Grilled onions go with anything – but they go especially well with grilled beef.  It’s a classic pairing.

The beef tonight was a round steak, marinated in Moore’s marinade and simply grilled.  Moore’s hails from Birmingham, Alabama.  I would have never heard of it if Mike and Barbara hadn’t brought up a huge southern care package for us when they stayed with us a couple of years ago.  One of the things they brought us was a bottle of Dale’s Seasoning.  They told us there are two rival marinades down their way in South Carolina – Moore’s and Dale’s.  After trying the Dale’s, I sent away for the Moore’s.

Taste-wise, they both work for me,  but Dale’s only sells by the case online and the odds of me going through 12 bottles in this lifetime are slim.  I mean…  I don’t even buy green bananas.

But, as usual, I digress…

I boiled a couple of red potatoes and added a bit of sour cream, garlic powder, and salt and pepper.

The vegetables were even more fun…  A bit of clean-out-the-vegetable-bin… mushrooms, broccoli, and arugula, sauteed in a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Nothing fancy.  There was enough flavor in the veggies that I didn’t need anything else.  Cooked arugula is one of my most favorite vegetables.  Most folks know it as a salad green, but it can be cooked up the same way as spinach and used wherever spinach is called for.

It’s good!

A quick-and-easy 20-minute meal.

It is so good to be me.

I know, I know…  It’s just not right to brag or gloat or any of that sort of stuff, but damn! it’s good to be me!  My stomach is smiling from here to the moon and back!

Victor was in the kitchen once again, working his way through the Pasta Issue of La Cucina Italiana.  This weeks gastronomic celebration was Malloreddus con Salsiccia, or Malloreddus with Sausage.

Malloreddus is a semolina pasta from Sardinia.  Sardinia, was occupied for several centuries by the Arabs after the fall of the Roman Empire, and one of the fun culinary differences from other parts of Italy is the locals acquired a taste for saffron.  It is often used both in the dough and in the accompanying sauce.

Malloreddus in not gnocchi, although they share a similar shape.  They have very different ingredients, textures, and flavors.

Malloreddus

• Sea Salt
• 1 ¼ cups semolina flour
• ¾ cup unbleached all purpose flour
• Extra virgin olive oil

Gnocchi board or a table fork

Dissolve 1 tsp salt in ¾ cup warm water. In a large bowl whisk together semolina and all purpose flour; mound and form a well in the center.

Add water mixture and 2 tsp olive oil to the well. Using your hand or a fork, slowly incorporate flour from inside the rim of the well. Continue until liquid is absorbed, then knead in bowl until dough forms a complete mass (dough will be slightly sticky).

Transfer dough to a well floured work surface and knead, dusting with a bit more flour as needed just to keep dough from sticking to your hands, for 5 minutes. Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes.

Break off about 1/8 of the dough; tightly rewrap remaining dough. Roll dough into ½ inch cylinder, and cut into ¼ inch thick pieces. Pressing with your thumb, roll each piece on a gnocchi board (or down the back of a fork) to give it the characteristic ridges, and put on a floured baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough.

To cook fresh Malloreddus, bring a large pot of salted water to a bill. Add pasta and cook until tender, about 6 minutes after water returns to a boil. Drain, transfer to a large serving bowl and immediately toss with sauce and serve.

This is less than half of the pasta.  The rest went into the freezer!

Malloreddus con salsiccia – Malloreddus with sausage.

• 1 lbs sweet or hot Italian sausage
• Heaping 1/8 tsp crushed saffron threads
• 3 tbls extra virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, roughly chopped
• 1 (28 oz. can) whole peeled tomatoes with juices.
• ½ cup dry white wine
• Sea Salt
• 1 lbs fresh Malloreddus or dried from the store
• ½ cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese plus more for serving

Remove sausage from casing, break meat apart a bit. Combine saffron and ¼ cup water in a small bowl

In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium high heat, add onion and cook, stirring frequently, until softened. 5 to 6 minutes. Add sausage, and cook, breaking meat apart with a wooden spoon for 5 minutes. Add tomatoes with juices, add wine, cook, breaking up tomatoes for 5 minutes. (Sometimes dump the tomatoes and juice in a large bowl and roughly break them up with my hands)

Add saffron mixture and ¼ tsp salt. Gently simmer sauce until thickened and flavorful, 45 to 50, minutes over medium heat. Remove from heat and cover to keep warm.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook until al dente (about 6 minutes for fresh Malloreddus). Meanwhile, gently warm sauce. When pasta is al dente, drain, transfer to a large bowl, immediately add sauce and toss to combine. Add cheese and toss once more. Serve immediately with extra cheese.

