Garlic Scallion Noodles

There are some days where all I want are noodles. It doesn't matter what flavor, what type of noodle ... just noodles. I tell my husband all the time that I should have been born Italian. :) One day for lunch I was looking online for a quick and simple noodle recipe for lunch that I had all the ingredients for already. This is what I found and it didn't disappoint. They were quick and quite tasty! Even my picky 3 year old ate a bowl full (and that's saying something!).



Garlic Scallion Noodles
(Recipe from weekofmenus.blogspot.com)

Ingredients:
8oz (half a box) of angel hair or thin spaghetti noodles
4 Tbsp (half a stick) butter
5 cloves of garlic, minced
2-4 scallions, finely chopped
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1-2 Tbsp of brown sugar (based on your own personal preference of sweetness)

Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and rinse.

In a heavy skillet over medium heat, melt butter. Add scallions and garlic. Stir and cook, without browning the garlic. Cook until the garlic smell is fragrant and filling the room, about 5 minutes. Add sugar and soy sauce, and cook for another minute. Increase the heat a bit and throw in the noodles. Quickly saute the noodles until they are all coated with the garlicky butter mixture.

Serve immediately. Garnish with additional scallions if desired.

Spaghetti Sauce

I love spaghetti, but jarred sauce is expensive and not nearly as good as homemade sauce. Here is a sauce that is very good that doesn't need to cook all day long. It takes as long as the noodles take to cook.


Kelsie's Awesome Spaghetti Sauce:

1 large can crushed tomatoes in puree
1 small can tomato sauce
1/2 large onion, diced
4-6 cloves garlic, minced
Basil (fresh is best, dried works fine)
Oregano
Dried parsley
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese
1lb spaghetti noodles

Also good with mushrooms, or ground beef if you want to add them. Add anything you like, but I leave mine as a simple tomato and basil sauce.

Pour a little olive oil into a large sauce pan or a tall sided frying pan. Add diced onion and minced garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Saute until onion is tender. Add a palm full of parsley, a palm full of dried basil and a few pinches of oregano. Oregano is pretty strong, don't add too much. If you are using fresh basil, add a handful of fresh leaves now and save a handful for the very end. Once the herbs are added and mixed in dump in tomatoes and tomato sauce. Mix well. Simmer covered (so it doesn't pop all over your stove) until noodles are finished. Taste. If it is missing any salt, pepper or any other seasonings add them. If you are using fresh basil, throw the second handful in right before you add to the noodles.

Once the noodles are finished cooking, drain and put back into pot. Pour sauce over noodles and toss to coat. Put some freshly grated parmesan cheese on top and toss again.

Enjoy!

Mushroom and Spinach Marsala Pappardelle

Mushroom and Spinach Marsala Pappardelle
(Courtesy of Rachael Ray, changed up a bit by me)

1 lb pappardelle or fettuccine pasta (I couldn't find pappardelle, so I used extra wide egg noodles)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 pounds cremini mushrooms, sliced (regular mushrooms would work if these aren't available)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 small onion, diced
2 bay leaves
A pinch of nutmeg
3/4 cup marsala wine
1 cup vegetable (or chicken) stock
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
2 Tbsp butter
A handful of chopped fresh parsley
1 bag of baby spinach, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups grated parmesan cheese
1/2 - 1 tsp of red pepper flakes (depending on how much heat you want)

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Salt it, add pasta and cook until al dente. Drain

While the pasta is cooking, prepare the sauce.

In a large, deep skillet heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the onion and garlic. Cook for about 30 seconds to flavor the oil and then add the mushrooms and bay leaves. Cook until the mushrooms release all their liquid and the liquid is gone and the mushrooms start to brown. (about 8 minutes). Season with salt and pepper. Add the spinach a couple of handfuls at a time. Add more when the previous additions have wilted down. Season with nutmeg. Once all the spinach is wilted down, add the marsala and cook until slightly reduced (about 1 minute). Add the vegetable stock and cook for about another minute. Stir in the butter until melted. Add the cream and heat until warm. Add the parsley and cheese and pour over noodles. Add pepper flakes. If it needs more salt and pepper, season to taste.

If the sauce is still too runny, let it simmer with the noodles while stirring occasionally until it thickens and coats the noodles.

