Spaghetti with Easy Cherry Tomatoes Sauce

My cherry tomato plants gave me some bumper crop last season. Carlos is not a fan of cherry tomatoes so I am the only one eating it. I like eating them raw and sometimes I just cut them up and put it in my pasta. This is a very fast and easy meal to prepare. While you are boiling the pasta you can prepare the sauce and when pasta is ready all you have to do is mixing it into the sauce. The juicy sweet cherry tomatoes burst open in warm olive oil, creating a luxuriously silky sauce and voila the meal comes together in less than 20 minutes.

Spaghetti and Meatball Sauce

I made this a couple of month ago. I don’t prepare dish like this often but if I do I will usually make a large batch of it and freeze some of it up. This way I can just warm it up and have it with spaghetti or make it into meatball sub. Instead of just ground beef I added some ground turkey to it too. It turns out really nice. Mmmm feeling like having this today. Maybe I should thaw out some and have it for dinner tonight.

Panettone Apple Bread Pudding

Carlos is not a fan of bread pudding that is why I hardly make any but since I have some leftover homemade Panettone from Christmas so I thought he might like it if I use it in the bread pudding. True enough, he loves it a lot and he finishes most of it. There are many variation of bread pudding out there. Some uses white bread, croissant, donuts, baguette or brioche. Panettone is similar to brioche but with raisings, candied orange and lemon peel in it so it is great to use it in bread pudding. I added extra diced apple in it but you can always omit it.

Beef and Spinach Lasagna

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas celebration with family and friends and in a few days it will be the end of 2013. I hope year 2014 will be a better year for us. We won’t be doing much for the New Year as Diana won’t be home. I miss that girl. I wish she live nearer to us :( It will be a low key affair for us except I am looking forward to indulge myself with some Caviar that I ordered online.

I will be flying back to Malaysia in January and looking forward to spend some time with my family and I too hope to meet up with my blogging friends when I am home. Enough of my ranting and let’s get on to this awesome pasta.

I made this with Diana when she was home. I am not a big fan of lasagnas that are loaded with too much meat or cheese so I decided to add some spinach to it. It has a good balance of cheese, meat and veggie in it. I cheated a bit and used a good quality store bought marinara sauce as a base. You can always use homemade one if you have it.

 

Focaccia with Roasted Garlic, Pickle Peppers and Olives

It has been a long while since I bake bread. Since the weather is much warmer now I decided to make some foccacia to have it with our beef stew. I used my old recipe but this time I added 1 cup of whole wheat flour to the dough to make it a bit healthier. This is easy to make and I think it is a great alternative to garlic bread. As for the topping you can put anything you like to it.

Pasta Fagioli

I don’t cook a lot of soup but it is always nice to have a bowl or two during winter. This soup was one of the many Italian dishes that I learned from a friend many years ago but I never thought of making it again until my good friend Shereen tasted it at Olive Garden. I told her I know how to make this soup but it might not be exactly the same as the one she tasted but I will try to replica it. So this here is the recipe and hope it is what she is looking for.

Braised Beef Ragu with Rigatoni

This was the very first dish that I learned from my ex a long time ago. He was an Italian Chef and he can cook some mean Italian dishes. I like cooking this dish as it freeze really well. We love this slow braising beef in rich tomato sauce and it so tender that it falls apart when you break it with fork. It is simple, rustic and delicious. I usually use some of the sauce and freeze the rest for another time. The sauce tends to thickens when you reheat it so remember to add some water or pasta water to it until your get the consistency that you like.

Spaghetti Aglio Olio with Mushroom

I remember the first time I had Aglio Olio I don’t have a very good experience. The pasta dish was swimming in oil and I have to return it back to the kitchen. I never order this pasta dish from the restaurants again. I prefer to cook it myself as I can control the amount of oil I put in there.

Aglio Olio means stir-fry with “Garlic and Oil” in Italian, and one of the simplest pasta dishes that you can whip up with very few ingredients like good quality olive oil, garlic and lots of black pepper. My sister Elizabeth is not a fan of pasta with loads of cream or sauce so this is her favorite. I cooked this for our lunch and added some mushroom to it.

Chicken and Spinach Calzone

I prepared this for our lunch over the weekend. A little change from our regular homemade pizza I decided to make calzone. Normally calzone is made from pizza dough but I made this with Pillsbury biscuit dough. I always have a tube of biscuits dough in my fridge for days like this when I wanted to make something quick. These were a nice size and easy to eat just with our hands. You can change this recipe to include any fillings you like and it is a great use for leftovers meat you have in hand.

Vanilla Panna Cotta with Meyer Lemon Compote

I love having this type of dessert especially now when the weather is getting much warmer. It is silky, soothingly smooth and can be the perfect end to most meals. Since I have still have Meyer lemons I made some compote to go with it. The sweet sourish with a hint of bitterness of the compote goes so well with the light panna cotta.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish my mom in Malaysia and all the wonderful mothers out there, Happy Mother's Day!

