Meatballs: A Love Story
This week has been a massive failure, culinarily speaking. I think I ate out half the week, with the exception of last night, when Josh made Kraft Mac for us for dinner because I was too lightheaded to do anything but fall asleep after a very long day at work during which I ran around a lot and only actually ate one chocolate-banana smoothie and four homemade oreos.
These meatballs were the one gastronomical high point of my week, and that’s sad. The meatballs aren’t sad; they’re fantastic. What’s sad is that I have yet to follow them up with anything as delicious. To make it up to you, and to my poor, poor belly, I think I will make some barbecue this weekend and post all the mouth-watering photos that I can. That’s my gift to you. Or it will be. If I do it.
Anyway, I can’t really remember but I’m pretty sure I made these on Monday, before my week went completely to crap. I really love meatballs. I’m intrigued by them. Not the “Why the hell would you do that?” kind of fascination that I have with meatloaf, oddly enough, but a simple curious adoration (I’ll do anything for meatballs but I won’t do that?). In fact, if you recall, my previous iteration of this blog was chickenmeatballs.wordpress.com. It’s one of my food goals to master the art of meatball making (along with icing, pulled pork, chocolate turtles, pancakes, biscuits and a few thousand other things—luckily, I think I’ve got the chocolate chip cookie down). Well, this week I think I moved a tiny bit closer to my goal of meatball perfection. Read the rest of this entry »
Monday Night Pantry Pasta Pretty Damn Quick
uh yes please
I picked out glasses yesterday afternoon. Prescription sunglasses, to be precise. I can’t really tell you what they look like though. I’m not even really sure. That’s the problem with having to try on glasses when you don’t wear contacts and are otherwise mostly blind. But hey, in about 3-4 weeks when they come in, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised! Or horrified. We’ll see. Ha. We’ll see. Get it? Yeah.
So after that, I walked down to Kerrytown and waited for Josh to pick me up. It’s after five at this point. Then we have to go get the dog because yes, my dog goes to doggy daycare once a week so he can run around and socialize like the wild beast that he is. Of course, to get him, we have to drive through all the construction down on Main Street by Stadium and then once we’ve got him, we have to stop at the bank. And then drive through rush-hour traffic through town because there’s no way we’re hitting I-94 at this hour and by the time we get home, settled, mail on the table, shoes off the feet, bathroom break taken care of, dog fed, etc, etc, etc, we’re looking at almost 7pm and time to make dinner and I’m starving. I also have a lot of freelance work to do—videos to edit, DVDs to burn, that sort of thing–and don’t want to be on my feet all night cooking. And then there’s that nagging little voice that says, “Screw cooking; order a pizza from Aubree’s. With breadsticks. Don’t forget my breadsticks.” Read the rest of this entry »
I know. I’ve been neglecting you. I haven’t written a real post for over a week. And it’s sad. But the truth is that…well, there hasn’t been much to write about. I haven’t cooked a whole lot and what I have cooked hasn’t been very impressive, and definitely not worth sharing. Although I did make chocolate granola bars last night. And I will probably blog about them later. I thought posting them would be much ado about nothing but then I realized that I keep eating them and that’s a good sign.
I have been busy doing one thing, however: reading. One article I found today on the NY Times that I really enjoyed was all about…well, people like me. You know. Those people. The ones who take pictures of every meal they eat. The ones who fuss over lighting and crostini placement. The ones who tweet their tastings, like “Just ate fugu from amateur chef…think I’m dying…bye cruel world.” The ones who blog about their gastronomic adventures, posting picture after picture as though anybody else cares….cough…
Hey! Who wants to see pictures of my dinner? Read the rest of this entry »
Meal For One: Black and Green Pasta
This what I had for lunch today. The squid ink pasta came from my mom. It’s an egg pasta that’s been dyed a deep black color with squid ink, which also gives it a salty, kind of oily taste as well. The great thing is that it cooks in 3 minutes. For Halloween, I will probably make a “spooky” pasta with a nice bright orange pumpkin sauce, but today I just wanted a very simple, very light lunch, so this is what I made. Note: this makes a light pasta dish for one; to make it more hearty, add in any of the following: 1 c. chopped broccoli, 3/4 c. shelled edamame, 4 ounces of cooked shredded chicken and/or 1 small zucchini chopped.
However, as it is, this is a very simple 5 ingredient recipe, not including the salt and pepper. Read the rest of this entry »
My dear friend and fellow foodie/home cook and vegetarian extraordinaire Paul came over to hang out with us for a while tonight and in honor, I made a simple, tasty dinner of a mushroom and leek ragout. Mostly because I had most of the stuff for pasta and needed to fill my quota of 2 or 3 pasta dishes a week.
