Cavatelli with lamb sausage and spinach

I haven't made it to an Easter at my parents in a while. Since the holiday is on a Sunday and you generally don't get the following Monday off, it makes it hard to be at my parents for dinner,  drive 5-7 hours and still make it to work the next morning. I was so excited when my boss gave us the day off for Good Friday and on my first day on the job! We were able to leave NY early and get to see my family an extra day. My mother even arranged Easter to begin as a brunch so that we would see everyone! We decided that we had to leave by two o'clock so that we wouldn't be getting home too late. This meant that we were going to miss the final dinner item - fresh cavatelli in home made sauce with sausages and meatballs. Luckily, I got my mom to pack me up a container of sauce and meat with some of the uncooked pasta before we left.

Once home we were too full and tired to make anything for dinner, but the next night I decided to switch things around. I had some lamb sausage in the freezer and since it is very traditional to eat lamb around Easter (and Passover which we celebrated a bit later in the week) I decided to use that for our dinner instead. This is an easy dish based on some thing I often make with chicken sausage, the lamb was amazing though! Flavorful little morsels between perfectly chewy bites of cavatelli gave the perfect savory bite. And we got to enjoy the sauce with some pasta another day!

Click through for the recipe

Shells with Bacon and White Beans

I am one of those people who eats soup year round. I honestly have a bowl almost every lunch time thanks to a few amazing NJ diner's who have 5 or 6 choices year round. Soup is one of the best meals out there. You can make it with just about anything - just throw some meat, vegetables, noodles, beans in a pot with some water or broth and you have a delicious meal that can be reheated over and over. I am trying to break my habit of going out to lunch every afternoon and so I have started to make a big batch on the weekend that I can then store in individual containers that I grab on my way out the door.

This soup was a little more thought out than usual...  I even made sure to have the bacon on hand and defrosted so no running the package under water for 10 minutes before I can start cooking. I saw the inspiration for this recipe earlier in the week on the kitchn and decided that I just had to make it. I went a bit more traditional for the pasta fagioli by including some diced tomatoes but you don't have to....and that is the beauty of soup!

Clams in Red sauce with Bacon

There is really nothing easier than a clams in a broth. You can use almost any liquid with herbs to give it more flavor. I love garlic and bacon and couldn't resist clams steamed in this delightful duo. So rich and fragrant - I am not sure if there is a more tempting aroma to great you from the bottom of the staircase as you are entering the kitchen.You could also use a white wine in this dish with some additional caramelized onion to make a whole new combo. I love easy, versatile cooking. Its fun to follow recipes sometimes but whats even better is being able to adjust and work with what you have on hand.

One of the most important parts of this dish happens long before the sauce come together - completely cleaning and removing sand before steaming the clams. The last thing you want is to have a gritty, sandy broth. Take a few extra minutes to make sure that you completely scrub each shell with a small brush.

Eggplant Cups

Let me share one of my favorite money saving ideas.....hosting a dinner in can be less expensive than paying your share of the bill at a restaurant. Add in the comfort of a casual dinner spread over a few hours at our home compared to being rushed out of your table, the awkward moments of how to split the check and then the early goodbyes to go home our separate ways and dining at home wins in so many ways. This is especially true when you have friends who are willing to do dishes since the clean up is absolutely my least favorite part of hosting! So many thank you go to all my awesome friend who don't hesitate to grab an apron and get scrubbing.

I am an avid reader of SmittenKitchen blog and I was super excited to see her post on the feature in Everyday Food , one of my favorite Martha publications. I loved her creative use of eggplant as a little shell to "stuff" - you know my love of stuffing veggies and eggplant isn't going to escape. I didn't really follow her recipe exactly - its a bit past fresh tomato season and well I forgot mint at the store (at least remembered parsley for my chicken roasting/soup making later this week) but I want to give some credit to the inspiration for tonight's dinner. I served these eggplant cups alongside some grilled steak tips (a cut that I NEVER see in NJ but grew up loving in New England!) and roasted zucchini.

