Meals that I Like #2

While this is an Asher-friendly meal (that he likes), this is a meal that I daydream about. Therefore, it gets put in with my meals.

Chicken Marsala
from Cybele Pascal's The Whole Foods Allergy Cookbook

1/3 cup oat flour
salt and pepper
1/3 cup olive oil
1 lb thin chicken breast cutlets
1/4 cup diced nitrite-free prosciutto(I just use bacon because I have bacon...lots of bacon)
8 oz sliced mushrooms
1 cup sweet Marsala

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
2. Put oat flour on plate and season with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet until really hot. Meanwhile, dredge chicken in flour, shaking off any extra. Put in pan once really hot and cook until golden, a couple of minutes per side. Don't overcrowd the pan; you will probably have to cook in two batches. Transfer to a baking dish and keep warm in oven.
   
3. Add mushrooms and prosciutto (bacon) to pan. Reduce heat to medium and cook until mushrooms are softened and meat has crisped up a bit. Add Marsala to pan and deglaze by using a spatula to scrape up any bits that have stuck to the side, stirring to reconstitute them. Reduce liquid at a steady simmer, stirring frequently about 7 minutes until sauce has thickened. Add chicken back to pan and turn in sauce.

Serves 2-4.This is another picture from back in May but, like the cacciatore, it has become a regular in this house.
The final product: incredible! The chicken is good and relatively simple. It's the mushrooms and bacon that I adore beyond reason. They're sweet, rich and highly addictive. It can be served so many ways too. With potatoes, like I've shown, is good or you can use noodles or rice to sop up the extra sauce and be extra happy.

MTAL #8

It's time. My summer hiatus is over and now it is time to start posting all the things I tried this summer. There's actually quite a bit of ground to cover, including my quest to conquer the pie. We better get started.

Chicken Cacciatore
from Cybele Pascal's Whole Foods Allergy Cookbook

3 1/2-4 1/2 lbs chicken pieces
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp poultry seasoning (which I never have so I use thyme instead; Pascal recommends equal parts thyme and sage if you have those)
1/2 cup white wine
4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 onion, cut into about 10 wedges
12 mushrooms, cut in half (I use a whole cup)
8 black olives (which I omit)
2 cups red sauce (bought or homemade)
2 cups canned tomatoes
salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Wash and pat dry chicken pieces. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil over medium-high heat in oven safe casserole (such equipment would be great but since I don't have that, I use my largest skillet and then the largest baking pan I have). Brown chicken pieces skin side down, about 4 to 5 minutes. Sprinkle with 1/2 the poultry seasoning, reserving the rest for later. Flip chicken and cook the other side until slightly browned. Sprinkle with rest of seasoning. Remove from pan. You may have to cook the chicken in several batches, adding more oil as necessary.
   
2. Drain off all but 1 Tbsp oil and pour in the wine. Using a wooden spoon, scrape up browned bits that have stuck to the bottom. Put carrots, onions, and mushrooms (and olives if using) in the pan and stir slightly. If using a separate baking dish, transfer vegetables and sauce to dish. Cover with chicken pieces. Combine the red sauce with canned tomatoes. Spoon over the chicken. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and cover pan or dish.
3. Cook cover for about 1 1/2 hours. Serve over rice (for Asher) or over hot noodles (such as linguine).

Serves 4-6.

This is actually a picture from clear back in May but as this recipe has become a staple in our household, it remains relevant.
The finished product: delicious! This is actually my second recipe for cacciatore but it's also my favorite. The sauce is good but the vegetables are what really sell it for me. I'm kind of a sucker for cooked carrots. This is great comfort food and yet it's so colorful and pretty that it's great for entertaining too. As I mentioned, it has definitely made its way onto our list of staple family meals.

MTAL #6

This was my very first Asher-friendly meal and my very first attempt at making up a recipe (sort of). We call them Asher meatballs.

Asher Meatballs

1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground pork
1 cup rice
1/4 cup onion, grated
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
2 Tbsp rice milk
salt and pepper
olive oil
store bought or homemade tomato sauce (Prego fresh mushrooms is Asher friendly)

1. Combine all the ingredients except for the oil. Roll into 1 1/2-inch meatballs. Heat the olive oil over medium to medium-high heat. Brown the meatballs on all sides in the hot oil (I usually need 2 batches to get them all browned).
   
2. Transfer the meatballs to a slow cooker. Cover in tomato sauce and cook on low heat for 4-6 hours.
3. Just before serving, stir in another 1-2 cups of tomato sauce. Serve over hot rice (or noodles for the non-allergic crowd).

