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Agnolotti with Garlic-Spinach Sauce

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Agnolotti with Garlic-Spinach Sauce

Agnolotti with Garlic-Spinach Sauce

Fresh pasta is a treat. And while I do enjoy getting elbow deep in the semolina from time to time, it’s not convenient for your average weeknight dinner. The happy medium? Fresh pasta in the refrigerated section of your local grocery store.

We recently had the opportunity (read as: coupon for a free package) to try Buitoni’s Riserva Quattro Formaggi Agnolotti. Translated, that’s a 4-cheese stuffed pasta that look like half-round raviolis.

Having just had beef the night before, we paired it with chicken but didn’t relish looking at two beige-colored items on the same plate. Time to get creative.

First, I made a sauce of pomegranate liqueur, tequila, mustard and other savory ingredients and applied it to both sides of the rice flour-dredged chicken breasts as they cooked. Meanwhile (and as the pasta cooked–remember fresh pasta doesn’t take nearly as long to cook as dry) I melted butter as a base to a garlic and spinach sauce. Everything was ready at just the right time and dinner was delicious.

The Quattro Formagi Agnolotti are very tender (another hallmark of fresh pasta in general) with a creamy filling that pairs well with a simple oil or butter-based sauce. The addition of spinach definitely brightened up the plate a bit but, with the cheese filling, was almost like an inside-out creamed spinach (or would that be outside-in?).

According to the label, each 9-ounce package serves 2; that’s 6 agnolotti a piece. At 360 calories per serving, the addition of a nice sauce and a salad and this could be a dinner portion and not just a side dish. As an accompaniment, you might be able to get three smaller servings out, but there’s not really enough in each agnolotti for 4 servings in a single package.

Recipes:

Garlic-Spinach Sauce

1/2 c Butter, melted
1.5 T minced garlic
1.5 c cooked Spinach
1 T Salt
Fresh-ground Pepper, to taste

Melt butter in a small saucepan and saute garlic until golden brown. Add cooked spinach, salt and pepper and toss with cooked pasta.

Pomegranate-Mustard Chicken

2 T Spicy Brown Mustard
2 T Pomegranate Liqueur
1/2 T Agave Nectar
3/4 T Tequila
1/2 t Lime Juice
4 4-oz Chicken Breasts
3/4 c Rice Flour
Salt & Pepper
2 T Olive Oil

Combine mustard through lime juice in a small bowl, stirring to combine. Adjust flavors as needed. (Pomegranate juice can be substituted for the pomegranate liqueur and the tequila skipped if you’d prefer to not use alcohol.) Dredge chicken in rice flour seasoned with salt and pepper and brown on both sides in the hot oil. Spoon or brush the pomegranate-mustard mixture over each side of the chicken and continue to cook until it reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

[Disclaimer: I was provided with a free coupon for this item. All opinions and observations of this product are mine alone.]

Write it Right, or Risk Recipe Disaster

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After talking about recipe basics over at What to Feed Your Raiding Party, I recently ran into a great example of why pre-reading is so very important!

We had a little family fish-fry this weekend and I was in the mood for some cheese grits. Sure, I could make grits on the stove and melt-in pieces of cheese but I wanted something with a little more… oomph? So I went to a reliable source: River Road Recipes.

Garlic Cheese Grits

2 cups water
Salt
1 cup quick grits
1 roll garlic cheese
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs, separated
Salt and pepper
Worcestershire sauce
Tabasco sauce

Bring water and salt to a soft boil. Add grits slowly, stirring constantly, as it will thicken quickly because of the small amount of water. After a few minutes of cooking, remove from heat and add cheese (which has been cut in 4 or 5 pieces) and butter. After cooking a few more minutes, add egg yolks, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco sauce. Mix well. Fold in stiff egg whites with a fork. Put mixture in a greased baking dish. Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees, or until golden brown. This dish should be served immediately, as it will rise.

Now, I’m sure Mrs Fred A. Blanche, Jr., assumed everyone would know how these grits were made and that no one would mind a little short-hand. And the Junior League committee members in 1976 probably had no idea that their fundraiser would go into more than 20 additional printings and that certain things would need to be spelled out for future generations and cooks that are not local to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

In her defense, she didn’t commit the most heinous recipe wrong: asking for additional ingredients in the instructions. Even if it’s just a bit of water, when you’re in the middle of cooking is not always the best time to stop and measure something you weren’t expecting.

Let’s examine the offenses she did commit:

  1. Vague ingredients, both in measurement and description.
  2. Missing preparation specifics, multiple counts.

Two out of three ain’t bad? Maybe in Meat loaf, but in cheese grits it could have been pretty bad.

First the vagueness. Salt and pepper are frequently added ‘to taste’ so that’s not the end of the world, but Worcestershire and Tabasco sauces can have a big impact in little doses–knowing the target is 2 or 3 dashes plus maybe more for taste is better than not having a starting point of reference.

