Tagged with Pasta …

Dec 26 2009
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Holiday, Main, Pasta

Christmas Dinner

For the second year in a row I was the only one of my siblings to make it home for Christmas. While the holidays aren’t quite as exciting when you’re the only one home, it certainly has its advantages. For one, I get way more presents than either of my brothers. And isn’t that what Christmas is about? Just kidding, Bobby and Kyle. I’m sure mom and dad gave you just as many presents as they gave me. You guys got ponies, too, right? If not you should be happy to know that they at least hung up your stockings this year unlike the last when mine was the only one dangling from the mantle.

Since there were only three of us around to eat Christmas dinner, we kept it pretty simple. I brought my pasta-making discs home, and my mom and I made an Italian dinner from scratch. Noodles, tomato sauce, meatballs, and a caprese-like salad were on the menu, followed by a chocolate tart and a mincemeat pie for dessert. Yes, you read that correctly. Three people and two desserts. That’s just how we roll. If it were up to my dad it would have been three desserts and no main course. That’s just how he rolls. And due to his running regimen he has no rolls.


When I was in Matt’s hometown last week I picked up a deeply discounted copy of the Silver Spoon Pasta cookbook at their soon to be no longer B. Dalton, satisfying my several month long desire to add that book to my collection. I set out to make meatballs and sauce from recipes in the book, and I ended up tweaking and adding on to both dishes. For the meatballs I combined about 1/2 lb. ground beef and about 1/2 lb. ground pork with an egg, a handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley, maybe 1/4 cup breadcrumbs, salt and pepper.

The fresh parsley was key to the tastiness of the meatballs. The original recipe called for a single sprig of parsley, but I used several. It helped to brighten the flavor of the little balls of meat.

The meatballs were first browned in a little oil over medium-high heat, and then the lid went on and they were transferred to a 350 oven for maybe 20-30 minutes until they were cooked through.

My mom’s 30+ year old KitchenAid may be on its last leg, but it still managed to crank out all of these pretty noodles.

The sauce was diced tomatoes, crushed red pepper flakes, Italian seasoning, garlic, and salt. It was OK (and much better than it looks in this photo), but it could have been better.

My plate.

My mom and I wanted to add olives to the pasta sauce, but since we knew my dad wouldn’t be thrilled we resorted to sprinkling them on top as a garnish. It was slightly weird, in part because they were cold and raw and in part because they were of the green, pimento-stuffed variety. Next time I’ll plan ahead and buy different olives and cook them with the sauce.

The salad was grape tomatoes, fresh mozzarella balls, chopped artichoke hearts, fresh basil, vinegar, and oil.


I’ve been going through this awful phase lately where I haven’t been very impressed with desserts, but this Mexican Chocolate Tart has completely changed my outlook on decadent, chocolate things.

The tart was incredibly easy to make, it looks elegant, it tastes delicious, and it goes perfectly with a dollop of freshly whipped cream.

I was going to post a picture of the mincemeat pie, but the amount of time it takes to upload a picture with this slow internet coupled with the fact that I don’t like mincemeat held me back. Maybe next year.
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Dec 12 2009
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Cheese, Main, Pasta

Macaroni and Cheese

As much as I love cheese, I’m not a huge macaroni and cheese person. Sure, I ate my fair share of it when I was a kid, treasured shipments of Easy Mac when I was abroad, and still occasionally buy a box to keep in the cupboard, but to give you an idea of how infrequently I eat it I will tell you that a box of macaroni and cheese is good for at least two years beyond its expiration date. Slightly disturbing, but true.

My indifference to macaroni and cheese applies to eating it in restaurants as well as eating it from a box. I’ve had a few bites of Matt’s mac and cheese from Joe’s Garage, but I would never order it for myself because I would much rather blow calories on their fries with basil aioli. The same goes for Yum – I would choose their crispy fries with red pepper aioli over their mac and cheese any day. A few weeks ago, though, my mom, Matt, and I were eating at Nick and Eddie, and it turned out to be one of those rare occasions when mac and cheese sounded really good. To be completely honest it was the lobster that was mixed in with it more than the cheesy noodles themselves that prompted me to order it, but the bottom line is I picked mac and cheese over fish and chips. So basically, fries with good dipping sauces trump macaroni and cheese, but lobster trumps fries.