Serves 6-8.

This is the first meal I made that Asher truly loved. We all really like it too. It might sound weird to serve tomato sauce over rice but it's actually really good and much easier than cutting up noodles for little ones. Enjoy!

Lasagna (and noodles)

Lasagna is one of those classic comfort foods that is perfect to pull out on a cold day. Since this winter seems to be stretching on forever, try it out and enjoy!

Homemade Pasta
from Better Homes and Gardens

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 beaten eggs
1/3 cup water
1 tsp cooking oil or olive oil

1. In a large bowl stir together 2 cups of the flour and salt. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture. Ina small bowl combine eggs, water, and oil. Add egg mixture to flour mixture; stir to combine.
2. Sprinkle a clean kneading surface with the remaining 1/3 cup flour. Turn dough out onto floured surface. Kneading until dough is smooth and elastic (8 to 10 minutes total). Cover and let dough rest for 10 minutes.
3. Divide the dough into 4 equal portions. On lightly floured kneading surface, roll each dough portion into a 12-inch square (about 1/16-inch thick). Let stand, uncovered, about 20 minutes. If using a pasta machine, pass each portion through machine according to manufacturer's directions until dough is 1/16-inch thick. Let stand; cut as desired.

Makes 1 lb pasta.

Ready to mix the dough.
Ready to knead the dough.

Kneaded dough.

I used my pasta machine. Here are the four portions resting and waiting to be cut up.

I got a pastry cutter for Christmas and this was my first time using it. It made some pretty noodles.

Cooking the noodles.

Lasagna

from Better Homes and Gardens

12 oz bulk Italian sausage or ground beef

1 cup chopped onion (1 large)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 (14-oz) can diced tomatoes, undrained

1 (8-oz) can tomato sauce

1 Tbsp dried Italian seasoning, crushed

1 tsp fennel seeds, crushed (optional)

1/4 tsp black pepper

6 dried lasagna noodles

1 beaten egg

1 (15-oz) container ricotta cheese (or 2 cups cream-style cottage cheese, drained)

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

6 oz shredded mozzarella cheese

1. For sauce, in a large saucepan cook sausage, onion, and garlic until meat is brown. Drain.
2. Stir in undrained tomatoes, tomato sauce, Italian seasoning, fennel seeds, and pepper into meat mixture. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, covered, for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Meanwhile cook noodles according to package directions (2 to 3 minutes if using homemade). Drain noodles; rinse with cold water. Drain well; set aside.
4. For filling, combine egg, ricotta, and the 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese. Set aside.
5. Spread about 1/2 cup of the sauce over the bottom of a 2-quart baking dish. Layer half of the cooked noodles in the bottom of the dish, trimming or overlapping as necessary to fit. Spread with half of the filling. Top with half of the remaining sauce and half of the mozzarella cheese. Repeat layers. If desired, sprinkle additional Parmesan cheese over top.
6. Place baking dish on a baking sheet. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 30 to 35 minutes or until heated through. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Makes 8 servings.

Meat mixture.

Meat mixture with sauce.

The noodles stayed a little bent as they cooled. I would probably try to lay them flat if I can't immediately start layering them after they are drained.

The finished product: delicious. I love this recipe for lasagna. I'm sure there are more exotic and fancier lasagna recipes out there but this is certainly a good compromise between the familiar and the fancy. The ricotta is crucial to this recipe (don't switch it out for the cottage cheese). The sauce has a good amount of chunk to add interest and overall it has good flavor. Next time I think I'll roll the noodles out just a little thinner (I'll go to level 3 instead of 4) but that's the great thing about making them yourself: you can cater them to your preferences.

Tomato & Spinach Pasta Toss

Tomato & Spinach Pasta Toss

2 cups rotini or penne pasta, uncooked
1/2 lb. hot or mild Italian sausage
6 oz. baby spinach leaves (7 cups)
1 can diced tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano, undrained
1 cup Kraft Shredded Low-Moisture Part-Skim Mozzarella Cheese
2 Tbsp Kraft 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese

1. Cook pasta as directed on package.
2. Meanwhile, crumble meat into large deep skillet. Cook on medium-high heat 10 to 12 minutes or until cooked through, stirring occasionally; drain. Add spinach and tomatoes; cook 2 minutes or until spinach is wilted, stirring occasionally. Remove fron heat; cover to keep warm.
3. Drain pasta; return to pot. Add meat mixture and cheeses; toss lightly.

