.tagliatelle w/ bolognese.

I bought a pasta attachment for my Kitchen Aid last year and have only used it a couple of times... to roll out pieces of fondant.  No pasta.  Something about making homemade pasta scared me.  I don't know what it is.  It was this irrational fear that it wasn't going to turn out.

Well, I decided to give it a try.  I read a lot about pasta making online, checked out YouTube videos and I felt confident that I could do it!

Tagliatelle is one of the traditional pastas to use with bolognese sauce.  It's a lot like fettuccine but not as thick.

For the pasta, I used:

1 cup flour

1 cup semolina flour (If your store carries Bob's Red Mill brand, you can find it there)

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 Tbsp olive oil

Cold water

Mix together the flours and salt.  You can either mix in a bowl or on your counter.  I used my counter.  Make a deep well in the center and add the eggs and olive oil.  Using your fingers of one  hand, start mixing things together, being careful not to knock down the walls of your dam.  Use your other hand to keep the dam intact.

Add Tablespoons of cold water as needed until you have a nice, slightly dry dough.  Keep working the dough until you have collected and incorporated all of the dry ingredients.  Add more water as needed.

Knead the dough for 5 minutes.  This helps relax the gluten.  Cut the ball of dough into four pieces.  Flatted out slightly like a pancake and round edges.  Wrap each piece well with Saran wrap and let rest for 30-45 minutes.  This will help relax the dough so it can stretch well.

To learn how to use your pasta maker and roll out the pasta, check out this great YouTube clip.

Make sure you roll your dough to the #6 setting and then run through your fettucine cutter.  Make sure you dust your cut pasta with a little flour to keep it all from sticking together. 

Now bolognese.  This needs to be made well in advance.  In fact, make it the day before you plan on having it for dinner because it gives those flavors a lot of time to marry together, forming a wonderful sauce.  Here's my recipe for bolognese ------

1 lb ground beef or sirloin

1 lb ground pork

1/2 lb medium thick sliced pancetta, diced

3-4 cloves garlic, minced

1 onion, diced

2 carrots, peeled and finely diced

2 celery stalks, finely diced

1 large can tomato sauce

1 can tomato paste

1 Tbsp sugar

3-4 fresh roma tomatoes, chopped

Rind off of your parmesan wedge

1 1/2 cups red wine

1 cup cream

Fresh herbs (oregano, basil, bay leaf, Italian parsley)

Heat some oil in a large sauce pot or dutch oven.  Put in the pancetta, sirloin, and pork and start browning.  When the meat is halfway browned, add the onion, garlic, carrots, celery, and bay leaf.  Mix around and let those aromatics cook with the meat.  When the meat is completely cooked, add your sugar, tomato sauce, paste, diced tomatoes, and red wine.  Add more wine if you need to.  Tie your fresh herbs into a bouquet garni and drop into the pot.  We'll fish these out later.  Also drop in the rind cut off your parmesan wedge.  This will add a lot of flavor to your bolognese. 

Lightly season with salt and pepper.  Don't go crazy with the salt right now, because as the sauce cooks, that rind is going to add a lot of salty flavor and you don't want to wind up with something too salty.

Stir in the cream and cover with a lid.  Pop in a 300 degree oven and let it cook for about 3-4 hours, stirring occasionally.

Remove from the oven and either serve, or let it cool so you can put it in the fridge.  Like I said earlier, this is best if it can sit in the fridge overnight.  The next day, remove the parmesan rind and bouquet garni.  Taste and reseason with salt and pepper, if needed.  Serve hot.

You don't have to be of Italian heritage to make an amazing pasta dish with authentic bolognese!  Enjoy!

.thai peanut chicken.

In recent months, I have made a pledge to myself and to my family to cook healthier meals.  I'm the one who has made this commitment, but you'll notice I use some unhealthy things - because my family would revolt if we went 100%.  Baby steps, people.. baby steps.

We love Asian food.  My husband has been to Thailand many times and he is usually all over anything Chinese, Thai, Japanese.. you name it.

When I was at the commissary, I bought this bottle of something called PB2 (see image below).  It's basically the pulverized remains that are usually discarded after they make peanut butter.  It's 85% less fattening than regular peanut butter, but you still get all the protein benefits -- and right now, I'm doing this protein forward diet so I'm all over this stuff!

Not only is this dish HEALTHIER than it's original, it's tasty and I swear, your family won't even notice the difference.  At least my family didn't until I told them there was no sugar in this dish and it was less fattening.

Now on to the recipe!

In a bowl, mix together:

1/2 cup PB2
1/4 cup water
2 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 packet (2-3 tsp) Splenda
1/4 tsp chili oil
1/4 to 1/2 tsp crushed red chili flakes
1 Tbsp fish sauce
1/2 cup coconut milk
1 Tbsp cornstarch

Mix all ingredients together and set aside.

