Marinara, Mo Better

Now, I know I have another marinara recipe on here, and that one was good, until I tasted this one. I still like the other recipe just fine, especially for kids you have a hard time getting veggie's into, because it is vegetable packed. But this one is simpler, with fewer ingredients, and tastes mo better.

This is my go-to spaghetti etc sauce. It is yummy as a basic tomato sauce on pasta, and a great base sauce to jazz up (with Italian sausage, heavy cream or fresh mozzarella). I also use it as my pizza sauce.

It can require roasting your own tomatoes, but only if you want. I combine both roasted and canned tomatoes in order to yield enough sauce to freeze some for later use. I roast about 15 medium tomatoes and combine with enough canned diced tomatoes to yield 10 cups of puree.

Here's what you will need:
- 15 medium tomatoes of your choice
- olive oil, about 1/4 cup
- 6 to 8 cloves garlic, I use about a half clove per tomato. You will be pureeing the garlic into the sauce, so keep that in mind.
- sea salt and fresh ground pepper

Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.

Remove the stems from the tomatoes and place on a cookie sheet (I line mine with tin foil for easy clean up). break up garlic cloves and push pieces down into the tomato, if any of the garlic is exposed during roasting it will burn. Drizzle oil over tomatoes to coat and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast until tomato skins brown and burst (see photo below), about 45 minutes.

After roasting, allow the tomatoes to sit until they are cool enough to handle. You will need to remove the skins before you puree the tomatoes for the sauce.

Starting the Sauce:
You will need:

- olive oil
- 5 oz pancetta (optional)
- 10 cups tomato puree (canned and/or home roasted)
- 2 large onions, small diced
- 2 to 3 cups chicken broth, or white wine and water to equal same amount
- salt and pepper to taste
- crushed red pepper (optional)

Directions:
Add oil to a sauce pot over medium high heat.
Add pancetta, and cook until browned (4-5 min).

Add onions and season with salt. Cook onions until soft (about 7 min). 

Add tomato puree along with your 2 to 3 cups of liquid (either broth or wine) and allow to cook 2 to 3 hours.

Bruce's Dip

The name of the dip says nothing about it. This recipe is my favorite so far from Gwyneth's cookbook "My Father's Daughter."

Named after her father (apparently his favorite summertime snack), this is a mayo/sour cream based dip flavored with capers (yum!), and fresh herbs. I have eaten said dip in an avocado half, and died and went to heaven. But when you eat through all your avocados you can use your leftovers on a roasted chicken sandwich!

I ate my sammy with a side of Sauteed Baby Beans with Artichokes and Green Olives (find that recipe HERE).

Eating Gwyneth food makes me feel sexy. And that is priceless.

You will need:

- 1 cup Vegenaise (because it's healthier, but feel free to use regular good quality Mayo)

- 1/2 cup Sour Cream

- 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley

- 1/2 teaspoon Dijon Mustard

- 2 scallions, finely sliced

- 1 clove garlic, pealed and minced or pushed through a press

- 1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

A few fresh grinds black pepper

Pinch coarse salt

- 1 1/2 tablespoons capers, finely chopped

- 1/4 teaspoon celery seeds

Directions:

Mix it all up.

Homemade Big Mac's, with Class.

I should be writing a German paper right now.

If anyone could class up a Big Mac it's Ina. The basics for a burger Big Mac style: hamburger meat, cheddar cheese, ice burg lettuce, and thousand island (aka "special sauce"). Ina helped me make that special sauce mo' special.

Thousand Island for Big Girls
(big refers to maturity, not girth-- toward size I am indifferent, but mature the hell up.)

Ingredients:

- 3/4 cup mayonnaise
- 1/4 cup ketchup
- 1 teaspoon minced capers
- 1 teaspoon minced gherkins
- 1 tablespoon sweet pickles
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- Pinch kosher salt
- Pinch freshly ground black pepper

Directions:
Place the mayonnaise, ketchup, capers, gherkins, sweet pickles, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a bowl, and stir until blended. Great on your homemade Big Mac, also great on shrimp and fish!

I don't add to much to my hamburger meat when I make these burgers, just a little salt and pepper and some garlic powder.

I do toast my hamburger bun, and I like to use my mother-in-laws roll recipe for my buns when I have time to make them, the recipe for her rolls is HERE.

Hollandaise Sauce

How I lived before hollandaise I do not care to remember. Warm, velvety and (most deliciously) buttery, I love it on toasted sourdough with a soft boiled egg, or as my dipping sauce for artichoke.

