Sunday Dinner Staple: Homemade Sauce

 An early morning trip to the farmer's market (in the rain I might add) helped us choose our menu for dinner.  It started as a quick trip to grab a few veggie essentials, but when we saw how fresh everything looked, we walked away with a few more goodies than we anticipated :)

We quickly found some of the freshest tomatoes ever, just sitting alone in the rain.  We scooped them up, along with some onions, cabbage, and yellow green and purple beans. Then my hubby runs over with the fantastic idea of getting fresh bay scallops, and viola, dinner has been decided.


When we get home, we sift through my many Food Network chef cookbooks trying to decide which recipe we're going to pull from to create a sauce.  

Giada, Ina, we just couldn't choose!

The goal was to whip up something quick around dinner time, but we wanted a plan in mind.  Given that it was a rainy Sunday, and neither of us felt much like leaving the house again (I already had 2 showers that day, thank you rain), we decided to stay in and make a day of cooking.  We quashed the idea to steal a sauce recipe from one of our fav chefs, and made our own!


First, we chopped some sweet yellow onion (about 2 medium) and 10 cloves of garlic...yes, 10.  I enjoy smelling like an old Italian woman- no judgments please.  We tossed them in our pot with a little extra virgin olive oil and simmered them for about 15-20 min, stirring occasionally.  

Evan chopping garlic, not his fingers

Onions Simmering....

Now when making sauce with fresh tomatoes, expect to use a little more tomato paste than normal, as ripe tomatoes will be quite juicy.  We chopped up our tomatoes and tossed them in with the garlic and onions.  We threw in 2 small cans of tomato paste, and all our spices:

Garlic Powder, Italian Seasonings, Salt, Pepper, Parsley, Basil, Onion Powder, and Sugar to cut the acidity of the tomatoes.  This is all to taste; don't be afraid to put a couple extra shakes in there, but just dont open the "pour" sides of the spice bottles! 

 Then comes the best part:

Fresh basil from the garden :)   

Now that all your veggies and spices are simmering nicely together (and smelling delicious!) stir them up real good, and set it on low in a large covered pot.  

NOTE:  We realized about an hour after it had been simmering that we forgot to boil the tomatoes first to remove the skins, and the skin had rolled up into hard little pieces within the sauce.  

Fear not!  We brought out our trusty blender...

Look at that steam!  


and chopped, pulsed, and blended everything into a gorgeous red steaming pot of perfection! :)

So back into the pot it all went, to simmer and bubble for a few more hours.  We tasted it and adjusted the spices a few more times, and after about 4 hours, it was ready to be enjoyed atop some whole wheat fettuccine!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, the second half of our delicious dinner, were those scallops.  Normally, I am NOT a seafood fan, so it was super important that we find a recipe that took away that "fishy" taste.  I scoured recipes from my fav top food network chefs, and found a tasty looking one from Ina Garten (aka The Barefoot Contessa).  View full recipe here...Ina Garten's Scallops Provencal


We made some fresh farmers market asparagus (evoo, salt peppper and oven for 20 min at 400).

Now for the scallops!  We chopped up our shallots, grabbed our white wine, garlic, parsley and flour, and got to dredging our scallops.

They sauteed in their shallots, garlic and sauce for a few minutes.  We learned that scallops are one seafood that doesn't even need to be cooked.  It may taste better, but its better to under cook them than over cook them (they can get quite rubbery) and that in fact, they can be consumed completely raw!  Interesting....though, we chose to cook ours, and they turned out like this:

Scallops Provencal

It had a mild onion taste from the shallots, a creamy taste from the wine and garlic, and  the scallops were fresh and buttery.  So so so delicious!!  The perfect addition to a Sunday Night Dinner :)  And as Ina would say, "everything was beautiful and gorgeous and absolutely perfect!"