I made a loaf of Pane Pugliese from dough I had frozen a couple of weeks ago.  It was the perfect accompanyment to the perfect pasta dish.

While there are still lots of recipes in the magazine, we just received a copy of the latest Wegmans magazine – full of Italian Pasta Meals!

The Monday Pasta Extravaganza is going to going on for many many many more weeks to come!

It is so good to be me!

It’s a perfect day.  The weather has been absolutely gorgeous.  We did a few chores around the house – I fixed some fence rails and Victor is painting the back deck – but it’s been a slow and easy day.

Even dinner.

BBQ ribs, fries, peas and corn.  It really doesn’t get any easier.

I baked the ribs with Gate’s BBQ sauce for about 2 hours at 225° and then finished them off on the grill.

Fries and peas & corn.

Simplicity.

I’m saving myself for tomorrow’s Pasta Feast.

Ah…  Sunday Breakfast!

Breakfast is one of my most favorite meals.  I love the bazillion-and-one flavor combinations that one can come up with.  Sweet stuff and savory stuff and everything in-between.

In my restaurant-cooking days, it was probably the most difficult meal to cook.  Folks have some really serious issues about how they want their bacon cooked and how they want their eggs cooked – to the point of being completely and totally overly-neurotic about it.  Really overly-neurotic.

But I digress…

This was a really simple throw-together using leftovers in the ‘fridge.

I cut up about a cup of cooked teeny potatoes from the other night and cooked them with 3 green onions and 1 stalk of broccoli.  I mixed up 4 eggs, poured them in, topped it with some buffalo mozzarella and a sliced tomato from the garden.  Salt and pepper.

I stuck the pan under the broiler for about 5 minutes, and breakfast was served.

Another Cooking Light recipe!

I’m actually trying to be a good boy and maybe even drop a couple of pounds before the wedding.  What I really want to do is lose all of the weight I gained after I quit smoking, but I’m thinking short-term goals are probably more realistic.  A couple of pounds between now and October 14th.

I can do it.

Enter Cooking Light.  Now…  if you’ve picked up a copy of the magazine recently, you’ll notice that some of their recipes really are anything but light.  Lots of sugar, lots of butter…   Granted, they are favorite ingredients of mine, but sometimes sugar and butter are actually unnecessary in a recipe.  (Yes, you read that correctly!)

Just like the one I made tonight.  It calls for a minuscule amount of sugar in the spice rub, but… since the recipe later calls for  pepper jelly, I saw no reason to add it to the spice rub.

That being said, the dish came out stupendous!  It is a definite keeper.  It just rocked.  Vaguely sweet and vaguely spicy, but lots and lots of flavor.  The spices and the jelly really worked well together.

I followed the recipe pretty much as stated – except for the sugar in the spice mixture.

Ancho Pork Medallions

Pepper jelly and aromatic spices give your average pork tenderloin a bold new flavor. Serve with a spinach salad for a complete meal.

Other Time: 20 minutes minutes
Yield:  4 servings (serving size: 2 medallions)

• 1 (1-pound) pork tenderloin, trimmed
• 3/4 teaspoon ancho chile powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
• 2 tablespoons jalapeño pepper jelly
• 1 teaspoon lime juice
• 2 teaspoons olive oil

1. Cut pork crosswise into 8 equal pieces. Combine chile powder and next 4 ingredients (through allspice) in a small bowl; rub evenly over both sides of pork. Combine jelly and lime juice; set aside.

2. Heat oil in a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add pork to pan; cook 1 minute on each side. Brush pork with half of jelly mixture; turn and brush with remaining jelly mixture. Cook 1 minute on each side or until desired degree of doneness. Remove pork from pan; let stand 5 minutes before serving.

