Casarecce With Eggplant, Mushroom & Basil
My children and I get a lot of exercise five days per week – we walk to and from school, rain or shine! The walk takes about 25 minutes. Read more
Posts tagged ‘pasta’
Aug 17
Fairy Tale-Inspired Recipes For Children, Part 2
Wow, my first post on fairy tale-inspired recipes for children was a real hit! It’s currently the most popular post on my blog. Read more
Sep 17
Aaron's Chilli, Mushroom & Chorizo Pasta
Just to get your attention, I’m going to say first off that if you love Italian comfort-style food, you’re going to love this recipe for chilli, mushroom and chorizo pasta. It comes from MasterChef Australia magazine, issue #5, and is a creation of former MasterChef Australia contestant Aaron Harvie. I have to admit that while watching this season’s MasterChef, Aaron was not one of my top favorites, especially when Marion lost to him over the satay sauce! However, the recipe he included in this month’s MasterChef magazine makes me realize that Aaron isn’t actually that bad. His food dream is to open a pasta bar, so he gets all my good luck and respect because I just love pasta.
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.
May 5
Fettuccine Bolognese
If you live in Australia, you know Coles. And you may have seen a commercial on TV where chef Curtis Stone takes a woman and her daughter shopping for ingredients for his fettuccine bolognese recipe. The cost of the ingredients for the recipe is supposed to be under $10.
I’m a Woolies girl myself, and I’m not a fan of Curtis Stone, but this recipe looked easy, cheap and tasty, so I visited Coles, grabbed the Curtis Stone recipe booklet at the front door and bought the ingredients. Well, it wasn’t under $10 because I bought a bigger package of ground beef (the leftovers I would freeze for later use). I wasn’t very interested in the cost, however, as I was more interested in how easy it would be, and whether my kids would like it or not!
I started cooking when I got home from the shops and I found the preparation was quite easy and relatively quick, just what I was after. The sauce cooks up nice, thick and fragrant. I love the chunky mushrooms and carrots.
The taste was so-so. Oh, it was good, definitely, but it just seemed to be lacking a little bit of flavor, like it could have used more seasoning (which would have been my fault for not using more) or more basil. I don’t know, I’m not a cook – I’m a baker!
Jul 23
Sausage & Penne Casserole
I’m a big fan of baked pastas, so when I saw this recipe in my Taste of Home magazine (the June & July 2009 issue) I couldn’t pass it up. I’m so glad I decided to make this, it turned out really well and gave us three nights of dinners.
I did have to make a substitution to this, however. My store must have been out of Italian sausage, one of the main ingredients to this recipe. So I used regular ground beef and while cooking it I added an Italian spice blend. I’m sure I’ll be making this again sometime, and I will try to find Italian sausage next time!
My entire family loved this, even my 2-year-old son. It makes a great family dinner when served with a nice fresh salad. We had a salad of lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes and green olives.
The sauce this recipe makes tastes great, and would be nice to use as a regular spaghetti sauce. I might try this sometime!
The original recipe in the magazine made two full 13×9-inch baking dishes of this casserole, but I divided everything in half (or close to half) when I made this for just one baking dish, and I have posted the recipe for just one baking dish below.
Penne & Sausage Casserole
Adapted from Taste of Home magazine, June & July 2009Ingredients
3/4 pound uncooked penne pasta
1/2 pound Italian sausage
1/2 pound sliced fresh mushrooms
1 medium onion, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 garlic cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
3/4 cup dry red wine or beef broth, divided
1 can (14.5 ounces) stewed tomatoes, chopped
1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
1/2 cup beef broth
2 cups (8 ounces) shredded fontina cheese
2 cups (8 ounces) shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
Minced fresh parsleyMethod
Cook pasta according to package directions. Meanwhile, cook sausage over medium heat until no longer pink; drain and set aside.In the same pan, saute mushrooms and onion in oil until tender. Add garlic and oregano; cook 1 minute longer. Stir in 1/2 cup wine (or beef broth). Bring to a boil; cook until liquid is reduced by half. Stir in the tomatoes, tomato sauce, broth, sausage and remaining wine (or beef broth). Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 15 minutes.
Drain pasta. Spread about 1/4 cup sauce in a greased 13×9-inch baking dish. Spread half of the pasta on top of the sauce. Top with about 1 1/4 cups sauce and 1/2 cup of each cheese. Repeat the layers once more.
