One-Pan Pasta

This particular recipe was shared on Facebook several times, plus I stumbled across it in Martha Stewart living.  The basic concept is you put pasta, veggies and water in a pan and cook it for 10 minutes and then you have a creamy-sauced pasta.  Not having any plans for dinner tonight, I figured I'd give it a whirl since I had both pasta and fresh tomatoes on hand.  The directions are for regular pasta, so I figured I'd have to play it by ear.

Ingredients:
12 oz. pasta
12 oz cherry tomatoes
1 thinly sliced onion
4 thinly sliced cloves of garlic (I chopped it)
2 TSBP extra virgin olive oil
2 sprigs of basil
salt, pepper, crushed red pepper flakes
4.5 cups of water

Basically you put all the stuff in the pan like so:

Then you bring the water to a boil, and let it cook for 9 minutes, or until most of the water is gone, stirring the pasta occasionally.  HOWEVER, gluten free pasta takes 14-20 minutes to cook, so the water was mostly gone well before the pasta was done.  So, I did what any good cook would do...I added wine to make more liquid.  Then I had to add more water....then I figured out putting it on simmer and covering the pan worked too.  It was finally done, and this is what it looked like:

I then added sausage and freshly grated 30-month parmesan cheese for all three of us, but only I got the drizzle of Balsamic vinegar.  .

Philistine #1 proclaimed it delicious and asked for me to put some in the fridge for his lunch tomorrow.  Philistine #2 didn't like the pasta, ate the sausage, and went to bed hungry.  I thought it was really tasty, and next time I make it I plan to add mushrooms, and maybe some veggies. 

Betty Crocker Meets Davy Crockett

As I've mentioned before, I moved three months ago and had to move all the stuff that was in the pantry.  I hate to admit the fact that there were two cases of Betty Crocker gluten free chocolate cake mix in my pantry.  That's 10 boxes of cake mix...and this is what happens when you don't pay attention to the Amazon Subscribe and Save subscriptions.

As a part of my pantry clean-out challenge, I decided to play around with the cake mix.  I have a bottle of Davy Crockett salted caramel whiskey I bought in Gatlinburg, so I decided I'd make a whiskey cake.  So while I was cooking sloppy joes for the Philistines, I whipped up this cake.

The cake mix called for 3 eggs, 1 cup of water and 1/4 cup of butter.  I kept the 3 eggs and then started modifying.  Instead of a cup of water, I used 1/2 water and 1/2 whiskey.  Just for kicks, to drop the fat content, I used a container of Chobani coffee-flavored Greek yogurt with chocolate chips instead of the butter.  And I added a heaping tablespoon of Dagoba organic cocoa powder.   Baked it at 350 for 40 minutes, and got...CAKE.  It had the texture of brownies as opposed to cake, but that's not a huge deal.  Gluten free cake doesn't have the greatest texture in the world, so I'll take brownie-like and be happy with it.  The whiskey taste was very faint, so I probably could've used the whole 1 cup of whiskey.

Then the cake needed frosting.  I'm not much of a frosting eater, and I have no desire to actually make frosting from scratch.  There was no frosting in my pantry, but there was a jar of "Nutcracker Dip" that a friend gave me for my birthday.

It said it was a sweet mix of brown sugar and pecans.  I'm not sure what the heck one would dip into it, but it looked like cake frosting when I opened the jar.  So, .I heated it up and spread it on the cake.  It was perfect on the chocolate cake.  It's way too sweet for anything else I could imagine, but it made great cake frosting.  And it's another item out of the pantry.

Brown-Eyed Guy likes whiskey...maybe I'll share some of my cake with him.

The Brown-Eyed Guy and Chicken

I have to take a few minutes to blog about the Brown-Eyed Guy. I met him in September of last year, and was pleasantly surprised to find out he has a daughter who is supposed to be gluten free, so he wasn't "freaky" about the whole gluten-free thing like the ex-husband always was.  He likes learning new recipes, so it's been fun trying out new things, either cooking with him, or cooking for him.   It's fun to cook at his place, since he has a fantastic gas stove, and now that his oven is fixed, it's broadened the horizons for cooking opportunities.  Not that baking chicken in a toaster oven wasn't successful, you can just bake MORE chicken in the big oven.  I have had fun introducing him to new things in the kitchen, including two chicken experiments.