CALORIES 168 ; FAT 6.1g (sat 1.6g,mono 3.2g,poly 0.6g); CHOLESTEROL 63mg; CALCIUM 7mg; CARBOHYDRATE 4.6g; SODIUM 363mg; PROTEIN 22.5g; FIBER 0.1g; IRON 1.2mg

The side dish was a fun one, too.

It was a bit of a clean out the refrigerator dish that went well with the pork.

Potatoes and Tomatoes with Raspberry Chipotle Sauce

• 8 oz teeny potatoes
• 4 green onions, chopped
• 4 oz mushrooms, sliced
• 2 tomatoes, diced
• 1 tbsp cilantro, minced
• 1 small jar Bronco Bob’s Roasted Raspberry Chipotle Sauce

Boil or steam potatoes until tender.

Saute green onions and mushrooms until lightly browned.  Add tomatoes and cook.  Add the chipotle sauce and cilantro.  Add the potatoes and mix well.

Let simmer a few minutes and serve.

We pick up little sample jars of the sauces whenever we hit Cost Plus out west.  It’s a fun store with lots of fun products from all over the world.  We’ve bought a lot of goodies there over the years, from furniture to dishware to Christmas ornaments and more.  I first shopped with them a bazillion years ago when their only store was on Bay Street in San Francisco.  A cavernous place where one could get lost for hours.  Alas, they’ve become a slick almost-cookie-cutter store and have re-branded themselves as “Cost Plus World Market” but I can still drop a few bucks there, easily.

But back to the veggies…

The sauce is smokey but not spicy-hot so it went well with the vegetables and the pork spices.

I can see more of this in our future…

With the gastronomic success of Victor’s Pasta Monday I think I’m going to start Seafood Thursday.

I really do want to get more fish into our diet and the only way to do it is to make it part of an actual plan.  My normal cooking style is to open the cupboards and see what’s in them.  I generally just buy ingredients without a clear plan for what I’m going to do with them.  It works for me because I usually don’t know on Monday what I’m going to want to eat on any other given day of the week and having a well-stocked larder gives me options – or forces me into things because I have produce that needs eating that day!

I think Seafood Thursday will be a fun way to actually plan a recipe every week.

Today’s Seafood Thursday Concept came compliments of Cooking Light magazine.

The August issue had a recipe for Mahi Mahi with a Bacon Tomato Butter.  It was intriguing, but it called for brining the fish in a sugar and salt solution.  That just sounded silly to me, so I omitted that first step.  It also called for adding two tablespoons of butter to the finished tomatoes and bacon.  I love butter probably more than the next guy, but I didn’t see a need to add butter to something that already had bacon fat in it.  I know…  silly me.

I served it on a bed of fresh spinach sauteed in a drizzle of olive oil, with salt, pepper, and garlic.  I really like plating things atop others.  Besides being very visually appealing – the whole eat with your eyes concept – It just makes things taste good.

My tomatoes were “brown tomatoes” – not plums – and I didn’t seed them.  Nor did I add the 2 tablespoons of butter.

There’s the Cooking Light recipe.  Play with it as you wish.  I really do recommend the smoked paprika, though.  Go buy some.  It’s great in a lot of things!

Mahi Mahi with Bacon-Tomato Butter

Look for American mahimahi that were caught using the pole/troll method, as this fishing practice has the least negative impact on the waters where they’re caught, and it yields the freshest fish.

Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients

• 2  cups  water
• 1  tablespoon  fine sea salt
• 2  teaspoons  sugar
• 4  (6-ounce) mahimahi fillets
• Cooking spray
• 1/4  teaspoon  table salt, divided
• 1  slice center-cut bacon, finely chopped
• 1  garlic clove, thinly sliced
• 1/4  teaspoon  hot smoked paprika
• 2  plum tomatoes, seeded and diced
• 2  tablespoons  butter

Preparation

1. Combine first 3 ingredients in a shallow dish, stirring until sea salt and sugar dissolve; add fish. Let stand 20 minutes. Drain; pat dry.

2. Prepare charcoal fire in a chimney starter; let coals burn for 15 to 20 minutes or until flames die down. Carefully pour hot coals out of starter, and pile them onto one side of the grill. Coat grill grate with cooking spray; put grate in place over coals.

