Even MORE adventures in homemade pasta

Tonight's Menu

• homemade cheese ravioli
  
• green salad "bar"
  

I will be honest with you: I don't know that I'll be making homemade ravioli all that often in the future. It's not that it was difficult at all, but OMG, it was SO TIME-CONSUMING. I'm not sure the results were worth all the time that went into this dish. I mean, the ravioli was really good, but I don't know that it was two hours worth of good, you know?

ANYWAY, what I did was mix up a batch of pasta dough (two cups flour, one teaspoon salt, three eggs, whizz it all up in a food processor then wrap it in plastic and stick it in the fridge) and roll it out into sheets. That part was easy.

For the filling, I combined some whole-milk ricotta (if yours is runny or weepy, drain it first) with some shredded parmesan (NOT the stuff in the green can), chopped fresh parsley, salt and pepper. Also easy.

Then, I think I may have done something stupid. I'm pretty sure most people who are crazy enough to make ravioli at home dollop the filling onto the pasta sheets and then lay another sheet on top, sealing everything around the dollops of filling and then cutting the raviolis apart. But I'm such a doof, I wasn't sure I'd be able to get everything spaced out right. So I cut my pasta sheets into squares and made my raviolis one at a time and OH MY GOD, never again. It just took FOREVER, and they were kind of jacked-up looking. Maybe I just need practice.

But whatever, I boiled them in salted water for about five minutes and served them with my usual tomato sauce and they were fine. Really good, even! But holy cats, y'all. My back is killing me from all that ravioli assembly.

The salad bar was just romaine lettuce, sliced cucumbers, and sliced carrots from the garden.

More adventures in pasta

Tonight's Menu

• homemade spaghetti w/quick meatless tomato sauce
  
• green salad "bar"
  

I am determined to get this homemade pasta thing right, y'all. After posting about my most recent attempt at it on my other blog, some kind readers offered tips and I incorporated those this time around with very satisfactory results!

I used the same recipe as last time (two cups flour, one teaspoon salt, three eggs -- is it weird that I have that memorized now?) but after rolling the dough through on a couple of different settings, I folded it in thirds and went back to a larger setting and rolled it through again before repeating the process a couple of times. This time I was able to get it to a #6 thickness before chickening out. My crappy pasta maker has a built-in cutter for spaghetti so I tried it and it worked! I tossed the strands with a bit of flour, then hung them on a kitchen towel over the back of a chair to dry for a couple of hours. They cooked up in about three minutes and were really, really good! Yay! Success!

The tomato sauce was my usual. And actually, it was left over from some purchased tortellini I made several days ago. It keeps well in the fridge.

Tonight's salad bar was chopped romaine and green leaf lettuces, sliced green onions, sliced carrots from the garden, and some tiny cherry tomatoes (I caved and bought some at the store, which I would not normally do this time of year, but I NEEDED tomatoes, y'all).

I am SO excited about this whole pasta thing, can you tell? If I ever get brave enough for homemade tortellini or ravioli, you all will be the first to know.

Pasta & 'shrooms

Tonight's Menu

• spaghetti w/mushroom-herb sauce
  
• green salad "bar"
  

I am in such a rut with pasta that I usually don't even bother to tell you when I make it. I tend to do one of three things with it: spaghetti with my quickie tomato sauce, some sort of pasta shapes (penne, usually) with Knorr Parma Rosa sauce (a packet of powder to which you add milk and butter), or any sort of pasta with just butter and shredded cheese mixed in.

I know, right? BORING.

So tonight I decided to experiment. I know what you're thinking -- that NEVER ends well, at least for me -- but this time it came out pretty darn tasty! As usual I didn't measure anything, but here's essentially what I did.

First I sliced some crimini mushrooms (these are sometimes called baby bellas) and minced some fresh garlic. I melted some butter over medium heat in a skillet, tossing in the mushrooms and garlic and letting them sweat out fairly slowly without picking up any color. Then I added some fresh thyme, some minced fresh rosemary, salt and pepper and just tossed it around a bit (this smelled AMAZING) before adding in some heavy cream (left over from the pork and gnocchi the other night). I let that simmer over low heat until the cream had thickened just a bit. Then I drained the spaghetti (which had been cooking all this time) and dumped it right into the skillet with the mushroom sauce. Toss, throw on some chopped fresh parsley, and serve! This was really pretty darn tasty and a nice change from our usual boring pasta dinners!

