Basic Marinara

Marinara Sauce - the starting point for most tomato based pasta sauces. While it is easiest to go to the store and buy a jar and heat n' serve it may not give you that taste and flavor you are seeking! The best sauces are always made from scratch and allowed to simmer for hours to intensify the flavors. Here is a recipe for a basic marinara which can be doctored with other ingredients to make other sauces.

~ Recipe ~

Olive Oil
1/4 diced onion
3 cloves garlic minced
28 oz can Crushed Tomatoes
15 oz can Tomato Sauce
6 oz can Tomato Paste
1 to 2 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp oregano
Tabasco Sauce (original) [This is not added for spice but to balance out the tomato paste with a touch of acidity]
salt to taste
* 1/8 cup shredded fresh basil

In a large pot heat olive oil on medium high heat. Add onion and saute, once it starts to turn translucent add garlic and continue to saute. Don't let the garlic burn. Add the crushed tomatoes and tomato sauce plus the dried spices. Once it comes to a simmer reduce the heat and continue to simmer for 30 to 45 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add the tomato paste and at least 10 shakes of Tabasco (I used closer to 20). Let simmer for another 30 to 45 minutes (up to 2 hours). Add fresh basil in the last 20 minutes. 

You can use this immediately over pasta, add additional items like mushrooms, sausage, peppers ect. To make it extra spicy use red pepper flakes or siracha added with the tomato paste and Tabasco. This sauce is excellent for bakes pasta dishes like my next post.

You can also easily make a double or triple batch and freeze portions of the sauce to be used later!

Happy Cooking!

Stuffed Bell Peppers

I remember my mom making stuff bell peppers when I was a kid. I always loved that it seemed to be the perfect combination especially on rainy winter nights. I have never been able to exactly replicate what I remember my mom doing, although I haven't actually ever inquired. But over the past 10 years I have definitely experimented a little bit. Like most things I make they change a bit every time because I don't keep exact track of my movements if it is not completely necessary. 

Several weeks ago Sprouts two weeks in a row seemed to have yellow and orange bell peppers on sale! Two for $1 which is incredible! Because I can't seem to pass up a sale of vegetables like that I found myself with more peppers than I was going to eat on their own. I had a lovely brain storm to make stuff peppers! ESFSW helped me with this endeavor and gets the credits for the photos! Please don't just we are working in sub-prime conditions and this project is on top of both of our full time jobs. The food we create we are also planning to be our dinner so the main purpose is to make dinner, secondary purpose is to provide blog posts! I hope in the future our photography will get more professional looking. But for now it is merely to be pictorially descriptive!

Here is what I used:

Peppers - red, orange or yellow (green work too but I like the flavor of these better)

Ground meat - I used pork sausage for its flavor

Garlic

Onion

Olive Oil

Stewed Tomatoes (canned)

Tomato sauce (canned)

Rice - I used Trader Joe's Brown Rice medley with Rice, black barley and Dikon Radish seeds

Red Pepper flakes

Worcestershire Sauce

Tabasco Sauce

Cheese - I used Herb Goat Cheese

Most of the Ingredients used! I forgot a few when I took the picture.

Here is what I did:

Chop the onion (1 small one or 1/2 a large one). 

Peel 4 cloves of garlic. I don't particularly mind the smell of garlic on my hands it is so much better than the smell of gloves from laboratory work or chemical smell (and yes I am very diligent in washing my hands in lab and when I cook!). If peeling garlic cloves are the bane of your existence then here is a tip for you. Take a clove of garlic and place it on a cutting board. Take a large knife like the one pictured with the onion in the picture above. Put the flat part of the blade over the garlic clove and with the heel of your hand smash the garlic clove using the broad side of the blade.

Smashing a garlic clove.

Once smashed the paper skin will peel off much easier!

Presto! Garlic peeled in 2 easy steps!

In a medium fry pan, heat olive oil over medium high heat. Taking the garlic mince garlic directly into the fry pan.

Olive oil heating

Let garlic simmer 1 to 2 minutes, then add onions and cook til the onions are starting to soften.

Garlic simmering - breath in the aroma!

While the garlic and onion are cooking put a pot of water on the stove and bring to a boil. Depending on the size of the pot, drop peppers into the boiling water and par boil for 10 minutes. This step softens the peppers so it doesn't take as long to bake the peppers before they soften in the oven. Many of my early attempts ended with me looking sadly into the oven after the peppers had baked for an hour with the peppers still pretty crunchy!

I should have used a bigger pot! I had to boil each individually.

While the peppers are boiling the onions and garlic should be done and it is time to add the sausage.