Makes 6 servings.

This is a recipe from the Spring 2008 edition of Food & Family from Kraftfoods. The magazine is obviously meant to be one big advertisement for their products but if you need a quick and simple recipe, it will definitely do the trick. Here is a recipe that combines a lot of my favorite foods so I was excited to try it.

The ingredients:

I couldn't find anything but the links version of Italian sausage so I used them and just removed the meat from their casings. I'm sure you could just cook the links and then cut them up for this recipe but it takes just a bit longer to cook them that way and I was in a hurry.

It's always fun to cook down fresh spinach. Luckily I thought ahead this time and used my biggest skillet so I had plenty of room for all this spinach. I'm not sure exactly how much spinach I actually used as I had a 10 oz pack and wasn't really feeling like measuring things.

Here is the cooked down spinach/tomato/meat mixture. It smelled really good.

I had some time to kill before the pasta was done so I covered the meat mixture so it wouldn't get cold before putting it all together. Looking back now I see that the recipe even includes this step which makes feel a little bit better since I just thought I had planned poorly.

The cooked pasta, meat mixture and cheeses ready to be mixed.

The final product: this meal is super simple and very good. I like everything about this meal: the spinach, cheese, meat, tomatoes; it's all good. The only bad thing about this meal is the clean up as the cheese is super stringy and sticky. Next time I think I won't break the meat up as much because I like larger chunks.

Lasagna Casserole

Lasagna Casserole

1 pound campagnelle
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 pound ground beef, pork, and veal mix
1 carrot, peeled and grated
1 onion, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, grated
1 (28-oz) can Italian plum tomatoes
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, shredded or torn
A handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
2 cups ricotta cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Bring a pot of water to a boil. When it boils, salt the water liberally, add the pasta, and cook just shy of al dente, 6 to 7 minutes; there should still be a good bite left to it.

While the pasta water comes to a boil, heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the ground meat and break it up into small bits; brown it lightly, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the carrots, onions, and garlic; season with salt and pepper; and cook for 5 to 6 minutes to soften. Add the tomatoes to the pan and use a wooden spoon to crush them up. Add the stock. Simmer for 15 minutes, then fold in the basil and parsley.

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Drain the pasta and place in a large bowl. Add the sauce and ricotta cheese and mix well, then transfer to a casserole dish and top with Parmigiano cheese. Bake for 15 minutes to get the top a bit crusty.

I was excited about this recipe. It's from Rachel Ray's Just In Time cookbook. I got this cookbook a couple of Christmases ago and nearly every recipe we tried out of it has been really good. I had to do quite a bit of tweaking though simply because of availability of ingredients so I can only say that this meal is loosely based on her recipe.

The ingredients:


I didn't find the ground beef, pork, and veal mix at the grocery store so I just used regular ground beef.

While I had the grater out to grate the carrots, I decided it would be easier to grate the onion as well. I only had half an onion so that's all I used.

We couldn't find the Italian plum tomatoes at the store either so I used Italian seasoned stewed tomatoes instead. It says to crush the tomatoes which was pretty difficult.

I intended to use fresh basil for this but the basil I had in my refrigerator went bad. I used dried instead which will result in a less fresh flavor but I didn't have much of an option. I am pretty bad about things like this. I am getting better, but I often will forget to use something, or will put off a meal until one or more of the ingredients goes bad.

Here the sauce is simmering. The smell was very familiar to both Tyler and me but neither of us could put our finger on what exactly it smelled like. Whatever it was, it smelled good.

The pasta was done at least 5 minutes before the sauce so I decided to mix it with the cheese beforehand to prevent it from sticking to itself. The recipe calls for 2 cups but we could only find 1 3/4 cup containers at the store so that's what we used.

Here is the casserole all mixed up and ready to go into the oven. It was almost too much for my casserole dish but luckily just fit. I don't have anything bigger so I was relieved.

The final product: the casserole reminded me a lot of goulash. It was good but I was honestly expecting something a little more exotic from Rachel Ray. The issue may not have been with her recipe, though, and probably had more to do with all of my alterations. I will probably make this again but will definitely try to use fresh basil; I think that would increase the fresh factor.

