Giant Scallop Pasta with White wine sauce

Recently, Kevin signed up for a costco membership. I love costco...I think it might be because of the free tastings. Most of the time, we don't end up buying a lot. We never really end up buying too much since we're just two people.

While walking through the frozen aisles, we discovered a bag of frozen "dry" giant scallops. Dry scallops mean they haven't been soaked in sodium tripolyphosphate (STP) to prolong their life. When soaked in STP, it causes the scallops to absorb water and get heavier. It means you are partly paying for water. However, does this still apply to frozen scallops?

So anyway, we bought a bag of these giant scallops. I originally wanted to bake them in a buttery white wine sauce with bread crumbs to soak up the sauce, but got too lazy to think of a side dish to go with it. So I made pasta with it.

1/2 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup white wine
1/2 lemon, juiced
1 tablespoon minced shallot
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup butter
1 pound sea scallops
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup Heavy cream (optional) or milk
Spinach
Spaghetti pasta

1. Cook your choice of pasta al dente.
2. In a skillet over medium heat, mix the chicken broth, wine, lemon juice, shallot, butter, and garlic.
3. When the sauce is gently boiling, put scallops into the sauce to cook. About 1-2 minutes each side (depending on how cooked you like them). Usually I like them just opaque. Remove them when cooked to your preferred doneness.
4. Add heavy cream (if using) into the sauce and boil until slightly reduced.
5. Optional step (if using heavy cream): you can use cornstarch mixed with a little bit of water to thicken the sauce quickly.
6. Add spinach. Toss pasta in the sauce. Add peppers and salt to taste.
7. Enjoy pasta with scallop on top.

I tried a variation of this recipe. I made this recipe twice. The first time is as written, the second time I tried a "healthier" version. I substituted the heavy cream with milk, and used margarine instead of butter. I preferred using butter over margarine. But liked using milk instead of heavy cream. I'm usually not a big fan of tossed pastas. I like having sauce, but this was good. It would be even better if I had bread to sop up some of the sauce. This was a heavy but satisfying meal.

"Throw Everything In" Pasta with Rosée sauce

You know that commercial for Olive Garden where the parents visit their daughter who is in college? And every time they visit, the parents take the daughter and her roommates to Olive Garden because they like to know that their daughter is "taken care of"...and she fake bumps her dad and says "Daddy!!!" and feels all embarassed. I've seen that commercial about a hundred times. One of the times we watched it, and actually paid attention to the food they were advertising. There was a dish with tomatoes and sausages and Kev said "Hmmmmm..." .I've never been to Olive Garden, since they do not have one in Quebec. People who have been tell me it's not that great, but why do they always look soo yummy? So on a weeknight, i decided to make pasta with tomatoes and sausages, but ended up tossing in pretty much everything I had in it. :)



Pasta, cooked al dente
1 can of diced tomato
brocoli florets
Any color pepper, I used yellow, chopped
4 Italian sausage, I like the spicy kind, casing removed
1 1/2 cup heavy cream
1 medium onion, chopped
chili pepper flakes and parmesan to taste
Pepper and salt

1. In a large skillet, cook sausages. Add peppers, brocoli, and onions. Cook a few minutes until peppers, brocoli, and onions are tender.
2. Drain the can of diced tomato, and add tomato to the skillet.
3. Add heavy cream and simmer until thick.
4. Add pepper and salt to taste.
5. Serve with parmesan and chili pepper flakes.
   

I'm a pasta lover...because it's carbs. I also especially love pasta with a creamy sauce, so there was no doubt that I would love this. This turned out to have a rosée sauce, it was creamy and yummy! Kevin liked it too. The thing with pasta with creamy sauces is that it makes me sleepy because it's such a heavy and comforting dish. I loved having a lot of vegetables in it.

Pasta with Sausage and Sweet Peppers

Here's a post that I am revisiting. I already posted this recipe in Sept 2008, but decided to repost it with a picture of my own. Back then, I had just started blogging about the food I was making in our kitchen, so I never thought to take pictures.

Kevin is a simple man, especially when it comes to cooking. His favorite recipes need to have few ingredients, simple instructions, and especially take less than 30 mins to make. One day, I had dinner plans with my friend and Kevin had to make his own dinner. When I got back, he told me he made a yummy pasta dish. A week later, I was feeling under the weather and came home early to rest. I crashed so hard that I didn't even hear my cell ring, which was on the night table next to me. Kevin had called me 3 times. He probably wanted to ask what I wanted for dinner. He finally came home with all the ingredients to make his yummy pasta. He calls this "his specialty". When he makes this, I'm almost not allowed in the kitchen.

