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!

Yummy delicious CARBS

Tonight's Menu

• spaghetti marinara
  
• leftover green salad with lettuce FROM THE GARDEN!
  

DH has been shunning carbs (except potatoes, for which he has a weakness) for quite a while now, and when I told the kids that he was working late tonight and therefore we'd be having spaghetti, you would have thought I'd told them we were having ice cream for dinner. They were SO EXCITED. I think the boy ate a couple of pounds of spaghetti all on his own.

I've been told that my marinara sauce is not TECHNICALLY an actual marinara, but the degree to which I DO NOT CARE cannot be adequately expressed. It's a vegetarian tomato sauce, a'ight? I don't know from marinara.

Here's how I make it: take a can of Del Monte diced tomatoes with onion and garlic and combine it with a small can of tomato paste. If you don't like a chunky sauce, you can do this in a blender. Otherwise just stir them together in a saucepan. Stir in a little water; the sauce will thin just a bit during the cooking process so use your judgment here. Stir in 4-6 Tbs. of sugar, depending on how sweet you like your sauce. Add some dried oregano and basil; again, however much you want. Bring it to a boil, then cover and reduce the heat. Simmer for as long as it takes the pasta to cook.

There's a story behind this recipe but I've had a couple of sidecars (they go GREAT with Italian food, by the way) and can't be arsed to tell it right now.

Pasta

Tonight's Menu

• spaghetti marinara
  
• crusty whole-grain bread
  
• fresh green salad
  

My local grocery store has started replacing a lot of name-brand stuff with their own generic version, and this pisses me off like you would not believe. Sure, I buy the store brand occasionally and SOME of it is identical to the name brand stuff, but not all, and I hate having my choices taken away like that.

However, they also offer some of their own stuff that has no equal in name brands, as far as I know. Like they have this line of frozen "artisan" breads that is really, really good. I buy the big whole-grain one, which is very rustic and crusty and full of seeds and bits of stuff, and I LOVE it. You just thaw it for 15 minutes, then bake it for another 15 and it's delicious. Instead of spreading it with butter or margarine, we've been dipping it in EVOO with a little parmesan and freshly ground pepper.

Yum!