recipe: sundried tomato & parsley pesto

I love cooking with fresh herbs, especially basil and cilantro. I hate how quickly my herbs go bad in the fridge.  When I grow up, I want to have an herb garden - or maybe two. One in my glass-walled reading room (because that will exist), and one outside.  Anyway, I had leftover tortellini from a soup I made last week, as well as some broccoli that was on sale, and some leftover basil. We always have 10% cream hanging around, so I figured I'd do a basil cream sauce. Alas, not to be. By the time I got around to making the pasta, my basil had gone bad. SO, now what?

I asked Facebook, and the winning suggestion was sundried tomato pesto.  I've never heard of this before.  I decided to use up some of my parsley as well, and I added walnuts and sunflower seeds to fill the pine nut role.  However, I forgot a very important lesson from kindergarten: red + green = brown. Especially when you add balsamic vinegar, walnuts, and sunflower seeds.  It's definitely the ugliest pesto I've ever seen.

However, it's really tasty so I'm posting anyway.  The recipe only made enough pesto for 3 meals (whereas the tortellini package serves 4), so keep that in mind.

Sundried Tomato & Parsley Pesto
Ease: 1 very easy
Time: 1 very quick
Ingredients: 2 easy
Source: My facebook friends and some crazy imagination!

Ingredients:

• One package of cheese tortellini
• 1 head of broccoli, cut into florets
• 3 Tbsp sundried tomatoes (I used the kind in oil)
• 1-2 medium cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1/4 cup walnuts (or less)
• 1.5 Tbsp sunflower seeds (or less)
• 1 cup curly leaf parsley
• 1 Tbsp olive oil (note: my pesto was more of a paste, so more oil could be useful)
• Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. Cook tortellini and broccoli together in same pot. Drain and set aside. 
2. Meanwhile, make the pesto.  Combine remaining ingredients except Parmesan cheese in a food processor for a few seconds until everything is a bit chopped and pasty.  I didn't want to blend it too much or it would have been a uniform brown paste.  At least this way I can see chunks of green and red. 
3. Mix pasta/broccoli with pesto and serve!
4. Top with Parmesan cheese. I only used a tiny sprinkle - it didn't need the extra flavour.

recipe: mushroom stroganoff

I make weekly meal plans to avoid throwing food in the garbage (I abhor waste). I knew I wanted to eat "Mexican Night" this week, so I needed something else that would use a lot of sour cream. Stroganoff just seemed logical.  I've never actually eaten homemade stroganoff; I usually just stick with Lipton Sidekicks. Sooo... this was uncharted territory for me!

As usual, I grabbed inspiration from a few different recipes.  I'm very happy with how it turned out. If I needed to make one modification, it would be to reduce the broth for LESS time, since my sauce ended up a bit thick (hah, upon reading my notes more carefully, I accidentally used 1/3 of the amount of water requested so that would be my error.  The recipe below is how it should probably be made). Otherwise, it was very tasty.

The actual type or ratio of mushrooms is up to you.

Mushroom Stroganoff
Ease: 1 very easy
Time: 3 somewhat quick
Ingredients: 2 easy
Source: Primarily All Recipes Portabello Mushroom Stroganoff (and details in comments), although I also looked at the Food Network and Rachael Ray's version.


Ingredients:

• Egg noodles, pasta, or rice 
• 2-3 Tbsp margarine (or olive oil)
• 1 large onion (I used 3 smallish onions because that's what I had on hand), chopped
• 2 shallots, thinly sliced 
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 large portabello, sliced
• 5 large cremini mushrooms (or equivalent)
• 8 largeish shitake mushrooms (or equivalent)
• 1  1/2 cup vegetable broth
• 1 tsp mushroom soy sauce (or normal soy sauce, but mushroom sauce is very strong and tasty)
• 3/4 - 1 cup sour cream
• 2 Tbsp flour
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley (or less; I really like parsley)
• splash white wine (i actually didn't include it, but I wish I had some to try it out)
• black pepper

Directions:

1. Cook your starch (egg noodles, pasta, or rice) while following the rest of the recipe.
2. Heat margarine/oil in large frying pan on medium heat. Add onions, shallots, and garlic. Sauté until tender. 
3. Turn heat up to med-high. Add mushrooms and saute until they've released their liquid and are cooked. Transfer mushrooms from pan to plate and set aside.
4. Add broth and soy sauce (and wine, if using) to same pan and simmer until reduced to 1/3 volume. 
5. Mix sour cream and flour in measuring cup. Add to frying pan and mix with broth until smooth. 
6. Add mushrooms and mix well. 
7. Serve over starch. Top with fresh parsley and ground black pepper. 

Picante Pasta

This is my first email that I also post to the blog simultaneously. Go me!

I think eventually I'll phase out of emails and just go to blogs... However there are ways of getting notified of new blog posts so you don't have to remember to check it all the time. Either way, there will be dual posts for now. The blog will be the only place I post photos, though. Although I'd like to point out yet again that taking photos of food is REALLY REALLY HARD.