The salad was still boring, though -- just green leaf lettuce and sliced carrots from the garden. We ate up the last of the CSA greenhouse tomatoes last night when I made hamburgers so this salad was even more bare than usual!

What's cookin'

Hey, everyone! I know my dinner posts have been a little spotty lately, so I thought I'd list some stuff I've been making that I haven't had a chance to tell you about.

Cold Boiled Shrimp
This is the girl child's favorite way to eat shrimp, and it really could not be easier to make. I buy shrimp with the shells already split down the back and the mud veins removed, but it's pretty easy to do that yourself with a pair of kitchen shears. Bring a big pot of water to a boil with a couple of tablespoons (or more, if you like it spicy) of crab/shrimp-boil seasoning. You can buy this already made, which is what I do, or mix up your own blend of spices, which is what I keep telling myself I'll do one of these days.

Give your shrimp a good rinse in the sink and then, once the water on the stove is at a full boil, CAREFULLY add the shrimp. It only takes a couple of minutes for them to cook. As soon as they curl up, fish them out with a slotted spoon and dump them directly into a big bowl of ice. This will stop them from cooking any further and getting rubbery, plus make them easier to peel. And spicy, cold shrimp is soooo good on a hot day! I like to dip mine in a little melted butter with some hot sauce mixed in, but you could go the cocktail sauce route or whatever. Yum!

Spiced carrots
I made these the other night while DH was grilling steaks. I had a gorgeous bunch of organic carrots (with the tops still attached! love that!) and ended up using the whole bunch for this -- about 8-10 carrots -- because they were kind of small. But you know, adjust the amount however you like. All I did was peel them, cut them into 3/4-inch chunks, stick them in a bowl and steam them in the microwave until they were crisp-tender.

While the carrots were nuking, I bashed up a couple of teaspoons each of whole coriander and cumin seeds with my mortar and pestle. Then I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter in a skillet over medium heat, added the spices and stirred them around for a bit before dumping in the steamed carrots and tossing them to coat. Season with salt and pepper and you're done! These were really yummy with the grilled steaks (and baked potatoes, which the kids DEVOURED after claiming not to like baked potatoes. go figure!).

Coconut milk ice cream
We bought an ice cream maker this summer and I had resolved my lactose-intolerant self to a summer full of TEENSY dabs of homemade goodness, with the occasional fruit sorbet (boring!), when I learned there was such a thing as ice cream made with coconut milk. I was hesitant to try it because my past experience with non-dairy ice creams has NOT been good (ice milk, Rice Dream, bleargh!). But the one VERY expensive pint of coconut milk ice cream I purchased at the store was good, so off I went to Google to find some recipes for the homemade version.

I didn't find all that many, really, but I did find one for chocolate coconut milk ice cream over at The Nourishing Gourmet that sounded fabulous and really easy. AND it was sweetened with my new best friend, agave nectar! So I whipped up a batch of it and OH DUDES. It was seriously the best ice cream I've ever eaten IN MY LIFE. A monster was born in that moment, because I figured that with a base of coconut milk and agave, the possibilities were ENDLESS. And so far they have proven to be!

So yeah, I have been making a LOT of coconut milk ice cream this summer! My machine only makes one quart at a time so I use one can of organic coconut milk (NOT the "lite" variety) and three tablespoons of agave nectar and go from there. For a simple vanilla ice cream, I just add one teaspoon of vanilla to the above ingredients. For a kick-ass strawberry ice cream, I add the vanilla plus a bunch of fresh strawberries (you could use frozen, but thaw them first) and whizz the whole thing up in the blender before adding to the machine. My next experiment will be strawberry chocolate chip (or chunk).

This ice cream is sooooo rich and creamy, you'd never know it was non-dairy (and hello, IT'S VEGAN). Some flavors do retain a bit of coconut taste, but others don't really taste of coconut all that much. Or maybe I'm just getting used to it, I dunno. Anyway, DELISH! Thank you, Nourishing Gourmet! (And OMG, you all have GOT to check out her blog. It's full of fantastic whole-food recipes and tips!)

Homemade "magic shell" for the ice cream!
My kids are flat-out ADDICTED to that hard shell/magic shell ice cream topping. You know, the stuff that starts out as a liquid and gets hard (behave, children) when you pour it over ice cream? It's pretty expensive for a teeny little bottle of it, not to mention it's full of crappy ingredients, and after purchasing a new bottle pretty much every week for a couple of months solid I figured there HAD to be a better way.

