Pasta with Tomato and Peas

Merry Christmas! I hope everybody had a great Christmas, I know mine turned out a lot better than expected. We didn't have a tree here at the apartment yet, or any lights, so the whole month kind of felt un-christmasy. Aaaand look what I got!

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!! Yay! I finally have my very own Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer! Wheee! Now, of course, my first thought is to go on a baking rampage.. However, now that the new year is starting, I'm going back to dieting and trying to watch myself. No overexcess of baked goods for me. Yet. However, my plan is to break the old girl in with a recipe from my best friend Don's mom, so I'm looking forward to that. Gotta purchase my exercise bike this month and then get to work. Hurting my knee and being in crazy pain pills did nothing for my weight loss, that's for sure. I was hungry. Really hungry.

Anyway, I actually cooked this the night of my last blog post, but I have been procrastinating (shocking, I know) on posting it, so here it is! Just a very very simple recipe that I have come to enjoy. A light sauce made with tomato paste and pasta water. Some people prefer to skip the tomato paste and use a can of tomatoes in juice, but I kind of like the big punch of tomato flavor from the paste.

Peas, carrots, lots of garlic, oregano, thyme, parsley, tomato paste, pepper and salt, parmesan cheese and pasta! Not shown, olive oil and, you guessed it, onion powder. What the heck is onion powder always doing to get left out of these shots?! I'm gonna disown him soon.

First, boil yourself some water! And make pasta! Don't forget to salt your water, you HEATHENS!

When your pasta is almost done, you'll want to reserve about 2 cups of the starchy pasta water for later use. Don't miss this step, it's easy to drain your pasta without thinking. I suppose normal water would work fine if you did forget, just not AS good.

Next you cook your carrots and garlic in your oil. I added onion powder, salt and pepper to them now, but you could probably wait until you got your sauce going to add all your spices and seasonings. Cook for about 8 minutes, until the carrots are tender. I used about medium heat or so, don't want your garlic to burn.

Add your tomato paste and 1/2 cup of water. I kept adding a little more water because I wanted it more saucey.

Add your seasonings and taste to make sure it's all good. I added a little red pepper flakes too because I'm a naughty girl.

At this point I had added a good deal of the pasta water, maybe up to a cup and a half. I'm not sure, I was just kind of eye-balling it.

Then, stir in the peas and parmesan, letting them melt a little.

Then dump in your pasta! After stirring it around, I did indeed add all the pasta water, I wanted that sauce to really get around, know what I mean? Get arouuuuund.

Oh yummy.

Mmmm. I think next time I might try the same recipe but exchange the peas for diced bell pepper and cook them with the carrots. Or snow peas!

EAT ME. Oh right, how could I forget? With the peas and parm, I added the very last bit of all that chicken meat I had, so it's barely noticeable, but it's in there.

A few days later we finished off the ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF LEFTOVERS (and that's after taking a container over to my friend Matt), by mixing it with the leftover ricotta from the chicken pie thingies and some chedder and ohhh. Yum.

Almost the new year, folks. I hope everyone sticks to their resolutions (harhar) and has a good time. I sure miss the big family get togethers at Christmas time, and I hope at least a few family members do check up on this blog from time to time. I miss everyone terribly.

Cinnamon and Snooki (yes, snooki, I didn't name her) wish everyone a merry christmas and a happy new year! And also say not to touch their rawhide wreaths. Grrrr.

Pasta with Tomato and Peas (adapted from Giada DeLaurentiis' here)

• 1 pound pasta
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 carrot, diced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 5-6 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried parsley
• 1 1/4 cups frozen peas, thawed
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, about 8 to 10 minutes. Drain the pasta, reserving 2 cups of the pasta water.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large nonstick frying pan over medium heat. Add the garlic, carrots, onion powder, salt, and pepper. Cook until tender, about 8 minutes. Add the tomato paste and 1/2 cup of the hot pasta water. Stir to melt the tomato paste and create a sauce, adding more pasta water if necessary. Stir in the oregano, thyme, and parsley. Gently fold in the cooked pasta, peas, and the cheeses, adding more reserved pasta water if necessary. Transfer to a platter and serve immediately.

Baked Ricotta Cups with Chicken and Parmesan

That's a big sounding name. Also fancy. It isn't, trust me. What it is is delicious. I actually need to go start dinner and I'm trying not to fall asleep so I'll just make this a short non-chatty post. Onwards to food!

