When we get back in the morning, after having left my daughter at school, I usually begin work on any recipes I may make that day.  I really look forward to this time and always go over my ingredient lists and recipe instructions over a cup of coffee, setting out any ingredients to come to room temperature (eggs, butter, milk, etc.).

After I pick my daughter up my from school, I don’t often have enough time to prepare dinner.  If I am planning a special meal, I’ll make it after we get back in the morning and then heat it up for dinner.  And yes, I always sample a bit for lunch!

This pasta with roasted mushrooms, eggplant and olives was a meal that I mostly prepared the day before, and then cooked the pasta on the following day, mixing the roasted bits and the dressing with the pasta just before serving.  You can’t do this with any meal, but it’ll work for most.

What a lovely and beautiful-tasting dish!  This is the first time I’ve used such a pretty pasta; it’s called casarecce.  It is accompanied by roasted portobello mushrooms, baby eggplants, kalamata olives and garlic, then dressed in lemon-olive oil dressing and scattered with soft goat’s cheese and fresh basil.

This is not a cheap dish – expect to hand over some extra cash for those delicious portobello mushrooms and goat’s cheese – but you’ll find that by paying more for quality ingredients, the taste will be absolutely gorgeous.

I had never tasted goat’s cheese before, so this was the most exciting part for me.  The cheese was very soft and creamy and had only a slight tang to it.  It was very pleasant and made a great contrast in textures.

After spending 2 hours of the day constantly walking (oh, and also listening to all three of my children try to talk to me at once while I watch out for cars!), it’s always great to come home to an easy (as it was mostly prepared beforehand) gourmet meal such as this one.

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Aaron states in the description of this particular recipe that this is a great pasta to curl up on the couch with for a night at home (I totally agree).  His inspiration comes from his local deli’s “amazing” Portuguese chorizo.

Each bite of this pasta is packed full of flavor – from the spicy chorizo, the olives and fresh oregano, basil and rocket -, and includes a tiny bit of background heat from the chillies.

I try to keep it a secret, but I have to admit that I don’t like olives.  When I add them to pasta dishes, I tolerate the olives and grimace as I eat them.  They have quite a strong taste; I could not would not ever eat one by itself.  Yet I do like the different flavor it adds to the dish, if you can understand that!?

Speaking of strong tastes, the recipe also uses bird’s-eye chillies, which are very small and flaming hot. My very first experience with these chillies came about 6 years ago – shortly after I was done chopping them, my fingers felt like they were burning and it continued for hours! That had never happened to me while chopping regular chillies. The next time I chopped bird’s-eye chillies, I used rubber gloves. Since, I have substituted regular, longer chillies and have not had a problem (the longer the  chillies are, the less hot they are; the shorter they are, the hotter they are). Besides the fact that I don’t like the taste of fiery chillies, I don’t like my fingers burning!

The main problem I had during the preparation process of this dish was with the chorizo.  The ingredient list calls for chorizo sausages to be thinly sliced before cooking.  I found it utterly impossible to slice the raw chorizo.  Maybe it was just the particular chorizo that I bought?  Maybe chorizo is supposed to be more firm when raw?  Maybe I just needed a sharper knife?  I’m not sure, as this was the first time I’ve eaten chorizo, so I couldn’t tell you.  But I will recommend that if your raw chorizo is soft and flimsy like mine was, cook the whole chorizo first, then slice it.

When I realized that slicing the raw chorizo was not going to work, I cut the outer skin of the sausage off, discarded it, and crumbled up the sausage into little meatballs.  It might not have the same visual effect as neatly sliced chorizo, but it tastes just the same!

This is one pasta dish that I will, without a doubt, be making again and again.  Aaron, if you ever read this, thank you for such a lovely recipe!

Aaron’s Chilli, Mushroom And Chorizo Pasta
Adapted from MasterChef Australia magazine, issue #5
Serves 4 very hungry people

Ingredients
60ml (1/4 cup) olive oil
3 chorizo sausages, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 red onion, finely chopped
200g button mushrooms, thickly sliced
2 tablespoons roughly chopped oregano
2 tablespoons roughly chopped basil, plus extra leaves, to serve
120g (1 cup) pitted black kalamata olives, halved
4 red bird’s-eye chillies, seeded, finely chopped
2x 400g cans Italian diced tomatoes
400g long macaroni or other tubular pasta
1 1/2 cups wild rocket, plus extra leaves to serve
25g (1/3 cup) finely grated parmesan, plus extra, to serve
Extra virgin olive oil, to drizzle

Method
Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large pan over medium-high heat.  Cook chorizo, stirring, for 2 minutes or until browned.  Add garlic, onion, mushrooms, oregano, basil and half each of the olives and chillies.  Cook, stirring, for 4 minutes or until onion has softened.  Stir in tomatoes, bring to a simmer, then cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or until sauce is slightly thickened.  Season with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, cook pasta in a large saucepan of boiling salted water until al dente.  Drain.  Reserve pan.

