A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Copycat Ruby Tuesday's Ham & Pea Pasta Salad

 One of my favorite dishes on Ruby Tuesday's Garden Bar is the ham and pea pasta salad.   From talking with friends, I found that I'm not a lone.  Lots of people hit the salad bar for that pasta dish.  Some even confess to skipping the greens on the bar to save room for that pasta dish.  Tickled to have found a copycat home version for it, I ended up taking it as an entree salad for lunch at work two nights in a row.

Purist Macaroni & Cheese: THREE ingredients

"Mom's Extra Sharp Mac and Cheese" (Click to be linked)

Ran across this recipe when I was searching for a new baked Mac & Cheese recipe to play with. I was intrigued by the lack of a huge list of ingredients or odd spices.  It's simple: macaroni, milk, and cheese. That is LITERALLY macaroni and cheese. I happened to have all three ingredients so I had it in the oven in the time it took to pre-heat the oven.

I admit I was tempted to add salt, pepper, butter, garlic, any number of little extras but I really wanted to see how it would come out just as written. GREAT!, would be the answer to that.  There is no need for salt because of the salt in the cheese, extra would have, in fact, made the dish too salty.  And as for other seasonings, they have their place but not in this particular version of purist Mac & Cheese. I was quite content with the recipe as is, savoring the dimensions of the lovely sharp cheddar on my pasta.

One note about the photos:  I impatiently took the pics (so I could chow down!) pretty quick out of the oven, but within 15 minutes the rest of the milk soaked into the pasta so that it was creamy without being runny.   

The funniest part, to me, is that when I gushed about this recipe to Auntie Miranda, she said "Um. Yeah. That's exactly how your Grandmother taught me to make Mac & Cheese, long before the boxes."   Proof that what once was old is new again! 

Click on the link above for the rest of the details of the recipe.

 

 

Better Than Mom's (Sorry Mom!) Lasagna

 

 

Sorry, Mom, even though you were a fabulous cook, I think in this one instance I beat you at your own game. 

I love lasagna but with only two of us it's something I only get to make when we're having company.  You just can't make a small lasagna!

So for New Year's Eve, that's what I did, although I stepped up a few of the ingredients my Mom used to use, switching out ricotta and cream cheese for the cottage cheese, and using a 50/50 mix of ground beef and country sausage for my Slow Cooker Meat Sauce. 

We were all pretty pleased, patting myself on the back. The result was rich without being overwhelming and not too wet, not to dry, perfect texture. Will be making these changes always from now on.

 

Christmas Eve Traditions: Mushroom, Goat Cheese, & Spicy Chicken Sausage Lasagna

 Newlywed bride Sarah made this incredilble looking lasagna for hubby Sebastian and put these photos up on Facebook--is this not beautiful looking and scrumptious sounding? I'm going to give this one a try as soon as I get through this work stretch. 

Although I will be working Christmas Eve, I love the tradition of other friends of ours, Janell and Jerry, who always have lasagna on Christmas Eve with just their kids and then get together with all the family members on Christmas Day. I've always loved their tradition. It feels right to have your immediate family home on Christmas Eve for a cozy meal and small family night and then let the holiday bloom out the next day in all of its family-ness.

Just in case I get next Christmas Eve off...this is what Gene and I will be eating.

 

Timpano di Maccheroni: The "Mythic Pasta Dome"

  

This recipe was so much fun to make!  I'd seen it years ago, a classic Italian dish made famous by Stanley Tucci's movie "Big Night" , the story of two restauranteur brothers (Tucci and Tony Shalhoub, more recently starring as Adrian Monk) whose fortunates are on the wane.  In a last mad dash, they have one "Big Night" extravaganza to save the restaurant and this is one of the dishes they served.

I served it our Dexter Dinner group to celebrate the season six premiere of Dexter. We gathered for Timpano, Death in the Afternoon cocktails, and Dexter (Apple) cake. Everything, including Dexter, was delicious!  This recipe is definitely a showstopper and very flexible. I'll be serving it again.

Several years ago, I had planned on making it for my pasta-lovin' niece Jordan's birthday party as a truly celebratory entree but at the last minute I flinched, afraid I would leave the whole family in the lurch if I messed it up, and simply served baked mostacciola instead. While the dish does have several steps, almost all of them can be made ahead and the whole dish can easily be finished early on the day of serving and baked a bit before serving.  Actually, with at least a half hour cooling time it's a great dish to take to a potluck or to serve at an open house. I only made a 2qt bowl full and not only was it plenty of food for the four of us watching Dexter that night, there were leftovers, and during the dinner, the dish was still warm to the touch 45 minutes after cutting.

As much as I sort of dreaded and anticipated and was scared and excited all at the same time about preparing this dish, it really is much easier to make than it looks! I promise.