• 1 pound Italian sausage, casing removed and crumbled
• 1 any colour bell peppers, chopped
• 8 ounces farfalle pasta or other pasta (penne, macaroni...)
• 1 cup beef broth
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain.
2. While pasta is cooking, cook sausage and peppers in large skillet over medium heat until sausage is brown and juices run clear. Drain sausage mixture and return it to the pan. Pour in the broth, season with black pepper and bring to a boil.
3. Toss pasta with sausage sauce and serve.

If you use too much pasta, the dish will end up bland. You can add more beef broth or some salt. I usually crumble some aged cheddar or mozzarella or parmesan. I think i'd also like to add some onions into it too. You could add different spices, i've put cayenne pepper in mine. This is such a basic dish, you can change it up any way you like. But Kevin likes it simple.

Mac & Cheese with Italian Sausage

So the stupid groundhogs announced that we won't be having an early spring. What a downer! This calls for some comfort food. When I used to live with Rachelle and we were both lazy and just not willing to learn to cook proper meals (I mean really...sometimes i'd eat a big bowl of cereal for dinner), we would make pasta with tons of vegetables (frozen, couldn't be bothered with fresh ones) and of course a lot of cheese. I'm really glad i'm only semi-lactose intolerant. Cheese has never had an effect on me...besides bliss. When Rachelle made Macaroni and Cheese, it gave me a big craving for it. I made mine with some leftover sausage we had in the freezer, which Kevin didn't like because they were "crazy" flavors.



2 cups macaroni pasta or fusili or any other pasta, cooked
cheddar cheese
1 cup of milk
2 italian sausages, casing removed
1 small onion
garlic
1 tbsp all purpose flour
salt & pepper

1. Preheat oven to 300. Cook pasta until al dente, drain and put aside
2. On a skillet, cook sausage, onion, and garlic.
3. Add milk and flour. Boil until thick
4. Add half of cheese. Mix in pasta. Add salt and pepper, if needed.
5. Put in an oven safe casserol dish. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top.
6. Bake 20-30 min, until cheese is crispy and/or browned.

As you can see from my picture, I couldn't get the darned cheese to brown. I even switched my oven to broil. This is good, but I think I miss the medley of vegetables...This is an extremely easy recipe...you can't get it wrong. You can pretty much add anything you want. Rachelle liked to add a can of tuna or salmon in the mix. You can all any spices you want and many different kinds of cheeses. It's foolproof. Enjoy!

Shrimp Scampi

Shrimps were on sale a few weeks ago, so I found a shrimp scampi recipe. Before this, I always thought of scampi as a species of lobster, but after searching it on wikipedia, I discovered that it is often known as a cooking method in the US. Scampi is often the menu name of a shrimp dish in Italian-American cuisine. It is a dish of shrimp served in garlic butter and dry white wine served with bread and/or pasta. The word "scampi" is often construed as that style of preparation rather than an ingredient, with that preparation being called "shrimp scampi", and with variants such as "chicken scampi".




1 (8 ounce) package angel hair pasta
1/2 cup butter
2 cloves garlic, sliced (more if you like it)
1 1/2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/3 cup white wine
3/4 cup dry bread crumbs
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

Parsley flakes for garnish

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add angel hair pasta and return pot to boil. Cook until al dente. Drain well.


2. In a large saucepan, melt butter, saute garlic until tender, remove garlic and discard or keep if you prefer. Add shrimp and cook until colored pink. Stir in white wine. The bread crumbs are used as thickening, so stir in a little at a time until desired thickness is reached.


3. Serve shrimp over angel hair pasta, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.

Man! This stuff was yummy, but so heavy. I scaled down the recipe to serve only myself, since Kev was at work when I made this for lunch at home. I put in extra garlic with a dash of garlic powder too. I also kept the garlic slices in the dish instead of discarding them. I love garlic. If you don't have dry white wine, some people recommend using chicken broth. I used plain breadcrumbs, but i've read reviews where people used italian seasoned breadcrumbs, but I didn't want to mix flavors.

