Browsing Category

Pasta

Entree/ Pasta/ Side dish

Summertime Pasta with Pea Pods and Lemon

Easy pasta dish for the summer.

Don’t you just love pasta dishes for the summer. Pasta cooks in under 10 minutes and everything else that goes into the dish takes a matter of minutes. So, in less than 30 minutes you can have this dish on the table and have time to open that bottle of wine.

This was a Michael Symon recipe that I saw on Food Network. I love buying different shapes of pasta and for this particular recipe I bought a casarecce pasta which is kind of twisted. His recipe called for a cup of mint leaves but I only used 1/2 cup since hub does not care for mint that much.

One other change I will do next time is the cooking of the snow peas and peas. I would not cook. I wanted them to stay bright green and have a little crunch to them so I would recommend maybe sautéing the green onions a couple of minutes then throwing in the peas and pasta and cook just long enough to heat the snow peas and English peas.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ Pasta

Key Lime Shrimp with Trottole Pasta

Good and bad from Poppycocks…

So, the bad I will get out of the way first. We had dinner one night at Poppycocks in Traverse City, MI and my husband had the worst meal ever. It was cold, the plating didn’t make sense, vegetables looked raw and even after sending it back it still wasn’t good or even hot. In almost 50 years of marriage I don’t think he has sent anything back. The fish had no color and looked steamed and who puts a big chunk of cold tomato under a cooked piece of fish.

Now to the good. I really felt quilty eating my delicious Key Lime Shrimp and Pasta dish. It was so good and the lime flavor was so refreshing. I offered him a bite (only one) which he refused because he was waiting on his plate to be reheated. I think maybe they took the plate back and just looked at it and brought it back. So much for the SPECIAL of the evening.

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Entree/ Pasta/ Poultry

Creamy Artichoke Pasta with Chicken

It’s a…….

Dear Diary,

It’s 1963 and “today I met the boy I’m going to marry” (as the song goes). Lots of sporting events, I attended, just to see the boy I was going to marry play football, baseball, basketball and track. High school went by so fast, where did that time go.

1969 — married and on our way to Panama City Beach for our honeymoon. Why are we the only car going South — oh, hurricane Camille coming and we had no idea what was going on with the evacuation. The hurricane missed our beach. My first glass of burgundy had me thinking I was not going to be a wine drinker (that changed). First helicopter ride (my last), back to college for hub and we spent a year and a half in Rolla.

1971-1976 — Our first move to Louisville, KY. First son born 1973, then second son 1976. Fond memories of Louisville and derby’s, friends and baby boys.

1980 — our daughter was born in Ft. Madison, IA

FAST FORWARD to 2016 — After a move from Iowa, to Chicago to Kansas City then our final move to Texas we are five grandsons richer with our daughter expecting again this February. Continue Reading…

Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ Pasta

Shrimp and Crab Stuffed Pasta Shells

Stuffed shells perfect for summer get together.

Do you cook more shrimp in the summer or are you like me and cook it year round when you get them on sale. This dish would be great with some lobster thrown in to the mix.

I love shrimp in just about any recipe. I’ve pickled them, corn dogged them, skewered them, coconut fried them, Bang Banged them, and like Bubba Gump I could go on and on listing the ways I like shrimp.

This recipe just happens to have crab meat in it along with the shrimp. After making this dish I decided that maybe the next time around instead of stuffing the shells this would be great just mixed in with a penne or rigatoni pasta; saves some time stuffing and the taste is going to be just the same.

Sour cream was supposed to go in this dish but my carton container something other than that when I opened it and I was in luck since grandson Thomas had just been for a visit and left behind a carton of plain yogurt. I like the yogurt and would probably use that the next time instead of the sour cream.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ Pasta

Red Chard, Shrimp and Artichoke Stir-fry

Beautiful and so easy and something red for Valentine’s Day.

These days when I’m trying to make things move a little slower I’m doing a stir-fry. Now does that make sense. A slow day but with a quick fast dish at the end of the day.

I’ve always got some shrimp in my freezer. In fact, when the x-large goes on sale here, I will buy 2-3 bags and put in my freezer for last-minute dishes like this or a quick shrimp cocktail. So, I can have a slow and relaxing day doing whatever I want and wait until the last-minute and do a quick dinner to feed the hungry.

