Baked Ziti

My new crop of tomatoes, basil, and parsley inspired me to make some baked ziti from scratch. I've tried several recipes, and they were good enough, but my husband always complained that there was too much cheese.

I had a self-made roasted tomato sauce recipe in a notebook from a few years ago, and I used it as my guideline for this dish. It's pretty simple and adaptable.

Here's the garden stash. The tomatoes are Roma and Golden Girl. I grew everything except the garlic. I also used a homegrown onion.


The tomatoes are halved, seeded (dig a finger in the cavity and scoop them out), put in a baking dish, stuffed with a halved garlic clove (1 half clove in each tomato half), sprinkled with minced basil and parsley and some dried oregano, and drizzled with extra virgin olive oil.



The tomatoes are baked at 350º for about 40 minutes until soft. After removing them from the oven, let the baking dish sit, covered loosely with foil, for about ten minutes. Then, using a fork or your fingers, peel the skins off and discard. They should come off easily.



While the tomatoes rested, I cooked a half pound of bulk mild Italian sausage in a deep skillet, and deglazed the pan with 1/4 cup of dry red wine. I added the roasted tomatoes to the sausage and mashed everything together with a potato masher, breaking up the clumps of tomato. I also wound up mashing the garlic pieces with a fork, since they were still a bit firm.

Add 1 small white onion, diced, about 1/2 tsp. of red pepper flakes, and one roasted bell pepper from a jar, diced. Season with kosher salt and fresh pepper. I wound up adding a pinch of sugar at the end. Simmer the sauce until a bit of excess liquid remains. You don't want it completely reduced, because the pasta will soak up the liquid as it bakes.



When the sauce was simmering, I cooked a half pound of rigatoni/ziti in salted water until just al dente. Drain well and mix with the sauce in a greased 9" baking dish. Sprinkle a bit of fresh grated Parmigiano Reggiano on top, cover with foil, and bake at 350º for about 30 minutes.

I thought that the pasta I used was a little too big for this dish. Next time, I'll probably use spirals or ditalini.

My new toy

This is my new toy, a Fluke infrared instant-read thermometer. It's not designed for kitchen use, but my boy Alton Brown uses one all the time and it looks handy. My husband gave this to me as an early birthday gift. You can instantly check the temp of a grill, oven, pot of oil, or skillet.

Playing catch-up

I've been living up to my blog name of late. I'm still cooking and baking, but until recently, I wasn't taking any pictures. Here's some stuff I've made recently.

Chicken Pasta Primavera:

I had a bunch of seasonal summer veggies on hand and wanted to make something fresh and tasty with pasta. Here's the saute of vegetables. The skillet includes zucchini, button mushrooms, onion, garlic, a yellow tomato, and roasted bell peppers from a jar.


Here's the finished dish. The vegetable saute was combined with grilled chicken breast. I tossed the pasta with a little chicken broth for flavor and sauce, mixed the whole mess together, and topped it with some freshly grated Parm.



Chicken Noodle Soup:

I don't have a recipe for chicken soup, and I never have. I just boil bone-in chicken pieces with a couple of breasts in a big stockpot of water with various amounts of dried spices, including poultry seasoning, granulated garlic, onion powder, celery salt, whole peppercorns, and a bay leaf. After the chicken is cooked, I strain the broth and de-bone the chicken pieces and chop the breasts.

I add the meat back to the broth, along with diced onions, carrots, and celery. I usually also toss in a couple of chicken bouillon cubes for extra flavor. Bring to a boil and add half a bag (about 6 oz.) of wide egg noodles.

When the noodles are cooked, I toss in a palmful each of chopped fresh Italian parsley and snipped fresh chives. It's awesome as leftovers, too.


Cheesecake with Cherry Topping:

I use Tyler Florence's recipe for the "ultimate" cheesecake. The secret to a crack-free cheesecake is slow mixing, and not over-mixing. It's baked in a water bath for 45 minutes, and removed while the center is still jiggly.


I flatly refuse to put canned, artificially red, cherry-flavored goop on top of my homemade cheesecake, so I threw together some cherry topping. It's super easy. Dump a bag of frozen tart cherries into a sauce pan with about half a cup of water, a little over 1 cup of sugar, a couple of teaspoons of cornstarch, and a dash of vanilla. Mix well and cook until bubbly. Chill.

Chicken Tikka Masala

We like to eat Indian food at a local restaurant that serves a lunch buffet daily. The only problem is that the restaurant is way across town, and dinner is quite expensive. So, we both get the occasional unsatisfied craving for Chicken Tikka Masala and naan bread.

I'd tried a couple of different techniques before- one out of a packet, one a regular recipe- and both tasted like crap. I hated throwing that food away- rice, chicken, sauce, etc. It irritates me when a meal does not come out. But, I find I can generally trust America's Test Kitchen's recipe integrity, found their version, and threw caution to the wind.

