Baked Rigatoni
There's nothing quite like having a big casserole of baked pasta awaiting you as you come in from the cold.
This was my treat coming in yesterday. It was so good, we're having it again, tonight!
Mini-rigatoni with homemade sauce, sausage, ricotta, and parmesan.
Yum.
This is another classic throw-together dinner that just works on every level. It's warm, filling, comfort-food of the highest caliber.
Victor cooked the sausage and added it to his sauce. He cooked the pasta.
While the pasta was cooking he added one egg to a 16oz container of ricotta cheese, along with parmesan cheese and chopped fresh parsley.
The pasta went into the bowl with the ricotta and about 3/4 of the sausage and sauce. Mixed well, it went into the casserole dish and was topped with the remaining sauce, breadcrumbs, and more parmesan cheese.
Into a 350° oven for about 40 minutes.
Good enough for two dinners!
Rack of Lamb
You know life is good when you decide to make a rack of lamb for dinner because you're feeling lazy.
But less than15 minutes in a hot oven and dinner was on the table. The rice took longer to cook!
And fresh carrots steamed and then sauteed with honey and dill finished off the plate.
Back when I worked at Hugo's at the Hyatt Lake Tahoe I cooked a dozen or so racks of lamb every night. There, we seared them, spread a thick layer of dijon mustard on them, covered 'em with seasoned bread crumbs, and finished them in a hot oven. Probably charged 25 bucks for it - in 1976.
This was considerably easier - and less expensive.
Lamb is something I don't cook often. No particular reason other than I really just don't think of it.
One of these days I'm going to have to try and replicate my Great-Aunt Dolores' bone-in leg of lamb, complete with lamb gravy. It was stellar. I remember a lot of garlic... she sliced it in slivers and stuck it deep into the leg. And rosemary. Auntie was a great cook. It will have to be for a crowd, though. A bone-in leg would be a bit much for two.
One of these days.....
Magnificent Meatloaf
Meatloaf is one of those things I just throw together. No written recipe, but it's the same ol' loaf time and time, again. It's good, but it's the same ol' loaf time and time, again.
I decided that we needed something a bit different. I had a recipe for a Rustic French Meatloaf that I made for Victor's birthday, but I wasn't in a chicken liver mood. (Besides, I didn't have any lying about...)
I saw an old Gourmet recipe but it wasn't really what I wanted, either. I decided to take bits and pieces of everything and make my own.
Magnificent Meatloaf
- 1 cup bread crumbs
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1 small onion
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 stalk celery
- 1 carrot
- 4 oz mushrooms
- 1 cup dried figs
- 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
- 3 slices thick-sliced bacon
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup Italian parsley, minced
- 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tbsp cider vinegar
- 1/4 tsp allspice
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Preheat oven to 350°.
Soak bread crumbs in milk.
In food processor, finely mince onion, garlic, celery, carrots, and mushrooms. Cook mixture about 5 minutes in skillet over medium heat.
Add Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, allspice, salt and pepper. Add to bread-crumb mixture.
Finely chop bacon, parsley, and prunes in a food processor and add to onion mixture. Add beef and eggs and mix well.
Form into loaf.
Bake about 90 minutes or until thermometer reads 155°.
It worked pretty well.
All of the chopped and sauteed vegetables really made for a moist meatloaf, and the figs added a perfect sweet balance.
Mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy, and peas finished the plate.
And now we get meatloaf sandwiches.
Yum.
Frozen Mexican
Dinner tonight came right out of the freezer. All of it. The whole thing.
Slightly unusual, I know, but I just wasn't in the mood to cook tonight. Also unusual.
But having a meal like this now and again makes me realize how much better food is when I actually do cook it myself.
The best part of the meal was probably the little tacos. It's kinda hard to screw up a crunchy little corn tortilla. The orangish-blob in the center of the plate is cheese enchiladas. I admit that I am not overly-familiar with frozen cheese enchiladas, but these were nothing to write home about. They filled a void. And they also do not transfer from cardboard container to plate.
The tamale was not bad but really could have used that wonderful brown sauce from Johnson's Tamale Grotto in San Francisco.