I’ve been busy trying to catch up on all these new movies that I’ve missed out for the last few weeks, getting back into craft circle and trying to come up with a couple of projects I would like to make for the year, and still working on getting the outdoor kitchen finished up. I bought a cool copper vessel type sink to use but still have not had the granite cut or picked out a faucet to match the sink. Gotta get this done because before you know it we are going to want to be outside again.

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Beef/Veal/ Entree/ Pasta

Ribeye Fettuccini with Mushrooms and Goat Cheese

Love that goat cheese!

Why do we all want comfort food when it starts getting cold, damp and wintery? That is not Texas weather right now but it may be getting cooler in your area. Last year after trying for weeks to sell my Ethan Allen dining set that we had purchased back in the 70’s, I ended up donating it to a women’s organization then I ordered a French bakery style table to use for a dining table and I envisioned having this dish on my new table set with an Italian table cloth, some beautiful pasta bowls, flowers in some old olive oil cans and some good bottles of wine and couldn’t wait to try and put together this recipe.

Pasta always reminds me of eating our way around Italy several years ago. I can only think of one bad meal we had on that trip; all the rest were memorable to the point that I can shut my eyes and taste every dish. I can’t wait to go back some day.

While visiting in Nashville a couple of years ago I had this dish at the Firefly Grille and it was delicious. As always, I’m thinking can I make this and I never know how it’s going to turn out. I love goat cheese either in an appetizer or breaded and baked to top a salad, so putting it in with some good steak and fettuccine was easy. After reading the menu and quizzing the waiter I found out all the ingredients; so who needs a recipe to recreate this dish, not me, it was fairly easy.

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Entree/ Pasta/ Poultry

Butterflies with Chicken, Asparagus and Snap Peas

Thanks Ferrari-Carano for your inspiration for this dish.

I’ve said before that some of my favorite places to look for new recipes are winery sites; and I found this recipe at Ferrari-Carano.com.

Even though I have made pasta many times, I wasn’t up to making the bowtie pasta this time around. You may not remember me talking about our pasta making experience in Italy several years ago; believe me, it was an I Love Lucy moment for sure. We did make bow tie pastas along with about 5 other varieties. I remember the strip of pasta for the bow ties and tortellinis getting bigger and bigger as we rolled through the machine and we were folding it over our arms to keep up.

But, when I found this recipe a couple of years ago, I remembered some beautiful striped pasta I had seen in my grocery and what better pasta to use to make a butterfly pasta dish. If you want to try and make your own butterflies, visit their website and give it a go. Of course, when I went looking for the colorful little pieces of pasta, they were no where to be found but on Amazon. My Amazon Prime membership has really paid off because I order food products from them all the time and with no shipping it is a lot easier than driving all over the place looking for something. So, if you want to try the pasta I used, you can order it here.

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Entree/ Pasta

Pasta Carbonara Primavera

Wow, a one pot meal.

I’ve always thought of one pot meals as being something you would throw in a crock pot and let cook all day or the way my mother use to make a pork or beef roast and put everything in one of those speckled dark blue roasters (I still have one and love it.) and put it in the oven and 3 hours later have a great dinner.

Tasting Table.com is a great site that sends out tips and chef recipes and lots of other information and when I saw their take on a Martha Stewart’s recipe for a one pot meal, I knew I was going to have to try it. Aren’t we all looking for ways to cut down on cooking time? I still like cooking and baking after almost (August 16) 46 years of marriage. Wow, that is a longggggg time but my cooking style, I think, has changed a lot over the years and I’m definitely more adventurous than I was as a newly wed who thought she had to do everything exactly by the book.

Still waiting on that outdoor kitchen to get started and as soon as it started, I will post some pictures along the way. Can’t wait to cook out there. Well, maybe when it starts to cool down a little; 96° doesn’t really make me want to even walk out the backdoor let alone cook out there but one day we will be out there cooking and entertaining.

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Pasta/ Salads

Cubano Orzo Salad

The rice looking pasta.

This is another recipe using my Pappardelle’s pasta I bought at the Pike’s Market in Seattle last summer. (Can’t believe it took me a year to get around to using it.)

Years ago I tasted a rainbow orzo that I bought at Central Market in Houston. It had beautiful colors of purple, orange, green and white and for some reason it was discontinued and after that I could only find green, orange and white. That is until I happened upon this southwest blend that is made with blackbean, red pepper, red bell pepper and spinach and a lot of other flavors that make this beautiful and delicious.

For this recipe I am using what I remember from my favorite Central Market salad (and the ingredients were printed on the nutrition label, so how easy is that) but added in some of the ingredients from Pappardelle’s recipe they gave me when I bought the pasta.