This came out pretty good, even if a little un-photogenic. We have a canister of Rajah brand garam masala that proved a good balance, not overly cinnamon-y like some we've smelled/tasted.

I was unable to find the called-for serrano chile at my grocery store (they seem to have a problem with the lowly serrano, and never stock it for some reason), so I left it out, again somewhat concerned that it'd be too spicy for the bebeh girl. You never know with Indian food.

It did wind up needing just a skosh more of something spicy, but was generally tasty and consistent with what we've eaten at the buffet.

Let me know if you want the recipe. I'm not gonna type it out until then, because that's how I roll. Don't judge me.

I wished we'd had some naan, but no dice, so I settled for some leftover regular flatbread. I made a batch of hummus to go with, which came out OK but a little too garlicky. Yeah, yeah, I know it's not Indian food, but it's close enough for government work. Again with the judgment! Jesus!

Traditional turkey dinner

My husband and I can't get enough of Thanksgiving food. I'd never actually cooked turkey with bones before, but some nice pieces in the grocery store, plus a recipe from America's Test Kitchen, inspired me to make a mini-Thanksgiving for us at home.

Oh. My. Sweet. Lord. This recipe came out SO GOOD, and made some of the best goddamn turkey gravy I've ever had, no giblets required!

The technique is a simple one- slowly roast turkey legs and thighs on a rack over a mixture of chopped onion, carrot, celery, garlic, thyme, and chicken broth. After about 2 hours at 275º, the turkey meat rests for half an hour while you start the gravy by straining out the vegetables. I skimmed off some liquid fat before making the roux that thickens the gravy. Finally, the meat is returned to the oven at 500º for about ten to twelve minutes, which crisps the skin and makes for an awesome exterior texture.

To round out the meal, I also made mashed potatoes, my stepmother's cornbread and sausage dressing, and orange juice-tinged cranberry sauce. The mashed potatoes were a little loose, unfortunately, and the cranberry sauce needed more sugar, but altogether it was a rousing success.

The turkey recipe called for using an additional piece of meat- a bone-in, skin-on breast. The full recipe serves 10-12 and I was only feeding 3 people, so I stuck to 3 legs and 2 thighs, which provided plenty of leftovers. I think next time, however, I will use a breast only, since my husband definitely prefers white meat over dark and the cooking method here does not make for a dry bird like most people serve.

Chicken Pasta Pomodoro

This meal was an attempt to recreate one of the few frozen entrees that is worth buying- Chicken Pasta Pomodoro by Kashi. My husband often comes home hungry from late night hockey games. I'm not always up to making him a meal at 1 a.m., so we compromised with a few frozen dinners. Having a particularly picky meat-n-taters type of husband, I was surprised when he actually enjoyed this relatively healthy one and asked me to buy him some more. I decided later to try to recreate the dish for the three of us.

Kashi has their own 7-grain penne pasta that I can't buy so I substituted whole wheat, which we've never eaten before. It was actually good, and we eat a lot of traditional pasta. Aside from that, I used the ingredients list as my guide, in addition to the obvious things that it contained, like chicken, zucchini, yellow squash, and red bell pepper. I added bits of sundried tomato and artichoke hearts.

It tasted pretty good, all in all. The only thing it required after serving was a dash or two of hot sauce for zing. I also had to feed it to a two year old, so I had not added any red pepper flakes like I would have if it was just us adults.

The one caveat to this dish: it did NOT taste very good the next day. I don't know if it was the pasta or what, but it was gluey and bland.

I'll probably make some adjustments to the recipe before posting it.

A Thanksgiving staple - Pumpkin Pie

One part of my family celebrated Thanksgiving early this year, because my cousin was preparing to leave for U.S. Air Force basic training. I offered to bring the pie. I love pumpkin pie; it totally defines the season for me, even more so than turkey and dressing. There's not much better than a homemade one, and not much worse than a shitty one from a box with rubbery custard, butterless bone-dry crust, and excessive spices meant to disguise the inevitable freezer burn.

I was especially proud of the way these two came out- not a crack in sight, the custard cooked just right and not overbeaten. The crust was GBD*, a blissful balance of buttery and flaky.

Recipes used are simple- the filling recipe is from the label of Libby's pumpkin puree, and the crust is from Alton Brown.

You can find Alton's pie crust recipe here, but you should know I stray somewhat from his technique. I don't use the food processor; I like the manual labor of a pastry cutter. I also use Crisco shortening instead of lard, and I drizzle in ice water from a glass measuring cup instead of spritzing with a bottle. Finally, Alton calls for blind-baking the crust, which I omitted.

The pies tasted as gorgeous as they looked, especially with a generous slathering of whipped cream.

*GBD = Golden brown and delicious. Totally ripped off from my nerd-crush, Alton Brown. Learn it. Know it. I'll use it often.