Although I have no problem going long periods of time without a dose of cheesy noodles, sometimes I do eat it more often than once a year. When I was home over Thanksgiving I went through the collection of old magazines that had been accumulating in the rack next to my bed, pitching a couple old copies of Vanity Fair and W before stumbling upon an issue of Saveur. It dated back to April 2005 (vintage!) and the theme was “American Artisanal Cheese.” I still can’t figure out how I had the good sense to buy it back then, but then I let it sit around for four and a half years before making use of it. When I saw the recipe for macaroni and cheese I knew I had to make up for lost time. It was my call to duty.

Macaroni and Cheese
From Saveur, April 2005, based on a recipe from Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating

1 lb. tube-shaped pasta
2 tbsp. butter
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 sprig fresh thyme
1/4 cup dry white wine
2 tbsp. flour
3 1/2 cups milk
2 tbsp. dijon mustard
1 lb. aged cheddar cheese
Salt and pepper
1-2 tbsp. coarse bread crumbs
Although the recipe calls for a pound of aged cheddar, I couldn’t get myself to spring for an entire pound of pricey cheese. I went with a little less than half a pound of Dubliner and supplemented that with cheaper stuff. In hindsight it would have only set me back a few more bucks to just stick with the aged variety, but the combination of the two produced a perfectly acceptable result so I guess I shouldn’t worry about it.

On a side note, I heard on NPR last week that most of the cheddar you buy at the store (like the variety on the left) is only a few months old at most. It came up in a discussion of a 15-year-old cheddar from Wisconsin that’s selling for $50/pound.

Start by cooking your pasta until it’s not quite cooked through. The recipe suggests cooking it for 6-7 minutes, the box of rigatoni I used said 14 minutes until al dente, and I cooked this for about 8-10 minutes. After cooking the pasta, drain it, rinse it with cold water, and drain it again. Set it aside while you work on the sauce.

As far as types of pasta go you can use penne, rigatoni, macaroni or any other tube-shaped pasta you like.

While the pasta is boiling, grate the cheese. I just kind of guessed with amounts. You need about 4 1/2 cups, and I probably had a generous 4 1/2 cups.

Have your onion, garlic, rosemary and thyme ready.
Melt a couple tablespoons of butter in a large saucepan over medium heat.
Add the onion, garlic, rosemary and thyme. Cook for several minutes until the onion softens.
While that’s cooking, get the remaining ingredients ready. The only white-ish wine I had was a bottle of vinho verde that had been opened in my fridge for long enough that it had lost its fizz, and I don’t think it hurt the quality of the dish.
Add the wine and cook for 2-3 minutes.


Discard the herbs and the garlic, and add the flour. Cook for one minute. I’m not sure if I overestimated the amount of time the wine was cooking or not, but most of the liquid had cooked off by the time I added the flour.

Slowly add the milk and then the mustard. The recipe tells you to reduce the heat to maintain a gentle simmer, but I didn’t have any kind of simmer to maintain after I added the milk. I guess I added it too quickly, so if you run into the same problem bring the mixture to a simmer and then reduce the heat.
Now we get to the exciting part – constantly stirring the mixture for 30 minutes! I suggest timing the cooking so this part coincides with an episode of Jeopardy. That way you can learn fun(ny) things while stirring. Did you know that another name for chewing tobacco is West Virginia coleslaw?
Go ahead and preheat your oven to 400 at some point in here.

After 30 minutes or so the mixture should be thick and creamy and will coat the back of a spoon. Here’s a little tip: slippery rubber spatulas are not as good of a tester as an actual spoon.

Remove the mixture from the heat, and mix in 2/3 to 3/4 of the grated cheese. You’re supposed to add a handful at a time and make sure the cheese is completely melted before adding the next handful, but I didn’t read that part of the recipe until after I’d dumped a bunch of it in.

Season with salt and lots of freshly ground pepper.
Mix the cheese sauce with the pasta.

Pour the mixture into a large baking dish.

Top with the remaining cheese and the breadcrumbs.


Bake at 400 for about 25 minutes, or until the top is golden.

We ate this with pieces of roasted squash to make ourselves feel better about the extreme amounts of cheese.
The only thing I would consider doing differently next time is to bake it in a large, rimmed baking sheet instead of a deep baking dish to increase the surface area of the crusty top.