Martha Stewart Cooking School is a must have for anyone like me, trying to learn how to cook on their own. She teaches you basics in a clear easy to follow way, pointing out how and where in the recipe variations can be made. I actually came across it at the library, and after giving it a test drive decided I had to own it!

Here is the recipe as well as some notes from Martha found in the book.

Recipe from: Martha Stewart's Cooking School

Here, we used a white wine reduction, but you can skip that step and simply whisk eggs with 1 teaspoon lemon juice and 1/4 cup boiling water. As one of the French "mother sauces," its preparation is a basic culinary technique that can be varied to create other sauces in the same family (often referred to as "warm emulsions"). By changing the acidic liquid to blood orange juice and zest, you get sauce Maltaise, typically served over steamed asparagus; tangerine juice and zest flavor Mikado sauce. Perhaps the best-known variation is Béarnaise, a traditional accompaniment for steak. To make it, prepare the hollandaise as directed, adding tarragon (the defining flavor of Béarnaise) to the reduction mixture. As it is designed to demonstrate, the method is the key to making the sauce, not the specific ingredients used to give it flavor.
When making hollandaise or any of it's variations, using gentle heat is critical to achieving the right consistency.

You will need:

- 1/4 cup dry white wine

- 1 T white wine vinegar

- 1 T minced shallot

- 1/2 t cracked black peppercorns

- 3 T boiling water

- 3 large egg yolks

- 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature and cut into tablespoons

- pinch cayenne pepper

Directions:

Make reduction

Combine wine, vinegar, shallot, and peppercorns in a small skillet over medium-high heat; cook until reduced to one tablespoon, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add the boiling water and strain through a fine sieve into a heatproof nonreactive (stainless-steel or glass) bowl.

Prepare hot-water bath

Fill a medium sauce pan with 2 inches of water and bring to a boil, then reduce heat so water is barely simmering.

Heat egg yolks

Add egg yolks to strained reduction and whisk, off the heat, until they become pale. Place bowl over saucepan with simmering water. Whisking constantly, cook until the mixture is thick enough to hold a trail from the whisk and begins to hold it's shape when drizzled from the whisk. Remove from heat. Wipe off any mixture that may have cooked to the side of the pot with a damp paper towel to prevent any lumps from forming.

Incorporate butter

Whisking constantly, add butter 1 tablespoon at a time, whisking until each addition is incorporated completely before adding the next. When all the butter has been added, season with lemon juice, salt, and cayenne. The sauce should be thick but still able to drizzle from a spoon (and it should form a pool, not a mound). If it is too thick, thin it with a little water.

Brisket with the Best Dry Rub Ever, and Sweet, Sticky BBQ Sauce

This one meal contains three separate recipes from three different people: Jacob's Grandma Vance, Good ol' Sandra Lee, and some random chef who posted a deliciously simple way of cooking brisket on foodnetwork.com named Tom Perini.

Jaleen's Dry Rub:

The spice rub is a super simple blend of six spices:
-Salt
- pepper (fresh ground is best)
- paprika
- garlic powder
- onion powder
- taco seasoning

Take any container you have, preferably one that is clear, and necessarily the same size all the way up, and fill 1/3 of the way up with salt. Then add one inch of each of the other ingredients, stir to combine, and there you go.

The dry rub is delicious on most meats, and actually really yummy on fresh tomato!

Sandra Lee's Sweet, Sticky BBQ Sauce:

You will need:
- 1 bottle (12 oz) chili sauce
- 1 cup beer (Budweiser is what Sandra recommends, but you can also use any dark colored soda like: coke, pepsi, root beer, or dr. pepper)
- 1/4 cup molasses
- 1 heaping tablespoon McCormick Grill Mates Steak Rub (use this, no substitutes please)
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- optional 2 tablespoons cornstarch (to add extra thickness to the sauce if it doesn't thicken enough for your liking.)

Directions:
In a large skillet stir together chili sauce, beer, molasses, steak rub, and brown sugar. Bring to a boil;reduce heat. Simmer for ten minutes, stirring frequently. Sauce should have thickened up quite a bit, but if you like a thicker sauce, ladle some into a small bowl and whisk in cornstarch until you see no lumps, then add back to skillet and allow the sauce to thicken up to your heart's content! Smother your cooked and sliced brisket with sauce and eat as is, or make up some brisket sandwiches.

For The Brisket:

You will need:
- 4 pounds beef brisket, trimmed
- 1 1/2 cups beef stock
- Jaleen's Dry Rub

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Season the raw brisket on both sides with Jaleen's dry rub. Place in a roasting pan and roast, uncovered, for 1 hour.
Add beef stock and enough water to yield about 1/2 inch of liquid in the roasting pan. Lower oven to 300 degrees F, cover pan tightly and continue cooking for 3 hours, or until fork-tender.
Trim the fat and slice meat thinly across the grain. Top with juice from the pan. Serve it up!

