Recipe Slumps

100 POSTS!!!!

We celebrated that milestone!

It's hard to believe that Elizabeth and I really have that many dinner ideas without repetition!

It is fun to share recipes since it is so easy to get into a rut....and then not even able to get out of the rut and figure out what is for dinner. No matter how organized and adventurous I am I still get into a slump on occasion. Either I get so tired of being creative with dinner food....or I don't feel like I have 10 minutes or so to think ahead.

I would love to hear what other people do when they find themselves in a slump. I periodically go through these phases where I just don't know what to make for dinner. It's been inspirational to blog about recipes and food, so I have to dig a little deeper in my recipe box or be a bit more adventurous when these hit.

I have found friends are a great source of recipes and have gotten my through recipe slumps. Elizabeth has gotten me out of a few recipe funks with some recipes and ideas.

The internet has been helpful.

Getting the CSA box helps my creativity as well.

Library cookbooks often can provide inspiration for me.

Friends have recipes to share,

What do you do?

Grandma Fiorenza's soup

I have seen a version of this called Italian Wedding Soup...but...in our house...this is known as Grandma Fiorenza's soup. Even after she was a great grandma and was called GG the name of the soup remained. My grandma didn't have much variety in what she cooked...and she really didn't like vegetables too much. In fact, when she would come to visit me she would bring a can of spam and a couple slices of white bread in her purse so she wouldn't have to eat something like...hmmmm....vegetable and shrimp pasta with fresh dill from the New Basics Cookbook. There wasn't much a person could say to her about this...she was healthy into her 90s, so her diet worked for her, obviously. BUT, something she enjoyed eating and making was this soup. I remember going to her house and having sugo one night with her homemade meatballs (the large meatballs were served with that) and Italian sausage and this soup (with the small meatballs) the other night. Both nights were good meals!!

I make this soup exactly as I'm blogging about it. There may be some shortcuts, like I'm not really sure why the meatballs aren't cooked directly in the soup. I can't vary it...but you may want to try. I just need to make this so it tastes exactly like my Grandma (and my mom) make it. I don't think that anyone should substitute any other kind of cheese for the imported Pecorino Romano.

I'm not a big beef eater, but there are a handful of recipes I don't think I could ever give up that contain beef. This is one of them!

My mom would make this for us if we were getting colds. I guess it was the Italian version of chicken soup.

Our Sendik's store didn't have acini de pepe pasta, the really tiny pearls of pasta. I got stars instead. But, I will have to run to an Italian grocery store, like Glorioso's, and get a stash of the really tiny pasta. For me, tiny pasta is part of this soup.

Here it is:
Broth:
1 or 2 meaty beef shanks
1 large (28 oz) undrained whole tomatoes
carrots/celery (amount varies....I used 4 large carrots and 4 stalks celery), cut into 4 inch to 6 inch long pieces
onions, small preferred (I used 4)
potatoes, quartered or halved (I used 4)
Cover beef shanks with water in soup kettle. Let it simmer until the meat is tender (about an hour). Skim off foam if necessary.
Add 1 can undrained tomatoes. Add potatoes, celery, carrots (as many as you want). Cook (not boiling) until potatoes are almost cooked through.

Then add onions and cook until tender.
I used a couple cans of beef broth as well.

Meatballs:
You can mix meatballs at any time during this process.
1 lb grd chuck
Italian seasonings, especially parsley(dried)
2 eggs
bread crumbs...about 1/4 c or as needed to form balls
Pecorino romano cheese (about 1/4 c)
Mix and form meatballs. Add meatballs to a pot of boiling water. After the meatballs are cooked, add them to the soup broth.
Pasta:
acini de pepe pasta (tiny pasta)
Cook in boiling water in another pan for approx. 5 minutes. Drain. Add soup broth to pasta through a strainer to keep it from sticking together.

Ladle the soup into bowls. Add some pasta and top with grated Pecorino Romano cheese.

Pull some vegetables and meatballs out of the soup in put in large serving bowl and let everyone take the vegetables they want. Top each serving bowl with additional Pecorino Romano and some salt and pepper. I don't usually use much salt and pepper at the table but this soup needs it.

Eleanor is not a very big tomato fan, but she doesn't like this if I omit the tomatoes. I tried making the meatballs with ground turkey one time (since that's what I had in the freezer), and that got a thumbs down. Maybe your family will work with substitutions on this recipe, we don't!

There really isn't too much time involved in making this soup. The time it takes to prepare is while it is on the stove, so you do have to be home but can be doing other things for most of the time. I will make this (including the meatballs) before swim practice and come home and just cook the pasta and warm the broth and vegetables.

Thanksgiving...what's on the menu?

This year I got to cook Thanksgiving dinner. For a family that usually ends up driving on the holiday, this was really exciting. My parents came and the three of us were here, so it was a small group, but very nice.

I found it a bit disappointing to cook since tradition dictates most of the menu. I did find a few places to be creative though. I will post the pumpkin cheesecake I made and the smoked turkey that Paul made, but I'll give you some other ideas from the menu as well.