As I mentioned in my last post, my challenge to myself has been to use up the vast array of condiments that had accumulated in my pantry.   I had a jar of sundried tomato pesto that, prior to going gluten free, would've been spread on toasted french bread and eaten just like that.  Figuring it might work with chicken, a google search turned up this recipe.  Brown-Eyed Guy was game to try it out, so we planned on having it for dinner one evening when I was visiting.  I decided to mix the filling in my kitchen ahead of time, primarily because I didn't know how he'd react to the idea of goat cheese (he'd never had it), and primarily so I could keep the amount of "stuff" getting transported to a minimum.  So, I mixed the sundried tomato pesto with some fresh Herb de Provence goat cheese from Caly Road Creamery, and got HEAVEN.  Oh my freaking gosh...this filling was the bomb.  I texted Brown-Eyed Guy that it was a good thing I'd doubled the recipe, because I ended up eating half of it with a spoon before it ever made it to the fridge.

Fast forward to dinner:  I was out on a volleyball court doing what I do, so  Brown-Eyed Guy got to do the prep work and pound the chicken breasts flat before I got there.  He watched me put everything together  and then we popped it in the toaster oven to cook.  I wish I had thought to take a picture, because this chicken was incredible, and looked fantastic.  It also gave Brown-Eyed Guy some ideas of his own for a variation on this idea that he wanted to try.  We'll get to that momentarily.

So...I know the burning question on your mind is what happened to the rest of that sundried tomato pesto?  I discovered that the filling for the chicken breasts was also quite amazing when spread on gluten free pizza crust, topped with grated parm and baked in the oven.

As for Brown-Eyed Guy's variation on the original stuffed chicken dish....he decided this would be really good if we stuffed the chicken with ham, cheese, and bacon.  The original idea was chicken cordon bleu, but  somehow we went off on our own path, and as we were putting filling inside, Brown-Eyed Guy decided he wanted some jalapenos in his.   He was going to bread it with corn flakes, but we discovered his corn flakes weren't gluten free, so we decided to coat the chicken with the parmesan cheese leftover from the original chicken experiment.  This was also the first time we used the big oven, so we got to cook all four breasts at once.  The finished product was tasty, but we also discovered a couple of things that would've made it better.  First one was we needed something "fat" in the filling.  The swiss cheese didn't provide enough moisture, so some butter or cream cheese inside the chicken would've helped.  The other thing we goofed up on was we used a broiler pan with a grate.  This allowed all the juice to drain away from the chicken, which wasn't exactly conducive to keeping the chicken moist.  Lessons learned, the chicken was still tasty, and no, there are no pictures of this one either.

Pantry challenges

So...it's been awhile since I posted anything.   The husband moved out not too long after I started the blog, so I didn't really do much updating.  I'm getting more creative in the kitchen, and dating a man who doesn't mind being a guinea pig for my new recipes, so I thought I'd give this a whirl again.

I moved about three months ago.  In the process of moving, I had to box up the pantry.  Oy!  Where did all those condiments come from?  Rather than throw things out, I challenged myself to use up these jars of  gourmet oddities.  I've also been challenging myself to use my crockpot more, and to find creative ways to use the roasts that come with the side of grass-fed beef I get every year.  So...my first post in a very long time will hit all three of those goals. 

I my pantry was this jar of caramelized onion confit.  It sounded good at the time I bought it.  So...what do to with it?  Pulled out the crockpot, sliced some roast into fairly thin slices, dumped in the confit.   Debated whether to leave it at that, or add some liquid.  There was a single-serve bottle of red Moscato in the cabinet, and you can never have too much wine, so I put that in, and let it cook on low for the entire day.   Then it got transported to The Loft, where it was to be dinner for me and The Guy.  When I got there, I put it on the stove, tossed in some frozen broccoli and some more wine, and let it simmer for a bit.

The end result:  We got distracted and left it simmering too long, so the broccoli was mushy, but the extra simmer didn't seem to hurt anything else.  I loved it.  The wine and the carmelized onion confit melded together to make a semi-sweet sauce that was really good.  (it was even better cold the next day - don't ask).  The Guy, on the other hand, likes neither wine, nor sweet stuff, so he didn't like it as much.  However, I do have to make the comment that even if he doesn't like what I've cooked, he has the good manners to eat it anyway, and express appreciation for the cook.  His mama apparently raised him properly, even if he did spend most of his formative years as a yankee in upstate New York.