Christie's Favorite Tortellini Salad

It was a warm summer night and... I was heating things up in the kitchen!!  Tomorrow is my Godchildren's 2nd birthday party, and I volunteered to make a tortellini salad for 50 people.  Ambitious...or dumb?  Anyway, my husband decided to go out for the night, which left me at home....alone!!  I decided to make a night of it.  
I lit a few candles for mood lighting, 

poured myself a glass of pinot, and got to work.


My favorite tortellini salad is a combination of one my mom used to make growing up, something I had at a bbq once and tried desperately to recreate, and my own little twists and tricks.   The dressing is sweet & tangy, there are plenty of veggies, and just enough cheese that starts to get nice and gooey when the tortellini goes in piping hot.  drool.


To make the salad, you will need:

1 lb cheese filled tortellini

1 clove garlic, minced

3 tbsp red wine vinegar

3 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2 tsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp honey

1/3 cup olive oil

1/3 cup vegetable oil

Salt and pepper to taste

¾ cup provolone cheese cubes

3 oz hard pepperoni (optional)

¼ cup sliced black olives

½ cup red bell pepper, diced

1 tbsp red onion, diced

½ cup fresh/frozen peas, thawed

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

1 tsp chopped rosemary

1 tbsp fresh lemon juice


To feed 50 people, I quadrupled the recipe, beginning with 4 lbs of tortellini.  They almost didn't make it into the salad...they're my fave.  The cooking instructions are super simple.  

1.  In a large pot of salted boiling water, cook pasta until al dente (3-5 min for tortellini usually) and drain.

Little tortellinis cooking!

Red Bell Peppers & Red Onion

Chopped Pepperoni, Black Olives, Red Peppers, Onions

2.  In a food processor, combine garlic, red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, mustard and honey. Blend until smooth. With the processor running, add the olive oil and vegetable oil in a thin steady stream. Season with salt and pepper.   (Luckily, we got an a-mazing food processor as a bridal shower gift, but I used to use a hand mixer and it came out just as good).

Our Cuisinart Food Processor doin' its job

3.  In a large bowl, combine the tortellini, cheese, pepperoni, olives, bell pepper, onion, peas, parsley, rosemary and lemon juice. Gently toss and drizzle with vinaigrette to coat. Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately. Best served at room temperature. 

Almost Ready....

My bowl, as a reward for completing this mission :)

........................................wait for it......................................

The finished product, all ready for the party tomorrow!!

Ps:  If you decide to make it and change it up a bit, I would love to

 know what you did, added, substituted, etc!! (or leave a comment 

and let me know what you think about this!) Enjoy :)

Summer Chicken Marinade

Working late hours lately has really made me want to create efficient, quick (and always cheap) meals that I can prepare the night before and then heat up the next day.  So last night at 11pm I decided I was going to cut up chicken and prepare a marinade so I can throw them on the grill when I got home from work the next day.  I wanted something light, summery, but with a little tang to it.  So...my half fried 11pm brain came up with this:


Soy Sauce Ginger and Honey Marinade.



Spices and Chicken Marinade!



While I haven't tried it with any other meats, my spidey senses tell me it would be fantastic on shrimp or pork as well.  And it's soo simple.

 

             INGREDIENTS:

3 large garlic cloves chopped 

1 lb chicken breast
ground white pepper

ginger powder

honey

Kikkoman (low sodium) soy sauce

white sugar (next time I may try it with brown...hmmm)
garlic powder

I made the marindae to taste; I used roughly a half a bottle of soy sauce, 4 tbsp granulated sugar, honey to taste, white pepper to taste, ginger to taste (start slow, its powerful stuff!), 1 tbsp garlic powder.  I mixed that all up with the chopped garlic and kept tasting until everything was perfect. 

Kikkoman Soy Sauce & Garlic Cloves

The white pepper has a very distinctive flavor, and I really prefer it to black pepper.  You need less as its more potent, but its got a kick as well as a warm flavor- very versatile.  I had to stop myself from spoon feeding myself the marinade- it was perfect!!  A hint of asian spices from the ginger & soy sauce, loads of garlic (who doesn't love that?), and a sweet/tangy flavor.  L.o.v.e.