Olive Tapenade

"Tapenade is a Provençal dish usually consisting of puréed or finely chopped
olives, capers, anchovies and olive oil. Its name comes from the provençal word
for capers, tapenas. It is a popular food in the south of France, where it is
generally eaten as an hors d’œuvre, spread on bread.
Tapenade's base
ingredient is olive. The olives (most commonly black olive) and capers are
finely chopped, crushed, or blended. Olive oil is then added until the mixture
becomes a paste. Tapenade is often flavored differently in varying regions with
other ingredients such as garlic, herbs, anchovies, lemon juice, or brandy."

-Wikipedia

You can't always trust wikipedia, but this sounded pretty right on to me. I had no idea what Tapenade was until a recipe I wanted to make a couple years ago called for it.
Keeping it short and sweet:
Olive tapenade is expensive and can be hard to find. Make your own! It's easy, and so very delicious!



Yield: about 13 ounces

You Will Need:

- 1 cup pitted kalamata olives, rough chopped
- 1/4 cup green olives, any filling removed (ie, pimentos or almonds) and rough chopped
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 Tablespoon anchovy paste
- 1 Tablespoon pine nuts
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until the mixture takes on the consistency pictured above.
Tapenade is a spread, perfect for bruschetta, or on THESE:
Tomato and Tapenade Tarts

Homemade Marinara

I'm taking credit for this one. I've made a few different marinara sauces, sticking strictly to whatever recipe I was using. This recipe I claim as my own is really a mixture of my favorite parts of each recipe.



You will need:

- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 2 small onions, finely chopped
- 2 celery stalks, finely chopped
- 2 carrots, finely chopped
- 2 to 6 garlic cloves, finely chopped (it's up to you, how much do you like garlic?)
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 2 (15 oz, or as close to...) cans diced tomatoes
- 1 (15 oz, or as close to...) can stewed tomatoes, (open the can and give them a rough chop)
- 1 (15 oz, or as close to...) can tomato sauce
- 2 bay leaves
- 1/4 to 1/2 cup white wine (optional I guess, but the flavor is insanely good when used)
- OPTIONAL (1/2 cup green olives, finely chopped, 3 tablespoons capers, drained)--these will go with the flavors of the white wine and add a delicious salty bite to the sauce, but I know not all of you are olive fans. That's ok, more for me!

Directions:
Place stock pot or dutch oven on stove over medium-high heat, and add olive oil. Add in the onions, celery, carrots and garlic, and season with the salt and pepper. Allow the vegetables to saute until soft, about 15 minutes. Add in the tomato products, bay leaves and white wine, and allow to simmer over medium heat for about 45 minutes, until flavors marry and the sauce reduces a bit.
REMOVE BAY LEAVES!!!
Grab your food processor and, depending on how chunky you and your family like your marinara, process ladle fulls of the sauce until smooth, and then add the processed sauce back to your stock pot. Doing this will help thicken the sauce. If you want to process the entire batch of marinara sauce then I recommend bringing out a second pot for the sauce you've already processed.
This sauce is delicious with the sweet potato gnocchi (when made without the capers and olives). It is perfect to use as pizza sauce for your homemade pizzas as well.
I promise you will love this sauce! You can pop it in a jar and give it as a gift to your neighbors. It keeps in the fridge for 7 to 10 days, but you can store some in the freezer if you need to keep it longer.

Salsa! (By Jason and Kelly) and Loaded Sour Cream, trust me, it's good

I'd like to start out by saying American Idol sucks. I will never watch again. I love you Casey James! Muah! (Kissing noise)

Dinner party tomorrow! We're having our favorite neighbors over and I will attempt for the first time ever a whole roasted chicken along with artichoke risotto. And guys, my risotto always seems to stay a little crunchy. This is even after adding all the called for liquid plus some and cooking it for the time called for in the recipe. Is this normal?

Anyway, moving on...

So a lot of my friends have been super fun and supportive of my blogging efforts. My friend Jason sends me pictures via cell phone of all the delicious things he makes. The cool thing about Jason is that he doesn't work from a recipe, he just works with what he's got or can get for cheap. That's just how this gangsta rolls. A few days ago he sent me a picture of this:

"Grilled Chicken and Mango Salsa"

"I had mangoes I got for super cheap, and chicken that was gonna go bad so I went to the store and got cilantro and lime. Grilled some red onions and sliced mango and bam." -Jason P.