Quick Tomato Sauce

Quick Tomato Sauce

2 Tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 cup grated onion
1/4 tsp dried oregano
2 medium garlic cloves, minced
1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
1/4 tsp sugar
2 Tbsp coarsely chopped fresh basil leaves
1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1. Heat butter in medium saucepan over medium heat until melted.
2. Add onion, oregano, and 1/2 teaspoon table salt; cook, stirring occasionally, until liquid has evaporated and onion is golden brown, about 5 minutes.
3. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
4. Stir in tomatoes and sugar; increase heat to high and bring to simmer. Lower heat to medium-low and simmer until thickened slightly, about 10 minutes.
5. Take sauce off heat, stir in basil and oil; season with salt and pepper. Serve.

Last night I tried a new recipe for spaghetti sauce. It's a recipe I got out of Cook's Illustrated (a magazine that was recommended to me by Liane, one of the best cooks in our church) and was super excited to try out. The goal of this recipe is to produce a fresh-tasting tomato sauce that can be made in the time it takes to cook spahetti.

The ingredients:

The author said to use the large holes of a box grater to grate the onion. Other than a few tears, I enjoyed this step; it's always nice to get to use one of my kitchen gadgets.

This is about a minute into step two. It smelled good.

This is what the onion looked like after it cooked for a while. Looking back on this now, I probably could have cooked the onions even a little bit longer but I don't think it really hampered the final product. At this point, I had added the garlic and it smelled even better.

After adding the tomatoes and sugar, you're supposed to bring the sauce up to a simmer. Be warned: it will splatter. I don't know why I never think of this when heating tomato sauce until I've got tomatoes on my wall; I guess I'm just a slow learner.

Here is the last step of mixing in the basil and oil.

The final product: the sauce was really good and seemed to get better with each taste. Even Tyler (who absolutely hates change) agreed that this was much better than our usual Prego.

The main issue I had with this recipe was not actually with the sauce but with the pasta. I decided to use Angel Hair pasta because Tyler likes it better. Of course, it has a shorter cooking time than regular spaghetti so it was done well before the sauce. I also have the inability to judge serving sizes of dried pasta. I either cook too little and we have to try to stretch it or I cook way too much. Last night I cooked way too much (seriously, you should see how much pasta I gave Tyler). On the whole, it was a successful meal and I will definitely be making this recipe again.

Fettucine alla Carbonara

Fettucine alla Carbonara

8 oz fettucine
6 slices bacon
2 Tbsp butter
1 egg
1 cup half & half (or milk or heavy cream)
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
black pepper
finely chopped parsley for garnish (although it looks pretty, I usually skip this because I'm too cheap to keep fresh parsley around just for garnishing)

1. Cook pasta.
2. Cook bacon and crumble.
3. Combine lightly-beaten egg with butter and half & half and cook over medium heat until the mixture will just coat a metal spoon (approximately 6 minutes).
4. Toss pasta, bacon, parmesan, pepper and sauce together to coat and serve immediately.

This past week I made Fettucine alla Carbonara (per the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook). This is a recipe I've made many times before. It actually was one of the first recipes I tried out of this cookbook (Tyler loves alfredo and bacon so I thought this was a sure-fired winner) and was one I thought I had down. Step 3 is the tricky part in this meal (that and making sure to serve this immediately because it gets pasty the longer it sits). If you don't cook the sauce long enough, it doesn't coat the pasta. If you cook it too long and it starts to boil, the sauce isn't creamy but instead is kind of grainy and dry. When we were living up north, I could get it to just about the perfect consisency by simply following the recipe and cooking for 6 minutes. I don't know what but something has changed since we have moved to Houston. Here it takes sometimes 15 minutes or more to get it even close to coating the spoon. That has been very frustrating and has resulted in multiple runny or grainy versions of this meal. Friday I decided I would try to alter my methods to see if I could get that cooking time back down to 6 minutes.

My ingredients (minus some salt for the pasta water and some black pepper for garnish):

The switch up: Instead of simply lumping all of the ingredients together and cooking for the stated 6 minutes, I thought I'd try to speed things up a bit by melting the butter and preheating the pot before adding the rest.

I have always beaten the egg in the pot to avoid soiling another dish but since the pot was already warm this time it actually cooked the egg just a little before I could get the rest of the ingredients added (this didn't turn out to be a huge problem but Tyler did notice a small hunk of scrambled egg in his carbonara).


While melting the butter beforehand did speed up the process, it still took nearly 10 minutes to get the sauce to spoon-coating consistency. If anyone has any ideas why it takes longer in Houston rather than in Kansas and Missouri, please share. I'm still stumped.

Here is the finished product. It ended up tasting fine (Tyler seemed to enjoy his added scrambled egg) and being about the right consistency but I think that's more due to my experience with this dish than any of the tweaking I did.