Lemon Dijon Pasta Salad

Last month, a friend graduated with his PhD in economics. For the celebration picnic, I brought pasta salad. Now, to be honest, for most of my previous pasta salad attempts I've simply used Italian dressing and store-bought pasta salad seasoning. However, because this was a special occasion, and because I had plenty of lead time, I decided to put in a bit more effort (although not as much as I'd expected!), and made a pasta salad completely from scratch. I found a great resource to do this at allrecipes.com, with their 5 steps to perfect pasta salad.

They offer general guidelines that you can follow to create a nearly infinite range of pasta salads. In order to prevent duplicating their method, I simply refer you to their page above, and list the ingredients I used for my creation below. It was, by far, the best pasta salad I've ever made, and was extremely easy as well.





Lemon Dijon Pasta Salad (for instruction, go here)

Ingredients:

• 1-lb box, rotini
• 1-lb cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/3-cup pine nuts, roasted
• 3/4-red, yellow, and/or orange bell pepper, diced
• 2-green onions, cleaned and sliced
• 8-12 basil leaves, sliced
• 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese, plus more to garnish
  

For the dressing, I followed this recipe, using lemon juice and Dijon mustard. Instead of using a wisk, I used our blender to mix it all up.

Portabella Parmesan

Here is a recipe for Portabella Parmesan we've enjoyed a few times. I don't exactly remember where we found it (food network, probably, so perhaps Giada?), but it has consistently been an easy and tasty dish.

before the oven (with good lighting) ...

Ready to serve

The top view

Portabella Parmesan Ingredients:
Portabella caps (1 per person)
Olive oil (1 tsp / mushroom)
Salt & Pepper
Pasta sauce
Mozzarella cheese
Butter (1 tsp / mushroom)
Parmesan cheese

Directions:

• Clean mushrooms with a damp paper towel
• Brush mushrooms on both sides with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste
• Grill mushrooms, 3-5 minutes per side
• In a shallow baking dish, coat with pasta sauce
• Place mushrooms, vent side up (i.e., upside-down) in baking dish
• Add sauce to mushroom caps (enough to coat with a thin layer)
• Sprinkle mozzarella cheese to cover mushrooms, add butter, and sprinkle Parmesan cheese
• Bake at 400° for ~15-minutes (until cheese is browned)
• Serve with pasta
  

Honey-Jalapeno Chicken

Yes, yes, I've been a bad blogger lately. Only one post in all of January and, I'll be honest, February isn't looking much better. However, I do have some cooking to report at least.

My latest cooking attempts was a recipe that Sam suggested (which can be found here). This is an Asian-inspired chicken and pasta dish that came out wonderfully. It had a good balance of sweet and spicy and was very simple to make.



Honey-Jalapeno Chicken

Ingredients:
12 ounces soba noodles (could not find them, and forgot to go to Asian grocery store, so I used whole wheat spaghetti)
1 jalapeno, seeds removed
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 to 3 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 rotisserie chicken, shredded or sliced
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1/4 cup chopped scallions, green part only
2 tablespoons pickled ginger, minced

Directions

• Cook soba noodles according to package directions and drain
• Blend jalapenos, honey, cilantro, salt and pepper and puree. Add 2 to 3 tablespoons of water to the mixture until desired consistency is achieved
• Heat olive oil in a skillet
• Add the shredded chicken and sauce and cook until heated through
• In a medium bowl, toss cooked soba noodles, soy sauce, sesame oil, scallions, and pickled ginger, then transfer to serving bowl
• Pour heated chicken and sauce over noodles

Chicken Marsala

This recipe was largely stolen from a Tyler Florence recipe, and was very easy to make. I was generally happy with the outcome, but might do some things differently in the future. In particular, in this recipe, the chicken is only in the sauce for a brief period of time, not allowing much of the Marsala flavor to penetrate the chicken. In the recipe below, instead of removing the chicken, perhaps I'd simply add the bacon and mushrooms when I flip the chicken (I cooked it for about 5-minutes per side), and then continue from there. It would mean that the chicken was in the pan for as long as the Marsala was, and hopefully this would mean deeper flavor distribution.