Grilled Veggie Pasta Salad

Grilled Veggie Pasta Salad
(Courtesy of Cooks Illustrated)

Ingredients:
1 bunch (about 1-1 1/2 pounds) of asparagus, tough ends trimmed
3 large red bell peppers (I used red and orange)
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more to toss with vegetables
1/4 cup fresh squeeze lemon juice from 2 lemons
1/2 tsp grated lemon zest
1 medium clove garlic, minced
1 pound short, bite sized pasta
2 Tbsp chopped fresh chives
2 Tbsp chopped fresh basil
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese

1. Grill peppers and asparagus on grill until lightly charred and tender. Cool to room temperature (They could also be roasted if you'd prefer that)



2. Chop the veggies up and toss with oil, salt and pepper to taste.
3. Bring water to a boil over high heat. Add pasta and salt to boiling water. Cook until pasta is al dente and drain.
4. While pasta is cooking make dressing. Whisk lemon juice, zest, 3/4 tsp salt, garlic and ground black pepper to taste in a bowl. Whisk in 3/4 cup oil in a slow, steady stream until smooth.
5. While pasta is hot toss with veggies, chives, basil, parmesan cheese and dressing and mix thoroughly. Cool to room temperature. Adjust seasonings and serve.

(Can be covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated for 1 day; return to room temperature before serving.)

Chili fajita shrimp alfredo with garlic cheese bread

Chili fajita shrimp Alfredo

Ingredients:
1/2 - 1 box bow tie pasta
Fresh broccoli (frozen will work too)
Fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 jar garlic or roasted garlic alfredo sauce
Raw shrimp, shell and tail removed
Fresh Parmesan cheese
Chili powder
Fajita seasoning
Salt and Pepper
1 Tbsp butter
Olive oil

Drop pasta into salted boiling water. Two or three minutes before pasta is finished, add broccoli.
When it is finished, drain and put back in pan. You can drizzle a little olive oil over the noodles to keep them from sticking if they will be sitting for a few minutes.

In a separate pan melt butter. Add sliced mushrooms. Cook until tender. Season with salt and pepper and set aside. In the same pan, add shrimp. Season with salt, pepper, chili powder and fajita seasoning. Cook only 1-3 minutes or until shrimp turns pink. Do not overcook the shrimp!

Dump jar of sauce over noodles and broccoli. Fill jar about half way with milk, shake and dump over noodles. This will get all the sauce out of the jar and make your sauce stretch a bit further. Add mushrooms and shrimp. Stir everything together until well coated. Top with Parmesan cheese.


Garlic Cheese Bread

Ingredients:
1 loaf french bread, sliced
1/2 - 1 stick room temperature butter (depending on how buttery you want your toast and how many slices you were able to get out of the bread. I can usually get around 13)
2 cloves garlic, minced
Fresh Parmesan cheese

Put sliced bread on cookie sheet. Mix the garlic into the room temperature butter. Spread onto bread slices. Top with fresh grated cheese. Put in oven set to hi-broil. Watch the bread closely so it doesn't burn!! Take out when golden brown and the cheese has melted

Macaroni and Cheese

Homemade macaroni and cheese

Ingredients:
1 box elbow macaroni noodles (I only had salad noodles, they worked just fine)
1 pound cheese (I used sharp cheddar), grated
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp mustard
2 cups milk
Garlic and herb bread crumbs
Salt and pepper

Boil noodles according to directions on the box.
In a separate saucepan, melt butter. Once butter is melted, whisk in flour until it forms a paste. Slowly whisk in milk. Season with salt and pepper. The butter and flour combined will thicken the milk. Whisk in mustard. (I just like it as a background taste. You don't have to add it if you don't want to). Slowly stir in cheese until melted.

Add to noodles and toss. Top with bread crumbs.

(Kelsie's Note: Sometimes the cheese doesn't always melt and gets gritty instead...which is odd, but it still tastes good)

**Optional: You can pour macaroni and cheese into a baking dish, top with bread crumbs and a little more cheese and bake in oven until cheese is melted and there is a crunchy topping**

Mushroom ravioli with a gorgonzola blue cheese sauce

Homemade 3 mushroom ravioli with a Gorgonzola and blue cheese sauce

Ingredients:

Ravioli:
Handful of cremini mushrooms, sliced
Handful of button mushrooms, sliced
1 small portabella mushroom, sliced
1 small onion, diced
3 or so cloves of garlic, minced (or however many you want)
2 bay leaves
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Sauce:
1 package large egg roll wrappers
2-4 Tbsp butter
4-5 cloves of garlic
2-3 Tbsp flour
2 1/2 cups milk
4 ounces (1/2 cup) cream cheese
4 ounces gorgonzola cheese
2-4 ounces blue cheese
Parsley
Salt and pepper


In a large frying pan, saute onions and garlic in olive oil until tender. Season with salt and pepper. Add mushrooms and bay leaves. Cook until mushrooms are done and mince in a food processor (or whatever else you want to use)

Cut egg roll wrappers with cookie cutter/top of glass/or anything else circle you have (I try and use a size so I can get four circles out of each sheet)

Put a little of the filling on one circle, get the edges wet on that circle and one other piece. Piece them together and seal. Set aside.

