Pesto Shrimp Bake with Squash and Tomatoes #30MinuteMondays

A quick summer casserole bursting with Italian flavors.

I know this is a totally blasphemous thing to say in the food blogging world, especially in the middle of summer, but I'm really not a fan of tomatoes. They've grown on me since I was a kid, when I wouldn't touch foods with them in it (including pizza, ketchup, and most of all anything involving raw or sundried tomatoes). I now really enjoy a good tomato sauce (like this bolognese or this garlic tomato sauce) and I'll dip into a fancy ketchup if it's got curry mixed in or something, but the appeal of raw tomatoes still largely eludes me.

My best experience so far has been with a couple of memorable caprese salads, including one at dbar, one of my favorite Boston restaurants, which is conveniently located just blocks from our apartment. A caprese salad with housemade mozzarella and tomatoes and basil from their rooftop garden was on the specials menu, and my mom and I had to try it. And, surprisingly enough, I didn't hate the raw tomatoes.

Slow-Cooked Bolognese Sauce with Sweet Potato Spaghetti

This is Whole30 comfort food at its best. Making Bolognese sauce every Friday is a new tradition of mine, and even though I've only been doing it for a few weeks, it's already made my weekends much heartier and more delicious. I have Fridays off this semester so I can stay home while this fragrant sauce simmers away, but if you have to work you could start the sauce in the morning before you leave and finish it in the slow cooker, or make it your Saturday or Sunday tradition instead.

You want to let this sauce cook for a nice long time because the flavors will continue to meld and develop over the course of several hours. The long cooking time is the reason bolognese sauce is so synergistic. I also think the sauce tastes even better when I reheat it a day or two later, but I can never resist eating at least some of it the day I make it. The aroma is so enticing! 

Because everyone's schedule is different, I'm providing a slow cooker version and a version that cooks completely on the stovetop. Other than the cooking time, which is much longer for the slow cooker version, the only difference is the amount of liquid you add. The stovetop version needs extra liquid since much of the water in the sauce will evaporate, but the slow cooker keeps all that moisture locked in.

Parrilla Mixta Italiana

This Italian summer grilling post is sponsored by Colavita.

To me, a mixed grill is the epitome of summer eating. When I spent a semester in Buenos Aires during college, I loved to go out with friends and order a parrilla mixta, which usually consisted of grilled steak, chicken, chorizo, and often organ meats as well, with a big bowl of herby chimichurri sauce and an even bigger bowl of french fries on the side. Add a bottle of wine and you have yourself one happy evening!

I don't know why it took me so long to recreate a parrilla mixta at home, but when Colavita asked me to write a post on the theme of Italian summer grilling, this was the first thing that came to mind.

Here I've given the Argentine parrilla an Italian twist, marinating the steak and chicken with Italian seasonings and adding capers to the chimichurri. Argentine cuisine is heavily influenced by the food of Italy to begin with--even the Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires sounds uniquely reminiscent of Italian--so Colavita's oils and vinegars work really well with all the components of this South American meal.

Mocha Ricotta Pie with Strawberries

This pie is one of my absolute favorite desserts. It's in my top three of all time, right up there with almond butter thumbprints and salted caramel brownies.

What makes it so fabulous is the trifecta of a lightly sweetened, crunchy shortbread crust, a rich and creamy ricotta filling with chocolate, coffee, and a hint of lemon (yes, lemon!), and a topping of juicy strawberries. It reminds me of the amazing Southern-style chocolate pie I always used to eat at the now-defunct Marimont Cafeteria in Austin, Texas, but with a mature Italian twist and bright berries to lighten things up.

Really good dark chocolate and high quality, full-fat ricotta are important for this pie. (Good coffee won't hurt either, but I love my Café Bustelo.) I was so excited about having a tub of Narragansett Creamery ricotta in my fridge that I proceeded to completely forget I'd bought it to make zucchini lasagna, and dumped all of it into the filling for this pie.