Chicken meat, parmesan cheese, ricotta, eggs, salt, pepper, chedder cheese, parsley, dijon mustard and refrigerated pie crusts!

First, you put everything into a bowl...

Then you mix it all up! I tasted mine a bit after this and decided it needed a lil zazz (yes that is a technical term) so I sprinkled some onion and garlic powders in and it really bumped up the flavor.

Then you take your pie crust, and according to the recipe, separate it into 8 pieces..

Roll into balls..

And stuff them up the sides of mini muffin tins!

Okay, but, mine were a bit weird. Each section of dough seemed like way too much for one little cup so I wound up ripping some off and instead of winding up with only 8 of them, I managed to fill the tray.

Then came the next problem. My filling. I had too much! WHAT! Luckily, that pie crust package had 2 crusts in it, so I took the second pie crust and used it to make 4 regular muffin sized ones and it used up exactly all of the filling. Wheee!

They are really tasty, I would make again.

Baked Ricotta Cups with Chicken and Parmesan (adapted from here)

• 1 (or 2 in my case) 9 inch refrigerated pie crust
• 2 chicken breast halves, cooked and diced (I just eyeballed it with the meat I had)
• 1 cup ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup shredded chedder
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons grated parmesan
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 teaspoons dijon mustard
• 1/4 freshly chopped parsley leaves (I used dried)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Divide crust into 8 pieces and shape each piece into a ball. Press the balls into the bottom and up the sides of an 8-cup mini muffin tin. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine chicken, ricotta, Cheddar, 1/4 cup of the Parmesan, eggs, Dijon, parsley, salt, and black pepper. Mix well. Spoon mixture into prepared muffin cups and top with remaining parmesan. Bake 20 minutes, until a knife inserted near the center of 1 cup comes out clean and crust is golden brown.

Hurry Up Chicken Pot Pie!

Well HELLO y'all. Blablabla butter EVERYWHERE OH MY GOD BUTTER WHEEE

Okay that was my Paula Deen impression. Was it close? Don't answer that. All kidding aside, Paula Deen is a sweet woman and while sometimes her recipes scare me with their insane amounts of butter, they also look delicious. So don't fear the butter, everyone. It makes you happy. And if your arteries are going to go out, I'm sure they'd want to go out happy.

I got a rotisserie chicken on sunday because I was starving while shopping for groceries and I couldn't think of something I could IMMEDIATELY upon getting home. After lunch, I went and picked that sucker clean and wound up with a whole mess of chicken meat. And since I've been kind of sick lately and not feeling well, I wasn't exactly feeling very creative, so I took a trip to the internet for ideas. Voila.

This isn't a pot pie so much as it is.. a chicken cobbler? I don't know. It was pretty good, almost like chicken and dumplings but less soupy.

The recipe is simple, you will need: Chicken

1/2 cup each of peas and sliced carrots. I diced mine up. I also read some people's carrots weren't properly cooked so to thaw my peas, I stuck them and the carrots in the microwave for about 3 minutes and they were just a little softened for when they went in the oven. Turned out perfectly.

A can of cream of chicken soup, a cup of chicken broth.

And some milk and some biscuit mix. Don't talk smack about my mutant milk. I'll cut you. Lactaid milk is so creamy and delicious, I can't believe it has no dairy in it. I am a believer. Also, Sean is lactose intolerant.

So you put your chopped up chicken in a 2 and a half quart baking dish, then pour your peas and carrots over top.

Mix together your soup and broth, add salt and pepper if you think it's needed. Mine definitely needed no salt. But I added a little black and cayenne pepper. I couldn't really taste the cayenne in the end.

Pour it over your chicken, carrots and peas. I stirred around the stuff underneath juuust a little bit to make sure all the sauce got to the bottom. I also didn't measure my half cup, I just poured half the can so it might've been a little thinner than it should have been.

Then you stir together your milk and biscuit mix and pour it over the top of your filling. Slowly. It won't be perfect, it'll kind of sink a bit, just spread it as best you can without stirring it together. Now, the recipe called for a whole stick of melted butter to be poured on top (yikes) and I wasn't going to do this step but I found a little bit of a stick of butter in the fridge so I melted that and poured it on. It still seemed like a lot. Oh and I was so excited to put it in the oven I forgot to take pictures. You can kind of see it, right?!