In another pan, melt butter and add garlic. Let cook, but don't over cook! Garlic is not good if it's overcooked. Add flour and whisk for 30 seconds to a minute. Add milk gradually and whisk constantly until it is mixed in and there are no lumps. Stir in the cream cheese, season with salt and pepper. Add gorgonzola, blue cheese and parsley. Stir until melted. It's okay to have a few crumbles left over, it adds a different texture to the sauce.

Boil the ravioli and top with the sauce! Yum!

Russian pelmeni

A friend of ours went on a mission to Russia quite a while ago and has been wanting to make dinner for us for quite some time now. He finally decided that it was time. So a week or two ago he came over and taught me how to make Russian Pelmeni. We made a meat version and a vegetarian version. I heard from everybody else they liked them combined. That way it wasn't too much of either.
Russian Pelmeni is like a Russian dumpling, or an Italian ravioli (He doesn't like when I call it that) but that's the easiest way to describe it.

Russian Pelmeni Meat Version (Vegetarian version to follow):

1 part ground beef
1 part ground pork
Whatever seasonings you like on meat. We used:
Salt and pepper
Tony's
Grill seasoning (Steak seasoning)
Garlic pepper
Small amount of lemon pepper
Chili powder
*Optional: Part of an onion grated in for flavor and to help keep the meat moist. Traves completely despises onions so we didn't do that.*
Egg roll wrappers (or fresh noodle dough if you have the time)


(Kelsie's Note: I would not use very much meat, you only use about a teaspoon or so in the actually dumpling. Don't go too crazy when you buy it. Traves bought 2 pounds each and there was quite a bit left over. We also fed 7-8 people.)

Mix the meat by hand until well blended. Don't overmix or the meat will become tough.



Mashed Potato Pelmeni (Vegetarian version):

Ingredients:
Potatoes
Whatever you like in your mashed potatoes
We used the following:
Butter
Sour cream
Tony's
Garlic pepper
Salt and pepper
Egg roll wrappers (or fresh noodle dough if you have the time)

Cube the potatoes and boil until very tender for mashing. Add butter, sour cream and seasonings and mash well. This is the filling for the vegetarian.


If you make a little of each, then you can have a combination of both potato and meat dumplings.


Here is the meat filling ready to go:


Once you have both fillings ready it's time to put them into the dough. We used a biscut (or a round cookie cutter) to cut the egg roll wrappers into four circles per sheet. (we bought the large egg roll wrappers) Our circles were about 2 3/4" in diameter. You can use a glass or whatever you have to cut the wrappers.



Place a small amount of filling into the center of the wrapper and wet all the way around the edges with water. This will allow the dough to stick together and not to fall apart. (For the most part. Some will still fall apart).

Fold in half and press the edges tight.



This part is hard to see because of the photo, but you are going to fold in half now the other direction. You will have the seam facing away from you.




Here is what they look like all folded up.




Once you have them all ready to go, bring a pot of water to a boil. Once it's boiling, salt well.

Add dumplings to boiling water and boil for 8 minutes (on the meat ones to cook the meat) and just a minute or two after they start floating on the potato ones. I boiled mine in two different pots so I knew which ones were ready to be taken out.

Traves likes to top his with just sour cream and salt and pepper. He said you can top it with anything you like. Tomato sauce, cheese, etc. I've only eaten them once so I have no idea what else to pair them with. The sour cream and salt and pepper were good though.

If you have way too many left over you can freeze them (if they are still raw) then you can just pull them out whenever you want them. You can also spend all day long making tons of them and just freeze them so next time you want them you don't spend all day making them.

Gorgonzola fettuccine with asparagus

A while back I bought a cookbook with this recipe in it and have been wanting to try it for a long time. I altered the recipe a little bit, so I will post what I did to it. Also, where this was the first time I had made this, there are things I would do different next time. I will let you know what those are as well.

Gorgonzola Fettuccine with Asparagus:

Ingredients:
11 oz (about half a small package) of fettuccine
12 oz (1 1/2 packages) sliced mushrooms
3 cups or so (however much you want to add) fresh asparagus cut into 1 - 2 inch pieces
4 Tbsp butter
4 garlic cloves minced
2 Tbsp flour
2 1/2 cups fat free milk
1/2 cup (4 oz or half a brick) cream cheese
Salt and pepper
1 cup (4 oz) gorgonzola cheese (This is one of my favorite cheeses and it wasn't as strong as I would have liked it. Next time I make it I will be adding more. If you don't like this cheese or are afraid to try a blue cheese use the 4 oz, it's not strong at all)

And this recipe called for walnuts, but honestly I didn't care for them that much in this recipe. They were fine, if you would like to add them go for it. I won't add them next time I make it.

Cook pasta in boiling salted water according to cooking directions on back of package. Mine called for 9-11 minutes. About 2 minutes before the pasta is finished, add asparagus and cook until tender. Drain pasta and asparagus.

