Mushroom and Chile Carbonara

Continuing the parade of favorites...I have been known to make this more than once in the same week. Mmm, mmm. You really can't beat mushrooms cooked with chile flakes in a cream sauce.

One of the sad days of my life was when I realized that whipping cream isn't very good for you. But some days, like today, I just pretend I don't know that and run an extra few miles to compensate.

I admit, these pictures aren't the most attractive. Trust me, it tastes better than the poorly lit shot would seem to indicate.


Also, I sort of had to stop taking pictures because Abigail was eating Parmesan cheese straight out of the thingie (but I didn't stop until I'd taken a picture of her. Go figure).



Oh, and yes, I use canned Parmesan, because Neil shakes his head at me when I look pleadingly towards the $$$$$/lb chunks of real Parmesan at the grocery store. He's a wise and prudent man...what more can I say?

Mushroom and Chile Carbonara

8 oz thin spaghetti Parmesan cheese
2 T. butter 2 Roma tomatoes, chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed 1 t. dried oregano
8 oz mushrooms, thinly sliced 1 t. dried parsley
1 t. dried red pepper flakes 1 t. dried chives
2 eggs 1 t. dried basil
1 ¼ c. light cream Salt and ground black pepper

Cook the spaghetti according to package directions, drain and rinse.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, then add the cream and herbs, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Chop the tomatoes and set them aside.

In a large saucepan heat the butter and oil together and lightly sauté the garlic for half a minute. Add the mushrooms and chile flakes to the pan of garlic and stir well so everything cooks evenly. The original recipe tells me to only cook the mushrooms for two minutes, but we like them to be more well-done, so cook them until you're happy.

At this point, theoretically you should add about half a cup of water. However, because I generally use half and half rather than cream (unless I've run about a hundred miles the preceding week, or more honestly, if cream was on sale), I skip the water.

Turn the cooked spaghetti into the mushroom sauce and then toss in the eggs and cream. Reheat the mixture, WITHOUT BOILING. Add the tomatoes, toss, and sprinkle each portion liberally with Parmesan to taste.

Abigail's favorites

Sweet potatoes--they're not just for Thanksgiving!!

We eat them a lot. Mostly because both Abigail and Juliet absolutely adore anything with sweet potatoes in them, like this soup:

which Abigail gobbled down in about two seconds.

But our hands-down favorite is the classic sweet potato casserole, except because we eat it so much we try to make it a little healthier. And simpler, so that it can be thrown together in about five minutes (not counting the roasting time).

Sweet Potato and Applesauce Casserole

3 lbs sweet potatoes
3-4 cups applesauce (I just use the stuff we canned in fall; if you buy it from the store make sure it's unsweetened)
1-2 t. each of ginger, cinnamon
sprinkle of nutmeg
brown sugar
sweetened flaked coconut
1/4 c. butter, if you're feeling wild and crazy

Wash the sweet potatoes and pierce them with a fork. Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour or until soft. Peel, then combine (I use my stand mixer) with applesauce and spices (add the butter at this point if you so desire). Spoon into a casserole dish and top LIGHTLY with brown sugar, then with flaked coconut. At this point you can refrigerate it for dinner later, or pop back in the oven to brown the coconut. If you refrigerate it, plan on warming again at 350 degrees until it's warmed through (20-30 minutes).

When combined with broccoli, and grilled dill-and-lemon salmon, this is Abigail's absolute favorite dinner in the world--it's one where she requests thirds (and getting her to finish her first serving is usually an enormous battle on a regular night).

Thai-almost-takeout

Sundays are always a really hard dinner day. We start church at 1 pm and get out at 4 (which means we get home around 4:30) and there are two tiny people who didn't nap, didn't really eat much lunch, and are now ravenous and want to EAT RIGHT NOW.