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes. Some people said they had to put theirs on for longer, mine wound up being something like 50 minutes before my biscuit crust was acceptably brown in the center.

It was very tasty. And so easy! The filling seemed a liiiittle liquidy in the first few scoops but it settled down after that. So good.

Mmmm.

Hurry Up Chicken Pot Pie (original recipe by Paula Deen)

• 2 cups of chopped cooked chicken
• 1/2 cup frozen peas
• 1/2 cup carrots, sliced thin or diced
• 1 (10 3/4-ounce) can cream of chicken soup
• 1 cup chicken broth
• salt and pepper if desired
• 1 1/2 cups biscuit mix
• 1 cup milk
• Up to a stick of melted butter (if you're crazy)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a greased 2-quart casserole dish, layer the chicken, carrots, and peas. Mix the soup, chicken broth, and season with salt and pepper, if desired. Pour over the layers. Stir together the biscuit mix and milk, and pour this over the casserole. Drizzle butter over the topping. Bake until the topping is golden brown, 30 to 40 minutes.

Sloppy Joes #1 and Garlic Potato Wedges

And skittles vodka! Oh snap, I went there. Okay, so maybe that isn't food and maybe it's bad for you. But our friend Garret mentionned it and I had been eyeing it online for sometime. Skittles vodka, basically, is take plain vodka, pouring it into 5 different bottles, taking a big bag of skittles and adding each seperate flavor to the bottles. The candies dissolve overnight and then you filter out all the gross white solid crap that gets left behind. What you have in the end is a sweet yet very strong liquor that, well.. I guess it would be okay for shots, but I think it would be better used in place of straight vodka in mixed drinks or something. Anyway, first I'll cover that then move on to the food. Also, I did this last week but have been too lazy to post, hurrhur.

The place I got the recipe for from is this cute little site, Mix That Drink. If you're interested in the process, they have far better pictures than I do of the processes. Also, I love the little bottles they use, I might order some.

I'm tasting the rainbow already, baby. You take your skittles. You tell yourself "Don't eat any, they're for the vodka.". You tell the whining man in the background that he can't have any either and that that does not in fact make you a "meanie". Then you sneak one of the super malformed ones that are rock hard and probably won't dissolve well. There's a double rainbow joke in here somewhere.

Add your colors to 6 oz of vodka each. Now, that doesn't look like a lot of vodka in each but I can assure you that it killed half of that huge bottle in the first picture. Don't they look neat?

Anyway, you shake them a bunch, blablabla let dissolve overnight. You can read the recipe yourself at the other site. Anyway, the filtering was really crappy and I did the first two in a very wrong way. Do not not use a funnel. You need it. Things went much smoother after. And while the website says 4 coffee filters, after finding they just were too much, I used 2 at first, then after about half the liquid had gone through and was starting to get stuck, I poured what was left in the filter into 2 other ones and it went smoothly.

If you were wondering what the stuff left behind looks like.. ew.

There, a nice and brightly colored booze. I don't know if they will be worth all the trouble I went through, and I'm told that sugar + alcohol = hangover. So, I suppose we'll see how insane things get when the skittles vodka finally gets broken out. WOOOO PARTYYY!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, now on to the ACTUAL COOKING.

I love sloppy joes. Well, I actually dislike how sloppy they tend to be, but I love how they taste and that is reason enough to go to the effort. And I like potatos. And I had never tried to make my own fries in the oven, so oh my god it's KITCHEN ADVENTURE TIME! Are you all ready?! *rides a rainbow into the kitchen*

First, the fries. I don't know if I would make them again. I enjoyed them but Sean said they were too "something". I get that a lot. "It's too.. something." I think he lacks the culinary brain to figure out what part he doesn't like. Also they were a bit odd to prepare but that's mostly because I don't have big enough bowls and my microwave is too small and blabbity blah. They were pretty good though, I enjoyed them.

I think I'm going to start posting instructions and pictures, followed by the recipe so that anyone who wants to copy and paste it for printing or anything can actually do so easily.

Garlic Potato Wedges (original recipe here)

Cast of characters: Garlic Powder, Kosher or Sea salt, Pepper, Cornstarch, Cayenne Pepper, Olive Oil, 8 cloves of garlic and 3 russet potatos.

Mince or press your garlic into your oil. Looks a little like lemon zest!