Like…well, every dish I make, this is a fairly flexible recipe. And by “recipe,” I mean “guideline.” And by “guideline,” I mean, “loosely affiliated series of ingredients, directions and methods.” Read the rest of this entry »
Meal in a pot: baked mac and cheese
I think there’s one basic truth in this world that we can all agree upon: macaroni and cheese is freaking awesome. It’s like pizza-even when it’s bad, it’s still macaroni and cheese.
There’s a de facto rule in my family that every holiday meal must contain at least one pan of baked macaroni and cheese. To not have it is a sin against God. And taste. And delicious flavor.
I do have a go-to recipe for mac-and-cheese that I like to pull out for such meals, and it never fails. But tonight, I was on my own and I wanted to make something that would a) use up some leftover chicken from last night’s sammiches and 2)have all my carbs, veggies and protein in one pot.
I ended up combining influence from my usual recipe and from this baked penne with cheddar and leeks recipe from Bon Appetit, and threw in a few other things I had on hand. Read the rest of this entry »
Salsa + Spaghetti = Salsagetti
Inspired by reading over Noelle’s entry about her delicious-looking salsa, I decided tonight to utilize the tomato-y bounty given forth to me by Josh’s beautiful heirloom variety tomato plants growing out on our deck. But instead of a salsa, a fresh tomato sauce that I could mix in with the whole wheat linguine I got on sale at Busch’s yesterday, and serve it with the boneless skinless chicken breast I had thawing in the oven. AND it would be a light healthy dish. I love it when a plan comes together.
The smug foodie in me (I am writing this on a Mac after all) was also pretty proud of the fact that just about all the produce in this dish was locally grown, too. The tomatoes, thyme, parsley and basil came from our own deck garden (we live on the third floor of an apartment building, but are lucky enough to have a big long deck which we line with various pots containing leafy and delicious products). And the peppers, garlic and onion came from our farm share. Delicious. Read the rest of this entry »
I wasn’t going to blog this recipe…it’s a plain old lasagna. And it’s July. Who bakes a lasagna in July and blogs about it? Me. At Josh’s request. That Josh is a bad influence.
Anyway, here is the basic recipe: Read the rest of this entry »
A Ragù, of sorts
Today was a pasta kind of day. You know those days. It was rainy all morning and wet and even though it cleared up this afternoon, it just seemed like a day that was destined for noodles covered in sauce wearing some sort of delicious cheese. We have pasta pretty often, though, and I wanted something not quite the same as the usual linguine or rigatoni with meatballs or meat sauce with ground beef. So we went with a variation on the theme with a more traditional ragù. Sometimes ragù is known as bolognese sauce, although traditional bolognese is made somewhat differently (served with tagliatelle or green lasagna and containing beef (sometimes pork or lamb), pancetta, onions, carrots, tomato paste, broth, red wine and sometimes cream or milk) and comes from Bologna, Italy.
So what did I do?
I went shopping. I had to. We were actually almost entirely out of pasta, which is very rare for us. So on the way home from work, Josh and I headed to Busch’s and picked up a package of beef stew meat (I would have used a cheap cut of shoulder and chopped it up myself, but there were none), a can of crushed tomatoes, onions, a bag of shell pasta (conchiglie) and a small block of parmesan. Including the cost of the pizza dough from yesterday to make garlic bread with, the entire dinner worked out to about $10 not including spices. Woot!
Now, generally I can make a pasta dinner for the two of us in a half hour. Tonight it was an hour and a half, and most of that was simmering the sauce to cook the stew meat long enough to let it start to melt into the sauce. I’m a big fan of packaged beef stew meat for slowcooked meals. It’s cheap, it’s delicious when properly seasoned, it responds well to long cooking times and hey, who doesn’t love the iron and the protein? Vegetarians, that’s who. Read the rest of this entry »
Baked Macaroni and Cheese
Every family has their favorite dishes, things that appear at every get-together and every holiday. My family has baked macaroni and cheese. We’re connosieurs of it, really. Don’t get me wrong; deep down, the poor kid in me still loves something about Kraft easy mac, and the grown-up in me still likes to experiment with my own homemade version of the stuff, but really, truly and absolutely there is no substitute for a good, hearty backed macaroni and cheese casserole with tons of gooey cheese and a good crispy crust.
This is the version I make. I got it from Tyler Florence (the man is a god amongst mortal chefs) and I make it with or without the bacon (depends on whether my vegetarian mom is partaking) altho Josh will say that it’s not the same without bacon. It’s a pretty easy recipe to scale, and I’ve made it for as many as 25-30 people. It always gets rave reviews.
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