A New Twist to Ziti

I can’t say I am terribly fond of baked ziti. It tends to be dry and a bit tasteless to me. I am very find of Italian dishes but baked ziti seems to be very… American. lol. American style is great for a citizen watch or architecture, but I think American food tends to be a little boring. I prefer Italian and Chinese dishes which tend to be more flavorful. But baked ziti is dull dull dull!

So I am always adding little things to ziti to try and perk it up. This latest addition was pretty good– fresh kale.

I removed the stalks from the kale and ripped the leaves into bite-sized pieces. Kale is such a wonderful vegetable. A member of the cruciferous family, kale has plenty of vitamins and antioxidants that help destroy “free-radical” cells– the cells that cause cell mutations which can lead to cancer.

The ziti pasta will readily slurp up the moisture from the kale leaves during the cooking process, so I suggest adding a bit of water or additional tomatoe sauce to the mix. Cover tightly and bake. The kale added a nice tang to the otherwise bland dish.

How about you? Do you have any ideas for sprucing up a ziti dish?

Perfect Meat Spaghetti Sauce

I recently wrote an article about tips for making the perfect spaghetti sauce with ground beef. I used to make this kind of sauce all the time (I cook mostly Italian dishes) and my sauce is sooooo good. While this kind of sauce is pretty easy to make, there are a few tips that will make it even more luscious.

photo credit: mrjoro

• If you want a low-fat sauce, pre-cook the ground beef and drain it. But realize that by draining the fat, you are removing most of the flavor. It’s true! Ground beef is pretty bland without the savory fat. You can drain MOST of the fat as a nice compromise.
• Use ground chuck, not ground sirloin or ground round. Ground chuck has a bit more fat in it, giving the beef more flavor.
• If you want to leave the fat in the sauce but not have TOO MUCH fat, use a lean beef and do not pre-cook the meat. Instead, shred the ground beef and put it in the tomato sauce and let it cook. Yep, it’s fattier and has more calories, but it’s SOOOOOO good.
• Use only fresh ingredients: fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh garlic, etc.
• Use Roma (plum) tomatoes, not those big round beefsteak tomatoes. Roma are the best tomatoes for sauces, as they are thick and savory. The big beefsteak tomatoes are great for slices on hamburgers, but they are too soupy and flavorless for sauce.
• Pre-cook white onions before you add them to the sauce. When you pre-cook the onions, the heating process caramelizes the onions, drawing out their sweetness and adding flavor.
• Cook the sauce on LOW heat and stir constantly.
• Don’t serve the sauce right away. Allow the sauce to sit in the refrigerator for a day or two, to ripen. This is true for all tomato recipes (especially Manhattan Clam Chowder). For some reason, allowing the sauce to mature for a day or two allows the ingredients to mellow and blend together. Yum.
• Add little touches to the sauce, like freshly grated Parmesan cheese or a drop of Worchestershire sauce. I also add green peppers for color and a little panache.

Italians make the finest foods, don’t you think?! I love Italian cooking and I learned some really good tips growing up in an Italian home. I’m not Italian, though (and I couldn’t even pass as one, not even with some good costume kingdom coupons and a slick disguise). But I can cook like one!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make some sauce! Manja! Manja!

Homemade Pizza That Tastes Good

I’m not exactly a pizza connoisseur, but I love me a good pizza. I’m terribly spoiled, because I live in Upstate New York, where there are more pizza parlors than people (so it seems). I have tried my hand at making a good homemade pizza, but have failed miserably.

My daughter, however, makes GREAT homemade pizza! OMG this is amazing!!!

We made the crust in the bread machine, a simple white bread dough. We allow it to rise and then we stretch it out in a pan. Allow it to rise again.

I always failed in the next step– from there, I always spread the sauce and cheese and baked it. But the daughter baked the bare dough for just a few minutes before she added the toppings. The crust turned out perfect.