When we first switched to the afternoon block, we experimented for a few weeks with putting things in the oven and programming the oven to switch on. Except it didn't. Oh, it would switch on just fine when we programmed it and sat there watching it, but if we left the house...nada.
We'd come home to room-temperature lasagnas that were likely harboring pathogens by this point.

Four months into afternoon church, I'm starting to run out of crock pot and oven-for-three-hour recipes. So I'm cheating and making things that mostly come out of cans and jars and packets and can be on the table in about twenty minutes (which is how long it takes the girls to run around the house like crazy, be persuaded to change out of their dresses and finally find something else to wear).

Anyway. Now that I've gotten that whole not-cooking-from-scratch thing off my chest...let us proceed. But not before noting that I'm ashamed of my cans-and-packets dinner and I can't believe I'm posting this, but for the sake of truth...oh, and yeah, it's really tasty. Which is why I'm posting it.

Green Curry Chicken with Hot and Sour Soup

1-3 T. green curry paste, depending on how adventurous you are (I use the Thai Kitchen brand)

chicken, diced into bite-size pieces (I used two boneless skinless breasts, about a pound)

1 14-oz can light coconut milk

green peas

1 can bamboo shoots

2 T. oyster sauce (the recipe on the curry paste jar says fish sauce, which I think stinks too much to eat)

1/3 c. chicken stock

Jasmine rice

1 packet Sunbird hot and sour soup mix

1 egg

Start rice--generally I cook 1 c. dry rice with 1.5 c. water on the stove. It needs about 15-20 minutes; then let it sit for about 10 minutes off the heat.

Simmer curry paste and coconut milk together for about five minutes. Add chicken and simmer for another seven minutes, then add bamboo, peas, oyster sauce, and chicken stock.

Using egg, make soup according to package directions.

Spanakopita (spinach and feta phyllo triangles)

These are my very favorite appetizers in the world. My family ravenously consumes mounds of these at our annual New Year's Eve appetizer extravaganza. In fact, when I was looking for the recipe, I found it not in the appetizer section of our family cookbook, but in the main dishes section. Hmm...

In any case, this is a super yummy appetizer that takes a bit of work, but is quite impressive and aesthetically pleasing. You'll need the following ingredients:

3 pkgs 10-oz frozen chopped spinach
¼ cup olive oil
4 eggs, beaten
¼ cup bread crumbs
½ lb feta cheese, crumbled
½ lb cottage cheese (we substitute another 1/2 feta)
½ cup fresh parsley, chopped (use 2/3 less if using dried)
1 tsp dried dill weed
1 med. onion, chopped fine
1 cup butter, melted
½ lb phyllo pastry (one box)

I did have pictures of the intermediate steps, but they somehow disappeared, along with all our Christmas pictures and those sort of things. I'm extremely upset at my camera over this. Anyway.

Step 1: Choppin'

Thaw (microwave is fine), drain, and squeeze dry the spinach. If it's too chunky, chop it up so it will mix nicely.

Chop your onion finely. You want it to sort of meld into the rest of the flavors.

Step 2: Cookin'

Saute the onion in olive oil. When it's nicely yellowed and translucent, add the spinach and cook until the moisture is gone (be careful not to burn it!) Remove from heat.

Step 3: Mixin'

Beat the eggs, then add them to the spinach and onion. At this point, you'll need a fairly large bowl to make sure everything gets well mixed. (I'm not sure how many quarts the ideal bowl is--I just use one of the ones that's big enough to bathe a newborn baby. How's that for a standard of measurement?) Add cheeses, parsley, dill, and bread crumbs.

Step 4: Trianglin'

Here comes the exciting part. This is easiest to do if you have either a) a friend or b) a wet towel. Depending on the friend, they might be equivalent. Heh heh. In any case, you need to work quickly enough so that the phyllo dough doesn't dry out, hence the friend. If you're doing it by yourself, then place a damp towel over the dough to prevent drying.

Before you unroll the dough, brush a 9x13 pan with melted butter. Don't skimp.



