Summer Garden Pasta

I was recently given a gift certificate for Indigo and I knew exactly what I wanted to buy -- a cookbook by Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa. For years, I have enjoyed watching her on the Food Network for her simple, classic recipes and she always just looks so happy cooking! Though I guess if I had her kitchen in the Hamptons, I might too!

Anyway, so I just got two of her books in the mail and they are beautiful. Nice glossy pages with beautiful photos and I was immediately inspired to make three dishes of hers and they were all easy and full of flavour.

The first I made was the summer garden pasta. Angel hair pasta topped with a simple mixture of cherry tomatoes, olive oil, fresh basil and garlic. You had to marinade the sauce for a few hours before so all the flavours infused together and it smelled like nothing else. I couldn't wait to eat this one!

Ingredients
Adapted from The Barefoot Contessa at Home

• fresh angel hair pasta (make your own using this recipe)
• 2 pints cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 4 cloves freshly minced garlic
• 10 leaves fresh basil, chiffonaded
• 1 cup grated fresh parmesan
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

• In a bowl, combine cherry tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, basil and salt and pepper. Toss and let sit for about four hours.
• Bring large pot of salted water to a boil and cook pasta. Drain.
• Put tomato mixure in a large pan and warm. Add in pasta and toss, fully coating pasta. Add parmesan and stir, letting it melt throughout.
• Serve warm with more parmesan and basil for presentation.

Chicken Fajitas

I love an easy weeknight meal that comes together with ingredients from my own kitchen. I have a dream that one day I'll menu plan so grocery shopping is more productive and meal-time less stressful, but for now, I'll just take it when I can create a healthy and satisfying meal from my items I already have. 

Fajitas are easy and can be personalized to any taste. I keep mine simple with lettuce, tomato, cheese and chicken, but feel free to add additional toppings. T, for example, added artichokes, olives and hot sauce. I'm trying not to judge.

These are also fun to serve at a casual party and have the toppings in separate bowls and let your guests put them together. Enjoy!

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground chicken (turkey or beef would work too)
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 package of fajita seasoning (stay tuned for an at-home version to make)
• 1/4 cup water
• lettuce, shredded
• cheese, shredded
• tomatoes, diced
• sour cream and salsa
• tortillas (once I get a cast iron skillet, I'm going to make these tortillas)

Directions

• Brown ground chicken until no longer pink and drain off any excess liquid
• Add diced onion, seasoning and water and simmer for a few minutes
• Warm tortillas in the oven 
• Add chicken to tortilla and add preferred toppings, such as lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream and salsa
• Wrap tortilla pulling bottom up (perpendicular to line of toppings), then fold in sides to create a leak-free fajita
• Serve with a fork -- in case the leak-free fajita, well, leaks

Fresh Green Bean Salad

To balance out all the baking I've been doing, we've been eating a lot of salads. Each week, I enjoy going to the farmer's market outside my office and finding fresh veggies to make a new salad with. I stumbled on this recipe on www.allrecipes.com/ for a two bean salad with cherry tomatoes, feta and a balsamic dressing and we were not disappointed. Unlike the other salad dressings we've made, the balsamic was sweet. This will be a regular staple in our summer salad rotation.

Ingredients

• 
  
  1/2 pound green beans
• 
  
  1/2 pound yellow beans
• 
  
  12 cherry tomatoes, halved
• 
  
  1/2 brick of feta cheese
• 
  
  2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 
  
  1 tsp olive oil
• 
  
  1 clove garlic, minced
• 
  
  salt and pepper to taste

Directions 

• 
  
  Mix together the balsamic, oil, garlic and salt and pepper
• 
  
  Clean, trim and cut beans into bite-sized pieces
• 
  
  Mix vegetables together in a medium-sized bowl with dressing
• Crumble feta cheese on top

Recipe adapted from www.allrecipes.com 

Summer Couscous and Chickpea Salad

It's hot out. I mean steamy, sticky, humid hot and what am I looking for to cool down? A refreshing, cold, delicious salad. I love this time of year, but the thought of standing over a hot stove is the last thing I want to do and I just find that I always gravitate towards cold foods and healthy ones. This dish meets all those requirements and then some! This is my new go-to for the summer pot luck and I'm sure it will be yours, too!

Ingredients

• 1 cup cooked couscous
• 1 can chickpeas, rinse and drained
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 1/2 red onion, diced
• 1 field cucumber, chopped
• 1 tomato, diced
• 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2-3 limes, juiced
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

• In a large bowl, toss all the ingredients with the olive oil and lime juice. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve cold.

Recipe from Ezra Pound Cake

Stuffed Peppers

I tend to over-buy vegetables. I get overly ambitious about the things I'm going to make, and it's not uncommon to have casualties in my fridge; poor vegetables that have been ignored and unused. 