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Pasta/ Side dish

Pesto Pasta with Peas

A day in the garden.

Does this pasta look like it was born in a garden. Fresh basil and parsley from my garden, fresh spinach and English peas.

This year I was co-chair (with my friend, Linda) for arranging programs for our garden club. We had been told about this garden up in Conroe, Texas, Hope Farms Gardens and knew we just had to see it. Barbara Lopez opens her home gardens for one month in April/May for people to tour and buy her plants. Her gardens are a fun place to shop because you know exactly where the plants belong. If the plants for sale are placed in her shady parts of her yard that means they belong in the shade. Same for the sunny parts of her yard and that will be where she has the plants needing sun during the day.

So, we decided to see if our Hospitality Chairperson would like to take a look at her gardens to see if she thought our members would like to have our end-of-year lunch there instead of a restaurant or country club. Everyone agreed so for all of last year I had been thinking about what I wanted to do for lunch.

After a trip to the dollar store, I came away with 45 $1 rectangle baskets perfect for our French inspired luncheon. I have literally hundreds (not really) French looking cloths (I do have about 175 cloth napkins though that I accumulated while working at Williams Sonoma). The menu started taking shape about a year in advance with the baskets to hold all the goodies. Nancy’s Chopped Salad from Smitten Kitchen caught my eye early on and I knew I wanted to put this in a wide mouth pint jar. I also knew I wanted to do a fruit crumble dessert in the wide mouth 8 oz. jars. This Pesto Pasta with Peas is a recipe I have been thinking about for a while because I knew I wanted to use these tinsey tiny bow tie pasta noodles. Homemade focaccia bread and some baby bell cheese rounded out the basket.

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Entree/ Pasta

Southwest Pasta with Black Beans and Cotija Cheese

You can never have too many pasta recipes. 

Doesn’t it seem like when we are invited to a dinner or potluck it’s hard to come up with something different to make. I know I have a problem and I’ve been cooking for a very long time. I’m always in search for something unusual that someone else might not show up with. And, when it comes to pasta dishes it seems like you see the same ingredients — tomatoes, peppers, onions etc. I really like the idea of the enchilada sauce in this recipe mixed with the yogurt or sour cream and then the addition of the Cotija cheese and green olives.

This is a great room temperature pasta main dish, side dish, or I guess it could pass for a pasta salad. Either way, it’s delicious.

The colors from this pasta blend from Pappardelle’s come from blue corn flour, red chili peppers, green jalapeño, dried spinach, paprika, grape skins extract and some turmeric. I really wanted the pasta to retain the beautiful colors even though it might be covered up with the enchilada sauce mixture; but it did not.

In our area this pasta is sold at Berings hardware in Houston, but they also sell in farmer’s markets across the US. So check out your state to see if you have one of their vendors close to you selling in a farmer’s market or store.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ Pasta

Shrimp, Mussels, Clams, and Linguini

A fond food memory of Italy.

What is it about remembering names and other things, like where did I put my phone, give me such a problem sometimes and then on the other hand I can think of a dish I had someplace and remember all the circumstances surrounding it.

For instance, it has been about eight years since we went to Italy but I will not forget one rainy night in Chinque la Terra going to dinner at Ristorante Miky (pronounced Mickey like my Michie). I started saving menus like my sister (she has some beautiful ones) and that rainy night there was one menu outside on a table and it was getting wet so I decided to rescue it from the rain and it now occupies a place along with my other menus. So I went back and took a look at the dish I had that night.

So, that rainy night the six of us were seated outside in a tented area and we had one of the nicest waiters and he talked us through everything on the menu and promised us a meal we would not soon forget. He even told us about his cousin who was a waiter over in Montecino and told us we should check out his restaurant while we were in that area the next week.

This was the first time I had ever had clams and mussels and I was a little hesitate in ordering it. It was delicious and will always be one of my fond food memories. I decided to add some shrimp to the dish the night I made this recipe.

I love looking back at old menus I have picked up during travels and recreating dishes that helped to make a great vacation. I have a journal full of great dinners from travels and love reading about what I thought of the meal.

When we were in Seattle for our anniversary trip back in August we had eaten so much fish in Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle that one night we just wanted some simple Italian food. I ended up ordering a dish similar to this Mussel, clams, linguine dish but it had the addition of tomatoes. So delicious and that brought up all the memories of our trip to Italy and the great food we had while there.

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