I don't particularily like handling raw meat so I just drop the whole thing in the pan and then break it apart as it cooks with a spoon.

Both me and ESFSW like a little heat to our food so I added some red pepper flakes (just like the ones you get with pizza) to the meat as it cooked. If you don't like spice, you can leave this out. Although I would encourage you to try just adding a bit. A little heat can help bring out the flavors in foods.

Once the meat is completely browned, remove from heat

And back to the peppers! If you are starting to feel like there are a lot of steps, their are! If you are a good multi-tasker it isn't too bad, or if you have a good assistant the process is pretty easy. The hardest thing in cooking things that have multiple steps is the timing of everything and using the waiting time to work on other steps.

So the peppers - doing this next step immediately after they were removed from boiling water will cause small finger burns! Please let the peppers cool down a little bit before handling. Next they need to be de-seeded. What I do is take a small sharp knife and cut a circle around the green stem. Then pull on the step and seeds should come out easily. Any loose seeds in the bottom of the pepper can be dumped out.

This time around I decided to cut the peppers in half, but they can be stuffed whole as well. I cut the peppers the long way and arranged into an baking dish.

Now in a large bowl, combine the cooked meat, drained diced tomatoes and the cooked rice medley (I cooked this the night before). If you tasted the meat and want more spice feel free to add some more spice at this step.

Now evenly divide the meat and rice mixture and spoon into the bell pepper halves.

Now for the sauce! Pour the can of tomato sauce into a small bowl and stir in a dash of both Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco. This just give a little bit more complexity to tomato sauce which quite frankly is pretty bland in my opinion. The Tabasco beyond adding some heat also cuts the sweetness of both cooked peppers as well as canned tomato sauce due to the high vinegar content.

After mixing, pour the sauce evenly over the peppers.

Drop large chunks of goat cheese on top each pepper. If using cheddar or some harder cheese wait to top the peppers with it until half way through baking. Place the peppers in a pre-heated 400 F oven and bake for 30 minutes. (Add shredded cheese after 15 minutes and bake til cheese is melted and bubbling)

And here is my final product! Aren't they beautiful. If you want a more toasted top, after you bake them turn on the broiler to low and cook for 2-5 minutes. Watch them carefully so you don't burn them!

ESFSW and I between use ate 3 halves of the peppers and the rest were consumed as leftovers through out the week. We had them on their own because we weren't super hungry, but they can be served with a nice green salad if you need more to eat! Although we did enjoy them with a nice bottle of wine white acquired from the local Trader Joes.

As with most of my cooking, feel free to experiment and deviate from the recipe above. My goal is to provide general guidelines for preparing delicious food, but I want to encourage you putting your own flare on your dishes! I would also like to note that these truly are an balanced meal in and of themselves. Balance of protien, vegetables and grains with a little cheese to boot! I haven't tried to make these vegetarian, but if you are one you could probably subsitute beans for the meat with relative ease. Or just use a rice and lentil mixture. If you frown on rice due to its lower nutritional value feel free to use a more nutrious grain like quinoa.

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!

Creamy Tomato Basil Soup

Tomato soup is one of those foods that I think is stamped in the American food vernacular. Often served with grilled cheese sandwiches as the meal to comfort and warm. I personally have not made a whole lot of strictly tomato soup. Tomato tends to be the base of a lot of my soups but never the main ingredient. I poked around online a bit looking at recipes and didn't really settle on any particular one, but took parts that I like from several and combined them with my own personal flourish!

Before you embark on this cooking journey, I will warn you that this soup will take a while to make. It is not a throw together, heat to a boil, and serve immediately soup. There are two long steps in this process, which can luckily be divided over the course of a day or two days. The soup will be best the longer it simmers. This allows the flavors of the ingredients to meld and intensify! It will be worth the wait I promise you!

Most of the needed ingredients

Here is what I used:

1 lb fresh grape tomatoes (if you have older ones that are getting wrinkly here's how to use them!)

garlic (at least 6 cloves)

olive oil 

dried basil (1 - 2 Tbs) - yes I mean the dried variety - fresh dried basil will provide the best flavor

30 oz canned diced tomatoes

1 to 2 yams or sweet potatoes depending on size (already cooked and soft)

1 tbs red pepper flakes

salt to taste

2 cups chicken stock - if you are vegetarian or vegan you can substitute with vegetable stock or water

1/2 & 1/2 - if you are dairy intolerant or vegan you can skip this ingredient.

This is what I did:

Pre-heat your oven to 425 F. 

While the oven is heating, cut grape tomatoes in half and place in large baking dish (for easier clean up, line with foil). Crush several cloves of garlic and toss in with the tomatoes (I used 10 to 12 but some of them were rather small). Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and douse with dried basil.