 

Garlic Soy Sauce Ginger Marinade

I threw in the chicken breasts, covered and let them marinate overnight in the fridge.  I opened it up once or twice to stir and make sure all the chicken was soaking up the deliciousness. 

 

When it came time to cook, was ther really any other option than a george foreman grill?  (Unless of course you have a super duper fancy grill on your deck/porch- that would definately be preferable!!)  But, our little grill worked wonders.

                      

                        Look at those babies!!  

Smoky, tangy, salty, sweet.....scrumptious.  Really great for a quick easy summer night when I REFUSE to turn on the oven.  Enjoy.

Penne with Arrabiatta Sauce

So, while I cannot lay claim to this recipe, I tested it out (and tweaked it a bit) from a site I found online and it is pretty delicious!!  (see here if you want the original recipe http://allrecipes.com/recipe/arrabbiata-sauce/detail.aspx)

I had some sausage (spicy and regular) on hand, so I defrosted those and threw them in the mix.  I was skeptical of the recipe; growing up sauce (made on Sunday mornings and used for sauce sandwiches prior to lunch of course) was always made early in the morning, left to simmer for a good portion of the morning hours before being ready for Sunday Lunch at 2.  This was a quick (under 1 hour) sauce recipe for a spicy marinara that was both easy and tasty.

So....Penne Arrabiatta with Sausage became Sunday lunch.  Along with a side of roasted garlic bread and a dipping sauce of fresh basil, pecorino romano cheese and olive oil.  .....drool.

You will Need:

1 medium onion, chopped

6 garlic cloves, minced

3/4 c red wine (preferably a pinot noir- the sauce is pretty spicy, a pinot will balance the dish as it is mild)

Crushed red peppa' and brown suga'

2 tbsp brown sugar

1 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (throw in a few more for good measure if you like it hot!)

1-3 tbsp  chopped FRESH basil 

2 large cans crushed red tomatoes

1 small can tomato paste

Fresh parsley- for garnish only

salt and pepper to taste

EVOO


To Cook:

1.  Heat a little olive oil in a pan.  

2.  Open up your sausages, and throw in your links (I used 2 spicy, 2 sweet) and do NOT cut them!  (I learned this mistake once before).  Let them brown in the pan on medium for about 5-8 min.

3.   Next throw in your chopped onion and garlic cloves, and let simmer with the sausage links for 5 min or until the onion is translucent.4.  Stir in your red wine, crushed red pepper, brown sugar, basil, tomato paste, salt & pepper.  Let sit over medium heat for 2-3 minutes, then throw in both cans of crushed tomatoes.  



Sausages browning!





Sauce simmering away



****NOW you can cut your sausages!  Make sure the insides aren't pinky (which may be hard to tell with spicy sausage as its already a little red inside).  They will cook faster when they're smaller.

Tip:  If you're cooking with sweet and spicy sausages, you may want to cut them differently so your family/guests can tell the difference.  Nothing worse than hoping to bite into a sweet sausage and getting a mouth full of burn!

5.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to medium (the recipe I used said "uncovered", but I'd rather use a splatter cover than clean up the mess later)

6.  Let simmer over med heat for 15-20 minutes. 

7.  Serve over penne pasta.





Mmm!!  Spicy, hearty, creamy Penne Arrabiatta.




Roasted garlic Italian bread, with pecorino romano cheese,
extra virgin olive oil and fresh basil dipping sauce.



Delizioso!!

Hungry Howley Cook-Off Challenge: Entree Results

So, the second half of the results are coming in a week late, but who's counting?  It was decided that we tied on the appetizer round, so it was important to step it up during the entrees.  I decided to go ahead and start my dessert before my entree, because I was making a carrot cake and knew it needed to sit in the oven for 50 minutes.  (By now it was nearing 9pm, and I was not about to be baking a cake at 11pm!)

