Spaghetti Carbonara

Great pasta recipe which is super quick – under 20 minutes.

  • bacon
  • fresh basil
  • Parmesan
  • heavy cream
  • egg
  • spaghetti
  1. Cook the pasta (about a pound).
  2. As soon as you start the water for the pasta, cook the bacon (chopped into small pieces) until it begins to soften, 4-5 minutes.
  3. Add a generous cup heavy cream.
  4. Simmer for 7 minutes stirring frequently, until the cream begins to thicken.
  5. Add the egg, stir in very well and stir frequently for 2 minutes.
  6. Add a cup of Parmesan a stir it in, turn the heat off.
  7. Add the basil (about 2 cups).
  8. Add the pasta.

Winter Salad

This is a tasty little invention of mine that I call winter salad because small oranges and pears are in season in the autumn and winter.

Ingredients:

  • Mixed spring greens
  • 2 or 3 Satsumas, clementines, or tangelos
  • 1 or 2 ripe pear(s)
  • Black currants (amount to taste)
  • Almond slivers or slices (amount to taste)

Peel the oranges, carefully removing the chewy white pith, and section them (don’t slice them, leave the sections whole). Cut the pears into small chunks. Put mixed greens and 3/4 of other ingredients in the bowl and toss. Sprinkle the top with the rest of the ingredients for presentation. Serve with a salad dressing of your choice – I usually go with something vinegar and oil based.

Note: You can get black currants and almond slivers or slices in the bulk aisle. Also, do NOT use regular-sized oranges. Only the small, juicy, intensely flavorful winter oranges listed above taste good this way. If you insist on using a big orange, cut the sections into chunks. That’ll help release some juices and flavor, but it’ll still be disappointing.

Beef Marinara

I love simple, tomato-based spaghetti recipes. Nearly everybody likes them, they’re easy to make delicious, you can make them in big quantities for little money, and they taste even better as leftovers. After years of winging it, I’ve found myself coming back again and again to an adaptation of this Red Wine and Rosemary Marinara from Cooking Light.

Ingredients (my way):

  • Olive oil
  • One medium onion, chopped
  • 5 garlic cloves, minced
  • 3/4lb lean ground beef
  • 1 green bell pepper
  • 1 cup red wine, preferably dry
  • 1 tbsp honey
  • 2 tsp dried basil
  • 1 tsp dried rosemary
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (or more, to heat taste)
  • 1 28oz can crushed tomatoes
  • 1 6oz can no-salt-added tomato paste

Directions:
Stir-fry the onion in olive oil until almost clear. Add garlic, stir fry about 45 seconds or until fragrant, then add ground beef. Stir fry until beef is cooked through, then add green pepper and stir fry until pepper is just beginning to soften (it’ll cook the rest of the way as the sauce simmers).

Add the rest of the ingredients, wine through tomato paste. Take it easy on the honey- it adds a nice golden sweetness, but it can be really overpowering. 1tbsp is actually half the amount called for in the original recipe and that’s plenty.

Let it simmer at least 20 minutes, or until it thickens. I recommend letting it simmer for a minimum of an hour to let the flavors really mingle. Serve it over spaghetti or linguine, with red wine, salad and/or garlic bread on the side.

Mushroom+Polenta

Last night we tried out a recipe for creamy polenta w/ mushrooms, spinach and tomatoes, adapted from America’s Test Kitchen. Next time I’d add a little something to make it pop – more salt, more pepper, and something hot – but it worked well as a simple, healthy, easy dinner.

Ingredients for the topping:

  • 2lbs crimini mushrooms, halved or quartered
  • 1 onion, thinly sliced
  • olive oil
  • 0.25oz dried porcini mushrooms minced (these are expensive so I skipped ’em, but the wild mushroom flavor definitely suffered for it)
  • 1 tsp minced fresh rosemary (I would increase this next time)
  • salt & black pepper
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 12oz baby spinach
  • 12oz cherry tomatoes, halved

Ingredients for the polenta:

  • 4 cups water
  • salt & black pepper
  • 1 cup coarsely ground cornmeal
  • 1/2 cup parmesan + extra for topping
  • 1 TBSP unsalted butter cut into small chunks

Directions for the topping:

  • Put mushrooms, onion, olive oil, rosemary, and 1/4 tsp salt in a cast iron saucepan or Dutch oven. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are softened, 10-12 mins.
  • Uncover, increase heat, and cook until vegetables are browned, 4-6 mins.
  • Stir in garlic, cook until fragrant, ~30 seconds.
  • Add spinach one handful at a time and cook until wilted, 3-5 mins.
  • Stir in tomatoes and cook until warmed. Salt & pepper to taste, set aside and keep warm.

Directions for the polenta:

  • Bring water + 1/2 tsp salt to boil in a large, heavy saucepan. Slowly add cornmeal, whisking to prevent clumping.
  • Bring cornmeal + water to a simmer, stirring constantly, then reduce heat to low. Cover and cook, stirring frequently and making sure to scrap the sides of the pan, until polenta is smooth and thickish, 10-15 mins.
  • Once you’ve achieved your desired texture, take it off the heat and vigorously stir in the butter and parmesan. Salt & pepper to taste.

Put some polenta in a bowl, put some veggies on top, and smother it in more parmesan and the hot sauce of choice.