Johnson's... ::sigh:: They were at 24th & Vicente and made the best tamales around. They were "cup" tamales. Not rolled in husks, but formed in cups. They had a turkey tamale - made with fresh-roasted turkey, of course - that was out of this world. With rice and beans.
Those were the days... I guess it's a bit unfair to try and compare frozen concoctions with freshly-made items of my youth, but it really does bring home the point that even fast-food once upon a time, was really, really good. We had several take-out-type places in the neighborhood that served some really fine food. They took pride in what they served and sold.
Then, again, people had different standards about what they would eat.
As a kid I didn't eat a lot of frozen foods because there were six of us kids - and frozen food was expensive. I remember the extremely rare times we actually got to eat a Swanson's TV Dinner! My favorite was the Salisbury Steak. Or a frozen pot pie (back when there was a top and bottom crust!) They were so much fun - because we never had them.
After moving out of the ancestral home I never had frozen food because I worked in restaurants. I ate fresh. Heck, for the longest time I rarely shopped for groceries at all except for Coca Cola and Dorrito's. (Great for the munchies...)
So... dinner tonight wasn't bad, it just wasn't fresh, homemade, or out of the Johnson's steam table.
I probably won't be making it a weekly dining experience.
Stuffed Pork Tenderloin
I've been spending an inordinate amount of time trying to get a new website configured (FINALLY got everything in place a little while ago!) but my cooking and writing about it have suffered a bit. Today, Victor finally figured that if he was going to eat dinner, he would probably have to cook it, himself. It's not that I don't want to cook or eat, it's just that time can get away from me a bit when I'm up to my neck in things that should work - but don't.
So just as I was about to throw my hands up in the air and run screaming out of the room, Victor said he would cook dinner.
He just knows.....
I had brought home a pork tenderloin and there was some Italian sausage in the 'fridge from last night, so a stuffed pork tenderloin was created!
The stuffing was fresh breadcrumbs, hot Italian sausage, celery, carrot, leeks, dates, and a bit of chicken broth.
The hot sausage and the sweet dates really worked well together! And he roasted a sweet potato and some broccoli with olive oil and a splash of balsamic vinegar.
It was perfect.
Snow has started to fall and I have a bunch of stuff to redo since migrating databases and upgrading servers wreaked havoc.
Oh well. It's keeping me from baking a cake right now.
Beef Stew and Beer Bread
It's amazing how much fun it is to decorate the house for Christmas and what a chore it is to take everything down. And how do decorations get so dirty?!? Do I stop and wash or clean things or say hell with it and pack 'em away, thinking I'll be in a better vrame of mind to deal with them next year?!?
You may guess which route I chose...
Spending the day taking down decorations means a day not spent in the kitchen cooking. But I still wanted a decent dinner.
Beef stew was the logical choice. It could sinner while I stewed about the 487 trips up-and-down the basement steps with 632 plastic bins full of 7,874,928 santas and other decorations.
We decided that if we ever won the lottery, we would have two identical wings to the house. One would always be decorated for Christmas. We'd just close it off until the holidays and open it up and close the other. I'd never have to worry about stowing dirty ornaments, again.
As we were getting towards the end of the bins, I decided we needed bread to go with dinner.
The quickest loaf to bake was definitely George and Suzanne's Quick Beer Bread.
I made this particular loaf with Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale. I keep several bottles of beer in the 'fridge just for cooking and making beer bread. I've been on the no-knead kick for a while and the beers have just been sitting there. The type of beer definitely changes the flavor. I tend to go for the darker beers, but a light pilsner works very well, also.
Beer Bread
- 3 cups self-rising flour
- 2 tbsp sugar (raw sugar works best)
- 12 oz beer
Use a 4″ x 8″ bread pan. Mix and bake at 350° about 1 hour. Top with melted butter.
If you don't have any self-rising flour in the cupboard, don't fret. Use:
- 1 cup flour
- 1 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
per cup of flour.
I'm seeing toast for breakfast.....
Panettone French Toast
Sunday Breakfast. It's one of the great joys of life - and one we just don't partake of often enough.
But the stars and planets aligned just right this morning and Victor headed off to the kitchen to create.