3. Sprinkle 1/8 teaspoon table salt evenly over fish. Lightly coat fish with cooking spray. Place fish, skin side down, over direct heat on grill rack coated with cooking spray; grill 2 minutes or until well marked. Turn fish over and move to indirect heat; grill 12 minutes or until desired degree of doneness.

4. Heat a small skillet over medium heat; add bacon to pan. Cook 5 minutes or until bacon is almost crisp, stirring occasionally. Add garlic; cook for 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add paprika, and cook for 20 seconds, stirring constantly. Add tomatoes, and cook for 3 minutes. Stir in butter. Remove from heat; stir in remaining 1/8 teaspoon table salt. Place 1 fillet on each of 4 plates; top each serving with about 2 tablespoons tomato mixture.

I wonder what next Thursday will bring…..

I had about six peaches that needed using up and a package of puff pastry in the freezer.  Almost-instant dessert!

Just for grins and giggles, I actually peeled the peaches – something I rarely do.  And they were so sweet I didn’t even add sugar to them!

I peeled and sliced them and then mixed them with 3 tbsp flour and 2 tbsp melted butter.  Nothing else.

I placed ‘em in the baking dish, topped it with the puff pastry, and placed it in a 400° oven for 35 minutes.

Yum.

After years (and years) of rolling gnocchi off the tines of a fork, Victor went out and got a real, live gnocchi board.  Just in time for Monday’s Pasta Feast.

He’s going to be making Malloreddus con Saliccia.

I can’t wait.

This recipe comes courtesy of Cooking Light.  Well…  The concept does.

I followed the guidelines, but my ingredient list was a bit different.  I wanted to use up a few odds and ends in the ‘fridge.

I liked the original recipe and will probably make a closer-to-the-original version one of these days.  In the meantime, here’s the recipe from Cooking Light with my changes following!

Chicken and Mushrooms with Marsala Wine Sauce

Serve with mashed potatoes or egg noodles to soak up the tasty sauce.

Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 1 chicken breast half and about 1/2 cup sauce)
Ingredients

• 1/2  cup  dried porcini mushrooms (about 1/2 ounce)
• 4  (6-ounce) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
• 4  teaspoons  all-purpose flour, divided
• 3/4  teaspoon  salt, divided
• 1/4  teaspoon  freshly ground black pepper
• 2  tablespoons  olive oil, divided
• 1/2  cup  chopped onion
• 1/4  teaspoon  crushed red pepper
• 5  garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 1 1/2  cups  thinly sliced shiitake mushroom caps (about 4 ounces)
• 1 1/2  cups  thinly sliced button mushrooms (about 4 ounces)
• 1  teaspoon  dried oregano
• 1/2  cup  dry Marsala wine
• 2/3  cup  fat-free, lower-sodium chicken broth
• 1  cup  halved cherry tomatoes
• 1/4  cup  small fresh basil leaves

Preparation

1. Place porcini mushrooms in a small bowl; cover with boiling water. Cover and let stand 30 minutes or until tender. Drain and rinse; drain well. Thinly slice.

2. Place each chicken breast half between 2 sheets of heavy-duty plastic wrap; pound chicken to 1/2-inch thickness using a meat mallet or small heavy skillet. Combine 3 teaspoons flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and black pepper in a shallow dish. Dredge chicken in flour mixture.

3. Heat a large stainless steel skillet over medium-high heat. Add 1 tablespoon oil to pan; swirl to coat. Add chicken; cook 3 minutes on each side or until done. Remove from pan; cover and keep warm.

4. Heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil in pan over medium-high heat. Add onion, red pepper, and garlic; sauté 2 minutes or until onion is lightly browned. Add remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, porcini, shiitake, button mushrooms, and oregano; sauté 6 minutes or until mushrooms release moisture and darken. Sprinkle with remaining 1 teaspoon flour; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Stir in wine; cook 1 minute. Add broth; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 1 minute. Add chicken and tomatoes; cook 2 minutes or until thoroughly heated, turning chicken once. Sprinkle with basil.