Zucchini Lasagna

I've been on the fence for a while about whether I should buy a spiralizer. I want to make rutabaga noodles so badly, but I can't seem to bring myself to purchase another kitchen gadget. I've made zoodles by hand with my julienne peeler, but it's a huge pain. After adding the spiralizer to my cart on Amazon several times and then taking it back out again, I've decided that I'm going to ask for one for my birthday next month (are you reading this, Mom?). I won't feel as bad about getting yet another cooking tool if it is a gift from my wonderful mother.

In the meantime, I was excited to find this zucchini lasagna over on Sarah and Tim's blog, Curious Cuisiniere, because it uses veggie noodles that you don't need any special gadgets to make. Strips of zucchini stand in for lasagna noodles, but all the great Italian flavors and delicious textures of the original dish still come through.

Curious Cuisiniere was my assignment for this month's Secret Recipe Club reveal, and I had a great time perusing the site to choose a dish. I noticed that this recipe isn't their only noodle-free lasagna--they also have a butternut squash lasagna that I'm planning to try in the fall. Sarah and Tim also have recipes from countries all around the world, and the best part is that they have an interactive map that helps you explore food from different regions. Click on India, for example, and you'll be taken to a page with all of the Indian recipes on Curious Cuisiniere. So cool! If you're looking to expand your palate and cooking repertoire with some food from faraway lands, their blog is the place to do it.

Blood Orange Mascarpone Panna Cotta

My winter survival strategy goes a little something like this: hibernate, obsessively check the sunrise and sunset calendar to track the slow lengthening of days, and eat all the blood oranges.

I buy blood oranges every time I see them at the store, but I love snacking on them so much that this is the first time all season that I've managed to use them for a blog recipe. I'm so used to having a supply of them around that when I turned to the fruit bowl the other day, ready to make this panna cotta, I was surprised to find there was only one orange left.

Luckily, that single fruit yielded just enough vibrant zest and sweet juice to lend the perfect amount of citrusy brightness to this panna cotta. If you're not familiar with panna cotta, it's like an eggless pudding. It couldn't be easier to make. The name means "cooked cream", but I'd hardly even call it cooking--the cream is warmed over low heat for less than five minutes, just long enough to dissolve the gelatin. For this recipe, the gelatin and cream are whisked with blood orange juice and mascarpone for an extra creamy, cheesecake-like finish. The panna cotta is sweetened with honey, which adds a floral note that plays nicely off the bright flavors of the orange juice and zest.

Pesto Frittata

I'm finished with the first week of my Whole30, and feeling pretty great.  You can see almost every delicious thing I've eaten over on Instagram--I've been having so much fun trying out new recipes and revisiting old favorites.  Doing a challenge like this really gets the creativity flowing!

So far I'm breezing through each day without craving any off-plan foods--I even survived a friend's birthday party last night without any serious yearnings for the cake, cookies, booze, or tortilla chips that everyone else was enjoying.  I sipped on seltzer with lime, snacked on mixed nuts, and felt pretty darn virtuous.

Balsamic Chicken with Mushrooms

I love to read.  It's actually somewhat of a problem.

Whenever I read fiction or a memoir, one of two things happens.  I either put the book down because I can't get into it, or I'm so into it that I can't think about anything else, and end up reading the whole thing within a day or two.  The latter happens much more frequently than the former, and everything else I'm supposed to be doing falls by the wayside.  I fall into reading rabbit holes so easily that I usually don't allow myself to read anything other than my school textbooks during the semester itself.  (Of course, I'm very interested in speech and language pathology, but books with titles like Understanding Voice Problems and Preclinical Speech Science never really end up being page-turners.  Instead of keeping me up all night like a suspenseful novel, they're uniquely capable of sending me into a sudden nap if I read them anytime after the sun sets.)

Chicken Meatballs with Garlic Kale Marinara (Whole30 Day 4)

I've always been more of a baker than a cook, but I'm working hard to change that, especially since starting my Whole30.  It's exciting to try lots of different meats in lots of different forms.  Yesterday I made pork belly (you can see the before & after pics on Instagram--it was good, but not quite good enough to share with you!).  Today I used ground chicken to make meatballs.  I am so happy with the way this dish turned out--it's one of the best savory recipes I've made!  The meatballs are moist and rich, and the sauce provides the perfect level of tart tomato and roasted garlic flavor.

