for mini savory pies is amazing. It comes from the Pie Truck (sadly no longer in existence) via a design blog. I've never tried the Pie Truck, but this recipe was ammmaaazzinnnngggg. The pastry dough is delicious and easy to make- I had to keep sticking mine in the fridge because it was hot that day and the butter was melting. I didn't have zucchini so I substituted potatoes- delicious! The pastry is buttery and flakey, the mushrooms and potatoes were creamy with a bit of tang from the sour cream. And dill! Who knew I liked dill??

My sad crimping.

The insides. Mmmm dill.

This was my first time making a true pie crust and also a pie. As in... I had no idea how to really pinch the seams so it looked good. And to make matters worse, it was hot in the kitchen so the dough was getting mushy as the butter melted. I just threw it in the oven and hoped it worked and it was magically delicious. TA-DA, butter fixes everything!

Not the most pleasant picture of cheesy pasta, but you get the idea.

I really love baked pastas with ricotta so an oven baked ziti was a no-brainer. This is a great make-ahead dish and it fit nicely in my 8x8 brownie pan. This will be a fun recipe to mess around with.

That Simple But Amazing Tomato Sauce Everyone Raves About

Not really knowing how to name this post, we'll just jump straight into the goodies. Listen up folks: this is seriously one of the simplest, easiest recipes ever. Grabbed the recipe from here: http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/01/tomato-sauce-with-butter-and-onions/

It's literally 3 ingredients. 3! Tomatoes, butter, and onion. Measurements:
1. Two 28 ounces canned, whole peeled tomatoes (I used 2 cans by accident, but the recipe was still awesome ...and healthier)
2. 5 tbsp butter
3. yellow onion, peeled and halved
4? (and salt for #4, if you need it)

And the steps are as easy as 1-2-3:
1. Put all ingredients in the pot to boil
2. Turn down to simmer for 45 mins, meanwhile cooking your choice of pasta
3. Throw out onion & serve with pasta



Even though this was claimed to be the best tomato sauce ever, I just had to add ground beef. I love meat too much!

But I did get a chance to try it without the meat, and surprisingly, I could honestly eat the pasta just with the sauce. It's soooooo delicious!

Can't fathom to throw away the onions? I couldn't either. The Asian-ness in me slapped me around awhile until I succumbed to the calling for no food waste. I ended up chopping the tasty onions up and making an egg scramble/omelet out of it with some chopped ham. :)

Two great meals in one low budget. Enjoy!

Fresh pasta dough for cheese and mushroom ravioli

Pasta dough work station.

I found a pasta maker at TJ Maxx for $16 and I had to buy it. It rolls out dough to 6 different thicknesses and does 2 different cuts (fettuccine and angel hair). I've always wanted to make fresh pasta because it's one of my favorite foods. I used this recipe for the cheese ravioli. Although by the end of it, I had no energy to make the fresh tomato sauce so I used Trader Joe's basil marinara.

The dough, resting.

Some of the comments mentioned that it was bland so I added some white mushrooms and a lot of fresh herbs (thyme, rosemary, chives) and extra garlic. I didn't think that this would make so many ravioli, but it did. AND I had leftover dough so I made pasta. This made several meals.

Trying to place small amounts of filling on the pasta. I should've put half of what I thought would fit (based on the width of the pasta that I rolled out).

Covering the filling.

Sliced (with a pizza cutter) with the air pinched out.

I was going to shape them nicely into squares, but then realized I put way too much filling in so I kept the large ravioli as is. (Note the enormous ravioli at the bottom of the photo.)

My large, irregularly shaped pasta.

I used leftover dough to make pasta when I ran out of the ravioli filling.

Oof, these were hard to pull apart the next day- definitely go heavy with the olive oil if you are making enough for leftovers. The taste is completely different from boxed pasta. It's really silky (and I used all purpose flour! It's probably even better with european 00 flour, it's ultra ultra fine) and very egg-y. So eggy that it was almost like egg pasta. This is not an everyday recipe. It took awhile to roll out each sheet and fill them, pinch all the air out and then slice them, but for a special occasion or for an empty day, very much worth the effort.

Also, you can definitely make these without a pasta roller, but I hope you have strong arms and a whole lotta time to roll out the dough.

Marinara Sauce

My favorite jarred pasta sauce is Trader Joe's tomato and basil marinara. It's the best and so cheap! I haven't had to buy any other type of sauce in years- if I want a mushroom sauce, I add mushrooms. If I want to add meat, I add it myself. I wanted to try and make marinara sauce because it's interesting to learn what work goes into it. And... it looked really pretty on this blog.


I thought since there are so few ingredients that I better use the best tomatoes I could find so I splurged at the farmer's market.


This is how you peel tomatoes- very very easy. Slice a shallow X into the bottom of each tomato and slide them into boiling water for a few seconds. Then take them out and place them into a bowl of cold water (I know, a waste of water...). The skin will peel off super quick and easy. Unlike peeling roasted peppers... which you have to really roast thoroughly and then put under a bowl and tightly cover with saran wrap and then still peel off tiny shrivels of skin with your fingers.


Onions and garlic!

Quartered, seeded and peeled tomatoes + wine (and this is where the quality drops slightly. I don't know my wine and we only had 2 buck chuck so... that went in here) join the party. I let them cook for 2 hours after this photo and things got real mushy. If I had an immersion blender, this would've been a good time to use it, but I do not have one- so I used a potato masher and left a few chunks in there.

I had my marinara sauce with crispy slices of polenta. I got the polenta from Whole Foods. It's packaged like a sausage and I'd never had polenta so I gave this a try. I sliced it as thin as I could and fried them until crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. Coincidentally, the NY Times posted this yummy looking recipe (creamy + parmesan + sausage), which I have bookmarked for the future.

Thoughts? Well jarred sauce is much faster, this took me half a day to make although I left it alone on the stove for the last 2 hours. It tasted very different from the TJ variety, this was intensely savory (umami-y?) whereas the TJ kind is all TOMATO in your face with a hint of BASIL and rather sweet. I'll probably only make this again when I have a lot of time or a lot of tomatoes about to go bad. But an interesting learning experience...