Return pasta to pan and toss with remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil.  Add the tomato sauce, rocket and parmesan, and toss well to combine.

Divide pasta among bowls, then top with the remaining olives and chillies.  Scatter with extra basil, rocket and parmesan, then drizzle with extra virgin olive oil to serve.

The recipe is really easy and is one of those that you can’t really screw up.  You can add all the ingredients based on your own tastes.  I’ll post a basic recipe, but note that I can’t give you the exact amounts because I never measure them!

The flavor of the mushrooms really stand out in this dish; it is the most prevalent taste, followed by the garlic and herbs.  A sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese finishes off the taste really well.

Spaghetti With Mushrooms And Garlic
Serves 2-ish

Ingredients
2 servings uncooked spaghetti (maybe a little more?)
2-4 tablespoons olive oil
1-1 1/2 teaspoons dried parsley
1-1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 ounces baby portobello mushrooms, or button, finely chopped
Grated Parmesan cheese

Method
In a medium saucepan or skillet, add olive oil, herbs, garlic and mushrooms.  Cook, uncovered, over low-medium heat until it begins to simmer; remove from heat.

Meanwhile, cook spaghetti according to package directions.  Drain.  Toss with mushroom mixture until thoroughly coated.  Serve with a sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese.

If I have leftover olive oil after plating, I usually just toss it out after making sure there are no more chunks of garlic and mushrooms.

If you try this, let me know.  It’s been my favorite for years!

I used a store-bought refrigerated pizza dough as the base for this pizza, and a simple tomato sauce.  I sprinkled two minced cloves of garlic on top of the sauce and a sprinkling of dried thyme.  Then, I added a good layer of shredded mozzarella cheese, chopped fresh baby spinach and sliced cremini mushrooms.  On top of that I added a sprinkling of dried oregano and a little bit more cheese.  I baked the pizza for 12 minutes at 400F.

I don’t have exact measurements of each ingredient that I used, like I said, that’s the great thing about making pizzas – you don’t really need a recipe.  My pizza was a little too herby because I went a little crazy with the oregano, but it’s a nice change from frozen store-bought pizzas.  :)

But first, last night’s dinner.  My mom has turned to a diet of organic and healthy foods, so she decided to cook up some samples of what she’s been eating for me.

We had organic sweet potato soup (swirled with cinnamon and dotted with mini marshmallows), steamed broccoli and cauliflower and a lightly seasoned salmon fillet.  It was really yummy!

And now the morel mushrooms.  As everyone knows, it’s morel season now and my dad found quite a few good-sized morels in the woods behind my parents’ house in the country.

The one lying in the very front is approximately six inches long!  While my mom has been here with me, my dad has been at home feasting on these morels!

Anyway, these two recipes are ones that I have recently found on Land O’ Lakes recipe index and TasteSpotting.com.  Grilled portobello mushroom burgers and oven-baked onion rings.

The recipe for grilled portobello mushrooms is posted here (they spelled portobello as “portabella”, but I’m pretty sure I’ve spelled the correct way?).  The mushrooms are coated with melted butter, chopped garlic and chopped fresh basil, then grilled.  They are then accompanied by romaine lettuce and a sliced tomato on a whole wheat bun.  The recipe also called for onion slices, but I forgot about them!

We don’t have a real grill, so I used our little George Foreman grill that my cousin gave us for Christmas in 2006.

This is a delicious, meaty and juicy alternative to hamburger.  We’re not vegetarians here, but this mushroom burger is good enough to make us turn into vegetarians!

Next on the menu, oven-baked onion rings, which I originally found on TasteSpotting.com; the recipe is posted here, at Le Petit Pierogi.  The neat thing about these onion rings is that they are baked, not fried.  Their coating of panko bread crumbs ensures that you’ll get a nice crunch from these onion rings.

They weren’t exceptional, but I loved that they were homemade and oven-baked, and they were a nice pairing for the mushroom burgers.