Well, bam Jason! You're a rock star. I wish I lived back in San Diego so bad it makes my stomach hurt! I MISS MY FRIENDS! Thank goodness for technology. Keep sending me pictures of your food so I know you guys miss me too.

This next salsa recipe is so delicious and simple! Kelly (of According to Kelly) made it for a dinner this last Easter holiday. It goes fast at parties, it's a great thing to keep in your fridge for snacking (Finn loves it), and it's made from things that are easy to get any time of year and that most of us have on hand most of the time anyway.

Ingredients:

- 1 red bell pepper (small diced)

- 1 green bell pepper (small diced)

- 1 cucumber (small diced)

- 1 can corn, drained

- 1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

- cilantro (to taste, but about 2 tablespoons chopped)
- Zesty Italian Dressing (about 3/4 bottle)

Combine and toss. Eat with chips or add to a salad. Yummmmm!

Ok. Are you ready for loaded sour cream? Jacob and I stopped at this restaurant called Cafe Diablo ( http://www.cafediablo.net/) in Torry, Utah on our way home from Escalante this last trip. We had never heard anything about it, and were really surprised when we discovered it to be an upscale restaurant with all plates hovering around the $22 mark. In Torry? Seriously? It's claim to fame is being featured in the 1,000 Places to see in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die. Our food was so good, but I think our favorite thing was the quesadilla we ordered for Finn. Homemade tortillas, gooey cheese, and it was served with this crazy good sour cream. I've spent a couple days on it and I think I have it figured out.

Ingredients:

- 1 cup sour cream

- 2 tbsp small diced green bell pepper

- 1 tbsp small diced onion

- 2 tbsp small diced cucumber

- 1 tomato diced

- Lawry's seasoned salt (to taste)

- 1/8 teaspoon dried rosemary, finely ground

Mix all ingredients together, but reserve half the chopped tomato to sprinkle on top. Eat with quesadillas, enchiladas, or whatever. I crave this stuff.

Hot Fudge, baby! (10/20/2009)

Let me tell you about a little thing called “The Meatloaf Stack.” Start with a slice of buttered, toasted sourdough bread, then add 2 large scoops of mashed potatoes, top with a slice of meatloaf coated in mushroom onion gravy. Wanna know the fastest way to clog a toilet? Get five adults sharing a bathroom to all order the stack for dinner, then lock them in a car for two hours. When the dust has settled I believe you will find your toilet is out of commission.
The Meatloaf Stack is served at the Carnation restaurant in Disneyland, and that is how my family spent last Thursday.
Friday passed in a way much more my style: morning massage and adjustment, nap, aged steak from Bandit’s, and then a few of us went to see Where the Wild Things Are. Yes, my Friday was the BOMB. The weekend was quiet, the highlight for me was taking a drive up to Buellton and eating at Ellen’s Danish Pancake House. Their thin crepe style pancakes are so good. They serve them with butter and powdered sugar. Ugh, I wish I could wake up to them every morning!

We drove home on Monday, and we made it to just past Boulder, Utah before Finn decided to start throwing goldfish at the back of my head in revolt. So, a good drive. (My son might be the devil…)
The recipe I am sharing with you tonight is my mother in laws hot fudge. Famous throughout Newbury Park and Thousand Oaks, and already once published on a much cooler blog than mine, I feel I have to do my part to share it with the rest of the world. I hope you try it, I have actually seen people fill a cup and drink it straight.


(When Larene makes this she doubles the recipe.)

You will need:

- 1 and ½ cubes Butter
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla
- about 6 oz Carnation evaporated milk
- 6 to 7 tablespoons Coco Powder (depending how ‘chocolaty’ you want it)
- 3 cups Powdered Sugar

There doesn’t seem to be an exact science to combining the ingredients. The best way I can figure to prevent lumps would be to heat the butter and vanilla together in a sauce pan (probably over medium to medium-high heat), then alternate adding the dry ingredients (coco powder and powdered sugar) with the carnation milk, whisking like crazy. Larene puts hers in a mixer to get rid of lumps, and then reheats it. Pretty fool proof (yay!) but beware of overheating, which Larene says can cause the mixture to become too sticky. If you have leftover fudge that you will be keeping in the fridge, adding a little extra butter when you reheat it will help keep it from getting ‘sugary.’ Sorry I don’t have any pictures of this to post, I hate cooking when I have no idea of the end result I am shooting for. I will probably put some up soon, though!

Meat Sauce

This is the spaghetti I grew up on. I love to use this sauce when I make lasagna. When I make it I always make enough to freeze for later use. This recipe makes enough for just that.

Can we tell the theme for this week is quick, easy, comfort food?