Figs & Pancetta

This simple appetizer is an amazing way to showcase some delicious figs.  I'd been wanting to wrap figs in prosciutto for a while now, but accidentally got slices of pancetta instead.  I think in my mind I'd filed them as being the same thing.  I did a little research and it seems like pancetta is thicker and less pliable, and cured with more spices than prosciutto.  You can use either one here--prosciutto would probably be easier to wrap around the figs, and you might not even need the toothpicks.

Shrimp & Zoodles with Garlic Tomato Sauce

Have you ever made zoodles?  If you get yourself a julienne peeler, you can be making zucchini into low-carb noodle stand-ins in no time.  It's actually really good.  You may not be able to fool people into thinking they are eating actual spaghetti, but I don't think anyone will be complaining.

Homemade Pasta, Midnight Style

Did you know that if you have flour, eggs, salt, olive oil, and garlic (and a sense of adventure and a little time on your hands) you can make your own gourmet pasta dinner?

It's true, and while it's not quick or exceptionally easy, it is really fun and amazingly delicious.  Plus, I feel like making your own pasta earns you some bragging rights.  My boyfriend is tired of hearing me brag, so I'm here to share my homemade pasta conquest with you.

Ready to try it?  You know you want to!  Here are my step-by-step photos and notes on the process.  Scroll down for a recipe for midnight fettucine--a simple sauce to let your pasta shine.

This is a special recipe from America's Test Kitchen for people who DON'T have special pasta machines.  So if you're fancy and do have a machine, this might not be the right recipe for you.  But, leave me a comment about what machine you have and how you like it!

Here's the dough recipe (from America's Test Kitchen).

Ingredients:

2 cups flour, plus extra
2 large eggs
6 large egg yolks (save the whites for this or this or a healthy breakfast scramble)
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil

Put 2 cups of flour and all the remaining ingredients in your food processor.  Whir until the mixture comes together into a ball.

Touch the dough.  If it sticks to your fingers, add more flour a tablespoon at a time until it's just a little bit tacky.

I found this hard to do in the food processor, so I dumped the dough out onto a cutting board and worked in extra flour until it felt right.  I added 3-4 tablespoons.





Dump the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead it with the palms of your hands for a couple of minutes, until it feels really smooth.

Form a cylinder of dough that's about six inches long.  Flour it lightly on all sides (otherwise it will stick) and wrap it in plastic wrap.

Let the dough rest at room temperature for at least one hour and up to four.  The longer you let it rest, the easier it will be to roll out.  I let mine sit for an hour and a half and rolling it out took a little elbow grease, but went just fine.





When you are ready to roll out your dough, unwrap it.  Using a sharp knife (I subsequently discovered that my pizza cutter is NOT super sharp), cut the dough into six equal pieces.

You will work with one piece at a time, so wrap the remaining pieces back up with plastic wrap (flour them a little first and wrap them individually).

Using your hands, form a 3 x 3 inch square with the dough and flour it lightly on both sides.

Use a rolling pin to roll the dough out into a six inch square.  As you can see, mine wasn't really square.  I did my best.  Lightly flour it again on both sides.

Place the rolling pin in the middle of the dough, and using one motion, pull the rolling pin toward you as you roll out the bottom half of the dough.

Then, place the rolling pin in the middle again.  This time, push the rolling pin away from you to roll out the top half of the dough.

Repeat this process until the dough is about 20 inches long and 6 inches wide, and you can see the outline of your fingers through it.

Set rolled out strips aside on a kitchen towel to dry a little while you roll out the rest of the dough.

When you finish rolling out the strips, go back and get the first one.  The edges should feel a little firm and dry.  If it isn't floury, flour it lightly on both sides so it won't stick to itself.

Starting with one of the short ends of the dough, roll up the strip by folding over two inch segments.  Don't push the layers together, just roll them up very gently.

Using a very sharp knife, slice the roll crosswise into 1/2 inch wide slices.

Unroll them with your fingers.  Ta-da!  Fresh fettucine.  

