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.

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.

Creole Sides

As you can probably tell, last Sunday was Cajun/Creole night, courtesy of Chuck Taggart’s fantastic Gumbo Pages. I was responsible for starch & vegetable, starting with:

Dirty Rice
The recipe starts with a shortcut for homemade chicken stock. You then pan fry uncooked converted rice in a whole lot of butter, add celery, onion, green bell pepper, garlic, and parsley, and cook the whole mixture in the broth. Estimated total time about 2 hours including simmering chicken parts in water for the “stock.”

Changes: I got lazy and just bought a pack of gizzards for the pieces for the broth, which turned out fine.
Would I make it again: Yes- YUM. I’d probably try their suggestion of cooking a whole chicken as the main dish and using the discarded parts to make the “stock.”

The “healthy” side was a Green Bean & Artichoke Casserole
This features green beans and artichoke hearts mixed with onion and garlic, smothered in bread crumbs and parmesan, and baked to delicious.

Changes: I used frozen everything due to a rotten bean snafu at the produce stand, and I would definitely like to try it again with fresh veggies. Also, the recipe calls for Italian bread crumbs and I just bought plain ol’ bread crumbs and added a little thyme. Worked just fine.
Would I make it again: It was a tasty enough dish and went great with gumbo, but I couldn’t see bothering with it in any other context. I like to experience my veggies a little more.

Gumbo

This was a real project over the weekend.  I got some of the ideas from gumbopages.com.

Ingredients

  • Shrimp (2 lb) head on.  You have to go to an asian grocery to get head on shrimp, generally.
  • A whole chicken
  • 2 lb chicken parts
  • 1 lb andouille sausage
  • 2 lb okra
  • 8 stalks celery
  • 4 carrots
  • 2 large onions
  • 3 green bell peppers
  • one bunch green onions
  • several sprigs of fresh thyme
  • one bunch parsley
  • whole pepper corns
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 9 quarts water
  • white pepper
  • ground thyme
  • ground oregano
  • ground black pepper
  • cayenne
  • sweet paprika
  1. Start by making a stock.  This is a special stock for gumbo, but you can use whatever stock making techniques you like.  Below is what I like to do.
  2. Butcher the whole chicken, saving everything except the skin.  Chop one onion, 4 stalks of celery and the carrots into large chunks.
  3. Brown the chicken and the vegetables in the bottom of you stock pot for about 20 minutes, stirring regularly.
  4. Add the water, and let it come to a boil, reduce it to a simmer.
  5. Add the thyme and some whole peppercorns, and salt, to taste.
  6. Let the stock simmer for 4 hours, skimming fat from the top every 30 minutes or so.
  7. Peel the heads and skin from the shrimp.  Save the shrimp for later and add the heads and skin to the stock.
  8. Let it simmer for another 30-45 minutes.
  9. Strain the stock so that it is just the liquid.  I refrigerated the stock overnight to allow the fat separate, and then skimmed the fat from the top.  Any other method to remove fat from stock is also fine.
  10. If the stock has been refrigerated, begin reheating it, otherwise, skip to the next step.
  11. Make a roux by melting the butter in the oil in a cast iron skillet and adding flour steadily until all of the flour is in the cast iron.  Cook the roux on medium-high heat stirring constantly until the rue is dark brown, about 15 minutes.
  12. Finely chop the remaining onions and celery, green peppers, garlic, and green onions.  Add the vegetables to the roux as it is finishing cooking to cool down the roux and the brown the vegetables.
  13. Cook the vegetables in the roux for another 10 minutes, continuing to stir constantly.
  14. Add the vegetables and roux to the stock.  Brown the chicken parts (cut into medium sized cubes) after rubbing them with a spice mixture of your liking (I used the ones listed above) in the oven.
  15. Brown the andouille sausage in a cast iron skillet.
  16. Add the chicken and sausage to the stock as well as the parsley, finely chopped, and the spice you would like to have in it.
  17. Let the gumbo simmer for about 2 hours.
  18. Chop the okra horizontally, leaving the seeds in tack.  Add the okra to the gumbo.
  19. Let the gumbo simmer for another 30-60 minutes.  The okra should be simmered until it has lost all stringiness.  You should notice your gumbo thickening as the okra softens.
  20. Add the shrimp and continue to simmer until the shrimp are cooked (about 15 minutes) and remove from heat.
  21. Serve with rice.

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.