So last week when I was at the farmer's market, and I came home with four peppers (which would be keeping the two peppers I already had in the fridge, company), T told me that I needed to use them asap. 


A quick search of my freezer, fridge and cupboards showed that I had all the ingredients of stuffed peppers -- a family fave. I defrosted some beef I purchased for lasagna, grabbed a can of tomatoes, dug up some rice and got set to cook!


These stuffed peppers are a meal in themselves -- a giant pepper stuffed with meat, tomatoes and rice. I am often perplexed about what to serve as a side with them because they simply don't need anything else, but they look lost on the plate. I'm open to suggestions! In the meantime, enjoy the peppers.




Ingredients

• 1 lb. ground beef (or chicken or turkey)
• 1 28 oz can of tomatoes (diced, stewed, whole, whatever)
• 1/2 cup rice
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp garlic
• 1 tbsp butter
• four peppers, tops cut off and insides scooped out
• 1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

Directions

In a pan, melt the butter and sautee the onion and garlic.

Add the ground meat and cook until no longer pink.


Drain off fat.


Add can of tomatoes, rice and chili powder. Simmer for about 25 minutes until rice is cooked.


While cooking, prepare peppers by cutting tops off and scooping out insides.


Let meat mixture cool slightly, then stuff peppers, right to top.


Cook at 325 degrees, covered with foil, for 90 minutes, or until peppers are soft.


Uncover and sprinkle with cheese and broil for 5 more minutes until cheese is bubbly.


Serve with a dollop of sour cream.




Print recipe for Stuffed Peppers

Easy Cheesy Tortellini Bake

I love East Side Mario's Cheese Cappelletti. When I used to go for dinner with my skating team at competitions, we would get 30 orders of it. Thinking about it actually makes my mouth water. It is that good.

Well, I have stumbled upon a really close second. It's cheesy and delicious and the awesome thing is that this is hardly even a recipe really because it has just FOUR ingredients. It was such a no-brainer I wasn't even thinking of blogging about it (really, it's hardly cooking), but it is so good that I couldn't keep it to myself.

It would be really easy to personalize this dish by adding tomato, different kinds of cheeses or even different pasta. This is going to be a staple in our house for sure.

Ingredients

• one can tomato soup
• one can milk (fill up the empty can of tomato soup to measure)
• one package of fresh tortellini
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions

In an oven safe dish, pour tomato soup and equal amount of milk. Stir. 

Add UNCOOKED tortellini -- yes, straight out of the package. 

Stir to coat. 

Place in oven at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Stir once or twice during this time so all tortellini cooks evenly.

At 40 minutes, spread mozzarella over top and put back in oven on Broil for 10 minutes until cheese is bubbling and browning.

That's it. So easy, so amazing.

Double Tomato Bruschetta

Bruschetta are often a bad idea at parties. They can be messy and difficult to eat with in front of people, but I made these for my family for Mother's Day and they were devoured so I think they might be worth it. 

For me, the trick to a good bruschetta is the bread. When the bread is too toasted, that's when it gets difficult to eat. So these ones I worked to not over toast and I think I found the perfect balance to toasty by still soft to easily bite into without it crumbling apart. 

I also used only fresh ingredients for the topping and I think it made all the difference. Our local fruit market sells these huge bags of fresh basil for $1.99 and it really was much better than using dried. This is certainly a keeper!

Ingredients

• 6 tomatoes (most recipes recommend Roma tomatoes because they are less juicy inside, but I used regular tomatoes because they were redder and I simply scooped out the seeds and juices)
• 1/2 cup sundried tomatoes, diced
• 3 cloves minced garlic
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 fresh basil, chopped
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• french baguette
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions 

Prep all the ingredients -- dice fresh and sundried tomatoes, garlic and basil.

(I scooped out all the middle of the tomato because you don't want all that extra liquid)

Mix tomatoes, garlic, oil, vinegar, oil, basil and salt and pepper together. Let rest for 15 minutes while flavours blend together.

(this smells amazing!)

Set your oven to broil.

Slice the french stick into 1/4 inch slices. The bigger the angle you cut them on, the bigger the piece will be. (I used one and a half french sticks to get 20 slices, which was the perfect amount for the topping).

Paint each piece of bread with oil on one side and lay flat, oil side up, on a baking sheet and broil for two minutes until getting very lightly toasted.

Remove from oven and top each piece with the tomato mixture and then some mozzarella cheese and put back in oven (still on broil) for five minutes until cheese is melted and bread is toasted but still soft.

Remove from oven and place on platter and serve to a hungry crowd (who are already armed with side plates and napkins!)

Download a printable version of Double Tomato Bruschetta