For the main component of the dish, I used:
3 chicken breasts, cut against the grain, into strips
1/2 cup green onion, sliced on the diagonal
1/2 cup red bell pepper, chopped or julienne
1/2 cup carrots, peeled and grated
2-3 Tbsp cilantro, chopped
1/2 to 1 cup peanuts

I also added some peas, but you can add whatever vegetables you want. 

Heat your wok until it starts smoking.  Add 1 Tbsp peanut oil and saute the chicken with 2 cloves garlic, minced and 1 tsp fresh ginger root, peeled and grated.  I also added the red bell pepper, since they take some time to cook.  If you use broccoli, add in the beginning.

When the chicken is almost cooked through, dump all the peanut sauce into the center of the wok.  Stir until the sauce thickens and coats the chicken.  Add cilantro, green onion, carrots, and peanuts at this time.  Remove from the heat and serve with rice or noodles (if you want).

This will make enough food for 6 people.  Enjoy!

.cubano skirt steak w/ grilled corn.

There's a restaurant near us that I absolutely love.  It's classy and swank and the food has always been excellent.  You should see their brunch buffet!!!!  One of my favorite dishes there is a grilled Cubano skirt steak.  It's actually an Asian-Latin fusion dish because they put a spicy Thai Tamarind sauce on top.

I decided to try and recreate this recipe once and was very pleased with the results.  (verrrrryyy pleased!)

First, you want to make sure you use the right cut of meat.  Skirt steak.  It's also referred to as hangar steak.   It comes from the belly of a cow and is a very thin cut.  It has a ton of flavor all on it's own, but it's not particularly tender on it's own so I like to marinade it.  I wouldn't replace with flank steak.  Flank steak is thicker and you won't get the same results.  Trust me.

Here's a diagram of where the skirt steak comes off a cow!

This is a marinade recipe I came up with on my own.  I really wanted to get a lot of flavor into the beef.

In a bowl, mix together:

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 cup soy sauce

3 cloves garlic, crushed

a handful of cilantro

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp cumin

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1/4 cup orange juice

1/4 tsp crushed red chili flakes

a couple dashes of chili oil (found in the Asian aisle of your grocer)

Mix everything together with a fork.  Put your skirt steaks into a large ziploc and dump the marinade in.  Seal up the bag, pushing out as much of the air as you can.  This will help the marinade envelope the meat and keep it sitting in the marinade at all times.

You want to marinate your meat for at *least* 8 hours.  Overnight is best.

About an hour before you grill, take the steak out of the fridge and let it sit on the counter.  Beef always cooks better when it's closer to room temperature. Gives you even cooking. 

Because this steak is so thin, it won't take very long to grill up.  Also, personally I would never cook these past medium rare otherwise you will wind up with shoe leather.

Since we had this with grilled corn on the cob, put the corn on first, as this takes a lot longer to cook than the steak.  Here are good directions on how to grill corn. 

Drain the marinade and pop the steaks onto a very hot grill.  Let sit for about 2-3 minutes to get grill marks then flip over.  Repeat so that you've grilled the steak twice on each side.  Press the fattest part of the skirt steak and if it's still squishy, you might want to turn the grill down and lower the lid so it can cook through some more.  Don't be tempted to cut into this to check the doneness.  Just remember the general rule -- if it's squishy, the meat's still a little raw.  If the meat is soft but not hard, it's perfectly medium rare.  If there's no bounce back at all and firm, you've done gone and killed it. :P

Remove the steak from the grill and allow to rest for 5 minutes.  Your corn will probably be done at this time, too.  I love mixing together some soft butter and a little bit of smoked cumin, salt, and pepper.  Take a knife and rub that all over your corn.  It gives you a wonderful smoky, spicy flavor on your corn that complements this dish very well.

Slice and serve the steak and eat!  This is going to be the best steak you ever ate.  Guaranteed!



.shrimp chorizo & red potato hash w/ poached egg and manchego cheese.

Paige was craving shrimp last night and I didn't want to make scampi or any kind of pasta dish.  I normally make this dish without the shrimp, but thought it would be delicious in this.

This will make enough for 4 people, depending on how big a serving you want.  It's easy to add a little more here and there to adjust for a larger group.

1 lb medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
6-8 new red potatoes, large dice
1 large onion, sliced
1 lb chorizo sausage, sliced in half, then sliced into 1/2" pieces
1 clove garlic, minced
Manchego cheese
olive oil
4 eggs
salt and pepper
white vinegar
chives (garnish)

Put the potatoes in a pot and cover with water and salt.  Bring  to boil and cook until the potatoes are fork tender.  Drain and cool.

In a skillet, heat about 3-4 Tbsp olive oil.  When it's hot, add the onion and garlic and saute until the onions are slightly translucent.  Add the potatoes.  Season with salt and pepper.  Let the potatoes get some color on them.  Add the chorizo and shrimp.  Cook and stir occasionally to make sure all the shrimp cooks.  When the shrimp is light pink, remove the pan from the burner.  Taste and re-season with salt and pepper, if needed.