Review: PC's Best Ever Meat Lasagna

"Lasagna lovers, we proudly present to you the ultimate upgrade. We've prepared it with paper-thin sheets of delicate egg pasta layered with a generous selection of premium authentic fillings. Our recipe includes beef and Italian-style spicy pork sausage (50% more meat than our regular lasagna), creamy béchamel sauce, roasted garlic sautéed rapini, rustic tomato sauce and six delectable cheeses. One taste will convince you that this irresistibly flavourful masterpiece is indeed the best ever in our line of excellent PC lasagnas."

When we run out of ideas for dinner during the week, we sometimes turn to prepared frozen food, like frozen lasagna. We usually buy the regular PC meat lasagna, but I much prefer the PC seafood lasagna. Over the weekend, we were in the lasagna aisle and Kev said he saw the feature fridge with President's Choice's new lasagna. They call it "Our Best Ever Meat Lasagna" for $14.99. It is slightly heavier than the regular meat lasagna we get for $7.99. The spicy pork sausage, roasted garlic, béchamel sauce really got me. So Kev agreed to give it a try.

On the day Kevin made it, he worked from home because he had a dentist appointment, so it worked out well. He put the lasagna in an hour before I was expected home. So the lasagna was ready by the time i took off my shoes.

At first glance, I could tell that there wasn't a lot of cheese on the top. I'm a cheese fiend. I know there's 6 kinds of cheese, but for $14.99 c'mon...don't be cheap. It's supposed to live up to its name. As I cut into this lasagna, it didn't feel as firm as their regular meat lasagna. Perhaps it was too hot and I should have let it sit on the counter for 10 more minutes. Scooping it into our plates with a spatula proved that the lasagna was not firm. It fell apart. The cheese slid off, sauce pouring out of every side...it was a mess. Still...presentation is nice to have, but the true test is the taste. The mixture of ground beef and ground pork sausage was...a meat mixture. I couldn't really tell what was in it besides that it was some animal meat. I like the mix of tomato sauce with the béchamel. I'm a sucker for creamy sauces. As for the 6 kind of cheeses...it could have been just one, i wouldn't have known the difference.

The lasagna was pretty good, but not good enough to pay almost double what we pay for a regular lasagna. If the only upside is the béchamel, I could easily just buy béchamel or make my own and pour some on the regular lasagna.

Sorry, not really the Best Ever Meat Lasagna, Mr. President. Try again.

Roasted Ratatouille Pasta

Since learning that I like to try new recipes, it has opened up a wide range of conversation topics between me and some co-workers. Over the summer, my co-worker Mary told me about roasted Garlic. As many know, I love anything that makes my breath smell. Garlic and Onions are my favorite. Needless to say, I was all ears when Mary told me how to make roasted garlic and what i could do with it. Then she mentioned a new recipe she had just tried and recommended i try it since it has the roasted garlic in it. It was a recipe she got from the Rachael Ray Show. I honestly have never watched her show...her voice just annoys me...how do I know if I haven't seen the show...from those dumb Dunkin' Donuts commercials. One night, I was watching TV with Kev and that commercial came up. Midway through the commercial, Kev exclaimed "she has an annoying voice". Right then, I knew Kev and I were meant to be together. LOL

Recipes with several steps, I reserve for quiet weekends. I can better cook in peace without having to stress that i don't have the food on the table in less than 30 minutes. The only Ratatouille I've ever seen is on the Disney movie Ratatouille. lol I imagined having to slice everthing into thin slices...but I didn't need to slice anything. Well, here's the recipe:

• Extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO)for drizzling
• 1 head garlic
• 1 medium eggplant, ends removed, peeled and cut into small chunks
• 2 to 3 medium zucchini, ends removed, quartered and into small chunks
• 2 red bell peppers, cored, seeds removed and cut into small chunks
• 1 large onion, cut into small chunks
• 4 sprigs thyme, leaves removed
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes
• 1 pound whole wheat penne
• 1/2 cup Italian parsley, chopped
• 1/2 cup (a large handful) grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more to pass at the table
  