Set the finished pasta strips aside on a baking sheet while you finish rolling and slicing the rest of the dough.

Cook the pasta within an hour, or freeze it.  To freeze, place the whole baking sheet in the freezer until the pasta is firm.  Transfer to an airtight zip top bag and store for up to two weeks.  You can boil the pasta straight from the freezer.

To cook the pasta, boil in a large pot of salted water until just al dente, 1-3 minutes (it might take longer with frozen pasta).  Fresh pasta cooks really fast, so check it early!

I used my fresh pasta to make midnight fettucine.  This easy pasta is called midnight fettucine (or spaghetti) because chefs like to make it as quick and easy meal when they get home from work at midnight.  I loved it with this fresh pasta, but you can make it with any pasta and it will still be delicious.  You can dress it up with parmesan, parsley, or red pepper flakes if you want, but I like it best just the way it is.

Ingredients:

1 pound pasta
1/3 cup olive oil
10-15 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
Salt to taste

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium low heat.  Add the garlic and cook, stirring frequently, for about ten minutes.  You want the garlic to soften and sizzle but not brown, so reduce the heat if it starts to turn golden.

Cook the pasta until al dente and drain, reserving one cup of the cooking water.

Toss the pasta with the garlic and oil, season to taste with salt, and add cooking water as necessary to thin out the sauce.  Serve hot.

Paccheri with Braised Chicken and Saffron Cream

The other day, I went to my mom’s place to visit her and the cats.  My mom is always trying to get me to go through the boxes of books and other junk that I still have at her apartment.  We found a box I’d sent to myself via media mail when I moved back up from Texas, and I hadn’t even opened it yet.  Turns out it was full of old issues of Bon Appétit magazine.  I had a friend coming for dinner yesterday and had promised to make some sort of pasta with chicken.  I flipped through the magazine with that in mind, and found this recipe (my recipe is adapted from the September 2010 issue and can be seen online here).  I knew right away that I had to make it, because I love paccheri.  It’s like rigatoni on steroids.  

Somehow I think the pasta tastes even better because it is bigger.  I buy paccheri at Whole Foods, but if you can’t find it you can order it online at markethallfoods.com.  You could substitute rigatoni, but I think it would take a lot of the fun out of this dish.  

This dish takes a little bit of time to make, but it’s very satisfying once you’re done.  Braising chicken thighs and then shredding the meat makes the chicken very tender and flavorful.  If I made this again, though, I would add some cheese.  I think a bit of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano can only make things better.  Let me know if you try it!

Ingredients (serves 4):

           

            3 tablespoons olive oil

            Salt and pepper

            2.5 pounds bone-in chicken thighs, with skin

            2 yellow onions, chopped

            6 cloves garlic, minced

            2 cups dry white wine (I used Chardonnay)

            1 teaspoon crushed saffron threads

            2 cups chicken stock

            1 cup light cream

            1 tablespoon lemon juice, plus extra to taste

            1 pound paccheri

            ½ cup chopped fresh basil, plus extra

            ½ cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Heat the olive oil in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat.  Salt and pepper the chicken on both sides.  Add the chicken to the skillet and cook until golden on both sides, about 15 minutes total.  Remove the chicken to a plate.

Add the garlic and onion to the same skillet, and cook until softened somewhat, 5-10 minutes.  Add the wine and saffron, bring to a boil, and continue to boil until reduced by about half and thickened.  Add the chicken broth, return the chicken to the pan, and bring to a boil again.  Once the mixture boils, turn the heat down to low and cover the pan.  Simmer for about an hour, until chicken is very tender, turning once about halfway through.

Set the chicken aside to cool.  Boil salted water for the pasta and cook until al dente.  Drain and set aside.

When the chicken has cooled somewhat, remove the skin and bones and shred the meat into small pieces (this is easiest to do by hand).

Skim excess fat off the top of the skillet.  Add the cream and boil until the sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.  Add lemon juice and chicken.  Cook until heated throughout.  Taste and add more salt, pepper, and lemon juice if desired.  Add pasta and stir in basil and parmesan, if using.  Garnish with additional basil and parmesan and serve hot.