Browsing Tag:

pasta dishes

Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ Pasta

Chili Crisp Shrimp Scampi

Another pasta dish for the cooler months to come.

Nothing says you can’t eat pasta in hot weather but this was such a homey dish that I started thinking of the cooler days to come. I think this dish would also be great served cold or even room temperature. It would be great to have it made and in the refrigerator and just pull it out a couple of hours before you are ready for dinner.

So one morning when I’m sitting at my computer planning some upcoming menus  which I have done for the last 55 years of married life and I received the link to this recipe from our son Scott (Chicago) and after reading through the recipe I had everything need to make it for dinner that night. I was at the bottom of my chili crisp jar but had just enough to make this dish.

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Pasta/ Poultry

Chicken Fettuccini with Mushrooms and Asparagus

I love the creaminess of fettuccini!

Lately I’ve been focusing more on afternoon tea parties than the  “what’s for dinner” question I get late every afternoon. I love making tea foods and planning the party and it is a lot more work than throwing something together for dinner. But while looking for some ingredients for making a new scone I realized the pantry needed a little TLC.

Seems like I reorganize my pantry every week. Before we moved into our new house and renting a little 850 square foot house, my pantry was a broom closet that my husband converted into a pantry. You wouldn’t believe what I could get into this tiny pantry. Now I have this huge pantry that holds not only food that would last me a year (not really) but every pan and gadget I own and believe me I have a pan for every need. You name it – madeline, donut, barquette molds, flower molds, cannoli forms, Charlotte pan; if you can think of it I probably have it and I have used probably 99% of them at one time. If you ever need a special pan and live close by, you can borrow one of mine.

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Entree/ Pasta

Orecchiette Snap Peas and Italian Sausage

What a combination of YUM!

I just say “little ears” because oh-reck-ee-ET-tay is a little hard say. So let’s cook some “little ears” pasta also know as Orecchiette. 

Orecchiette in Italian translates to “little ears”. It’s a small, ear-shaped pasta that originated in southern Italy and it’s the perfect pasta to pair with rich creamy sauces because the little bowl shaped pastas hold all your yummy sauce.

A few weeks ago I was laying under a machine for an hour and half looking at the ceiling while having a HIAD test (gallbladder). Anyway, I’m thinking about this post and what I was going to write about and all these visions of pasta came to mind. Remember Lady and The Tramp movie where the little dogs are sucking the spaghetti and end up at the same end of the noodle and “kiss”. Don’t ask me why that was the first thing I thought of; but then I’m thinking of canned spaghetti “o’s” my kids use to eat when they were younger. Can’t believe I fed that to them.  

I have brought back different shapes and colors of pasta from just about every trip we have taken. I packed Italian pastas in my suitcase, chocolate pasta from Pikes Market in Seattle, little tiny squares of pasta for soup that I found in Canada and there is always a special pasta waiting for me in any little specialty shop I might go into.

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Beef/Veal/ Entree/ Pasta

Beef Stroganoff

Been decades but I still like this recipe.

So you are wondering how many ways can one possibly do beef stroganoff. Well, I couldn’t find many recipes that veered off the traditional recipe.

All I knew when I started this recipe was I wanted to use our leftover delicious bone-in ribeye steak that we had for Christmas dinner. We had bought these steaks and some other meats at Eckermanns Meat Market in Fayetteville (TX) (my now go-to for delicious meats and sliced pork belly that I love).

My daughter, Alexis, had brought me some trofie shaped pasta on her first visit to see us after our move to Round Top. I guess I was complaining too much I couldn’t find certain things that was easy to pick up in The Woodlands. Now I know (I already knew this) if I can’t find it, then I can order it probably from Amazon.

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Entree/ Pasta/ Poultry

Smoked Mushrooms and Chicken with Pappardelle Pasta

Smokin’ mushrooms! And have a smokin’ happy Thanksgiving.

On the last leg of Canadian trip this past summer we were in Burlington, VT and I had made reservations at a cool restaurant, The Hen of the Wood in Burlington. Well, I thought it was in Burlington and when we had our Uber driver drop us off there was a sign on the door saying they had had a “fire” and please visit their Waterbury location. I had made reservations at the wrong restaurant (never done that before).

After walking around downtown for a while we settled on Pascolo Ristorante and chose to eat at the bar rather than wait an hour for a table. We love eating at  bars  if there is something interesting going on that we want to watch.  I ordered their delicious smoked mushroom pappardelle pasta with marsala cream, rosemary and truffle oil. Like many restaurant recipes it wasn’t hard to come up with a recipe.

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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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