Phyllo dough is tricky. Be VERY careful when you unroll it. It will probably be sticky.



You may have to use a sharp knife (very gently) or your fingernails to separate the sheets of dough from the plastic wrapper. Don't worry, after the initial separation it's easy.

Oh yeah! I actually recruited three friends (well, relatives: my mom, Elise, and Mary Beth) for this, because phyllo dough scares me sometimes. Okay, that's not true. The real story is that my sisters and I had this idea to make a cooking show out of it. We made up a dorky theme song that we sang and we followed each other around with a camera demonstrating chopping, dicing, choux-making (for the cream puffs), etc. We thought it was really cool. Actually, my sisters got kind of mad at me because we set everything up in tiny little ingredients bowls of pre-diced ingredients and then I forgot and dumped everything in and cooked it up while my sister was putting new batteries in the camera. Oops.

Back to the recipe. Look at that sneer on my face. I'm totally whipping the phyllo dough into shape.

Gently lift up one sheet of phyllo dough and place it on the buttered pan. Don't be put off by the fact that the dough may or may not resemble a tattered shroud.

Once you've plopped it on the buttered pan, liberally butter the dough. Basically, you want to butter it until it's translucent. Yum.

Repeat the process with another sheet of dough--lift, layer, and butter. Now that you have two sheets of butter-coated dough, it's time for my favorite part.

Cut the dough layers into five or six (depending on how big you want your little triangles) long strips (make the cuts running vertically where the top/bottom are the short sides of the cookie sheet).

Now plop about a tablespoon and a half (or more) of filling down on each little strip at the top.

Fold the dough in a sort of triangle over the filling. Fold it up exactly as if you were folding a flag.

See this picture here? This shows the right and wrong way to do it. The top example is a FLAG. The bottom example is a TRIANGLE. TRIANGLE BAD. FLAG GOOD.

Mary Beth had a little trouble grasping this concept. Fortunately, Elise was there to straighten her out and make fun of her lack of flag-folding skills. What a good pal.

When you get to the end, fold up the corners of your flag. Not a triangle, remember?

When you get a whole cookie sheet full of these little beauties, pop them in a 375 degree oven for 20-25 minutes. Oh yum.

Then you might want to go for a good long run, and come back hungry, cause we're making chicken wontons next.

EASIER NO-FOLD METHOD: Layer 7-10 layers of phyllo in pan, brushing each layer with butter. Spread spinach mix over phyllo and add another 7-10 layers of phyllo, butter each layer. Bake 30 minutes at 375 degrees.

Quiche a la Julia Child

In matters of eggs and custard-y things, I defer to Julia Child. I don't even try to mess around.

Ok, that's not true.

I defer to Julia Child on egg-to-milk proportions. But I do mess around with everything else.

For instance, I don't think Julia Child would ever tell you to use a storebought crust, but seriously, if I have to make the crust, I'd rather just not make quiche. I tried making it without the crust, but Neil revolted. And I don't like making crusts because it adds a good 40 minutes to prep time, and why do that, I say, when crusts are on sale at the grocery store for $1.50 a pair?

So buy a crust.

And these too:

3 "large" eggs

Cream (says Julia)/Milk (says I)

Meat (crispy bacon, sliced ham, turkey, etc.)

Salt

Pepper

Onions

Cheese (Swiss is sort of the accepted quiche cheese because of its propensity to not make everything really wet, but Neil likes the taste of Cheddar better)

Parsley, oregano, basil, chives

Other things in the fridge that need to be eaten (last time I grated in some carrots)

**If you want spinach quiche, blend in 1 c. cooked spinach into the custard.

Ok, so I just realized that the Julia Child version only calls for eggs, cream, bacon, salt, pepper, and nutmeg, so this really isn't quiche according to Julia Child, it's messed-up-Julia-based-quiche. But I still think it's good.