Cover and bake at 350F for 25 minutes. Uncover; bake 5-10 minutes longer or until bubbly and cheese is melted. Sprinkle with parsley if desired.
Jun 9
Broccoli Pesto
This dinner was inspired by Not Without Salt. It’s broccoli pesto. I’ve never actually had any pesto of any sort that I’m aware of, so I was interested to try this out.
The “recipe” is posted at the link above to Not Without Salt, but you’ll see it’s not exactly a recipe. It basically says to throw together broccoli, oil, garlic, lemon juice and puree! It doesn’t give amounts of anything, so it’s pretty much open to your tastes.
What you do is you steam some broccoli. You then saute it in dark green olive oil (I don’t have any of this, so I used regular olive oil) along with two minced cloves of garlic until the garlic is soft. Put this into a blender along with pepper, salt, the juice of half a lemon, more olive oil and puree it.
I have no idea what consistency pesto should be – should it be runny or thick? Mine came out a bit thick, and I used it on spaghetti.
I really need to work on my spaghetti plating skills! But anyhow, I really liked this. I did something sneaky for the kids though. I made them spaghetti as well, but knowing that they wouldn’t eat green spaghetti, I mixed the rest of the broccoli pesto into regular red spaghetti sauce and they had no idea they were eating broccoli – they loved it!
Greek Pasta Bake
This is a recipe from The Taste Of Home cookbook that I received for winning December’s Iron Cupcake: Earth challenge. It’s called Greek Pasta Bake, and I was tempted into making it because 1) I like pasta bakes, and 2) it had a nice list of ingredients. The description also tempted me into making this:
“Lemon and herbs are complemented by the subtle taste of cinnamon in this pasta bake.”
While cooking on the stove, the meat sauce (the meat called for was a mix of beef and lamb, but my store only had beef, so I used all beef) for this recipe smelled fabulous. Interestingly, after adding the cinnamon to the sauce, it definitely took on a different scent and it filled the house with the pleasing aroma.
After taking the dish out of the oven, I thought perhaps that the baking time might have been a little too long, at least for my tastes, as the rigatoni pasta on top became hard and chewy, as well as the crumbled feta cheese.
The taste of the finished product was just so-so. I could definitely taste a subtle hint of cinnamon, as the description noted. But I just wasn’t too pleased with the overall taste of the pasta bake and I will probably not be making this again.
Greek Pasta Bake
Adapted from The Taste Of Home CookbookIngredients
1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground lamb
1 large onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
3 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1 can (15 ounces) tomato sauce
1 can (14.5 ounces) diced tomatoes, undrained
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups uncooked rigatoni or large tube pasta
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbledMethod
In a large skillet, cook beef and lamb over medium heat until no longer pink; drain. Stir in onion, garlic, oregano, basil, salt, pepper and thyme; mix well. Add the tomato sauce, tomatoes and lemon juice.Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the sugar and cinnamon. Simmer, uncovered, 15 minutes longer.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to package directions; drain. Stir into meat mixture. Transfer to a greased 2-quart baking dish. Sprinkle with feta cheese.
Cover and bake at 325F for 45 minutes. Uncover; bake 15 minutes longer or until heated through.
Pasta Salad
I really love pasta, and besides spaghetti, cold pasta salads are one of my favorite pasta dishes. I’ve recently found two cold pasta salad recipes on the back of Ronzoni Healthy Harvest boxes, one of which I altered slightly and posted at the Mixing Bowl recipe website.
I have to admit that these aren’t the best cold pasta salad recipes out there, but they’re quick, healthy (or at least a bit healthy) and make a great side dish or even a light meal.
The recipe I’m posting here uses whole wheat spiral pasta, roasted red peppers, fresh baby spinach, creamy Parmesan Romano dressing and grated Parmesan cheese.
Actually, I have no real recipe for you, as this is such a simple recipe, you can really just throw in the amounts that suit your taste. I used about 1 cup of spiral pasta, 1 roasted red pepper (from a jar), a couple of small handfuls of fresh baby spinach and about 1 tablespoon of the creamy Parmesan Romano dressing (you could even creamy Caesar dressing). Toss those ingredients together to mix, and once on your plate, sprinkle with either fresh shredded Parmesan cheese or grated Parmesan cheese.
I accidentally sprinkled a bit too much grated Parmesan cheese on my serving!, but it was still quite tasty. Both of these pasta salad recipes (the one from Mixing Bowl I posted, and this one I’m posting here) taste better very cold, so I recommend refrigerating the pasta salads for at least one hour before eating.