I whipped together my ingredients for my carrot cake, stuck that in the oven in the name of saving time, (and space- our desserts would not be friends with each other if they had to share an oven).  Then it was on to the entree round to include our joint ingredients- Steak and Red Wine.  Mmmm.  Warm and toasty and delicious- not the first choice for most people's summer menus, but we were going for taste and I knew mine would kill :)

I found a gorgeous sirloin at the food store and decided it was perfect for my dinner.  I chose to only get 1 lb in the hopes that we wouldn't have too many left overs.   My dinner was a sirloin steak with Garlic Wine Sauce and damn was it good!!  (not to pat myself on the back, but it won!)

The lengthiest part of the process was pre-baking the garlic clove in the oven so it was soft and smushy enough to puree, so I would suggest starting that before you start your steak.  To make this dinner, you will need:

1 medium head of garlic...thats right, the whole head.
1- 1 1/2 lb sirloin steak (you can substitute the cut if you wish)
1/4 cup chopped scallions
4 tbsp butter
1 cup red wine
salt to taste
2-3 tsp black pepper (to taste)
EVOO

To Make:

Roasted Garlic Puree

1.  Pre-heat your oven to 375.  Peel the first layer or 2 of paper off your garlic clove, until you can begin to see individual cloves. Place it on aluminum foil, and lightly coat with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Wrap it up in the aluminum foil and place on top rack of oven for 30-40 minutes.  Remove when the garlic cloves are soft and gooey, so you may want to check them around the 30 minute mark.  *Note- when they turn brown on the inside they are too hard and cooked to puree; you want them still white but slightly soft and easy to squeeze.  When done, squeeze each clove out of its little shell and into a bown to puree; set off to the side.

2.  Next, heat a medium skillet on the stove (do not add butter, oil or cooking spray).  Sprinkle both sides of steak generously with salt and pepper.  Place your steak into the heated pan and sear on both sides (1 min per side).  Then, reduce heat to medium and add 2 tbsp butter.  Continue to cook evenly on each side, 3-5 min and then remove steak from pan, but keep warm.

Red Wine, Garlic Puree, & Butter Reduction

3.  Pour the fat out of the skillet, and add your red wine and chopped scallions.  Bring to a boil, then quickly whisk in your yummy garlic puree.  Boil until the mixutre is reduced to about half, and is thickened with browned bits.  The consistency should be almost molasses-y.  Pour in the juices from the steak (from wherever it has been resting and keeping warm.  Continue to boil for another 30 seconds, then remove from heat and add the remaining 2 tbsp butter.

4.  Slice the meat into thin strips, and pour the thick, maroon colored sauce over the sliced steak strips.

Your finished product should look something like this:



Sirloin Steak with Garlic Wine Sauce!!


I know I could have probably taken a better picture, but TRUST ME.  This was A-mazing.  The sauce was pretty thick, so if you wanted, you could add a bit of beef consumme, but I loved it the way it was.  The consistency of the sauce was perfect for a nice cut of steak- not watery and definitely not something that yields enough to pour over potatoes or pasta, but perfect the way it is.  The sauce was garlicy, and really captured the red wine flavor....Im drooling a little just writing about it.  Needless to say, there was very few leftovers, even with a pound of steak (plus Evan's dinnner!)

Oh yeah, and in the scuffle and excitement over my roasted garlic cloves and wine reduction, I kind of failed on the carrot challenge.  It was a scallion and carrot puree with cinnamon....it needs a little work and will perhaps make an appearance in a later blog...just not now.

Ahh, the entree round was a success :)

Summer Greek Arugula Pizza

So summer is finally here, along with its 80-90 degree days when most people feel like the idea of turning on the oven is insane.  I, however, feel a strange sense of urgency and excitement when the summer hits, like I have endless reserves of energy, and its the time to do everything I have been talking about doing all winter and spring.  So, along with my endless list of shelves to clear, papers to organize, scrapbooks to start and picture frames to fill, there are recipes I have been dying to create as well.