Nice Salad

Tonight we concocted a salad bastardization, part chef’s salad, part salad Niçoise, mostly whatever we felt like throwing in. I’m calling it a Nice Salad because we went with a Niçoise dressing. Pardon the icky photo, I forgot to snap it until we’d tossed the salad and consumed most of it.

Ingredients:

  • Head of Romaine
  • 3 Hard boiled eggs
  • Can of solid white tuna
  • Broccoli
  • Kalamata olives
  • Red onion
  • Parmesan
  • Capers

Dressing:

  • 1 clove garlic, crushed
  • 2 tsp mustard
  • 2 tsp dried thyme
  • 2 anchovy fillets, chopped to an almost-paste
  • 5-6 tbsp cider vinegar
  • 6 tbsp olive oil

Mostly the instructions are just wash, chop, mix, etc. However, I do highly recommend the following procedure for hard boiling eggs to keep them from overcooking and smelling sulfuric:

  1. Start with refrigerated eggs, and put them in a pot filled with cold water to about 1″ above the eggs. (Yes, cold and cold. The key is to avoid overcooking.)
  2. Cover the pot and bring to a boil on high.
  3. When it starts to boil, turn the heat off, but leave the pot covered and on the stove. Set a timer for 10-15mins.
  4. When the timer goes off, put the eggs in a bowl and and run cold water over them until they’re cool enough to peel. This will stop them from cooking right away.

Steak Au Poivre

Another one adapted from NYT Cookbook.  This is a great recipe for second tier cuts of steak, like sirloin.

Ingredients

  • Steaks
  • Half a lemon
  • 2 tablespoons of butter
  • Whole peppercorns
  • Worcestershire Sauce
  • Tabasco
  • Brown liquor (preferably high proof)
  1. Put a few peppercorns on each side of each steak and tenderize.
  2. Put a pinch of salt in the bottom of a cast iron skillet and heat the skillet until the salt starts to brown.
  3. Add the steaks, and cook until the steaks have mostly reached your desired temperature.
  4. Remove the steaks.
  5. Turn the heat off of the skill and scrap the bottom of the skillet to separate the browned pieces of steak from the bottom of the skillet.
  6. When the skillet is cool enough to not burn the butter, add it.
  7. When the butter has melted, add the lemon, Tabasco and Worcester sauce.  Briefly let the sauce reduce.
  8. Add the steaks back into the skillet.
  9. Pour the brown liquor over the steaks.
  10. Light it on fire.

Caesar Salad

This is adapted from the New York Times Cook Book.  Adding the egg in at the end, after the lettuce, giving the dressing a less creamy consistency, which some people prefer.

Ingredients

  • Romaine Lettuce
  • One Clove Garlic
  • Worcester sauce
  • Tabasco
  • Mustard
  • One egg
  • Parmesan
  • Olive Oil
  • Half a lemon
  • Croutons
  • Anchovies
  • Pepper
  1. Cut a clove of garlic in half.  Rub the inside of your salad bowl with the raw end of the garlic to coat the bowl.
  2. Juice the half lemon into the bowl.
  3. Add an equivalent amount of olive oil (so there are equal parts lemon juice and olive oil.
  4. Add most of your grated Parmesan, a healthy table spoon of mustard (horseradish can be substituted as well).
  5. Add a teaspoon of Worcester sauce, and a few drops of Tabasco, and pepper to taste.
  6. Thinly slice the anchovies and add them to the bowl.
  7. Add the raw egg.  The NYT Cookbook suggests boiling it for a minute so it isn’t raw.  I don’t think this is necessary.
  8. Mix well by hand.
  9. Add the lettuce and croutons, and toss.
  10. Sprinkle the remaining Parmesan on top of the tossed salad for presentation

This is a pretty vague recipe because it can be wildly altered.  Caesar Salad means different things to different people.

Eggplant Tomato Rigatoni

We still had half an eggplant leftover from the Ratatouille, so last night I decided to try out a RealSimple recipe for Rigatoni with Sautéed Eggplant and Tomato (key ingredients are in the title plus fresh mint) with a side of A’s delicious Caesar salad and some crunchy garlic bread. With help, it took about 35 minutes of continuous activity. Alone, I would have prepped the pasta ingredients, then gotten the bread all the way to the baking stage before starting to cook anything else.

Helpful additional notes: I followed RealSimple’s recipe for crispy garlic bread rather than use my old technique (baking minced garlic and butter straight into the bread), and really liked it. Infusing olive oil with garlic then brushing it on bread was definitely a better way to get the flavor thoroughly distributed. I only wish I’d cut the bread so it had more surface area for better oil saturation.

Things I would or did change: We only had half an eggplant, and I’m glad I didn’t use more. It would have been overwhelming. I also added the parmesan in the recipe to the whole pasta bowl when I mixed in the mint and then offered more parmesan for garnish, which helped the flavor/texture. The texture would have been even better had I peeled the eggplant. I also would have used fresh basil instead of fresh mint. Yes, they’re very different flavors, but I think that the basil would have complemented the vegetables better. And, finally, it might have benefited from either some tomato paste or canned crushed tomatoes to make the sauce just a little bit more saucy.

Review: Eh. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t overwhelmingly delicious. (Except A’s Caesar. He makes a mean Caesar. Some time I’ll put the recipe up here.) It was an easy way to use up the rest of the eggplant and have leftovers.

Would I make it again? If I had some ingredients lying around and was feeling lazy, probably. Wouldn’t go out of my way for it though.