In a medium sized saucepan, put 3-4 cups water and 3-4 Tbsp vinegar.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat so it is no longer boiling.  You can have this water ready and waiting on the side so your hash doesn't get cold while waiting for this to get to temp.

When your water is good and hot, take a wooden spoon and swirl the water to make a little whirlpool.  Have an egg already broken in a bowl and quickly, but carefully pour directly into the center of the whirlpool.  This helps the white swirl into the center.  Cook for 3-4 minutes.  Remove with a slotted spoon and set on a paper towel to dry.

Dish up some hash and put the egg on top.  Use a vegetable peeler and shave some manchego cheese on top.  Manchego is a wonderful sharp Spanish cheese that complements this Spanish influenced dish.  Sprinkle chopped chives on top to give it a splash of green.  Serve immediately.

.chinese chicken salad.

The weather is starting to warm up here in New York and this is when I start wanting salad.  I love salad.  This is a recipe I got from my sister, Ronda, but I tweaked it a little to give it  a more Asian flare.  There are four different steps to this dish.  Each can be done early in the day or even the day before and then tossed together when you're ready to eat.  Make sure if you do hold it for another day, that you don't add the mandarin oranges or chicken until you're ready to toss.  This will keep the lettuce from getting wilted and soggy.



STEP 1:  DRESSING

In a jar, mix together:

1/3 c. vegetable oil
1/4 c. rice wine vinegar
1/4 c. sugar
3 Tbsp soy sauce
2-3 Tbsp chopped cilantro
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp chili oil (optional* - use only if you want your salad to have a kick!)

Put a lid on the jar and shake it up.  Set aside and add to salad when you're ready to eat.

STEP 2:  CANDIED ALMONDS

In a saucepan or skillet, put 1 cup slivered almonds & 6 Tbsp sugar

Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the sugar is melted and coats the almonds. Dump onto a piece of foil and let cool completely. Break apart and add to the salad.  (I think you can find candied almonds in the produce section of your local grocer.  So if you find them, take the short cut and use them!)

STEP 3:  SALAD

In a large bowl, put:

4 cups chopped lettuce
2-3 cups chopped cabbage (you can  use red or green)
1 bunch green onion, sliced on the diagonal
1 cup celery, sliced on the diagonal
2-3 carrots, peeled and shredded
1 - 11oz can mandarin oranges, drained
2-3 chicken breasts, cooked, cooled, and diced

STEP 4:  WONTON STRIPS

Take a package of won ton wrappers and slice them into strips.  Heat some oil (1 cup) in a skillet and heat over medium heat.  Test the oil by tossing one strip in.  If it just sits there and doesn't immediately start frying, the oil is too cold.  You want these to fry quickly so they don't absorb a lot of the oil.

Fry up a handful of wontons and remove when golden brown.  Put on paper towels to drain.  Repeat until all the wontons are fried up.


Toss everything together (minus the wonton strips).  Put a handful of crispy wontons on top and serve!  The perfect Spring/Summer meal for you and your family!  Enjoy!

Deb's Birthday Cake

My BFF Deb turned 50 in March. Her husband and kids threw her a surprise birthday party - that really wasn't a surprise to her because she's too observant and picked up and subtle things. lol.. but not once did she ever ask me if I was part of the planning. She probably didn't want to put me in an awkward situation where I'd have to lie to her (right, Deb?).

Anyway.. I was asked to make the cake for her birthday party. I kept trying to think of what I should do for the theme of the cake. I thought about the things she enjoys -- photography, horses, scrapbooking. Then I thought about what she does for a living -- a nurse. I thought I should just do a basic birthday cake but I couldn't do it. It had to be something special. Something one-of-a-kind. It couldn't be the same ol' for my friend.

So I thought about her favorite scrapbooking company - Basic Grey. I went to their website and searched through some of their recent paper lines and fell in LOVE with their "What's up?" papers and thought the design would transfer well to a cake.

Here are the papers I used for inspiration. Beautiful, right?

And here's how the cake turned out!

.chocolate zucchini bread.

Now before you turn your nose up and close the browser, I want you to give zucchini a chance. You don't taste it and it provides not only nutrients to your bread, it makes it moist and delicious!

I've been making this recipe for years now and it's one of my favorites. I'm sure it will become one of your favorites, as well.

This recipe makes 2 loaves, or about 1 dozen large, Texas sized muffins. (Those are the kinds of muffins we made at my bakery -- we like em big!)

In a large mixing bowl, combine:


1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 cups flour
1 Tbsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

In another bowl, mix together:
3 eggs, beaten
1 Tbsp vanilla
1 cup oil (you can substitute applesauce, if you like)
2 1/2 cups grated zucchini
1/2 bag mini chocolate chips

Dump all the wet ingredients into the dry and mix using a fork just until the dry ingredients are slightly wet. Don't overmix.

Spoon into prepared bread or muffin pans and pop in a 375* oven and bake 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350* and continue baking until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Trust me... you're going to love this bread! (you can thank me later. ;) )