I used leeks instead of onion, and sliced up about 8 brussels sprouts and fried them with the leeks.  I used the porcini mushrooms but used baby bellas instead of the shitake and button.  I also lightly thickened the sauce with a bit of cornstarch.  And my tomatoes were from the garden, not cherries.

It came out pretty good.

Pansotti con Salsa di Noci

I don’t even know where to begin.

Dinner tonight was just unbelievable.

I could die right now and have lived a complete life.

This is one of those recipes that sounds wonderful but is actually even more wonderful when you taste it!  Just wonderful.

Creamy good.  The sauce is surprisingly silky for having so many walnuts in it.  The food processor really does a good job.  (It may state mortar and pestle but we cook using 20th century equipment, whenever possible!)

There is a definite garlic undercurrent to it – even though the sauce only calls for one clove.  But the other flavors work together well with it.  The ravioli filling actually has flavor and texture to it – something usually lacking in the store-bought variety.

The actual pasta was light enough not to be a belly bomb, but substantial enough that you knew you were eating a ravioli.  A real ravioli.

Balance.

And balance pretty much sums up the whole plate.

Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes.

Pansotti

Dough

• 3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
• 1 ½ tsp fine sea salt
• ¼ cup dry white wine
• 1/3 to ½ cup water
• 1 large egg

In a large bowl, whisk together flour and salt. Mound flour mixture and form a well in the center. Add wine, 1/3 cup water and get to the well. Using a fork, gently break up yolk and slowly incorporate flour from inside rim of well. Continue until liquid is absorbed, then knead in bowl until dough forms a complete mass. Transfer to a well floured work surface and knead for 3 to 4 minutes more. If dough is not coming together add more water by the tablespoonful to moisten. Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes.

Unwrap dough and knead for 5 minutes. Flatten dough so that it will fit through the rollers of a hand-cranked pasta machine. Set the rollers of pasta machine at the widest setting, then feed pasta through rollers 3 or 4 times, folding and turning the pasta until it is smooth and the width of the machine.

Cut dough into 3 pieces; cover 2 pieces with a clean dishtowel. Begin rolling pasta through machine, decreasing the setting one notch at a time (do not fold or turn pasta) until the sheet is 1/8 inch thick. Cut pasta sheet into 2 pieces. Dust both sides of sheets with flour and cover 1 sheet with a clean dishtowel. Cut the other sheet of pasta into 3 inch squares. Fill each with 1 teaspoon filling. Fold into triangles and seal with a dab of water and crimp with a fork. Transfer to a clean dry lightly floured baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining pasta sheet, then roll, cut and fill remaining dough, 1 piece at a time.

Unwrap dough and knead for five minutes.

Feed pasta through rollers 3 or 4 times.

Filling

• 1 lb Swiss chard, stems and center ribs removed, leaves coarsely chopped.
• 1/3 cup finely chopped fresh basil leaves
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tsp fine sea salt
• ¾ cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
• ¾ cup fresh ricotta cheese
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add chard and cook for 3 minutes. Drain, then squeeze out all excess water. Finely chop together chard and basil

Mound garlic and salt on a cutting board. Using the blade and flat side of a chef’s knife, chop and blend together the garlic and salt to a paste. In a bowl, combine greens garlic paste, Parmigiano-Reggiano, ricotta, egg and pepper. Cover bowl and set aside.

Fill each with 1 teaspoon filling. Fold into triangles and seal.

Transfer to a clean dry lightly floured baking sheet.

Pansotti con salsa di noci – Pansotti with walnut sauce

• ¾ cup walnut pieces
• 1 cup (1/2 inch) cubes day-old rustic bread
• Sea Salt
• Fresh ground black pepper
• 1 garlic clove
• 1/3 cup plus 2 tbls extra virgin olive oil
• ½ cup fresh ricotta cheese
• ¼ cup nonfat Greek yogurt
• 1 batch Pansotti

Put the bread in a bowl, cover with tepid tab water and let stand for 5 minutes, then drain and squeeze out excess water

Place the walnuts, ¾ tsp salt and a pinch of pepper into a food processer with metal blade. Add the garlic and turn machine on, drizzling in all but 2 tbsp. of the olive oil. Add the ricotta and yogurt and the last 2 tbls oil and mix until combined.

Toss in a bowl with the warm Pansotti and serve immediately.