Google came to my rescue once again, when I found this recipe for a homemade version over at The Accidental Vegetarian. Dudes, it's just coconut oil (I used unfiltered, organic) and chocolate chips! Melt it in a pan or the microwave, cool it, and pour it into a squeeze bottle! I have no idea how long it keeps because we're mowing through it at a rapid pace, but you don't have to refrigerate it or anything (which is good, because it would turn solid). It tastes and works EXACTLY like the stuff you buy, but it's healthier and way cheaper.

So yeah, I am topping my VEGAN ice cream with VEGAN magic shell over here. Right after a nice big steak dinner. Heh. (Sorry, vegans. I have a condition!)


Well, that's all I can come up with for now. My kids are back in school which gives me a little more free time to blog, and our CSA is off its one-week hiatus, so look for more dinners and whatnot coming soon. I'm also working on a FAQ, finally, so stay tuned for that!

More cooking from the CSA box: slow-roasted veggies? Oven-poached veggies? Veggie confit?

Yeah, I am not sure what to call this one, y'all. Here's what I did; maybe YOU can figure it out!

I wanted to slow-roast some of the CSA tomatoes in a bunch of olive oil based on this recipe by my lovely pal Kim. So I cut a bunch of tomatoes into wedges and tossed them in a baking pan along with some unpeeled garlic cloves, and then I thought, "Hey! I bet those little ichiban eggplants from the CSA would work a treat in here, too!" So I tossed those in as well (some of them were whole because they were just finger-sized, and others were cut into chunks).

I could have left it there but you all know me; I can never leave well enough alone. So I chopped up a medium-sized zucchini and popped that in the pan as well. Then I tore in some fresh basil (from the CSA), drizzled over quite a lot of extra-virgin olive oil (REALLY a lot -- I didn't cover the veggies entirely or anything but I definitely covered the bottom of the pan), shook on a few glugs of balsamic vinegar, sprinkled the lot with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper and popped it into the oven, uncovered, at 300 degrees F. The total cooking time was about 90 minutes, and I gave it a stir every half-hour or so.

Oh DUDES. This is one of the most delicious things I've ever made, I'm not kidding. After it came out of the oven I took a spoon and squished the garlic cloves so the smooshy garlic goodness squooshed out of the paper (which I threw away). I let it cool a bit and then spooned some into a bowl, scooping up great gobs of it with thick slices of peasant bread (from that bread book I can't stop talking about). HEAVEN, people. Absolute heaven.

This is going to be my lunch every single day until I've eaten it all. And possibly my breakfast, as well. It's THAT good.

But I still don't know what to call it!

More bread!

Tonight's Menu

• grilled boneless pork chops
  
• European-style peasant bread
  
• grilled zucchini
  

Easy dinner tonight, y'all.

The chops were just sprinkled on both sides with Jane's Krazy Salt and garlic pepper, then grilled for about 4-5 minutes per side. Easy!

The bread was another recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (that's NOT an affiliate link, by the way -- just trying to make it easy to find stuff). This one has a mix of flours -- rye, whole wheat and unbleached all-purpose -- for a slightly more rustic taste and appearance, and I actually prefer it to the master recipe (which only has unbleached all-purpose flour). Will probably try focaccia with it sometime soon, since my family has turned out to be a bunch of focaccia freaks -- who knew?!

Grilling is my new favorite way to cook zucchini. It's a good thing I love it so much, because our CSA shares have been overflowing with zukes! All I do is cut the ends off a large-ish zucchini (you could do it with a small one, too, but the ones we're getting lately aren't small!) and then slice it LENGTHWISE, end to end. I do the slices anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 inch thick. Brush them on both sides with EVOO (last night I smashed up a garlic clove in the oil for a little added flavor), sprinkle with salt and pepper, and grill them for just a minute or two per side. They're SUPER fast to make -- if you're grilling meat, just slice up the zucchini while the meat is grilling and then slap the zukes on the grill right after you take the meat off. That gives the meat a chance to rest while you're grilling the zucchini, and everything's ready to eat at the same time.