All Purpose Marinara Sauce & a photo show of gnocchi making

Growing up there was only one type of sauce, my mother made it almost every Sunday after frying up a few dozen meatballs and some spicy Italian sausage. This was just how things were...we didn't know any vegetarians and so there was no reason to make a sauce that didn't start with the rich meaty flavors that came from using the left over bits of meatball stuck in the bottom of the biggest pan we had in the house. But now that I am living a few hundred miles away and have friends that follow every diet under the sun, I rarely make meat sauce because pasta is one of the only meals that most of us can eat together...as long as the sauce is vegetarian friendly (and we ignore those gluten-free people!). When I first moved down here, I would still make my mothers classic meat sauce and use jarred sauce for those friends who didn't eat meat. But when I made things like lasagna where the sauce was already mixed in, we ran into problems. The fix was easy - learn to make a marinara sauce that would rival the deep flavors of any meat sauce.

When I looked on the internet for example recipes (usually I like to look at 4 or 5 different versions then decide which ingredients and methods I will go with), I wasn't happy seeing additions of sugar, powdered spices and other ingredients that my mother (never mind my grandmother!) would never have put in sauce. I decide to make up my own version and over the past year or so I feel that it is really a great substitute. Nothing will compare to a meat sauce and those nicely browned up bits of meaty surprise that are well incorporated into the sauce lending it flavors that are uniquely carnivorous. But this sauce avoids some of the most common pitfalls of vegetarian sauces, too many vegetables (don't get me wrong I love my veggies but this is pasta sauce not minestrone soup!), too thin and watery (I simmer low and slow just like a meat based sauce), too much "raw" tomato taste (the addition of carrots seems to add enough sweetness to balance the acidity of the tomatoes) and with a rich base that gives this flavor to spare (onion, garlic and a splash of red wine).

But first some pics of our gnocchi making session... 3 girls, 15 lbs of potatoes and 3 4  hours of work. Somehow things always seem to take a lot longer than they should but at least when you are making dinner there is a great reward for you at the end!

  Jess and Tova ricing the potatoes

 

Me trying my hand at the ricer 

  

Pouring beaten eggs into the potato

Making the ridges in the fresh gnocchi

 A close up of the finished goods!

Keep reading for the marinara recipe

VIDEO POST! Pan Roasted Chicken with Ratatouille Sauce

It has been really fun using my new Flip Camera to record recipes. And so far I have gotten some great feed back...and even had a friend make something new because of my video! They say a picture says a thousand words - so what about a video? I know that personally I often look up videos of new cooking techniques because so many of us are visual learners. This recipe really turned out amazing. As I say in the video its fast, easy and really is perfect for company as it makes a great presentation. Don't be afraid of the hard to spell French name - Ratatouille is a wonderful vegetable dish that is a perfect recipe to have when your summer garden is making you see green (zucchini that is!)

I used two Newman's Own products in this recipe - Family Recipe Italian Dressing as a marinade for the chicken and Cabernet Marinara as part of the ratatouille. I used boneless, skinless chicken breasts as I find them much more flavorful than the standard boneless, skinless chicken breast. However, if you wanted to serve this with on the bone chicken breasts I think that would be a great option as well. Also feel free to serve this over brown rice, another type of pasta or even something more exciting like quinoa or couscous!

Click the link for the full recipe and instructions

VIDEO POST! Flexitarian Pasta Bakes

Well I am not really one for following directions so here is a bonus video from my experiment this weekend. I was asked to make a short (<5 min) video that featured Newman's Own products in a quick recipe (<30 min) and what did I do? Well I picked a recipe that had to cook in the oven after you prepped 4 or 5 different ingredients.... and I took over 10 min explaining it!  I was able to trim it down a little and I must say that they were absolutely delicious. While I don't think that I can call it a quick dinner for after work definitely find the time to make these individual pasta bakes. They freeze wonderfully and are perfect to have on hand when you want something homemade but don't have the time to make it right now.

Dinners like this are a favorite in my house because while we eat meat (or rather everything) we have lots of vegetarian friends.... so I try to make food that is adaptable to different eaters. This is the perfect dish to make double of and save one for a "rainy" day. Oh and for the record it should take you about 20 min to prep all the ingredients and then you just need to let them bake for about 20-30 min so dinner will be on the table in less than an hour!