Her toppings are amazing. She used canned pizza sauce (not spaghetti sauce!). She chopped up and cooked frozen meatballs. She used plenty of pepperoni. She steamed fresh broccoli. She slathered on mozzarella cheese (I think she used about 45 ounces of cheese for 4 pizzas!). She spread freshly chopped garlic and plenty of Italian seasoning (dried) herbs. And she baked it all again.

IT WAS MARVELOUS. The pizza was very filling and so delicious. It wasn’t greasy like pizza-parlor pizza, either– the cheese was more like the consistency of egyptian magic cream– smooth and flexible but not oily and runny.

Yeah, it was a lot of work. And yeah, it was expensive. The cheese alone costs $10 per 30-ounce bag. Ouch. Pizza is just an expensive meal, which is so ironic because it was invented as a cheapo means to use up leftovers.

I also think homemade pizza is more healthy. Which gives us another excuse to make it again!

Easy Shrimp & Chicken Garlic Pasta

Oh have I got a new recipe for you!! This is our new favorite. I’m sorry I don’t have any photos– the food is gone as soon as I cook it! It’s an easy to make, light meal that is very satisfying.

Easy Shrimp & Chicken Garlic Pasta
Serves 6-8 hungry people
1 5-lb bag cooked, frozen shrimp
3-4 chicken breasts, cubed
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup olive oil
3 handfuls of raw kale, de-stemmed and chopped into bite-sized pieces
2 pounds thin or vermicelli spaghetti
2 Tablespoons pesto sauce

Place the frozen shrimp in the sink and run under cold water, to thaw.

In a large wok, add the olive oil and toss in the chicken cubes. Turn on medium-high and simmer.

Remove the tails from the shrimp and toss them in the wok. Stir the chicken and shrimp until both are cooked/warmed well. Add the kale and garlic and cook for another 3 or 4 minutes, until the kale softens. Turn off the heat. Add pesto sauce and stir well. Serve over spaghetti.

Tip: Do not overcook the chicken or it will turn to rubber. Don’t add the garlic until last– you want it a little raw and not burned to a crisp.

This stuff is SO good, more filling than nitrix, I think. I’d eat it every night, if I could. It’s very good for you, too, because the olive oil, garlic and kale are very healthy.

Four Foods on Friday #135

This week there are four questions about pasta.

1. What type of pasta is your favorite?
2. Is there a type of pasta that you don’t like at all?
3. What’s your favorite ravioli filling?
4. Do you use regular or no-bake lasagna noodles?

We are big pasta eaters. I recently found out it’s not such a great diet. :-p I grew up in an Italian home, and we always ate a lot of pasta. That, or my mom’s ikky pasta fazool (*wretch*). I loved pasta because it made me feel full, and as a kid, I always felt hungry.

So I usually have huge stockpiles of pasta around. I even got a few medical computer carts type thingies to store boxes of pasta in them, lol!! Weird, I know. I have boxes everywhere. I am sloooowly starting to move away from pasta and move toward healthier stuff, like long-grain rice and more veggies. But pasta dishes are nice because you can either make them long in advance or make them immediately. Because I work full-time, my meal preparation skills are totally gone! I can slap a hearty meal on the table in 20 minutes with pasta, or prepare it the previous day and make it the next. It’s so versatile.

Anyway, on to the meme.

1. I like rotini. I don’t always get it, because it seems that it is not as filling for a household of teenagers who eat mounds of food all the time.

2. Not really. I guess I like them all, or am ambivalent. Of all the pastas, I probably like the plain spaghetti least. It is so slippery and sloppy. I don’t like to wear my food. :-p

3. Meat. I greatly dislike ricotta cheese. YUK!

4. I have used both, and even though the “regular” lasagna is more laborious to prepare, I prefer it enough to use it. The no-bake is too pasty and bland.

All this talk of pasta reminds me that I need to start tonight’s dinner! See ya later!

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