Here's what's important when making quiche:

"Any quiche can be made with either heavy or light cream or with milk. The proportions are always 1 egg in a measuring cup plus milk or cream to the 1/2 cup level; 2 eggs and milk or cream to the 1-cup level; 3 eggs and milk or cream to the 1 1/2 cup level; and so forth."

--Julia Child

I prefer to use milk because a) cream is expensive and b) cream is fattening. I'm sure it tastes delicious, however, but I'll go on in my skim-milk ignorance, so please don't tell me if you use cream and it's just out of this world.

Ok, the actual makings:

Step 1:

Preheat oven to 450.

Step 2:

Arrange pie crust in dish, put in either pie weights or dried beans/rice to prevent crust from puffing up (a Julia trick), and bake for 10-15 minutes. The crust should be set but still soft. now turn your oven down to 375.

Step 3:

Grate your cheese, slice your onions, and cut up your meat things. Put in however much you feel like putting in. I usually put in half to three-quarters of an onion, a couple of ounces of chopped meat, and enough grated cheese so that it covers the onion and meat but doesn't obscure them completely from sight. I think the Julia rule is 2 T. (which doesn't seem like much. I definitely do more). Dump all your cut-up things into the bottom of the shell.

Step 4:

Mix up your custard. I usually go for the 3 eggs variant and then end up adding another egg and another slog of milk. It depends on how big your pie dish is and how much "good stuff" you already put in. I then add about a teaspoon each of parsley, basil, chives, and oregano, with about a half teaspoon of salt and a couple grinds of pepper.

Step 5:

Pour the custard over the yummy things already in the pie crust.

Step 6:

Bake at 375 for 30-35 minutes. The quiche is done when it's puffed up and brown (it should not jiggle wildly when you take it out of the oven. That is egg soup and it's nasty, so put it back in the oven until it turns into quiche.)

We like to eat our quiche warm or cold as either breakfast or lunch, depending on how early I got up that day to make it. Yum.

Curried Pumpkin Soup

**no soup picture because ravenous family devoured it too fast

I made this recipe a couple of weeks ago with some of the leftover canned pumpkin filling my pantry. It was pretty hurried, and I was a bit unsure of how it would turn out, since I was smashing together several different recipes and adding in my own ideas.

So I was watching anxiously when Neil took his first bite. He rolled the soup around in his mouth. His eyes widened, and he started gulping that soup down.

We both decided it was a winner. Oh yum. I'm looking at the pumpkin-besmeared scrap of paper I jotted my measurements down on and getting hungry all over again.

The nice thing about this soup is that it requires very little time both in preparation and in cooking. You're only chopping one thing! (or two if you don't buy pre-minced garlic, which I highly recommend).

Anyway, here's what you'll need:

1 onion, chopped
1/4 c. butter

3 t. minced garlic

4 c. milk

3 t. chicken bouillion

1 15oz can pumpkin

1 t. curry

1 t. salt

1-2 bay leaves

Heat the butter over medium high heat until it's melted. Just as it starts to sizzle and pop, add the garlic and bay leaves for 30 seconds, then add the onions and cook 3-4 minutes. Add remaining ingredients.

Simmer for 15-20 minutes. Puree the soup (an immersion blender works really well for this! It's a nifty little gadget that I dearly love).

Dad's molasses cookies

Do you like cookies?



We sure do.



These are my absolute favorites: my dad's molasses cookies. Oh...they're just good. So good.


Molasses Cookies

½ c. oil
1 cup sugar
¼ cup molasses
1 egg
2 cup flour (I like whole wheat best)
1 tsp soda
½ tsp cloves
½ tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp salt

Mix oil, sugar, molasses, egg. Add dry ingredients. Roll into balls and roll in cinnamon sugar. Bake 8 minutes at 375 degrees.

Take them off the pans right away and transfer to a cooling rack to preserve the deliciously chewy-ness of these cookies!!