I had to have mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, so neither offered too much originality. I just baked the sweet potatoes, scooped the meat out of them and combined with a couple tablespoons of butter and salt and pepper, baked the skins for a bit, and put the mixture back in the skins. I had this done early and just held the sweet potatoes that way and baked them 1/2 hour or so before dinner. Topped them with some craisins and served.

I did find a new recipe for roasted vegetables since I got the last CSA box of the season the night before. It came with two very large rutabagas, so I had to find a way to incorporate at least one of them in a way other than my usual idea (which is to boil it with the potatoes and mash all together). I found the recipe on epicurious for roasted vegetables, so follow the link; however, I made this with rutabaga and carrots since I didn't have the other vegetables and added a bit of leeks since they came in the box also.

I made up a recipe for cranberry chutney. I sauteed some onion and garlic and added some ginger root and cranberries. I added a cup or so of sugar and some orange zest and orange juice. It really needed some sugar at this point, so I added some craisins and 1/4 c or so of sugar. Then another 1/4 c of sugar. Then another 1/4 c sugar. I also added some coriander seeds and a cup or so of vinegar. I think it will be a good addition to sandwiches this week and was good on the Thanksgiving table.

Sweet potato biscuits seemed like a good addition; however, I made them with canned pumpkin since I didn't use the entire can for the pumpkin marble cheesecake.

We had a green salad with a balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing. We got a beautiful head of lettuce in the last box. So nice to have something so green and fresh with the meal.

Stuffing....ahem...dressing (since it didn't stuff the turkey) that was a recipe that I found on the internet. I made the bread for the bread cubes from the artisan bread recipe. I could have used bread from the store, but it is so easy to make I went this route instead.

Our family's traditional cranberry and apple salad was brought by my mom.

So many things to be thankful for....in addition to a beautiful harvest meal.
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Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie

 On this Thanksgiving morning, I thought it appropriate to blog about one of the dishes most of us will eat later on today. This recipe for pumpkin pie is from my mother...growing up we had it at Thanksgiving and Christmas and we fought over the leftovers. My father usually made everything else on the holidays, but the pie was always made by mom. She didn't go to the trouble of making a crust, she used a Pet-Ritz frozen crust. Today, I follow the same tradition, but use a Pillsbury or store brand rolled crust, I find them tastier and more tender than Pet-Ritz.

1 16 ounce can pumpkin(not pumpkin pie filling)
1 13 ounce can evaporated milk
2 eggs
1/2 c packed brown sugar
1/2 c sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon each ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cloves and salt
1 9 inch pie crust

Mix all the ingredients and pour into prepared pie crust. Bake at 425°F for 15 minutes, reduce heat to 375°F for 45 minutes to 1 hour. The pie is cooked when just the center(about a 3 inch circle in the center) is still a little jiggly.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Aunt Liz's Chicken Spaghetti Casserole

This casserole is commonly called "gray chicken" at my house. While this title is not very appealing, I have to admit, the first time I made this, it did look very gray, and thus the name. I found this in a cooking light magazine, but is is available at myrecipes.com, here is the link.

I have made changes to this over the years. I found that using all cream of mushroom soup made the chicken unappealingly gray and the flavors were dull. I now use one can of regular cream of mushroom soup and one can of cream of mushroom soup with roasted garlic. I also use whole wheat pasta which is hard to detect with the sauce. The final note is that this says you can make 2 casseroles, about 4 servings each. I usually make one casserole and have some leftovers...I have never been able to get 2 full meals out of this recipe.

Enjoy!

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Fiesta Taco Lasagna

Is it a dip or is it a main dish?
It's hard to tell when eating this....it's just a bit too good.

My friend, Meghan, made this when we were visiting her. The only changes I have made is that I use ground turkey and cut back a tiny bit on the Monterey Jack cheese by instead using 1 c. or so of cheddar. Oh, and I used about 8 oz frozen corn instead of the can of corn. I think that's it...it's good.

YUM!

Mac and Cheese

 Through the years I have tried to make homemade mac and cheese but my kids always found the sauce too grainy. After the success of Ina Garten's chocolate ganache cupcakes(see post on 10/19/2010 ) I decided I would try her recipe since she claimed it always comes out creamy!

I have made this twice, the last time was for a Friday night of a swim meet weekend. Carbs were needed as was a meal that could be eaten at any time in the evening. My daughter actually took her dinner to the meet and ate it before a big race...she swam well so maybe it helped :)

Anyway, here is the recipe...Ina Garten's Mac and Cheese

Please note, for my version, I didn't use the tomatoes or the bread crumb topping. Also, it is important to use good quality cheeses, but you can vary them. The first time I used the recommended amount of Gruyere but the cheddar portion was actually part cheddar and part colby/jack. The second time I tried to bury some low-fat cheese in the recipe and the sauce did come out a bit grainy...




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