Place pan in oven and roast tomatoes for 30 to 40 minutes.

Tomatoes and garlic entering the oven

Toss occasionally while roasting and remove from oven once some of them are starting to char. Let pan cool. If you are doing this step ahead of time (up to 5 days ahead would probably be fine, longer if you plan on freezing them, although things do tend to lose their flavor in the freezer over time). If these are roasted ahead of time, store in a air tight container in the refrigerator. Make sure you save as much of the liquid and scrapings as possible for this is where a lot of the flavor is be found.

Roasted Tomatoes just out of the oven...mmmm they smell good!

Next in a large pot heat some olive oil. Once warm add diced onion and saute until translucent and soft. The longer you saute the onions the better. If you want even more garlic flavor you could add some minced fresh garlic at this point.

Onions starting to cook

Once the onions have started to soften, add cooked yams. I had two small yams in the freezer left over from Thanksgiving! I had been wondering what to do with them and figured this would be a good use for them since they wouldn't be that good re-heated and eaten on their own.

Add the yams

Smash the yam up with a spoon. Add more olive oil if the mixture is getting dry or sticking to the bottom of the pan. Make sure the stove is on high, but not too high that it starts to burn. Add some dried basil and the 1 tsp red pepper flakes. Let the onions and yam combine and start to meld with the basil and pepper. For anyone who might be shy of spicy foods let me put your mind at rest. The red pepper flake will not add that much heat, but will give the tiniest hint of spice and bring out some of the other flavors.

Smash up the yam

Next add the canned diced tomatoes. I used half regular and half fire roasted. Stir to combine all the ingredients.

Pour in the chicken stock. Add the roasted tomatoes and garlic and the remainder of the dried basil.

Turn down the heat to low/ medium low at this point to let the entire thing simmer for about 20 to 30 minutes. This allows the flavors to mix and intensify as some of the liquid cooks off. Give the soup a taste and add more basil or salt to taste. Be careful with the salt because as you let the soup cook it will get saltier.

Once the soup has simmered for a while pull out the immersion blender and blend. If you don't have an immersion blender (in picture) then you can use a regular blender and blend batches of the soup. Make sure if you use a regular blender to be careful. Blending hot liquids can lead to explosions so let steam escape as you blend!

Blending the soup - keep the end fully immersed or else soup will splatter up towards you!

Depending on your time constraints let the soup simmer for another 20 to 30 minutes. Now comes and optional part! If you want your soup extra creamy you can had half and half or heavy cream (using anything else will make the soup too watery, if you want to avoid the fat just skip this step). I was planning on freezing half the soup so I removed the portion I wanted to freeze before adding the dairy product. I have never found dairy based soups freeze and thaw very well. 

Half and Half

Stir in Half and Half

 Serve with toast or cheese and sprinkle basil on top!

 I thought the soup was excellent! I may in the future tweak the recipe a little, but nothing major. If you don't have yams you could also use carrots - about 4. You would cook these with the onions. Here you would not  add the diced tomatoes until the carrots are soft. Or you could roast the carrots ahead of time (or at the same time as the tomatoes, but in a separate pan). I hope you enjoy!

Chicken soup (For when an apple a day does work!)

I just recently came down with a cold, so what else would you eat when afflicted by a cold? Chicken soup of course! I personally, despite being  under the weather would much rather make my own soup over heating canned soup (despite it taking a lot less energy). First, I can add more chicken and vegetables in the soup. Second, I also know how much sodium is in the soup and finally it just tastes better. I make soups frequently but rarely follow a recipe. This approach can back fire when trying to make cream based soups. So for me soup making tends to be a "let's clean out the fridge and see what might go together" type of cooking activity. This I warn you can be rather a risky business. I have definitely made some soups that I don't like. Chicken soup is pretty basic, and can be quite cost effective considering how many meals you get out of a pot compared to a can of soup!

Here is what I did:

2 poblano chilies (roasted in the oven, skinned, de-seeded and chopped up)

1 diced onion

3 minced cloves of garlic

5 celery stalks chopped

6 chopped carrots

1/3 cup wild rice

2/3 cup Trader Joe's Brown rice medley

2 cooked chicken breasts chopped (I boiled them)

Turmeric (helps brighten the color - naturally!) 

olive oil

chicken stock (I used 4 cups

water

Poblanos

Saute onions, garlic, celery, carrots and wild rice in olive oil and turmeric until the carrots are just starting to soften. Add brown rice medley, chicken stock and 1 cups of water. Add poblano chilies. Cook til rice is just turning tender. Add water if you need more liquid. The rice mixture will absorb some of the liquid and some will cook off. You can also just use more chicken broth if you want. Season as you wish with herbs and spices of your choice!