The leftover grilled zucchini, assuming you have any, is even good cold in salads or sandwiches. Or stick it in some lasagna or on a pizza! Mix it into some pasta, rice or quinoa! You could make a meal off these things, I swear! And you vegetarians say I NEVER HAVE ANYTHING FOR YOU. Go grill some zucchini, fer cryin' out loud!

Lasagne for everyone!

Tonight's Menu

• cheesy lasagne
  
• crusty garlic bread
  
• big-ass salad
  

I could swear that years ago, DH told me he didn't like ricotta cheese. So all these years I've been making my lasagne with mozzarella only. Sometimes I'd throw in some spinach and/or mushrooms, but ever since the boy child decided he liked PLAIN lasagne, I haven't even been doing that. So it's been sauce, noodles and mozzarella. No meat, no veg, no nothing. Yeah. Kind of flat and yucky, actually.

HOWEVER, DH has suddenly decided that he would be okay with trying some ricotta after all. So today I mixed ricotta (part skim) with the mozzarella and layered THAT with the noodles and sauce, and my lasagne was much closer to something resembling normal. DH declared that he liked the ricotta version better, so thank God.

Oh, and by the way? Those oven-ready lasagne noodles are the best invention since microwave popcorn.

Tortilla soup

I have an awesome recipe for tortilla soup that calls for chicken thighs, but since DH is allergic to poultry I've had to modify the recipe to make it vegetarian. So here's my recipe, which we had for dinner tonight. The boy child even tried it and liked it!

Okay, first chop up half an onion (I like the sweet yellow ones; you do whatever) and saute it in some EVOO until it starts to get tender. Then add a couple of minced garlic cloves to the pan and stir them around just until they start to release their aroma. DO NOT BURN THE GARLIC.

Dump the onions/garlic into a blender or food processor and add the following:

3 tsp. dried cilantro (or 3 Tbs. chopped fresh)
4 tsp. fresh lime juice
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 14.5-oz. can of Del Monte Petite Diced Tomatoes With Zesty Jalapeno (try to get this exact item if you can - RoTel is NOT an adequate substitute)

Whiz all that together until the lumps/chunks are the size you like. Then dump the whole lot into a pot and add two 14 oz. cans of vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer.

While the soup is simmering, heat about half an inch of oil (I use canola; you do whatever) in a skillet over medium-high heat. Cut five corn tortillas (the soft ones) into strips and fry them in batches in the oil until they're crisp and only LIGHTLY browned. Drain them on paper towels and sprinkle with salt. By the time the tortilla strips are done, the soup will be done.

Here's how I like to serve it: put a handful of tortilla strips in the bottom of the bowl, ladle the soup over them, then top with shredded Monterey Jack cheese, diced avocado and dollops of sour cream.

This soup is SO YUMMY and I swear it helps cure head colds and bad allergies and whatnot. Which is why I made it today. Achoo!

Day 60

Adult Menu

• lasagna
  
• whole wheat dinner rolls
  
• salad
  

Girl Child
Ate some salad, two rolls, and some shredded cheddar.

Boy Child
Ate everything!

No one in the family (except me) likes ricotta, so I make my lasagna with just noodles, sauce, and lots of mozzarella. Sometimes I put mushrooms and/or spinach on the "adult" side, but the boy won't eat it that way.

Day 44

Adult Menu

• grilled hamburgers OR portabella mushroom caps w/sliced cheese, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, etc. on sesame buns
  
• pasta salad w/cherry tomatoes, fresh pearl mozzarella, fresh basil and marinated artichoke hearts
  
• Tostitos multigrain tortilla chips w/homemade (by my mom) peach salsa
• pickles (also homemade by Mom)
  

Girl Child
Ate a burger w/cheese and some chips.

Boy Child
He ate a burger!!! Dudes!!!! He put onions and ketchup on it, I think. I am AMAZED. He also had some pasta salad (but only the pasta, no veggies or cheese). And maybe some chips. I don't know. I was blinded by the burger, y'all. That's the first burger he's ever actually eaten, I think. He's tried them before but never liked them. Maybe the "natural" ground beef I bought this time made the difference. Who knows?

We had my parents over for dinner tonight and in addition to all of the above I made a sort of bastardized white sangria. A bottle of cheap pinot grigio, a can of peach nectar, some club soda, fresh nectarines, strawberries and raspberries all mixed in my favorite pitcher. It was WAY yummy. I actually think I prefer it to the regular red sangria I make with sliced citrus.