On another note, this was our new braiser's first run, and I was generally happy with it. At first, when I was cooking the chicken, I was afraid it would burn the chicken too much or be horrible to clean. This ended up being a non-issue. The wine helped to quickly dissolve any cooked on residue (further flavoring the sauce) far better than it has on any other pan I've used.

Our beautiful new braiser (thanks Priscilla & Paul)

The chicken cooking

Looks pretty good, eh?

After cooking the bacon and mushrooms, add in the wine

At the end, the chicken gets added back in

And served over pasta (in our new pasta bowl, thanks to Kim and Evan)

Chicken Marsala

Ingredients:
4 chicken breasts
1/4-1/2 c flour
salt & pepper
1/4 c olive oil
2 strips of bacon, cut into small pieces
1/2 lb mushrooms, halved
1/2 c dry Marsala wine
1/2 c chicken stock
2 tbsp butter
1/4-1/2 c heavy cream

Directions:

• Pound chicken breasts flat with mallet ("meat hammer")
• On a plate, season flour with salt and peppper
• Heat oil in a large skillet, over medium-high heat
  
• Dredge chicken in flour and fry until done, about 5-min per side, depending on size (and flatness) of chicken
• Remove chicken from pan
• Add bacon to pan & saute briefly over medium heat
• Add mushrooms & saute until mostly cooked, about 5 minutes
• Add Marsala wine & bring to boil, add chicken broth. Salt and pepper to taste
  
• Simmer for a minute or more to reduce sauce
• Add butter & cream, return chicken to pan & heat for another minute
• Serve over pasta or mashed potatoes
  

Zucchini Pasta

Well, I'm back to cooking, although not so much back to blogging. The camera that I thought had dead batteries was just plain dead. It was a point and shoot that had major focus issues, so it probably isn't a huge loss, but it does mean that I'm left without my own pictures until I can get a new camera. I would simply go out and buy another point and shoot, since they are pretty reasonable these days, but Z's photography lessons have made me really want a DSLR (plus, if I get a camera body, we can share lenses - once we have enough to actually share).

OK - now onto cooking...

I'm not sure exactly what she was looking for, but Z found a recipe for "zucchini pasta" (here) that looked really good. The recipe was very straightforward, and ended up tasting quite good.

picture stolen from NY Times

I made a few modifications to the recipe (sauteing the garlic in the oil before cooking the zucchini added some great flavor), and served it with a little grilled chicken breast. The zucchini strips from the outside were much better than those from the middle (they congealed like regular pasta that had been overcooked).

Zucchini Pasta
Modified from NY Times

Ingredients:
1 pound zucchini (or a combination of yellow and green zucchini)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
diced mixed vegetables (mushrooms, carrot, peppers)
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
freshly grated Parmesan, for serving

Directions:

• Using a vegetable peeler, cut the zucchini into lengthwise ribbons, rotating with each ribbon. Stop before you reach the seeds at the core of the zucchini.
• Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high hear and saute garlic and vegetables until al dente
  
• Remove vegetables, retaining oil (add more if needed)
• Cook the zucchini with a pinch of salt for two to three minutes, being cafeful to retain the crispness of the "pasta."
  
• Toss with other vegetables and add freshly ground pepper to taste.
  
• Quickly remove pasta from heat and serve with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

NOTE: This was the first time my Parmesan didn't come from a green can. While I didn't grate it myself, I have to say that even pseudo-fresh is a lot better than green can cheese!

Albondigas

Well, after three weeks in Texas, I finally have a working stove. I've done lots of grilling, toaster oven cooking, and no-cook eating (i.e., salad and fruit). But, finally, on Tuesday, I was able to cook a proper meal. What did I pick? Something fairly easy that I could adjust for a single serving size (OK, I ended up with 3 servings).

