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Yummy Pasta

7 Aug

One of the best dishes my mom made growing up was discovered later (highschool time I believe) is something we affectionately called “Yummy Pasta.”  I think it’s great for summer with the fresh tomatoes, however, pine nuts have become SUPER expensive.  Therefore it is great to know someone in the nut industry.  THANKS TRAVIS!!!

It is SO easy and quick to make, and you can make a big batch and have it for multiple meals.  You can also make the pesto sauce in advance and freeze it until you’re ready.

I made the sauce as the recipe called for, but I added some of the fresh basil and pine nuts at the end and chopped it only a few seconds so it had more texture.  It came out quite yummy!

As a side, Mike decided to whip up some spinach and mushrooms with shallots and garlic.  It was absolutely scrumptious and I was very excited to see Mike cooking off the cuff.  I’m pretty sure he threw everything into the pan and just cooked it until it was all soft.

Here is the Yummy Pasta Recipe (you can adjust the amounts if you want to make more or less):

Ingredients

  • One box of mini penne pasta
  • One ball of fresh mozzarella, cut into cubes
  • One container of grape/cherry tomatoes, cut in half
  • 2/3 cup of pine nuts (split in half so it’s 1/3 in each part of the recipe below)
  • 3/4 cup of fresh basil (or to taste), stems removed and cut up leaves
  • 1/2 – 3/4 cup of olive oil
  • Salt, Pepper, and Garlic Powder to taste

Directions

  • Cook pasta as directed
  • While pasta is cooking, cut up all ingredients
  • Put oil, basil, and 1/3 cup pine nuts into a food processor and blend to desired texture (add garlic powder at this stage if you like garlic)
  • Drain pasta
  • Toss basil mixture into pasta
  • Add additional 1/3 cup of pine nuts (I use more since I love them)
  • Carefully fold in tomatoes and mozzarella
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Happy Nomming!

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Stinkin’ Up the Joint

17 Jul

Mike and I decided to endeavor on grilling fish in my apartment.  One of my favorite kitchen tools is a stove top grill (I bought mine on sale for $50 from Williams Sonoma a few years ago but it does not appear they have it any more).  It fits across two burners and makes mean pancakes on the flat side and great chicken on the ridged side.  Fish was a new undertaking, however.

Now I have a large kitchen by NYC standards, however, it is poorly ventilated and the smoke alarm is in a tiny hallway right outside the room.  The tragedy of this event involved me standing below the smoke alarm for upwards of 20 minutes waving a magazine.  This paled in comparison, however, to the even greater tragedy of making my entire apartment smell of fish for the next four days.

I will sidenote here for a second to talk about the request that went out to all of my friends on Facebook for advice on how to get the smell of fish out of ones apartment when opening all the windows, lighting candles, febreezing, spraying air freshener, and putting out baking soda didn’t work.  I got some very interesting responses.  Lavender oil, scrubbing everything down with lemons, oil reeds, and roasting coffee beans in a skillet came up.  The most creative response, however, came from Mike’s Aunt Helene who gave us his Aunt Meggie’s trick: Boil water in a pot and then cover it and put cinnamon on the lid.  Wouldn’t you know it? It worked!  The smell was hardly detectable after about 30 minutes of boiling.  Good to know!

As for the food itself, it turned out pretty well.  I have come to the conclusion though that I need to accept that I just don’t like salmon.  Smoked is fine, but when it’s cooked I’m just not a fan.  Mike made salmon for himself and a tuna steak for me.  He also prepared an awesome, off the cuff soy, garlic, and ginger sauce for us to dip the fish in.  We paired it with some boxed butternut squash risotto and threw tomatoes and zuccini on the grill pan when the fish was done.  We then enjoyed our labors on the balcony, which was lovely.


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Fourth of July BBQ

6 Jul

What is the 4th of July without a BBQ?  Luckily, Mike and I were invited to the ‘burbs of Long Island to enjoy some good ol’ grillin’.  It so happened that we were eating Parve Kosher (that means no milk!) so this left me with quite a dilemma with baking.  I had a recipe in mind that I hoped would taste good enough that slight textural changed wouldn’t matter (margarine just doesn’t have the same texture/flavor as butter, and it was quite hard to find a parve margarine!).  It happened that TheGourmetFoodie had sent me her post to the recipe for Amaretto Chocolate Chip Cookies and I do love both amaretto and chocolate chip cookies.  I won’t repost the recipe since it’s right at that link, but even with margarine and soy creamer it was excellent.  I look forward to making them with butter and milk because honestly, it would be hard to make these better.  Cookie monster indeed!

We managed to eat all the cookies before I remembered to photograph, but here is a pic of the lovely spread from Saturday:

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