Slow Cooker Meat Sauce for Pasta

 

The first step in preparing for the "mythic pasta dome", Timpano is to create meatballs (traditional) or chunky meat sauce for the pasta.  Although I eat meat, I've found that many times I have a little texture problem when it comes to meat and I find myself pushing away the ground beef or meatballs and eating the pasta and sauce.  I do the same thing with chili with beans: I tend to eat the beans and work around the larger chunks of meat. Not any more.  Since experimenting one time with chili by putting the raw ground meat into the crockpot and slow cooking it for 10+ hours I've found that I know longer push aside the meat. The long slow cooking breaks down those tougher textures for a silker, more homogenous sauce.  I now always make my chili and pasta meat sauce this way.  The convenience is great also: throw it in the slow cooker and forget it.  This recipe makes approximately seven cups, three of which will be used in the Timpano.  The other three cups freeze very well for another meal another time. 

Dexter Dinner: Timpano, Dexter Cake, & Death in the Afternoon Cocktails

 

Dexter premiered season six last night and we were there! Last year, my cousin, James, came over to the house on Sunday nights so we could all watch Dexter together since we were all huge fans.  We adopted Auntie Miranda into the cult and have been a Dexter Dinner foursome ever since. We always meet at Gene's and my house and I make dinner, usually using them as guinea pigs to test new recipes.  It's a win-win for me and for them and the safety net is that if it's ever is a win-lose, there's always pizza that can be delivered.

 

Literally, for years I've been wanting to make Timpano, the classic "mythic dome pasta" (Mario Batali) dish made famous by the movie Big Night from 1996 where Stanley Tucci, as one of two restanteur brothers (Tony Shalhoub is the other) makes this dish for their "big night" make it or break it extravaganza.  My understanding is that Tucci himself came up with the idea to use this recipe in the movie since it's one that his family actually makes for special occasions in real life. In 1999, following the popularity of the food from the movie Tucci's mother and the chef who consulted on the film authored a cookbook "Cucina & Famiglia: Two Italian Families Share Their Stories, Recipes, and Traditions" by Joan Tropiano Tucci and Chef Gianni Scappin.

This week I'll be blogging my version of the Timpano recipe starting with a 15 hour slow cooker meat sauce for pasta, Auntie's fruited salad and vinaigrette, the apple cake with caramel apple filling, and Death in the Afternoon cocktail created by Ernest Hemingway using Absinthe which is now legal in the U.S. again.

Let's begin with the meat sauce...

Mediterranean Pork Loin Stuffed with Sweet Peppers and Feta

 

I was craving something hearty and good for us, something with lots of flavor but simple and full of vegetables when I went to the freezer and what did I spy but a pork loin...and a bag of Mediterranean mixed veggies....and in the pantry was a jar of sweet pepper bruschetta topping...and orzo...and on the counter was a small ciabatta loaf....put it all together and what do you get? Exactly what I was hungry for!

 

Nieces and Nephew Summer Slumber Party: Easy Cheesy Mac for a Crowd

 

Once a year or so we try to have a big slumber party with all three of our nieces and our nephew.  Two of them live here in town but the other two live about an hour away with their mom. Just because of work, school, life in general, we don't get to see them as much as we would like but we all know how it is, right? But we do try to have an overnighter when we can so that we can do an Aunt Gonnie and Uncle Gene and the kids thing where it's more about hanging out and catching up with what's going on in their lives.

One of the things I've learned over the years is to try to put aside the OCD "party" definition in my brain that tends to make all things including food and house cleaning into a spectacle so big that by the time my guests/friends/family arrive I'm so tired from over-working myself that I didn't use to enjoy the "together" part of getting together as much as I should have.  These guys are my nieces and nephews. They know I'm not a perfect housekeeper and they don't want a meticulously Martha Stewart set table or gourmet food so this family casserole my brothers and sisters and I were raised on is perfect fare for the occasion: quick and easy to make and yummy to eat. I even made it up the day before so that all I had to do was slip it in the oven when I went to pick up the kids at my brother's and then my sister's house.  We grew up with Mom (Karen) calling it "goulash" but it's not the traditional Hungarian dish of chunked meat with vegetables, it's an Americanized version from the 50's, I believe, that's made with hamburger, macaroni, and a tomato sauce.  Gene's mom had a recipe for it in her recipe box called "Chuckwagon Macaroni". The recipes follows the jump, along with lots of fun dorky pics.

Fresh Mussels and Shrimp over Pasta

 

 

At every Italian restaurant Auntie Miranda and I have been to together that has had mussels on the menu, we've always shared an order. They are always served as an appetizer in a large bowl with the mussel broth nicely seasoned, with crusty baguette slices on the side.  Every single time we always say to each other "Instead of (fill in the blank) why didn't we just order a plate of these for each of us and ask them to put a side of plain angel hair in that wonderful broth?"  I don't know why we never remembered either but I finally recreated the dish at home--so easy and so yummy!--when my grocery store had steamer-ready mussels on sale.  I thought "This is the night I make that dish!"  It was a good as I had hoped.