One more thing, if you want to do some of the work ahead of time you can do all of the steps through adding the noodles and sauce to the baking dish, and then stick it in the refrigerator until you’re almost ready to bake it. Take it out while the oven is preheating, add the topping, and then bake it as you normally would.
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Oct 05 2009
3 Comments
Cheese, Pasta, Vegetarian

Eggplant Lasagna

As promised in my last post, here’s my pre-marathon meal. I can’t guarantee that it’s the best meal in the world, as I had zero appetite on Saturday and only ate it because I knew I had to put something in my body. My stomach was really sensitive all day, as if it knew that it would be spending 5 grueling hours the next day bouncing around the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul being fed nothing more than Powerade, an orange slice, a couple gummy energy blocks and a packet of Gu. The only thing it would readily accept was half of a cupcake that a certain someone brought over along with some lovely flowers.

Because I cannot vouch for the actual quality of this meal I’m posting this recipe more for the idea and the process than to give you actual amounts and exact ingredients. I more or less threw this together with stuff I had on hand, and the recipe is more of the ideal ingredient list rather that what I actually used. For example, I used cottage cheese instead of ricotta because the grocery store was somehow out of ricotta. While cottage cheese is an OK substitute after a quick trip through the food processor, I much prefer ricotta. So feel free to improvise, add, subtract, tweak, or completely ignore this recipe.

Eggplant Lasagna

1 medium-large eggplant
Lasagna noodles
1-1/2 cups ricotta
Tomato sauce
A few handfuls of spinach
About a cup of mozzarella, provolone, or some similar cheese
1/4 cup parmesan, grated

This fairly large eggplant was more than enough to fill my 8″x 8″ dish.
Start by slicing the eggplant into about 1/4″ slices. I sliced it lengthwise, but you can do it widthwise as well. Sprinkle both sides of the eggplant with salt, and stick it between a couple layers of paper towels for an hour or so.
In the meantime, if you’re using cottage cheese run it through the food processor until it’s fairly smooth.  I generally mix spinach in with ricotta when making lasagna, and I decided to just toss a few handfuls of spinach into the food processor.  While it kind of looks pretty (or slightly like mint chip ice cream), I would recommend just stirring them together so the flavors still stand on their own instead of completely melding together. I often lack foresight in the kitchen.
After an hour or so rinse the eggplant and pat it try.  Line the bottom of an ovenproof dish wish a little tomato sauce. I only had cans of diced tomatoes, which I heated up with garlic and some oregano. I wish I would have used tomato sauce, though. Smooth sauce makes for better layering, but chunky tomatoes will work in a pinch.
Cover with a layer of lasagna noodles. I started out with no-bake noodles, but I eventually ran out I had to boil a few of the regular kind.
Spread 1/2 of the ricotta mixture over the noodles. If you’re using a really deep dish you could probably squeeze in three layers, in which case you would only use 1/3 of the ricotta per layer. I hope I didn’t insult you by doing that math as if you couldn’t figure it out yourself. I’m just trying to help here.
Next comes a layer of eggplant.

Top the eggplant with tomato sauce.
And repeat. Once you have a second layer completed, top it off with a final layer of noodles and a generous dose of tomato sauce.
Then the most important part: cheese. For some reason I went with fresh mozzarella. It was fine, but next time I would use grated cheese. I like the crust formed by grated cheese better. You could also get away with using very little cheese. I made a slightly different veggie lasagna a couple weeks ago using only a little freshly grated parmesan on the top, and it was awesome. Before then I thought you needed to load on the cheese to make it really good, but my taste buds and my arteries were pleasantly surprised.
I had leftover everything, so I threw it all into a mini dish to bake and freeze for later. It looks like it could be some country’s flag. Or the crest on More Cheese More Chocolate polo shirts for our upcoming MCMC regional blogger convention at Super 8 conference room #4.

Moving right along, bake the lasagna at 350 for about 40 minutes, or until the top is bubbly. Let it cool for 5 or 10 minutes before slicing.

I couldn’t talk about the marathon without sharing some photos, so here you go! I think this is around mile 10. It was around here that I was thinking how lucky all of my friends were who chose to run the 10 mile instead of the marathon. I’m still trying to figure out why I look so happy in this picture.


Here I am showing off my medal and being very happy to be home. In case you were wondering I finished in 4 hours and 52 minutes, beating my previous time by over 30 minutes and meeting my goal of finishing in under 5 hours. And I am in serious pain today.
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