The worst part of this one, though, comes with the “1 roll garlic cheese.” First, what is garlic cheese? If you do not have a labeled product in your grocery store, knowing more about it would give you a better shot of making an adequate substitution. Second, how much is a roll? Is it 10 oz like a large roll of chevre or a 1 pound block? Maybe your store carries different sizes of garlic cheese, which should you get?

But the more problematic is the lack of instructions on both the cheese and the eggs. Reading the recipe we learn that the cheese should be cut into multiple pieces before being added. With the eggs, we know they need to be separated, but what else? Turns out the whites need to be whipped stiff. If you plunged into the recipe without reading the instructions, trusting that you knew the basics, the grits would have turned to well-flavored paste by the time you got those white whipped into shape. Not to mention how difficult it would have been to fold the white and grits together.

The takeaway? Do I really need to say always read the recipe if you’re making something for the first time? Read the recipe if it’s the first time or the first time in a while. Refresh your memory. But, also, when you’re writing down recipes of your own or sharing someone else’s with a friend, do everyone a favor and write it the right way.

Oh, it turns out that garlic cheese is a softer cheese infused with garlic. We ended up using a pound of white cheddar and the grits tasted somewhat like white cheddar popcorn. In the future I’d like to try this with a container of Garlic and Herb Boursin–I’m betting it would be delicious!

With a Cranberry on Top!

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Rasp-en-Crans Salad

Rasp-en-Crans Salad

Okay, the cranberries are in it, the walnuts on top, but you get the general idea!

Serene of the (recently launched!) Mom Food Project sent in her favorite jell-o salad that sounded pretty yummy from the get-go. Actually, she described it as “strange and delicious.” I think she’s right.

Rasp-en-Crans Salad

2 1.4-oz boxes Raspberry Gelatin
1 c boiling Water
1 16-oz can Whole-Berry Cranberry Sauce
1/2 c diced Celery
1 c Greek Yogurt
1/2 c chopped Walnuts, optional

Combine the gelatin and water in a mixing bowl and stir until the powder dissolves. Chill until viscous but not firm. [In other words, don’t be in a hurry, stick it in the freezer and forget about it for an hour. But if you do, let it sit at room temperature for a while and stir with a whisk. Proceed as if you didn’t just screw it up.]

Stir in the cranberry sauce, celery and yogurt until fairly uniform, adding in the nuts if you’re using them. Divide into 4 single-serving molds or or larger bowl or mold and chill until firm.

After Serene told me about this one I was curious but having to talk myself through it, too. Celery? Not the first thing I think of with the sweet. But, you know, you top celery with peanut butter and raisins, and that’s tasty. And then there’s the fruited chicken salad–it’s borderline sweet and it’s got celery in it, too! Okay, we’re good with the celery.

Originally the reference recipes I found called for sour cream. That was a no-brainer for me: Greek yogurt is just as tasty, has less calories and is naturally fat-free. And the walnuts are only optional because Todd’s allergic. In fact, I’d suggest you hold off on the nuts if you’re taking this to a pot-luck or serving guests who may have unknown allergies just because it’s so common. I did put them on the top/side of my portion and they really did add quite a lot to the flavor of the dish.

The name amuses me, and it’s my improvisation on the very boring (yet descriptive) Cran-Raspberry or Cranberry-Raspberry titles I was finding around the web. If you have a wordy crowd you could even go so far as to call it the Rasp-en-Crantz Salad with Gilded-nuts (and actually gild the walnuts). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? From Hamlet?

Moving on.