Click the link to get the full ingredient and recipe

Crab Fra Diavolo?

Shrimp Fra Diavalo is an easy dish that is found on countless "red sauce" Italian restaurants all over America - though most people say that it is not something normally found in Italy. Either way the combo of seafood with spicy crushed red pepper in a fast and easy tomato sauce makes this a perfect weeknight meal as it can be made quickly and after work those minutes count! I decided to skip the shrimp tonight and go with lump crabmeat.

I used a can of  pre-cleaned crab meat however if you are feeling adventurous you can always get your own crab and clean out the meat yourself. Or class the dish up with the addition of lobster or scallops instead of the crab.  The sauce takes about as long as it does for the pasta to cook so get your water starting to boil and then begin to assemble the sauce. The next question is to cheese or not to cheese. Traditionally fish pasta dishes do not take the usual sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese however I can't resist the unami taste and usually go light but need a little something!

A new twist on a Vegetarian Pasta Bake

Fall temperatures make me crave all of the comfort food of my youth. Coming from an Italian family that usually means cheesy pasta dishes. While I don't think that I would be able to pass up a gooey slice of lasagna with those cheesy strands that just have to be stolen and stuffed into your mouth as you serve it up I have been trying to make a conscious effort to eat better. I know that denying myself my favorites isn't going to work out in the long run so instead I have tried to come up with some ways to lighten up dishes. I find that for many vegetarians (for the record I am not one but many of my friends are and I do try and accommodate them when possible) its easy to fall into the trap of pasta dishes. They are fast, easy and cheap... what more could you want? Well maybe some protein for starters!

Even though this dish looks like a standard version of "lazy man's lazagna" (ie pasta mixed with sauce and cheese and baked vs the painstakingly layers of a real lasagna) there are a few hidden tricks that makes it so much more. While this one was made with "normal" pasta (figured it was time to use it up!) definitely feel free to use whole wheat or rice pasta for an even healthier (or gluten-free) version. By adding both beans and vegetables to this dish you still get a lot of volume but with out all of the carbs or calories of a plate of pasta.

7/11/10 - Buitoni Reserva Party!

I was really excited to find out that I was picked to hold a dinner party using Buitoni Reserva Fresh Pasta. For once I didn't have tons of prep which was amazing - the Tastemaker program from Foodbuzz provided all the fresh pasta! It was fun to focus on my friends and enjoy the party instead of hanging out behind the island chopping, stirring, saucing..... The fresh agnolotti (which is basically like a ravioli) came in 4 different combination of meats, veggies and cheeses. Since the pasta cooked up so quickly, I decided it would be a perfect match for some fresh summer vegetables. The veggies combined with the filling agnolottis made a perfect main course for any hot summer night. The best part of dinner was that in the time I boiled the water to make the pasta my sauce was ready to go!

Each dish contains a good amount of veggies which makes for a balanced meals. I tried to complement the flavors in the agnolotti with a fresh bright summer vegetable fresh from the farmer's market. The favorite dish of the night was the starter because of the unique way that I served the agnolotti. The Quattro Formaggi Agnolotti was also the favorite pasta of the night as well! The runner up was the second dish which was made with vegetable 'noodles'. These noodles are a fun unexpected way to serve vegetables - I make the carrot noodles with a standard vegetable peeler while I used a large box grater to make the zucchini however a spiral vegetable peeler is an easy way to do this as well (unfortunately I don't have one and couldn't locate one anywhere near by!)

Check out my whole menu:
Baby Arugula salad with Crunchy Quattro Formaggi Agnolotti in Cilantro Shallot Vinaigrette 

Zucchini & Rainbow Carrot "noodles" with Wild Mushroom Agnolotti in Pesto Cream sauce

Spicy Beef & Sausage Ravioli with Fresh Tomato and Spinach Sauce

Keep reading for the recipes!