Since our Cook-Off last week, I have been in full chef-wannabe mode, not settling for canned soup even at 11pm when I haven't eaten all day, and insisting on cooking it from scratch.  Not wanting my efforts at kickboxing to go to waste (and Evan's supposed P90X workouts) we are trying to cook healthy.  When Evan said he wanted pizza this week, I wanted to be more creative than red sauce and a pound of shredded mozzarella cheese, which I won't ever turn down, but am not all that enthused to make...again.  And since I am not yet versed in making breads and playing with yeasts, I had to be creative.

Which led to this latest dinner surprise...Summer Greek-Style Pizza.  I wanted the crunchy crust of a regular thin crust pizza, without having to roll dough.  I decided to use Pilsbury Crescent Rolls as the crust. Good decision! 
I rolled out my crescent rolls into a 9x13 baking pan, made sure to squeeze the seams together, and baked it in the oven at 375 for 11-12 min (or until golden brown).



Crispy Crescent Roll Crust

For the sauce, I wanted to steer clear of chunky red sauce, and decided to go with pesto.   I spread a thin layer on the top of my baked crescent roll crust using a kitchen "paint" brush.  I brushed the edges of my pizza crust with EVOO.  I had some fresh rosemary on hand, so I crushed up a few sprigs and sprinkled them on top of my pesto crust. 

 

Now for the fun part- the toppings!  It's not a greek style pizza (or summer pizza for that matter) without some delicious caramelized onions.  These may on my list of Top 10 Favorite Foods. I prefer my onions soft, buttery, and melt-in-your-mouth delicious.  Some people prefer them with more crunch, but thats too much like regular eye-stinging onions to me.

To make my caramelized onions:

1. I sliced 2 small whole onions, from root to stem.  *(If you prefer them crunchier, slice them horizontally instead)
2. Heat a large pan over med/low heat.  Add 1 tbsp EVOO and 1 tbsp butter

3. Once the butter is melted, throw in onions, enough to cover the bottom of the pan and then a few extra (You more or less want a single layer)

4. Throw in a heavy pinch of kosher salt

5. Keep your onions on med/low heat to sweat them out- stirring every couple of min.

6. When they began to look brown and soft, I gound some fresh black pepper and a few small pinches of sugar on top and stirred.

This can take from 10-30min, depending on how low your heat is and how dark you want your onions.  Mine took about 30 min and looked like this when they were ready to eat!



YUM!!!



Buttery, kind of nutty, soft and delicious.  But thats enough about these amazing little gems...back to the pizza.

Roasted Red Peppers, Pesto, Rosemary, Kalamata Olives

 I layered my caramelized onions onto my pesto and rosemary-ied pizza crust.  I sliced up sweet roasted red peppers, and halved kalamata olives. *(The good  imported Greek kalamata olives are a little SUPER salty, so you may want to give them a quick rinse under some water before use)

With Feta!!

 I really wanted a mixture of salty and sweet flavors but the olive juice has wayy too much salt for me.  Perfect after rinsing off some of that sodium. The finishing touch was the feta cheese, which I spread pretty liberally across the top of my pizza.  Back to the oven, for another 8-9 min to crisp up my outside and make my feta soft, and my toppings melt together underneath all that wonderful cheese. 

When the edges were nice and brown and crispy looking, I took out my pizza and placed a few nice handfuls of arugula on top.

And...viola! 

The finished product, all ready to devour.  It was actually pretty healthy; the feta and the olives are the only sodium filled goodies- the sugar helped balance out the onions and the peppers make up for the rest.   And who can deny that arugula is healthy?! So dinner was a success!!  And Evan got clean up duty :)

The Hungry Howley Cook-Off Challenge: The Appetizer Round

So....the verdict is in!  The first ever Hungry Howley Cook-Off Challenge Champion has been decided!  But we'll get to that later.  It was a very exciting and stressful 4.5 hours- thats right, it took 4.5 hours for us to make it through concocting an appetizer, entree and dessert each using our secret ingredients.  We allowed for a bit of rule bending, but adjusted our grading scale to reflect the rule-bender's lack of following the instructions!