Oh, and I needed a garnish for the photo and all we had that looked right was cilantro. Even though it was just laying on top, a couple of bites featured a bit of the flavor of the garnish and I’ll be damned if it didn’t taste pretty good. And I’m not the biggest fan of cilantro even in the foods it’s SUPPOSED to be on. Go figure? I wouldn’t suggest chopping some up and adding it with the celery, but a chiffonade sprinkled over the top along with a little extra Greek yogurt might be just the thing to elevate this molded salad in the taste buds of others, as it did mine!

~~~0O0~~~

I’ve still got spaces open for more gelatin desserts! Leave ’em in the comments! There could even be prizes involved…

More (or Less) Meatless

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The second week of our cooking through Almost Meatless was just as tasty as the first. Maybe even more so?

Shabu Shabu Soup

Shabu Shabu Soup

We started with Shabu Shabu Soup. Traditionally this soup is served as a flavorful broth and a tray of thinly sliced meats and vegetables that cook almost instantly in the hot soup. It’s the sound of the add-ins sliding through the soup that gives the soup it’s name, according to the authors.

Tip for this recipe: to get the thinnest slices of steak without a deli slicer, slice the steak when still partially frozen. Just watch the finger-tips, they tend to go a bit numb doing this sort of thing, increasing the possibility of an ouchie!

This version of Shabu Shabu soup has all ingredients cooked before arriving at the table but it was another excellent choice for a summer meal. Not too heavy and an amazing flavor. The bok choy leaves do lend a bit of bite, along the lines of mustard or turnip greens, but any chance to use soba noodles in a dish makes me very happy (even if I had to check 3 grocery stores before finding them).

Springtime Spaghetti Carbonara

Springtime Spaghetti Carbonara

Next we skipped ahead to the eggs chapter and tried out the Springtime Spaghetti Carbonara. What could go wrong with fresh asparagus, peas and bacon? I’m not entirely sure but there was something just a touch off. Maybe it was the whole-what pasta we used? Maybe it needed more bacon (though, you know, that’s pretty much a given)? Or, maybe it just wasn’t what we were after that day. Who knows. It was fine as far as a pasta disk goes but it wasn’t the best thing we tried from the book.

Finally, it was time for the Albondigas. I just love saying that word: al-BON-di-gaas. Lamb and Irish-oat meatballs, a little spicy from the chipotle pepper, cooked in a rich tomato (or, in our case, roasted red bell pepper sauce). I had a pound of ground lamb and only needed half that so I made a double batch with plans for the leftovers already brewing.

Albondigas

Albondigas

One of the few recipes that came with serving suggestions, instead of lime rice we made lime quinoa and served it with the suggested flour tortillas. It was a nice little accompaniment to the spicy meatballs and helped dampen some of the fire. The steel-cut oats really added to the texture of the lamb and kept in a significant amount of moisture for the lean lamb.

The leftovers? Well, I’d been craving a meatball sub for quite some time and saw this as my opportunity to act on it. Picking up a load of french bread and provolone cheese, we spread the split loaves with mayonnaise (adds a wonderful creaminess to the acidic sauce on the meatballs) and lined them with provolone before popping them under the broiler to melt the cheese. The meatballs and sauce were added, another half slice of provolone on top and back under the broiler until the cheese melted again and the edges of the bread crisped.

Mom taught me that pickles make a lovely counterpoint to the rich taste of both tomato sauce on a meatball sub as well as barbecue sandwiches, so I added a little relish to my sandwich as well. Oh, so, yummy. A little extra grated Parmesan on top and these sandwiches totally cured my craving. In fact, a little queso fresco on top of the standard albondigas wouldn’t go amiss should we make these again!

Albondi-subs

Albond-subs

And, hey, I got to drag my baguette pan out of storage–it makes the perfect holder for toasted subs to get maximum crispiness on the edges without spilling any of the filling!

After working our way through the cookbook (selected recipes, that is), did it fulfill those cover-flap promises?

Eating less meat is…

  • healthier? Probably. I mean we did eat less meat and more veggies. Did we, like, lose any weight in the process? Nope. If anything I felt heavier after some of these recipes than some of the balanced and properly portioned meaty meals we’ve eaten in the past.
  • cheaper? Definitely not. My grocery bill was the same if not more for 7 days of eating out of her book. Mostly from the vegetable requirements and specialty items that needed to be tracked down. I’m betting if you had a farmer’s market nearby (one that isn’t open only during workdays, for instance–sometimes it seems like you have to sacrifice a “normal” workday for access to healthy eating) or access to smaller portions of meats you might actually be able to save some cash. Keep in mind, too, that we already had several items so the higher bill came with the somewhat-shortened list.
  • eco-friendly? This one’s harder to say, for sure, but we definitely used less packaged items, created less trash and all that. It would take much more than a week, though, to really create any sort of environmental change.

All in all I enjoyed trying these recipes and look forward to making others at another time. I just don’t think I’ll be using this as my meat-adjusted bible any time soon.

A Salad Without Scandal

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Watergate Salad

Watergate Salad

I’m so excited, I’ve already got 2 recipes to try out in my hunt for the essential summer dessert!

The first comes from an old high school friend via Facebook and it’s fitting in a way: I didn’t know what it was really called but I remember having it on occasion from the Shoney’s buffet when Mom would take us on kid’s nights (single mom with a teenager and 2 young boys, gotta take those nights when you can find ’em!).

Watergate Salad

2 pkg Pistachio Pudding Mix
1 20-oz can Crushed Pineapple
5 oz (half a bag) Mini-Marshmallows
1 8-oz tub Whipped Topping

Gently drain the crushed pineapple–just whatever is on the top of the pineapple mush; too much liquid will make a soupy salad, not enough and you’ll have paste. Mix the pineapple and pudding mixes together, add in marshmallows then fold in whipped topping. Refrigerate a couple of hours to overnight. Top each portion with a maraschino cherry or some chopped walnuts.

Back then we just called it Fluff and it came in green and pink. I didn’t eat it all the time and, honestly, I won’t be making this too very often because whoa is it sweet! Still, it’s nice and fluffy and sugar-laden, perfect for a pot-luck or picnic. It’s fairly stable* considering there’s whipped topping and not milk involved, though you should do your best to keep it cold–wilting salads just aren’t cool.

Oh, man, that’s a really bad pun. But a really good salad.

I’ve got a cranberry-raspberry confection coming up next week but whose recipe will there be to test after that? Why not throw your recipe into the ring-mold and see what happens?

[*ETA: After 2 days in the fridge the marshmallows will start to become one with the fluff–don’t make this too far ahead if you like your mini-mallows a bite apart from the rest. Maybe this is why I never remembered there being marshmallows in the restaurant version?]