It's January 9th. Christmas really is officially over. Almost all of the decorations are down - and almost put away. And most of the holiday foods are out of the house. Almost. There's the panettone lurking in the corner....
I like panettone but Victor really likes it. It's his mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack with a cup of tea. I keep him well-supplied during the holidays, but all good things must come to an end. And if they're going to end, a perfect ending is panettone french toast.
Simplicity.
A couple of slices of bacon, maple syrup, a cup of hot coffee...
The perfect way to cruise into the day.
Soup and Sandwiches
A roast chicken means chicken soup. A chicken carcass is an automatic free meal. It takes nothing but a bit of leftovers to create a great meal.
A basic chicken soup has no recipe. It just is.
Seriously... It's put stuff in a pot and boil. Place the carcass and whatever meat is still attached, skin, liver gizzard, neck - all the little pieces from the little bag - into a soup pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat and simmer for a couple of hours. You can add some celery, onion, and carrots to the pot - skins, peels, and all - for additional flavor.
Remove from heat and strain.Let the carcass cool and then strip it of every last shred of meat. It will go back into the pot.
For the soup itself, add the stock and chicken to a pot. The add whatever you have in the house. Frozen vegetables, those little tupperware containers of whatever, potatoes, beans, rice, noodles or other pasta...
Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper and anything else you may like or have laying about.
That's the soup I made last night. It's slightly different yet always the same whenever I make it.
There are a lot of other chicken soups out there, from Mulligatawny - one of my all-time favorites - to our friend Karen's Mexican Chicken Soup.
Soup is not difficult.
So that was last night.
Tonight was meatball sandwiches and french fries. Going gourmet all over the place.
Even the cook doesn't feel like cooking some nights. Frozen meatballs, jarred sauce, a fresh baguette, and fontina cheese. French fries dusted with garlic powder and cayenne pepper.
It worked.
Roast Chicken
I have been sadly remiss in getting dinner blogs together the past few days. We're definitely eating, but I have been really busy trying to get a new website online for Against The Grain Gourmet - a great gluten-free bakery in Vermont. They've outgrown the site I did for them a couple of years ago and we're going to bring it into the 21st century. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, dinners are being quickly consumed and then I head back to the office to work.
But they've been good dinners!
Last night was a roasted chicken. Sometimes the simplest foods can just be the best! A lemon in the cavity, freshly grated orange zest on top with a bit of salt and pepper, and into a 375° oven for about an hour.
It came out great! Pan gravy, mashed potatoes, and zucchini and tomatoes finished the plate.
Victor had chicken sandwiches today and I'll probably make soup tomorrow, since it's supposed to snow a bit.
Well... no more goofing off. Back to work!
Turkey Soup
Lobster one day, soup the next. It's just the way of things around here.
But hi-brow or low-brow, it's always fun.
Tomight's dinner came completely out of the freezer. Well, almost. The carrots were fresh.
I had a small container of turkey soup from Thanksgiving, a small container of turkey gravy - also from Thanksgiving, and a container of chicken stock from whenever.
All three went into a big pot. I let it come to a boil, added some shell macaroni and a couple of sliced carrots.
I warmed up the bread from a couple of days ago and dinner was served.
It was the perfect for the weather - getting cold outside, again - and the perfect meal to balance the food-a-thon we had yesterday.
Oh. And there's more cheesecake for dessert.
All-Day Dining with Linda and David
Hors d'Oeuvres started at 2pm. Cheesecake was served at 7pm.
We ate all day.
It's pretty much what yer supposed to do when you get together with good friends. And we all believe in following the rules when it suits our purpose.
This has been a tradition since we moved back here 10 years ago. Victor has known Linda since childhood. She was our real estate agent when we bought our house. David was our mortgage broker.
Good friends with a lot of history. Friends you can say anything to without having to filter.
And friends who like to eat!
We started off with hors d'oeuvres. Just three, because we didn't want to spoil our dinner.
First off was a puff pastry dish Victor came up with based on something Ina Garten makes. She does a puff pastry, ham and cheese. Victor took it to a whole new level.