The night proceeded as follows:
1.  Get home from work.  Finalize shopping list.
2. Rush like mad through the food store amid the after-work, pre-dinner rush of sweaty, cranky shoppers.
3. Get home and unload the goodies.
4. Open the food processor and put it together (first time users since the wedding shower almost a year ago!)
5. We battled.


Now- as I am the more competitive of us both, I wanted to hold us to a time limit for each course.  My hubby said that was a no-go, since we are novices in the kitchen.  (Speak for yourself!)  So, we settled on no time limit, but that the courses had to come out in appropriate order.  So naturally, the appetizer round was created first.  I was debating shooting for scoring creativity points or taste, and I went with creativity.  Naturally the taste factor is huge, but I had time to make that up with my entree and dessert (which I was sure were winners).


I decided to go with Veggie Cream Cheese Penguins, very sophisticated.  

Penguin Man!

The only rules for the appetizer round were that it was to be uncooked, and must contain our Personal Secret Ingredients (mine carrots, his chocolate).  


What You Will Need: (Serves 2; 6 Individual Penguin snacks)


1 baby carrot
2 oz Philadelphia Cream Cheese
1 Scallion, chopped
12 Medium Black Olives
6 Toothpicks


I started with one baby carrot, sliced into 6 small slices (to make 6 penguins).  From each slice, I made a small "V" shape cut, and kept the small carrot triangle aside.

Then I took 6 olives and sliced them in half, lengthwise.
I chopped about half a scallion, and mixed it with the cream cheese. 
Then, I began to assemble.  The cream cheese mixture goes inside each of the olive halves.  The halves then get pushed back together to make a delicious little olive and cream cheese sandwich!  Stick your olive sandwich onto your carrot slice.  You now have the feet and torso of your penguin man.


Next, take the other 6 olives and lay them horizontally on the top of your olive sandwich, forming his head.  The bottom of the olive (with the "x") should face forward.  Now take your little carrot triangle that you cut from the feet circles, and stick it in the X to form his beak.

Viola!  

We were graded on a scale determined by Creativity, Taste, and Execution of special ingredients.  I was awarded a 4/5 for creativity, and I must say, they were pretty tasty too!  I can't stake claim for the idea for these little guys; I only modified it a bit and spiced up my cream cheese to include the scallions.  

Evan took a much more traditional route for an appetizer, but wow was it good!  His challenge was to use chocolate, and to not cook his ingredients.  We let him slide a bit since he did melt his chocolate down to form the vinaigrette, but boy am I glad he did!  Take a look at this delicious treat...

It.  Was.  Amazing.  He calls it his Arugula and Chocolate Covered Strawberry Salad.  He could have called it whatever he wanted, I had 2 of them.  


What You Will Need: 

Salad:  
Arugula leaves
1/4 cup Pecorino Romano Cheese
1/2 cucumber
2 cups strawberries, halved
black pepper to taste


Dressing
2 squares of a Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate bar
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tsp sugar


First, wash your arugula, and arrange it on 2 plates.  Slice the cucumber into quarters, and then place on the arugula.  Wash and plate your strawberry halves on top.  Season to taste with black pepper (less is more). 


For the dressing, pour your balsamic vinegar into a small saucepan with your sugar.  Heat on medium low until dissolved completely.  Remove it from heat and throw in your chocolate squares.  Let it cool for a few minutes at room temp; your chocolate with melt into the vinaigrette mix and will make a delicious dressing!  
*Note- do not place your dressing in the refrigerator- it will harden!
Drizzle your vinaigrette onto your salads and shave some pecorino romano on top.  So-o-o good!!


Now, I was going to give Evan a 5/5 for this, but he insisted on being modest because he "cheated" by cooking his dressing.  So at the end of the appetizer round, we were tied 4-4 on our meals.  Next, it was onto the entree course....stay tuned....!!