I made albondigas, which, according to my recipe, are meatballs in a garlic-tomato sauce. The recipe is actually for appetizer/tapas-type meatballs, but I ended up making them to put over pasta. Z and I did make these once for appetizers when we had a small party a few years ago, but they also worked very well over pasta. If you should make them for a party, you can make them early and then keep them warm/heat them up in a small crock pot to save last-minute rushing on food prep).


The recipe starts with making the meatballs and pan frying them in a heavy skillet (I used the lovely cast iron one you see below)

Notice how shiny and new the stove looks

The cooking of the meatballs is then finished in the sauce. (eeek! passive voice alert).


While normally, you'd serve them tapas style with toothpicks, I served mine over pasta.


This weekend, a group of us went to a local wine and tapas place that had albondigas on the menu. Theirs had jalepeño peppers in them as well, and were served in a marsala sauce, which I found to be a very tasty variation.

Albondigas

Ingredients:
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 large bell pepper, finely chopped
Olive oil
2 lbs ground beef
1/2 lb ground pork
2/3 cup bread crumbs
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp cilantro

For the sauce:
4 large garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp olive oil
1 can (33 oz) diced tomatoes
1 tsp dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

• Cook onion and pepper in olive oil until soft, let cool
  
• Combine onions/peppers, ground meat, bread crumbs, salt, nutmeg, & cilantro
• Make small meatball (1 - 1-1/2 inch diameter)
• Pan fry in olive oil in a pre-heated skillet. Remove when browned.

• For the sauce, briefly saute garlic in olive oil
• Add remaining ingredients, including meatballs and bring to a simmer
• Simmer for 30-minutes, or until meatballs are done and sauce has thickened.
• Season sauce with salt and pepper to taste.
  

Pasta Primavera

OK, so I know pasta primavera is one of the easiest dishes known to man, but I honestly had never made it nor seen it made until about a month ago. I had a bunch of veggies laying around, and didn't feel like making a stir-fry, so I searched the blogs for an appropriate recipe. I ended up combining the things I liked from 3 or 4 different recipes.

I started by chopping the veggies:


As you can see, I chopped mushrooms, carrots, red onion, asparagus, snow peas, broccoli, yellow bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, and garlic. The longer-cooking foods (carrots, asparagus) I blanched before the actual cooking. In the process of cutting these, I discovered that I'm horribly slow with a knife! I know Sam is planning to take knife wielding classes, and they would probably be a good idea for me as well, though I may have to wait until after graduation.

Once I chopped my veggies, I cooked the pasta and kept it in the pot with a little of the cooking liquid and some olive oil to prevent congealing. Meanwhile, I heated up some olive oil and butter in a large sauté pan. I started with the garlic, and then added ingredients in reverse order of anticipated cooking time (onions, carrots, asparagus, and mushrooms, followed by peppers, then broccoli, and finally the snow peas and sundried tomatoes). This only took a few minutes, and when done, I added the pasta, and then mixed it all together with some black pepper and the cherry tomatoes. It looked something like this:


Finally, I finished it off with a little Parmesan cheese and topped it with some chicken I'd grilled. The chicken was marinated with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, with a little garlic, oregano, and rosemary.


We made a lot more pasta than we needed, but fortunately, it reheats very well, so we had the leftovers for dinner a few days later, with some more grilled chicken breasts (this time I replaced half the vinegar with lemon juice for a little softer flavor).

We also had what was left of a bottle of Stephen Vincent's "Crimson" with the original dinner (we'd opened it the night before to drink with a little manchego cheese that caught our eye). This is one of our favorite all-purpose wines. It is a Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon blend, and is typically around $10-12. While it doesn't go well with everything (I think the manchego cheese was not the best match), it does do well for most dishes. The Syrah helps it to match with a wide range of dishes, and the cab gives it enough backbone to stand up to steak. I would imagine that this wine would age well, but we've never been able to keep a bottle around long enough! We've picked up a case of it, though it is earmarked for our wedding reception.