Puff Pastry with Pancetta and Dates
- 2 sheets puff pastry
- 1/3 cup sun-dried tomato pesto
- 4 oz thin-sliced pancetta
- 1 cup shredded fontina cheese
- 1 cup chopped dates
Roll puff pastry to fit sheet pan - 10" x 16" or so. Brush with sun-dried tomato pesto, them layer pancetta, cheese, and dates.
Roll second sheet of puff pastry and place on top. Crimp edges and brush with egg. Cut slits to allow steam to escape.
Bake in a preheated 450° oven about 10 minutes or until golden brown.
These were definitely a hit. They were easy to prepare and the fillings can be switched out a million and one ways!
Definitely a keeper.
I decided we needed to do at least one deep-fried hors d'oeuvre because... well... we do have that deep fryer! I went with a crab fritter because I just couldn't think of anything else savory that I wanted to do. This was a totally wing-it recipe from the fritter to the dipping sauce, but it turned out great. The test fritters I made were still a bit doughy in the center so I really was caredul about the size. 1 tablespoon cooked up perfectly!
Crab and Green Chile Fritters
- 8 oz crab
- 1 4 oz can green chilies
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 1 egg
- 1 cup self-rising flour
- 2 tbsp chopped chives
- salt and pepper
Mix crab with chiles, buttermilk, chives, and egg. Add a bit of salt and pepper, to taste. Add enough flour to make a moderately-stiff dough.
Drop tablespoon-sized balls into hot oil and cook until well browned.
Serve with dipping sauce.
For a dipping sauce I decided to go sweet and spicy.
We had homemade cranberry sauce in the fridge, apricot cookie filling in the fridge, and chipotles in adobo in the fridge.
I made a cranberry apricot chipotle dipping sauce!
Cranberry Apricot Chipotle Dipping Sauce
- 1 cup cranberry sauce
- 1/3 cup apricot preserves
- 1 chipotle in adobo, chopped (or to taste)
Place ingredients in small saucepan. Heat. Mix briefly with immersion blender to blend and to break down larger berries or apricot pieces.
Serve warm or at room temperature.
And finally, we had bruschetta.
I love bruschetta in any and all its various incarnations.
Anything on toasted baguette with cheese is my idea of good. This was mere open-a-jar.
We had a jar of Harry and Davids Charred Pineapple with Candied Peppers on the shelf for quite a while. Today it was spooned onto baguette slices, topped with cream cheese, and placed under the broiler for a couple of minutes.
This was so simple and a total hit.
By 4:30pm, it was getting time to sit down to dinner.
We started off with a simple Calabrese Salad.
Red and Green leaf lettuce, tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil.
I drizzled the whole thing with that nice, expensive olive oil Nick gave us for Christmas and some 15 year old balsamic. And a pinch of salt and pepper. It didn't need anything else.
And then it wan on to the main attraction:
Handmade pasta with a lobster sauce.
Oh yes, you read that right. Handmade pasta with a lobster sauce.
Oh yes.
Victor made the pasta from a recipe he saw on Ciao Italia with MaryAnn Esposito. She serves the pasta with a clam and mussel sauce, but Victor had a better idea. Lobster.
Scialatielli
- 1 extra large egg
- 1/3 to 1/2 cup milk
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 1 tablespoon grated Pecorino cheese
- 2 tablespoons minced basil or parsley leaves
Directions
Place egg, 1/3 cup milk, olive oil and salt in bowl of food processor and whirl until smooth. Add flour and cheese and pulse until mixture is grainy looking. Add parsley and pulse just until dough begins to leave the sides of bowl. If dough is too dry, add a little of the remaining milk until you can pinch a piece of dough between your fingers and it does not crumble.
Transfer dough to a floured surface and knead into a smooth ball. Place a bowl upside down over the dough and allow to rest for 30 minutes to relax the gluten and make it easier to roll.
Divide the dough into quarters and keep three covered while working the first piece. Flatten the dough to a four inch wide piece. Place it through the rollers of a hand crank pasta machine set to the fattest setting (#1). Set the rollers to the next fattest setting down (#2) and run the dough through again.
Use a small knife to cut 1/8 inch wide strips and place the strips on a clean towel. Repeat with the remaining dough.
