pasta

You are currently browsing articles tagged pasta.

Sunday Dinner

March 29, 2012 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 11 comments

Carb loading? Why yes, yes I am. It’s Boston Marathon season, and the best part of carb loading is the beer pasta!

I’m actually not a huge fan of carb-y things in general. I skip the bread basket and don’t go crazy for bread or pasta unless it’s really good and usually homemade. But every now and then I get a pasta craving, and a chilly Sunday afternoon was the perfect time to let a pot of sauce bubble away.

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I unexpectedly ended up having a VERY frustrating work day on Sunday, and going into the kitchen to chop onions and pound chicken tenders was the perfect release. It’s been a week of business lessons for me, the main one being, get everything in writing. Everything.

I wanted to make a really rich and delicious tomato sauce so I started with some anchovies. This was actually my first time cooking with anchovies, and I was surprised that they didn’t smell at all.

I melted them down in a bit of olive oil with a ton of garlic and onions. Ahhh. . . the sizzling sounds and the garlicky, nutty smells. They truly transformed me from my funk, at least until I checked my email again Smile .

When the onions were soft, I poured in a can of crushed tomatoes and added a few spoons of tomato paste. I also added a few pinches of salt and a hefty shake of crushed red pepper.

Next came the chicken. I wanted chicken cutlets, but I accidentally bought these tenders. They were just fine; I took some of my frustration out on them to get them the same thickness, then dunked each one in flour, egg, and Italian bread crumbs.

After browning them on each side, I popped them in a 350 oven to cook through while I got my pasta going. I love these little pasta nests.

My chicken came out golden brown, the pasta perfectly al dente, and the sauce packed a flavorful punch.

I topped my bowl with some parmesan cheese, curled up on the couch, and enjoyed a leisurely Sunday evening.

What’s your favorite Sunday dinner?

Technorati Tags: chicken, dinner, Food, pasta, recipe, sauce

Tags: chicken, dinner, Food, pasta, recipe, sauce

Spicy Pasta Sauce

January 25, 2012 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 10 comments

Winter comfort food to me is generally hot and spicy. True, I love a good baked mac and cheese as much as the next person, but eating too much hearty, cheesy food bores my palate, leads me to overeat, and just doesn’t excite me.

My husband, on the other hand, grew up in Ireland, where as he says, ketchup is considered spicy. Over the years, he has built up not just an impressive tolerance for spice, but a love for it. Just last Friday, he was calling me weak when our takeaway Vindaloo made me sweat.

Marathon training has me craving comfort food in the form of carbs as well as satisfying protein, so I recently whipped up a super simple meat sauce to coat ribbons of fettuccini.

I started with my veggies:

2 cups of small, sweet peppers

1 yellow onion

6 cloves of garlic

Instead of chopping these by hand, I pureed them. I really wanted them to kind of disappear into the sauce rather than being chunks of veggies. I was all about the meat in this dish, but I know I need my veggies too.

For this meat sauce, I used a package of hot Italian turkey sausage, removed from the casing and broken up, cooked in a little bit of olive oil and crushed red pepper to add more heat.

It smelled amazing.

Once the sausage was cooked, I poured in a can of crushed tomatoes and added a sprinkle of salt, a few pinches of dried basil, a dash of garlic powder and a pinch of oregano. I also added a splash of red wine from an open bottle, stirred it all up, and let it bubble away on the lowest heat while I worked.

I checked on the sauce over the course of about two hours, dipping pieces of bread in for a taste. When we were little, if my mom was making her amazing homemade sauce, she would always cut up bread for us and give us little bowls of sauce after school. I can still taste it, and it is still one of my favorite ways to eat sauce.

I couldn’t even wait for my husband to get for dinner to eat. I had one bowl before he got home and another with him. This sauce was easy, incredibly flavorful, and made for a pretty balanced meal.

I am always looking for easy, hearty meals to make for after training runs when I am ravenous and craving comfort. What are your favorites? Feel free to share links!

Technorati Tags: dinner, Food, pasta, recipe, sauce, turkey

Tags: dinner, Food, pasta, recipe, sauce, turkey

Summer Pasta Salad

July 9, 2011 in Food by traveleatlove | 8 comments

Summer makes blogging easier. The light is great, and the ingredients, local produce, make for great photos with no work. It also makes eating easier. The elegant, fresh flavors of summer fruits and vegetables lend themselves to quick meals without much fuss, almost as if nature planned it that way. . . I just need to find a place where it is like this year round!

As you know, I have been working mostly from home, but this week I started a contract job that has me in the office more. And that means making lunch again. Summer helped make that a no-brainer. A fresh, light, and veggie-packed pasta salad was my first thought, and it was a good one.

I started with about 3/4 bag of Trader Joe’s orecchiette, the little ear shaped pasta. I really like tiny pastas in pasta salad. I got the water boiling and the pasta cooking while I prepped the rest of my simple recipe.

An entire shallot, finely diced, went into the pan.

It joined a large zucchini, two small summer squashes, and grape tomatoes, all from Trader Joe’s, and all local or semi-local, at the very least grown somewhere in the US, an option that my Shaw’s just does not offer. Does it ever completely enrage you that, even in the height of the season, we import veggies and fruits from everywhere but our local farmers? Hello, economy fix. Let’s support businesses in our communities!

Anyhow. . . once the pasta was cooked, I mixed it in with the vegetables and four triangles of Laughing Cow garlic & herb cheese. For a light cheese, which I normally would laugh at, I actually think Laughing Cow is good, and mixed in with the veggies and pasta, it made a nice cream “sauce”. Yummy.

I forgot to take a photo of the final product, but it was great! It made for a lunch I looked forward to, and for me, that is the ultimate test of a lunch recipe.

This pasta salad would make a great vegetarian side dish or main dish for a summer BBQ, as long as it isn’t kept out in the sun too long!

What did you have for lunch at work this week? Anything delicious?

Technorati Tags: cheese, Food, Lunch, pasta, summer, vegetables, Vegetarian