Archive for the ‘what’s cooking wednesday’ Category
What’s Cooking Wednesday: Pasta with Fresh Tomato and Basil
Summer’s here! Luna says, “Mamma mia, fa caldo!“
It’s hot. This means that cooking during the day is ill-advised, so our usual lunchtime pasta course often finds its place in the evenings (unless I’ve made a lovely summer pasta salad). But a requirement is still that it must be fast and easy; it cools down in the evenings, but not that much.
So this week’s What’s Cooking Wednesday is one of our summer favorites, a seasonal salsa with fresh tomato and basil–quite possibly my most favorite dish in the whole world. I can’t possibly overstate my love for basil, so you’ll be seeing a lot more of it around these parts, I promise.
I’m leaving the “pasta” here in the general term as we’ve had this dish in the past few days with penne and with linguine (as shown in the photos).
Always delicious.
Pasta with Fresh Tomato & Basil
(Pasta con pomodori e basilico)
4 tbl olive oil
1 small sweet onion, chopped
3 small cloves garlic, crushed
2-3 large, ripe tomatoes, chopped coarsely
8 large basil leaves
1/4 cup water
salt to taste
1. Put water on to boil for the pasta of your choice.
2. Heat olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat and then add onion and garlic. Cook for a few minutes until onions are translucent and garlic is just starting to brown–don’t let it brown though.
3. Tear 6 of the basil leaves and stir into the mix.
4. Add tomatoes and salt, and mix everything well.
5. Add water periodically if sauce begins to look too dry (depends on how juicy your tomatoes are).
6. Let cook for about 15-20 minutes on medium-high heat, and with about 5 minutes to go add the rest of the basil.
7. In the meantime, once the water is boiling, prepare the pasta; everything should be ready at about the same time.
8. Toss the pasta with the salsa, coating it well, and serve hot with a sprinkling of grated cheese on top (and peperoncini on the side if you like it spicy).
Buon appetito!
what’s cooking wednesday: turkey with sauteed peppers & onions
Before we get to this week’s What’s Cooking Wednesday, a little background.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but for Thanksgiving last year, P got three turkeys to raise ourselves so we’d be assured of a good bird come Turkey Day. For those who don’t know, turkey isn’t commonly found in Italian butchershops, and although it can be specially ordered, you often end up with a truly enormous bird (just ask Cyndi if you don’t believe me).
Well just before that fateful Thursday, a fox got in and snatched one of our birds. So with only a female and male left, we let them be and ate chicken instead. Then another turkey was snatched, and P just let the other one get all big and meaty, figuring we might as well get our euros’ worth once slaughter time came.
So a couple months ago, when P got around to killing and cleaning our last surviving turkey, he put half of its enormous breast (this was a truly huge turkey, probably 25-30 pounds or 11-14 kilos) in the freezer. Now I’m sure many of you know that this means that once that section was defrosted, I’d have to cook all of it off within a day or so.
So I grilled some, made some turkey cutlets, and then I played around with a new recipe that I invented because I had a craving for peppers.
I put the experiment on the table.
P tried it.
He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t so much as make a face one way or the other.
I thought he’d be great at poker, and then I got nervous.
Me: “Dimmi qualcosa!” (Tell me something!)
P: “Chista è sua morte.”
Literally translated, this is dialect for “This is his death,” but what it means is that this is the way that turkey should be cooked–that it was delicious.
Phew!
As for our turkey fest, I told P it was just like having Thanksgiving in June…3 days of eating turkey! Woohoo!
Turkey with Sauteed Peppers & Onions
900 g (2 lbs) turkey cut into chunks
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt
a few sprigs rosemary
2 tablespoons olive oil2 large green peppers, cut into strips
2 medium onions, sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt
olive oil as necessary
Coat pieces of turkey in garlic powder and salt, sprinkling rosemary about. I let this sit for a few minutes while I cut the peppers and onions, and it worked well.
Now heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a pan (medium heat) and add turkey. Be sure to cook on all sides until no longer pink, then remove turkey from pan (leaving most of the oil/juice) and set aside. Cover to keep warm.
Add peppers to the pan and cook until just tender, about five minutes, and then add onions and cook until they are both the consistency you prefer. Add salt and more olive oil to pan as needed (if you find that peppers and onions are sticking, for instance, add some oil). Note that you’ll need to stir these quite a bit while they’re cooking.
Finally add in the cooked turkey and let the flavors mingle together for a few minutes.
I recommend serving hot and with crusty bread. I’d normally say this serves four, but it really only served us two.
Even poverina Luna was left out of the fun.
Buon appetito!