It made a wonderful and delicious pasta dish, but we think next time we make it, we'll (that's *we* as in *Victor*) roll it a bit thinner. It's supposed to be a thick pasta, but our tastes tend to go for thinner.
The sauce was a variation on a La Cucina theme...
Aragosta al Limone
- Chunks of Lobster Tail
- 4 Large Egg Yolks
- 2 Lemons
- ½ cup plus 2 tbls Grana Padano grated plus more for sprinkling
- ½ tsp freshly ground pepper
- ½ cup plus 2 tbls heavy cream
- 1/3 cup plus 1 tbls whole milk
- 3 tbls finely chopped flat leaf parsley
- 2 tbls finely chopped chives
Sauté lobster chunks till just done, about 3 minutes or opaque. (Don’t over cook)
Place egg yolks in a large bowl. Grate the zest of 1 lemon into the bowl. Add cheese and pepper, whisk to combine, then whisk in the cream, milk, parsley, chives and a generous pinch of salt.
When the pasta is al dente, drain and return to the pot. Immediately add the egg mixture and lobster meat then toss together to combine. Serve immediately with more Grana Padano.
It was gooder than good. It was great watching both Linda and David go back for more. It was everything it could be and more.
And then, finally, it was time for dessert.
Linda is just a bit of a chocaholic, so we decided a cheesecake with a chocolate crust was in order. And this morning, I decided the cheesecake needed a chocolate ganache to cover it.
The ganache was pure over-the-top decadence. I loved every calorie of it!
I made my favorite "Worlds Greatest Strawberry Cheesecake" except I didn't use the strawberries...
World's Greatest Cheesecake with Chocolate Ganache
The Crust:
- 3/4 cups walnuts, coarsely ground
- 3/4 cup chocolate cookie crumbs
- 1 3 oz Valrhona chocolate bar
- 3 1/2 tbsp butter, melted
The Filling:
- 4 pkgs cream cheese, room temperature
- 4 eggs
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup whipping cream
The Topping:
- 16 oz sour cream
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
The Ganache:
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 12 oz bittersweet chocolate
- 1 tbsp vanilla
Putting it together: Preheat oven to 350º. Mix crust ingredients and press evenly into bottom of 10″ springform pan. Set aside.
Cream the cheese until light and fluffy. Mix in eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add sugar, vanilla, and whipping cream, mixing until smooth and light. Pour into pan and bake 60 – 70 minutes. Remove from oven and cool about 15 minutes. Keep oven on.
Mix topping ingredients and spread onto top of cheesecake to within about 1/2 inch from edge. Return to oven and bake about 7 more minutes. Cool completely, cover, and refrigerate at least 24 hours (2-3 days is best.)
On day you’re going to serve, make ganache. Heat cream. Remove from heat and stir in grated chocolate. Stir until smooth. Add vanilla.
Remove cake from pan. Spread ganache over cake. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
It really was a stellar day. And while we did eat a lot, at least it was spread out over 5 hours.
Our next feast with them is tentatively scheduled for July at their house to celebrate my and Linda's birthdays.
I can't wait.
They feed us the same way.
Steaks and Langostinos
It's still New Year's day, so that means we have to indulge just a little bit more. Tomorrow we will be indulging a little bit more, as well. Maybe we'll settle down by mid-week.
Maybe.
Tonight we had filets with a langostino harissa cream sauce. Really.
And it was good.
The sauce was nothing more than a tablespoon of harissa paste, 2/3 cup heavy cream, one egg yolk, salt and pepper. As it thickened, I added the already cooked langostino.
I made a bed of red rice, placed the filet on the rice, and the sauce went over the steak.
It worked really well. Really well.
Harissa is a spicy chili paste-type condiment. I think it originated in Tunisia but I see it in a lot of other northern African recipes. It's not exactly a traditional preparation, but it really worked well with the cream. I have to admit I wasn't sure how this one was going to turn out. It had all the right flavor profiles, but from experience I know that just because I like things doesn't mean they're going to work together.
They did tonight.
And I used the last of the no-knead dough to make a loaf of bread.
Tomorrow is another all-out-food-fest.
I love the holidays!