5/27/10 - Garlic Chili Scallop Noodles

I love all Asian food, but its always tricky when you order take-out. Sometimes its fast, hot and fresh and delicious.... and sometimes my favorite isn't open and I have to try some 'other' place and its eh... lets just say that was a failed test! When it was getting close to dinner the other night and I still hadn't started anything I began to visualize steamy hot bags of ginger scented goodness arriving (and no dishes to wash) but after the issue with the take out the other night (friends ordered some wings and it took forever and arrived ice cold...yuck!) I decided it might just be easier to make something up with whatever was hanging around. When I need something for dinner fast, seafood is a top contender, fast and easy to defrost and cooks up quickly.

I boiled up some water and finished defrosting some frozen scallops, while the pasta was cooking I cut up my veggies and got the pan hot and ready. I had a few different veggies on hand but feel free to toss more peppers, snow peas, baby corn, mushrooms etc in to make this dish even more delicious.

Garlic Chili Scallop Noodles
2 c whole wheat spaghetti- cooked
1 lb scallops - dried 
2 cloves garlic - smashed
2 shallots - diced
1/2 green pepper - diced
2 carrots - sliced thin on the bias
1 c broccoli florets
1" ginger - grated
2 tbsp sesame seeds
2 tbsp reduced sodium soy
2 tsp garlic chili paste
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
2 red scallions - diced
1) cook the pasta according to directions - drain
2) In a large wok pan - heat up 1 tbsp oil and add shallots & garlic
3) Add carrots, green peppers, broccoli, ginger and 1 tbsp soy - cover to steam
4) In another small pan - heat remaining 1 tbsp oil
5) Add sesame seeds and toast
6) Once browned remove sesame seeds and place aside
7) Add butter and sear scallops
8) Once scallops are cooked, toss in 1 tbsp garlic chili paste
9) Add pasta and scallops to veggies - toss with remaining garlic chili paste, sesame oil, scallions and sesame seeds

3/29/10 - Chicken Rosa

With the weather getting crazier by the day (last week it was 80 and sunny now its 45 and pouring) and my health only somewhat improved (officially bronchitis), I decided to rely on a shortcut that was sent to me a month or so ago by Foodbuzz Featured Publisher's Tastemaker program, Bertolli's Four Cheese Rosa Sauce. Since Spring is officially sprung, I wanted to include some fresh veggies to give this dish a little of a more healthful spin (if that is possible when using an Alfredo base). I also tried to cut down on the amount of pasta used so that there was a good balance of vegetables, proteins (boneless, skinless chicken breast) and starches.

This dinner was slightly reminiscent of Mac & Cheese because of the cheese based sauce however it was more elegant than even the most adult versions. With a nice light tomato base, the cheesy Alfredo sauce was the perfect companion to the large chicken chunks. The fresh green taste of the vegetables and parsley, especially,  kept it from being too rich and creamy. It was really tasty and fast dinner that got good reviews from my dinner table.

1/20/10 - Chicken, Kale and Rotini

With my mac & cheese party coming up I decided that I should make a test run with my bechamel sauce to see how long it would take me to put the different blends together. I had chicken left over from one I had roasted earlier in the week and the kale was purchased for what was going to be a chicken sausage and white bean soup but my broth wasn't ready yet and I didn't have time so cheesey gooodness it was!

This spin on Chicken Ziti and Broccoli was just as delicious even if we made a few changes to it. When you are working all day it pays to be flexible - sometimes things don't always go as planned and you still need dinner for the night.

Chicken Kale and Rotini
1 lb pasta - cooked according to directions
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
2 c warm milk (microwave)
2 c shredded cheese
roasted garlic
bunch of kale
1 c water (or chicken broth)
olive oil
garlic clove
2 c cooked chicken breast- diced
salt & pepper

1) In large saute pan, warm oil and garlic clove - add kale and saute till softened and then add a water and cover
2) make roux with butter and flour - simmer to allow flour to lose raw taste
3) slowly add warm milk and mix to combine
4) add cheese and continue to stir to combine
5) add chicken chunk and combine
6) add pasta and cheese sauce to kale and chicken and mix till combined