Brown Rice, Black Barley and Dikon Radish Seeds

I typically don't add salt until I am eating a bowl of soup. This ensures the soup does get overly salty. While most may not think of whipping up a pot of soup at a drop of a hat, I will say it really isn't that hard and can be an entire meal if you add enough stuff to the pot. Every time I make soup it comes out a little different because as stated I rarely a recipe. In my opinion it is best just to experiment. What is good to remember however is the order of when you add  ingredients. Obviously really hard vegetables and hard beans will need to cook the longest. While tender vegetables can be added at the very last minute. Also if you are going to use rice or pasta best to for the first time have it al dente, because every time you re-heat the soup it will soften. I froze half the pot to keep it fresh, but ended up defrosting it two days later. I got about 10 meals out of the pot.

More Brussels Sprouts with White Bean Mash!

I think I have mentioned that ESFSW (my bf) have been trying to cook on Saturday evenings. It gives us a chance to cook together, enjoy a beer in the process as we prep food, relax and save a little money. If roommates are around they are welcome to join us. I enjoy cooking and it is some much better when I can do it for more than 1 person. We typically finish out the evening by playing some games or watching a movie. I know we could be hitting the town and painting it red, but honestly that is neither of our style's. And while we have made this a regular thing we don't ever mind rearrange plans to go out with friends!

Rough Recipe: Mustard Braised Brussels Sprouts (inspired from Smitten Kitchen's Dijon-Braised Brussels Sprouts)

Brussels Sprouts on their Stalks

Mustard (and no this isn't me making mustard!)

I would like to note that I am a lazy recipe follower and I didn't follow SK's recipe (linked above) directly because I didn't have heavy cream, white wine, parsley or shallots! And embarrassingly I had just been at the store and could have easily picked up these items. I had not actually looked at the recipe in great depth before my shopping trip (I also rarely make shopping lists!) I saw the title: Djion Braised Brussels Sprouts and said "Check!" Well there were actually quite a few items I needed in addition. So here is my version to the best of my memory:

Rough Recipe: Djion Braised Brussels Sprouts (inspired by Smitten Kitchen's Version)

Brussels Sprouts
Butter
Pearl onions/shallots
Stone Ground Mustard
apple cider vinegar
water
Sugar in the Raw

Clean and trim the Brussels Sprouts cut in half. Melt butter in skillet, when melted place Brussels sprouts cut side down in the butter and brown the cut side. Turn over to brown the other side. Add about a 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar with 1/4 cup water and a little bit of sugar (to tone down the strong acid taste of the vinegar), I use Sugar in the Raw, typically one package works well, aka ~ 1 Tbs. Really any sugar will do. This watered down vinegar sugar mixture is the substitute for the wine. Add thinly slice onions/shallots and mustard. It is best to stir the mustard in the liquid before adding the mustard so it is fully mixed. Now I used a generous amount of mustard, I am talking about almost an 1/8 of a cup. While I might be terrible allergic to mustard flowers I can't get enough mustard in my food however I do draw some lines. I don't do anything crazy like mustard peanut butter sandwiches...but I digress! So after adding the onions/shallots,

Rough Recipe: White Bean Mash (Tweaked from Nigella Lawson's White Bean Mash Recipe)...if you find yourself not being able to chew or want a simple white bean soup recipe check out this recipe.

Canned white beans + some of the juice (cannelli - not navy beans)

Olive oil

Lemon juice

Lemon Zest

garlic cloves

In a saute pan, dump a can or two (may want to go for the two to start off, once you taste this you won't be able to stop eating it!). Add minced garlic (I tend to add 3 to 4 large cloves personally!) and cook over medium heat until the beans are warmed through and begin to soften. Add some olive oil, lemon juice and lemon zest. I love love love lemons, so I am rather heavy handed with the lemon juice. It is best to use juice from lemons not the stuff you find in those funny plastic lemons or in a bottle, but if lemons are insanely expensive or unavailable the bottled stuff will do. As everything cooks take a spoon and mash the beans as you stir. If the whole mess starts to look a little dry add a little liquid, I recommend some of the juice the beans came in or if you dumped that add some water. Once the mess is mashed enough for your tastes it is ready to serve (unless you were too heavy handed with adding liquid - let it continue to cook off). You may need to add salt to taste to bring out the flavors. 

~

White bean mash goes with almost anything in my mind and is as tasty if not more than mashed potatoes. If you like the dish I strongly recommend you reading Nigella Lawson's write up in here cook book, Nigella Express, because it is so descriptive and sensuous. We paired it with the Djion Brussels Sprouts and grilled steaks. The meal was finished off with a good malty beer (a brown ale).