I can't remember if I've told this story but I'll tell it now anyways, at the risk of repeating myself. I'm a big fan of Freecycling (Freecycle.org - where you give away stuff you don't want anymore and you get stuff for free), both to get rid of stuff I don't want and to get stuff that I do want. A few months ago, I grabbed hundreds of recipe cards off some woman who must have been collecting them for years (literally... there were some very 50's style recipes going on there). I sorted through them and grabbed anything that sounded remotely interesting (weeding out all of the meat recipes), and I still ended up with well over 100 recipes. A lot of them are dessert recipes (which means I'll probably never make them), but some of them were salads and a few were pastas or other veggie-based entrees. Today's recipe is one of those. It's from a series of recipes called Grandma's Kitchen, and it's actually called "Linguine with Picante Sauce" but I've just been calling it Picante Pasta and there's no reason that it has to be linguine, so whatever. The recipe sounds a bit weird because it involves black beans + pasta, but I was very happy with the end result. Topping it with mozza cheese made it extra yum, too. I've modified the directions slightly because I don't agree with the order they were written in.
As always, I suggest chopping all of the veggies up first so that the actually cooking part isn't stressful.

Picante Pasta
Effort: very easy
Ingredients: very easy
Source: Grandma's kitchen card (modified from)

Ingredients:

• 8 oz linguine (I broke my linguine noodles in half because I"m a slob and can't handle full-length linguine without making a mess of myself)
  
• 1 med onion, coarsely chopped
  
• 1 clove garlic, minced
  
• 1 (15oz) can black beans, drained and rinsed
  
• 1 tbsp veg oil
  
• 2 1/2 cups canned stewed tomatoes (we used diced)
  
• 1/4 cup picante sauce (we used plain ol' salsa)
  
• 1 tsp chili powder
  
• 1 tsp ground cumin
  
• 1/4 tsp dried oregano
  
• 4 oz finely shredded Colby Jack cheese blend (we used mozzarella because that's what we had on hand)
  
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro (optional)

1. Heat veg oil in large skillet over med-hi heat until hot. Add onion and garlic and mix well. Saute until onion is tender.
   
2. Add undrained tomatoes, picante sauce (salsa), black beans, chili powder, cumin, and oregano and mix well. Bring to boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low and cover.
   
3. Simmer the sauce, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes; remove cover. Increase heat to med-high. Cook, stirring frequently, until sauce is the desired consistency, about 5 min.
   
4. Meanwhile (around step 2 or 3), cook pasta using package directions; drain. Rinse quickly and cover to keep warm.
   
5. Serve sauce over pasta (either one large platter or individual plates/bowls), sprinkle with cheese and cilantro.

Pizza Pasta

I'm a big fan of "slop-in-a-pot" type recipes, where the ratios and amounts of different ingredients are suggested, rather than fixed. This is one of those recipes, which explains why I don't give measurements. I make it veggie-based but it can easily be made to simulate meat (use fake pepperoni/ham on top, or put Yves veggie ground round in the sauce) or fully meaty. I'll take suggestions for pizza toppings, because I'm getting pretty bored with my usual.

Some example combinations:
- Mediterranean: Prepare as below. Top with black olives, feta, oregano flakes, red and green peppers
- Spicy: Mix fresh minced garlic and chopped up hot peppers with the sauce before adding to the pasta. Top with chili flakes, red and green peppers, green olives, and a sprinkling of cheddar cheese.

Nic

Pizza Pasta
Effort: super easy
Ingredients: super duper easy
Cookbook: an ex-boyfriend's mother + a recipe card

Pasta (I like rigatoni, but medium-sized shells, penne, or macaroni would also work. Use as much or as little as you like - leftovers make good lunch)
1 large can/jar of Pasta/tomato sauce (add lots of oregano and basil to make it zippy)
Mozzarella cheese, grated
Possible toppings:
Green/red peppers
Hot peppers/jalapenos
Olives
Onions
Mushrooms
meat/shmeat
garlic/roasted garlic
fresh basil leaves, chopped
extra cheese (feta, parmesan, cheddar, goat)
chili flakes
oregano flakes
shredded spinach
small broccoli florets
zucchini

- Cook the pasta and drain.
- Mix the pasta with the sauce - make it nice and saucy because baking it will dry it out (if you're adding fresh crushed garlic, it might be good to add it in with the pasta and sauce or else you'll end up with concentrated bites of garlic once it's all cooked).
- Pour the pasta&sauce into a baking pan (you want the pasta to make a layer about 2 inches deep)
- Top with mozza cheese (variation: add half of the cheese to the pasta and sauce in the stage when you're mixing together, and then top with the other half)
- Top with your favourite pizza toppings (mushrooms should go under the cheese to avoid drying out too much)
- Bake at 350 until cheese is melty and veggies seem cooked (around 20 min is good, but more is probably better. You can also broil in the last 2 minutes to brown up the cheese a bit).
- Serve with garlic bread, because garlic bread is delicious.

Protein tip:
Both pasta and cheese cheese have quite a bit of protein. You could also add some veggie ground round to the sauce (found in the produce section of a grocery store). it makes a pretty good substitute for ground beef and adds loads of protein. I recently tried veggie sausage and it was really bad, so I'd stay away from that. There is also veggie pepperoni but if you're still eating meat, you'll probably want to avoid any simulated deli slices since they only start tasting good once you haven't eaten meat for a year or so.