1. Preheat oven to 450ºF
2. Cut a sliver off the top of the garlic head just large enough to expose the cloves. Tear off a large square of aluminum foil and place the garlic in the center. Drizzle a small amount of EVOO over the head and wrap the foil up around it. Place in the oven and roast until golden brown and tender, about 45 minutes.
3. While the garlic is roasting, cut up the veggies and place everything except the tomatoes on one or two large baking sheets, along with the thyme leaves.
4. Once the garlic has been roasting for about 15 minutes, drizzle the veggies with EVOO and season them with some salt and freshly ground black pepper. Roast them in the oven until tender and caramelized, about 30 minutes.
5. Once the veggies have been in the oven about 10 minutes, place the tomatoes onto another baking sheet, drizzle them with EVOO and hit them with some salt and freshly ground black pepper. Toss them into the oven with the other veggies and roast until they've burst and shriveled up slightly, 15-20 minutes.
6. Once the veggies have about 10 minutes left to go, drop the pasta into the boiling water and cook to al dente according to package directions. Before draining the pasta, ladle about 3/4 cup or so of the pasta cooking liquid into a large serving bowl. Drain the pasta and reserve.
7. Once the garlic is done roasting, allow it to cool enough to handle, then hold the head in your hand over the bowl with the pasta water and squeeze out all of the roasted cloves into the bowl. Add the tomatoes and mash everything together.
8. Add the roasted veggies, drained pasta, parsley and grated Parmigiano to the bowl and toss it all to combine.
9. Pass some additional Parmigiano-Reggiano at the table along with the bowl of pasta.
   

Now for my review...the recipe was a bit bland. But in its defense, I completely forgot to put the thyme in, even though i had bought some. I also omitted eggplants, because we just don't care for them. I had to sprinkle some more salt and added more cheese. Other than that, it's a decent and simple recipe. However, next time, i'll double the roasted garlic...I could hardly taste it. After roasting the garlic, my kitchen was deliciously fragant of garlic...mouth watering. Once i squeezed the garlic out, i just wanted to spread it on a baguette with butter...hmmm...

Macaroni and Beef strips experiment.

Last weekend in Ottawa, Kevin’s dad made us a yummy hamburger macaroni dish for lunch. It looked so simple, but it was good. So I suggested to Kevin that we make Beef Macaroni last night for dinner. It just seemed like a quick and simple dish, especially after a long day at work and then a workout at the gym. Kevin suggested we use beef strips instead of ground beef. I didn’t really care.

I’ve never tenderized my meat, because I don’t really know how besides super salting it. My dear friend, Judyfoodie, told me about using baking soda to tenderize my meat. I’ve never used baking soda for anything else besides deodorizing my fridge and garbage can. Lol So it seemed odd to use it on something I’m going to eat.

I normally follow recipes when I cook. I’m not a great cook. I can tweak a recipe to my taste, but I always need a base recipe…to lead me in the right direction. For this I had none. I debated on how to make this…soy sauce or beef broth…onion soup mix? I finally pretty much used whatever was on hand. (I did take a picture, but as I was taking the picture, Kevin said I was weird and that the food didn’t even look nice. So that kind of annoyed me, so I didn’t even upload the pic onto the computer.)

I didn’t use measurements…I just did, a bit of this and a bit of that…tasting it to see what I needed.

• 2-3 cups of Macaroni pasta (cook as directed)
• Beef strips
• Soy sauce
• Hoisin sauce
• Black pepper
• One onion
• Long green beans
• Minced garlic

While I minced the garlic and cut the onion and long green, I mixed baking soda into the meat and let it sit for about 10 minutes,. After that’s done, I rinsed the beef under cold water a few times. In the pan it goes with the garlic. I added the onions after a minute or two. Then added the green beans. Shake, shake, shake some soy sauce. When beef was cooked, I added the macaroni,. Mix it up. I tasted it and it was bland, but was afraid that using too much soy sauce would make it too salty. So I looked in the fridge and grabbed the hoisin sauce, since it has a sweet note to it…Squeeeeeze…mix it up some more. A bit of black pepper and it was done.

The verdict wasn’t that great. Lol I actually debated on writing a blog about it or not. But I decided that cooking is a learning experience. One of my first mistakes was that my long green beans were not cooked enough. Sure they had a crunch to it, but I’m pretty sure that the crunch meant it was raw. I’ve never cooked green beans before. So, lesson learned. Other than that, I thought that the macaroni came out okay. It didn’t taste like Kevin’s dad’s, but it was edible. Kevin, on the other hand, told me he didn’t like it. Anyway…besides the long beans being too uncooked, I kind of liked it. The beef strips were tender and not tough. Thanks Judyfoodie. J