Roasted Lemony Cauliflower and Cauliflower Greens

As mentioned in my previous post I purchased a beautiful cauliflower from the local Sunshineville Farmers Market. I had plans for half of it but it was huge and I knew that I didn't need that much curried cauliflower and potatoes and I had all these cauliflower greens that where sort of wilted and needed to be cooked if I was going to eat them. Yes you can eat the Cauliflower greens! Typically you don't get the greens when you guy a cauliflower head in the grocery store. But they are a real treat and taste just like the cauliflower but they are green, which adds a bit of color to a meal that could turn completely white depending what you are pairing with the cauliflower. I also had some onions that had been soaking in lemon juice + zest for days and needed a purpose. What else would anyone do but roast all these items together!

So I cut up the cauliflower into slightly larger than manageable bites and put them in a bowl, I then took the lemon infused onions and tossed those in on top. For good measure I added some more lemon zest and juice (one can never have too much lemon in my opinion!) and several cloves of minced garlic. A decent pour of olive oil, a exuberant dash of salt, and daring addition of white pepper and a heavy handed addition of dill. Taking clean hands toss all these items so that they are well mixed and everything is coated with lemon juice and olive oil. I then poured the contents of my bowl into a foil lined baking pan and placed it in a pre-heated 450 F oven. I roasted the vegetables for 35 minutes. I wanted cauliflower to bet a nice toasted color on top and decently soft - although not mushy! I also mixed the them half way through their roasting. The bits at the bottom can't hog all the olive oil!

I ended up eating these with some fish, which in retrospect went against my rule that meals must be colorful, but it was quite tasty. The left overs I continued to eat all by themselves over the next couple days. I must say the combination was best the night they were roasted but still delicious in the following days.

Steaks without a grill! ...and in a flash?

Steaks without a grill....crazy I said, CRAZY! Steaks must be done on a grill, preferably on a charcoal grill, although in a pinch gas will work. Well a couple years back due to my LOVE of Nigella Lawson's writing and her food show I purchased her book: Nigella Express, (I also own How to be a Domestic Goddess, of which I am sure you will hear more of in the future).

So I wanted to cook a nice dinner for my bf and I wanted to include steak. So I turned to Nigella to find some inspiration. She flash cooks a steak in a frying pan and then post-cook marinate it. My first attempt at the recipe was not all that successful however in the post analysis I realized that getting the proper cut of meat is essential. In Sunshineville there is no local butcher, which means trying to find Although I have recently heard of a few places that I need to check out (one of which is Home Grown). Luckily however there is a Bristol Farms near by and I thought well they should at least have higher quality meat and potentially more choices than the pre-packaged cuts at other grocery stores near by. Well I went into the Bristol Farms after 9:30pm and there weren't too many people in the store. I honestly wasn't sure when they closed. The butcher counter looked closed since they had covered most of their meats for the night. But there was a nice guy behind the counter that asked me if I needed some help. After a little bit of an pleasant but awkward exchange with him (I was exhausted and not processing at top speed) I walked out with about 2 lbs of nice looking rump roast.

The following night was cooking night! I mixed up the post-searing marinade in a pie plate (recipe below) and I sliced two steaks off my rump roast about 1 in each. They looked small but knew with everything else we were having they would be enough. I brushed each piece with some olive oil on each side of the steaks and place them in a hot pan (no oil added here). I let the steaks cook about 2 minutes each side and then another minute on each side.The steaks should be fairly rare, the marinate will finish the cooking. Next place each steak place them in the marinate and let sit on each side for 2 minutes. Serve with sides of your choice!

Rough Recipe: Lemon Marinade (Inspired by Nigella Lawson's Lemon and Thyme Marinade)

Olive Oil

Lemon juice (equal amount to the olive oil)

Lemon zest

garlic cloves crushed

sea-salt or kosher salt

fresh ground pepper

thyme (fresh is better - although all I had at the time was dried)

Mix the above mentioned ingredients in a shallow dish (a pie plate works well). When steaks have cooked (they should be rare) place them in the marinade for 2 minutes each side.

To wrap up, I would like to say that if lemon and beef seem like a strange combination, I urge you to try it before knocking it. It is is different to be sure, but in a delicious refreshing sort of way. It does only work with thin steaks however; don't try post-marinading a huge T-bone! Also for all of you who may not think ahead when it comes to dinner, the post marinading trick means you can have steak even if you didn't have the forethought (or a working time machine!) to started marinading steaks in the morning or the night before. Not to say that every steak eaten needs to be marinaded!