Smiles of happy sunshine,

Arms of everlasting luv,

Touch of sweet roses,

There is magic in the air

Whenever you're there,

Mother, everything to you I owe,

May all pleasures of life come your way.

Happy Mother’s Day

Mix Fruits and Pistachio Biscotti

I always have soft spots for dried fruits. I like adding them in cakes and cookies. I know, some of you hate fruit cake but I just love it but it has to be the homemade kind though. These biscotti are no acceptation. I just love it!! These twice baked biscotti are crunchy and packed with dried fruits. I put 2 pieces in Carlos lunch bag everyday as I think this is much healthier than the store bought granola bar.

Meatballs in Mushroom Sauce

Carlos and I like this dish a lot. Sometimes we just have it with some sauté vegetables or serve it over pasta. It is so versatile that you can even eat it with rice or make sandwich out of it. Instead of frying the meatballs, I used the oven baking method to cook and brown the meatballs. If you have a large crowd to feed this will be a great dish to serve.The ground beef is cheap and so is the pasta. This recipe serves 4-5 so you need to double or triple the ingredients if you need to feed a large crowd.

Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta with Balsamic Strawberries

Vanilla panna cotta is such a refreshingly light yet extremely popular Italian dessert. These softly set and creamy Italian puddings are so silky smooth that they are just delightful to have at the end of a meal and they look really elegant too. It can be served simply with any type of fruit toppings, caramel sauce and even chocolate sauce and it is always one of my favorite desserts. Since I still have some vanilla beans I decided to use them to make this panna cotta instead of vanilla extract. As for the topping I macerate the strawberries in balsamic vinegar with a bit of sugar. The tangy taste of the strawberries goes so well with the silky panna cotta.

Spinach Lasagna Roll Ups

I realized I’ve been cooking quite a bit of Asian food recently. So it is time to make some Western comfort food for a change. What can be more comforting than Lasagna? With just the two of us, we can’t have all of it. I gave some to my neighbor and freeze some for Diana too.

Ingredients:

12 sheets dried lasagna noodles
2 ½ cups pasta sauce

Filling:

3 links turkey sausage
1 large onion – finely diced
2 cloves garlic - chopped
2 packet 10 oz frozen chopped spinach – thawed and squeeze out all the water
1 tub 15 oz skim ricotta cheese
3 tbsp parmesan cheese
1 egg
½ tsp red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper to taste

Onions and Pine Nuts Focaccia

I always like focaccia. I’ve learned to bake this bread when I took up Italian baking lesson at New York Culinary School with the famous pastry chef and cook books writer Nick Malgieri. It is rustic and very easy bread to make which requires no kneading to the dough. The most common topping to this bread are olives, anchovies and rosemary but you can actually put any type of topping to it. I will usually put fresh basil and tomatoes but today I used onions, pine nuts and parmesan cheese. We had this freshly baked bread with some salad for our dinner.

Dough Ingredients:

4 cups of flour
1 tsp salt
1 envelope/ 7 grm active dry yeast
1 2/3 cups warm water (110 degree F)
3 tbsp of olive oil

Eggs in Purgatory/Poached Eggs in Tomato Sauce

This is something that I learned from an Italian chef a long time ago. He told me that his grandmother used to serve this as a quick, light lunch so that they can all get back to the farm to continue working. I am not sure why such a dramatic name for such a simple Southern Italian Dish. Basically it is just poached eggs in tomato sauce. For this dish I like using over-ripe tomatoes which are plenty during summer. With just a few ingredients you get a healthy robust flavor meal. Remember to get some fresh Italian bread before you make this as you’re going to need it to slop up all the sauce.

Chicken Parmesan

Chicken parmesan is Italian comfort food for me. For years I’ve been making this dish. Not authentically Italian as we didn’t server with spaghetti but we will have it with salad or with bread. My version is much simpler and I serve the marinara sauce on the side. The key ingredients to this dish is the flavorful breading and the flavor of parmesan cheese is the magic ingredient that gives the dish its distinctive smell and taste. The ingredients are nothing complicated and you will find most of it in your kitchen or you can easily purchase it from a store. Do try out this dish and you will be pleasantly surprised with the delicious results.

Ingredients:

2 boneless-skinless chicken breasts
Salt and pepper to taste
½ cup of Italian breadcrumbs
¼ cup of grated parmesan cheese
1 egg (beaten)
1 cup of marinara sauce

1. Pound chicken breast until it’s about ½” thick throughout. Season it with salt and pepper and set it aside.
2. In a plate combine breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese. Crack an egg into a bowl and beat it slightly.
3. In a frying pan warm up a tablespoon of butter and some olive oil to pan fry the chicken. Dip the chicken breasts in egg and then in the breadcrumb mixture
4. Put your chicken breasts in a pan and pan fried in medium heat until browned on both sides. Drain the oil on paper towel.
5. Serve with your favorite marinara sauce.