Cut your potatoes into 12 wedges each. Cut in half, then each half in half, then each half into 3. Don't mind the green pepper, that's for the sloppy joes, and it just HAD to be included. It's a well documented fact that bell peppers are attention whores.

Now is when the recipe gets a little weird. Next, you remove 5 tablespoons of oil from the bowl of garlic and oil, and toss it onto your baking sheet. Then you toss the potatoes with the remaining garlic and oil in the bowl.

After that (I have no picture because it was weird and awkward and I had to do it in multiple batches due to my tiny little microwave) you cover the microwavable bowl in plastic wrap and cook for 6 minutes or so, shaking the potatoes around halfway through to distribute. You're basically cooking them a little bit. Next time I would probably just parboil the wedges first then toss them with the garlic and oil.

While those are cooking, mix your salt, pepper, cornstarch, cayenne pepper and garlic powder in a bowl.

When your potatoes are done, sprinkle mixture over top and toss to try and evenly coat everything.

Then, pour potatoes out onto your garlicy oil covered sheet pan. Your kitchen will be smelling amazing, by the way. Oh garlic, you are the greatest of all. I bow down to you. Arrange in a single layer.

And then you bake them at 440 degrees F, turning once about halfway through baking, for 30 to 40 minutes until nice and golden brown.

Here's the recipe!

• 8 garlic cloves, minced
• 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 3 russet potatoes (about 8oz each), each cut into 12 wedges
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 1/2 teaspoons coarse sea salt or kosher salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1. Preheat oven to 225°C/440° F.
2. Combine the garlic and oil in a large bowl, warming it until the garlic is fragrant, about 1 minute.
3. Transfer 5 tablespoons of the oil (leaving the garlic in the bowl) to the baking dish, coating it well.
4. Add the potatoes to the bowl with the garlic mixture and toss to coat. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and microwave on high power until the potatoes are translucent around the edges, 3 to 6 minutes, shaking the bowl to redistribute the potatoes halfway through cooking.
5. Combine the cornstarch, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and cayenne in a small bowl. Sprinkle over the hot potatoes and toss well to coat.
6. Arrange the potatoes in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet and bake, turning once, until deep golden brown and crisp, 30 to 40 minutes.

Honestly, I think the reason these fries were less of a star was because of how damn flavorful the sloppy joes were. They definitely took the prize that night. Next time I make them, I will try another recipe and see which is better, and this one is going to be hard to beat. And soooo easy.

Your buddies: Ground beef, onion powder, green pepper, garlic, ketchup, chili powder, ground mustard, worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, tomato paste, and hot sauce if you think it needs any. Not pictured because I'm a dingus: water, brown sugar and red pepper flakes. Oh and a little bit of butter. Though you probably don't need it with all the grease from the beef.

First, you brown your beef. And then you drain it. Still with me? I know, this is complex stuff, but I'm here to help. Then you add your diced pepper and garlic. And you COOK THEM. For several minutes even! Until the pepper starts to get nice and soft.

Now comes the really hard part. And then you add everything else in. And you mix it up. And cook it. OH MY GOD LOOK, YOU'RE MAKING SLOPPY JOES HOLY CRAP.

Now, I would recommend waiting to add your salt, pepper, worcestershire and hot sauce until you have all the other stuff mixed in and then taste it. I found mine to be just spicy enough with the chili and pepper flakes so I didn't add any hot sauce. But I found it a little sweet so I added a fair amount of worchestershire, about 4 teaspoons worth, but I love the stuff. Not so much salt, and a bit of pepper. Here's the recipe!

Sloppy Joes (as adapter from Pioneer Woman. I'll give you her recipe but I halved it because it is so huge and serves an insane amount of people)
Serves 8!

• 2 Tablespoons Butter
• 2-½ pounds Ground Beef
• 1 teaspoon Onion Powder
• 1 whole Large Green Bell Pepper, Diced
• 5 cloves Garlic, Minced
• 1-½ cup Ketchup
• 1 cup Water
• 2 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
• 2 teaspoons Chili Powder (more To Taste)
• 1 teaspoon Dry Mustard
• ½ teaspoons Red Pepper Flakes (more To Taste)
• Worcestershire Sauce To Taste
• 2 Tablespoons Tomato Paste (optional)
• Tabasco Sauce (optional; To Taste)
• Salt To Taste
• Freshly Ground Black Pepper, To Taste

Add butter to a large skillet or dutch oven over medium high heat. Add ground beef and cook until brown. Drain most of the fat and discard.