Truth be told the only thing I really want, and I will get it shortly, is a bean and extra cheese add sour cream burrito from Sombrero’s in San Diego. Come next week I will have my burrito and the universe will again be in balance! (Could you tell something was off?)

For the spaghetti sauce you will need:

- 1 lb ground beef
- 2 14.5 oz can tomato sauce
- 2 14.5 oz can stewed tomatoes, Italian style if you can find it
- 2 packets Lawry’s Spaghetti Sauce Spices & Seasonings, original NOT extra rich and thick

Directions:

Brown the ground beef in a large Dutch oven or stock pot.

Add canned tomatoes and sauce, one can full of water, and the spice packets. Cook until heated through and the sauce has thickened. You can serve it chunky, but I like to use my immersion blender to puree out the sauce. If you don't have an immersion blender you could use a food processor or regular blender. (But you should buy an immersion blender, best thing I ever did. Target, 30 bucks. And way easier to clean than the alternative.)

Add to your favorite pasta. You can also leave the meat out of the sauce completely, it is still really tasty.

Chicken and Sausage Pot Pie with Cheese Gravy, Caesar Salad, and a side of Cranberry Sauce! Happy Friday, baby! (9/25/2009)

Today was a day filled with chores. The most horrible of which was actually purchasing car insurance. I tried to put it off as long as possible. I mean, my old insurance, paid for by… not me, expired in August. Soooo…yeah, six months of peace of mind costs $684 dollars.
This calls for comfort food!!!
The pot pie recipe is a twist on my mother-in-laws already delicious original. The mild Italian sausage adds a little peppery kick, and the cheese gravy is the perfect topper. It was Jacob’s idea to serve it with cranberry sauce—“The boy’s a genius!” And the Caesar Salad dressing is Jacob’s favorite. I got it from an episode of Tyler’s Ultimate on the Food Network.
I hope you all love it. It’s the perfect meal for a game night with friends, or for eating yourself into a coma. I’m reminded of something a friend said to me once, but he said it about alcohol. Tonight I’m not eating for fun, I’m eating to forget.

For the pot pie you will need:

-1 cooked chicken breast, chopped (I just buy a rotisserie chicken, and use both breasts)
-2 links of mild Italian sausage, casings removed, cooked
-1 Can Cream of chicken soup
-1 Can Cream of potato soup
-1 Can Whole Potatoes (cut them into chunks yourself)
-1 Can Corn
-1 Can Green beans
-1 Can Carrots
-1 Can Peas
-1 cup Milk
-onion powder, kosher salt, fresh ground black pepper
-pre-made pie crust (top and bottom)

(This recipe makes enough for two full sized pot pies. I usually freeze the leftover filling to use later, but you could always just use half a can of each and store the leftover vegetables in a bunch of little Tupperware containers…if you do that, keep the meat portions the same.)

Combine all ingredients except sausage in a large bowl. Line bottom of pie dish with first crust and fill half way with chicken and vegetable mixture. Add sausage, then add chicken and vegetable mixture to fill. You will not use all the chicken and vegetable mixture, so don’t try to fit it all in there! Store the remaining mixture in the freezer until you are ready for another pie. Cover with the second crust, and seal the edges. Cut slits in top of pie to help steam escape. I usually take an egg and mix it with about a teaspoon of water, then brush the egg wash over the top of the pie.
Bake the pie for an hour at 350 degrees. I cover the pie with tin foil for the first half hour to keep the crust from getting too dark.

While the pie bakes, you can get your cheese gravy and your salad ready!

For the Cheese Gravy you will need:

-1 tablespoon butter

-1 tablespoon flour

-1 cup milk

-1 to 1and 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese

In a small sauce pan melt butter over medium heat. Stir in flour and some fresh ground black pepper until the flour and butter are completely blended and no lumps remain. Stir in milk and continue to wisk gently over medium heat until sauce thickens and begins to bubble across entire surface. Add cheese and stir until melted. Remove from heat and serve.

For the Caesar dressing you will need:
-2 anchovies
-2 cloves garlic, minced
- ½ lemon, juiced
-2 egg yolks
- ¼ cup grated parmigian cheese
-1 cup olive oil
-2 tablespoons water
-kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

In a blender combine the anchovies, garlic, lemon juice, egg yolks and grated Parmesan. Pulse a couple of times to combine, then add the water and blend again. With the motor running, gradually pour the oil through the feed tube and continue to blend until emulsified. Season, to taste, with salt and some freshly ground black pepper. Use to top your favorite mix of greens. Thanks Tyler Florence, you’re the bomb! I hope you kids had a better Friday than I did!