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[tags]turkey, turkey with peppers and onions, cooking, recipes, what’s cooking wednesday, peppers, onions[/tags]
What’s Cooking Wednesday: Tuna and Bean Salad
Continuing with the refreshing summer theme from last week, this week’s What’s Cooking Wednesday is a tuna and bean salad.
It’s light but filling, healthy but still tasty, and slimy yet satisfying. Always wanted to use that in context. Lion King fans? Anyone?
Oh, and there’s no cooking involved at all, so it’s pretty darn fast as well.
Tuna and Bean Salad
(Tonno e fagioli)
2 cans cannellini beans
2 cans tuna fish
1 small onion cut into chunks
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
salt and black pepper to taste
chopped parsley
Pour the beans into a strainer, rinse, drain well, and put in your serving bowl or platter.
Add tuna and onion in large chunks over the beans.
If you want, make the dressing in a separate bowl, but I just add everything all together in the same dish. That’s olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and parsley.
Toss well (and carefully so as not to break too many beans) before serving, and be sure to taste test first for anything missing.
I add another squeeze of lemon just before serving as well.
Ah, and I should warn you that I won’t be around the rest of the week due to a work conference, so while I’m gone, you have some homework: (1) Be sure to check out the full list of What’s Cooking Wednesday participants over at Shannon’s place;
(2) Have a lookee at Sara’s (Ms Adventures in Italy) Parmeggiano Reggiano Stuffed Onions Wrapped in Prosciutto di Parma;
(3) Explore The Left Over Queen’s Foodie BlogRoll over on my sidebar; and
(4) Report back here and tell me what other kinds of recipes you’d like to see around here, especially any specific ingredients you’re looking to incorporate.
Buon appetito!
What’s Cooking Wednesday: Refreshing Summer Pasta Salad
And please, please, please resist the temptation to use Italian dressing; all you need is some good olive oil, oregano/basil, and salt, and you’re good to go. And I promise it’s even tastier.
Read on...what’s cooking wednesday: spaghetti with meat sauce
Go ahead. Roll your eyes. Yawn like an anchovy .
Could it get any more boring than this week’s What’s Cooking Wednesday‘s spaghetti with meat sauce?
Not too long ago, I would’ve been rolling my eyes with you.
Far too many a college lunch was spent over a (paper) plate of pasta with meat sauce–and it was horrible. I mean really, really bad. It was so awful that I ended up asking for plain pasta, i.e., without what they called, I swear, “red sauce” which should’ve been a clue. I loaded up on grated cheese as a topping instead.
So in the opening stages of our relationship, when P suggested that we have spaghetti with meat sauce, I was, how you say, reluctant.
Luckily for my taste buds, I was still trying to be agreeable (girls, remember those days?), so I let him make it.
Wow.
It was that day that I learned to trust P’s food judgment.
I’m now a huge fan, and although my favorite type of pasta to serve with this is tagliatelle, here I’ve done it with spaghetti.
Oh, and I’ve left the part about how to make the pasta because I know you’re all old pros by now and can handle the boiling water and salt routine.
Spaghetti with (Ground) Meat Sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium sweet onion chopped finely
3 cloves garlic, chopped finely
1 fresh peperoncino, chopped
1 lb ground meat
1/4 cup red wine
28 oz. can peeled tomatoes, coarsely chopped or passed through grinder
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped finely
1/2 teaspoon salt
In a saucepan, add olive oil over medium heat. Sauté onions until translucent (3 to 5 minutes), then add peperoncino and garlic and sauté until the garlic is just starting to turn light brown (about 2 minutes).
Add ground meat, stirring with a wooden spoon. When the meat is lightly browned with little to no pink remaining, add wine. Let wine cook off for about 3-5 minutes.
Lower the heat and add tomatoes. Add parsley and salt, and let cook on low to medium heat for about 35 minutes.
Serve with plenty of grated parmeggiano cheese and more fresh peperoncino if you like it spicy like I do.
A clever reader might have realized that this is extremely similar to the sauce I use in Calabrian stuffed lasagne. Indeed, the only major difference between the two is that I prefer fresh peperoncino (the more the better!) in this sauce–I absolutely love the flavor it adds to the sauce.
Love.
A lot.
I usually don’t use it in the lasagne sauce because it gets lost in all the other tasty ingredients anyway.
A final note: be aware that for the most part, the smaller the pepper, the more it’ll open your sinuses, so choose accordingly.
Buon appetito!
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[tags]what’s cooking wednesday, spaghetti with meat sauce, pasta, recipes, cooking, ground meat[/tags]
Michelle Kaminsky is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer who lived in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy for 15 years. This blog is now archived.
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