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....!!

The Hungry Howley Cook-Off Challenge!!

Yes, that's right.  My husband and I have decided to save a buck and stop stuffing our faces at restaurants, and start cooking at home.  Now normally, most wives don't have to fight with their husband about who gets to cook.  However, in my home, since we both love to cook, and have very different tastes and cooking styles (I prefer Italian food, summery dishes, and spice!) and he prefers BBQ, stick-to-your-ribs, waist expanding foods that taste great but are not diet friendly.  So, in the spirit of competition, we decided to have a cook off.  This will determine nothing more than who gets the final say on which spice to add when dually cooking dinner- which happens a lot.  We have cleverly named it the Hungry Howley Cook-Off.  Ok...not so clever.

The premise will loosley follow Food Network's Chopped.  We haven't completely decided on the rules yet, but as they stand now, there will be 3 rounds:  Appetizer, Entree and Dessert.  For each round, each of us will have 3 "Must Use" ingredients.  One has been decided by the other competitor, and must be used in some way, in each of the 3 rounds.  My ingredient, chosen by Evan, to be used in each round is carrots.  For Evan, I chose Hershey's chocolate.  Hmm...challenging!

Our second ingredients will vary for each course.  We will both be expected to use the same two ingredients for each course.  For example, we decided that of our remaining 2 ingredients for the dessert course, one will be coffee.  Of our two remaining ingredients for the entree course, one will be red wine.  We plan to finalize the ingredients tonight, make a quick shopping run tomorrow night when we get home from work, then spend 2 hours total cooking to serve a meal at 8pm and judge each others creations!

RULES:
Every competition needs rules.

1. No cream sauces (in the name of health!)
2. No fried foods (we want to live past 30)
3. Judge honestly
4. The secret must use ingredient may not be used as garnish, but must be used as a main element of the dish.
5. No part of the meal may be created ahead of time, except the dessert course.
6. When the timer goes off, hands go up.  (The competitor who fails to finish on time is resigned to pouring their challenger the first glass of the wine of the evening)


So there are our loosely concieved plans for our first ever cook off competition set to take place tomorrow night.  Pictures will be included with the update, as will the winner of the competition with the title of Hungry Howley Cook-Off Challenge Champion!!  (HHCCC for short.)  

Stay tuned....