While the pasta is cooking in a separate pan saute mushrooms in butter. When they are cooked the way you want them, season with salt and pepper and set aside.
Melt butter over medium heat in same pan you sauted the mushrooms in. Add garlic and let the butter infuse (soak up) the garlic flavor. Add flour, cook for about 30 seconds stirring constantly. It should turn into a paste. This is called a roux (pronounced Roo). This will thicken the milk and make it a sauce. It's also used in gravies, etc. Gradually add the milk stirring well with a whisk to make sure there are no clumps. This will start to thicken right away. Whisk in cream cheese and season with salt and pepper. Add cheese to sauce until melted. Add mushrooms and pour over noodles. Mix and serve.

I served with a torn chunk of french bread.

Italian at my house

Sometimes I think I should have been born Italian. Not because I am some great Italian cook or anything, just because I love really good Italian food. Dinner tonight was a personal challenge for me because I went up against three people who hate lasagna. Who hates lasagna seriously? I love lasagna but was determined to make a lasagna that they actually liked and would willingly eat again. This is also my first ever from scratch not cheating lasagna. By not cheating I mean I used the boil before you assemble noodles not the kind that cook in the oven...those never worked for me. I also never put very much time into my cheater lasagna because I knew I'd be the only one eating it. I'll tell you if they liked it or not at the end. So for starters:


Caprese Salad:

Loaf of good Ciabatta bread
Fresh mozzarella
Fresh vine ripe tomatoes
Fresh basil
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and fresh cracked pepper

Slice the bread and toast in oven until toasted the way you like it. Top with a slice of fresh mozzarella, a slice of tomato, a fresh basil leaf and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil. Top with a little course salt and fresh cracked pepper!

Yum! If you've never tried this, you really need to. It's delicious! It's normally also topped with a little bit of balsamic vinegar but I didn't have any. It's just as good without.





I don't know why, but I can only cook for an army after having so many people staying here. I can't cook normal portions anymore so this is a giant batch of lasagna..okay two 9x13 pans full. I made one with hamburger and one with ground boca (hamburger substitute).

Kelsie's awesome from scratch lasagna (with and without meat):

Sauce:
Half a giant softball size onion diced (or 1 or 2 small to medium onions)
Lots of garlic, depends on personal preference (I used two giant cloves and 3 regular cloves)
Handful of fresh basil leaves
Salt and Pepper
Dried oregano
Dried basil
3 large cans of diced tomatoes
1 large can of pureed tomatoes
Extra virgin olive oil

Coat the bottom of a large saucepan (it has to hold all the tomatoes at well) with olive oil. Saute onions with a good sprinkle of salt and pepper. Mince the garlic and add to onions. (I use a microplane and just grate the garlic right over the pan. It's so much easier!). Throw in handful of fresh basil leaves, a few pinches of oregano (be careful, it's really strong) and about a tablespoon or so of dried basil. Add all the tomatoes and stir. Drizzle in a good amount of olive oil and let the sauce heat up stirring occasionally. Just let it bubble in the background while you do everything else.

Lasagna:
Noodles that you boil yourself, not oven ready kind (unless you have more patience than me and will actually wait for them to finish cooking in the oven)
Really awesome fresh tomato sauce (see above)
1+ pounds of browned hamburger
2 packages of ground boca
Ricotta cheese
Mozzarella cheese
Fresh parmesan cheese

Boil noodles according to box instructions. Brown hamburger. (I had one large pan with hamburger and one large pan with ground boca, you don't need both if your just making the regular meat) When your hamburger is finished browning in one pan and the boca is warmed up in the other, split the tomato sauce equally into both pans and stir. In your 9x13 pans put just enough sauce at the bottom so the noodles won't stick, cover the entire bottom with noodles. Cover with sauce, ricotta (kind of mix it into the sauce so it's not so strong), a good layer of mozzarella and then a layer of parmesan. Repeat layer. After second layer is finished top with noodles again, a little bit of sauce and then cover with a good amount of mozzarella and parmesan. Cover with tin foil and let bake until cheese is melted and bubbly! Let sit 15 minutes before you cut and serve, this will let the juices settle and it won't run all over the place.

Serve with an awesome salad and garlic bread! Yum!



Comments from the lasagna haters in my house:
Kacean: "You're Golden!" = You're good, this is really good and I'd eat it again
Dallan: (failed to tell me he even hated lasagna until after he ate it) Liked it and would eat it again
Mart: Liked it and would eat it again
Ber: (Not a lasagna hater) said it was better than Olive Garden (which she had for lunch the same day!)


I don't know how many of you know, but my sister in law Kacean recently graduated from the Western Culinary Institute where she was studying to be a pastry chef. She's currently working at the Marriot hoping to be hired on in the resturant as soon as it opens the end of May. She baked us a lemon chiffon cake with cream cheese frosting for dessert. It was really good and I don't really like cake all that much.



It says "Rawr means I love you in dinosaur".