Add green pepper, and garlic. Cook for a few minutes, or until vegetables begin to get soft.

Add ketchup, brown sugar, chili pepper, dry mustard, and water. Stir to combine and simmer for 15 minutes, adding salt and pepper to taste. Also add tomato paste, Worcestershire, and Tabasco if desired. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed.

Serve on buns with or without cheese! Hooray, dinner is served! Man it smelled good in here.

The wedges look pretty good, huh? They were tasty. This was a lot of food for 2 people though. I wish Sean was a bigger eater so I didn't always have so much left behind that only I had to eat. I also couldn't stop munching the leftover sloppy joe mix cold right out of the container. It's good, beware.

You know, I wonder how many pictures I'm allowed to put in these posts. I notice in a lot of other blogs, they upload their pictures elsewhere, but I've been uploading mine right to the post. I wonder if there's a limit to how many I can put per post, or per month. I guess I'll find out if they all suddenly disappear!

Lentil and Sausage Soup!

*yawns*

I like video games. Yeah, that part of me still hasn't changed. Tonight, Sean and I are going to the midnight release of the new expansion for the game World of Warcraft. It's my first midnight release. I anticipate it to be boring and cold. And full of nerds. (like myself)

However, you know what you should do on cold nights? Make soup!

I don't eat a lot of lentils. Or anything like them. But I tend to enjoy a lot of lentil soups, especially just like the one I made tonight. It reminded me a lot of one I really like to get at this italian place we go to sometimes. I had a couple of recipes bookmarked and after looking at them, they were all pretty similar, so I kind of made an amalgamation of them all. Oh damn, BUST OUT THAT DICTIONARY, PEEPS. IT'S BIG WORD TIME.

So please enjoy my yummy soup. Would make again but maybe with bulk sausage instead of pre-cooked. I had to use up some more of those Sam's Club sausages that we got. Granted, I still have a ton left. Aaanyway.

Lentil and Sausage Soup

• 2 tablespoons Olive Oil
• 8 oz of fully cooked sausage (I just used 2 and a half links of Italian)
• 1 teaspoon Onion Powder
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 carrots, chopped small
• 2 stalks of celery, chopped small
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme (more or less, I just threw about half of a tablespoon in)
• 2 cups of lentils
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 14.5oz can of diced tomatoes, juice included
• 6 cups of chicken broth, plus a little more if needed
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• Salt, to taste
• Pepper, to taste

Look how basic all that is! One of these days I'm going to get a pepper mill so I can feel snooty about my pepper and then grumble when I have to grind up a certain amount of pepper for a dish.

I chopped up everything as small as I could to give the soup a nice mouth feel. The sausage was a bit of a mess because it contained little pockets of cheese, which all kind of melted into the soup and disappeared. Normal sausage would be fine too.

In a large pot over medium high heat, warm the olive oil. Add the sausage and saute until lightly browned, about 2 minutes or a little more.

Add the garlic, carrot, celery, onion powder and dried thyme and saute until the vegetables are softened, about 3 minutes or so.

Stir in the tomato paste to get it mixed in, then add the tomatoes and the crushed red pepper.

Add lentils!

Stir up and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes or so.

Increase the heat to high, add the 6 cups of broth and bring to a boil. Check your salt level at this point, it can be a lot different depending on how salty your sausage was, if you used salted tomatoes or if you used reduced sodium chicken broth. The original recipes I was looking at all called for a good amount of salt but mine was already pretty good when I tasted it, I added maybe 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and I probably didn't even need to. And your pepper! Don't go overboard till you taste it because crushed red pepper goes a long way.

Reduce heat to medium low and simmer, partially covered, until the lentils are tender, about 40 minutes. The lentils will soak up a lot of liquid so if it gets TOO thick, you might have to add more broth. I wound up adding the last cup of broth I had just to add it, but it's going to be a very thick soup to end with anyway.

If your lentils don't feel done after that much time, taste them again after simmering for another 10 minutes.

Tada! Delicious soup! It actually reminded me a lot of the soup that I love from restaurants, I was really happy.

My first homemade soup was a success and also very easy. Don't be afraid of lentils just because they are good for you, they are delicious! And now with that post, so very late at night, I'm off to play WoW until I pass out. Hopefully later this week I'll be making homemade sloppy joes and garlic fries! Mmmm!