So Jeremy and I were talking about how Mike needs to take his French Toast recipe and turn it into a Boston Cream Pie French Toast. Jeremy linked to a recipe that looked damn good on this blog. I looked over the site and found a recipe that would work with some stuff I had in my house and made this.
http://cakebatterandbowl.com/creamy-lemon-summer-squash-pasta.html
Though I did make some modifications and I'm posting my recipe here.
1 lbs whole wheat penne pasta
2 large yellow squashes, chopped
2 large zucchinis, chopped
1 package stir fry chicken
1 red onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup chicken stock
Juice and zest of 2 limes
6 oz greek yogurt
1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
salt
pepper
olive oil
Cook the penne pasta like you know what you are doing.
Saute the squash and zucchini in olive oil and put aside until later.
In the same pan, saute the onions and in the last minute, add the garlic. Put these aside with the squash.
Cook up the chicken with a little more olive oil until brown.
About this time the pasta should be done. Drain it, and in the pot it was cooked in, add the chicken stock, yogurt, lime and basil. The original recipe said to add the cheese which I did and it just ended up get all clumpy and sticking to the spoon rather then getting creamy. I recommend adding the cheese at the very end to get good coverage. Instead you'll need to get the sauce creamy another way. You could make a roux and add that, or add the squash and zucchini and get some of the starch from them to help cream up the sauce.
Either way, mix the veggies and chicken and pasta all back together. Mix it up real good, and sprinkle on the cup of parmesan while stirring. I idea is to get the parmesean to stick on each piece of food rather then sticking to itself in one, maybe delicious, clump.
I added some more parmesan to my bowl to serve but it wouldn't have been necessary if the parmesan was creamy to start with.
I really enjoyed this pasta dish. I've had dishes similar with the veggies and cheese and creamy bits. But the addition of the lemon juice, or lime juice in my case, and the yogurt is really nice. It helped to bring out the saltiness of it all.
So my roommate, Michelle, bought some stuff for spaghetti puttanesca, but she has been working a lot recently so I asked if I could make it. It is a real simple recipe. If you ever find yourself with a tin (or two) of anchovies, capers, and olives, this is the dish you want to make.
Ingredients:
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
4 cloves garlic
1 tin anchovies (or two if you want it to be rich and salty), drained
1 Tablespoon red pepper flakes
Small can of black olives, diced
3 Tablespoons capers
32 oz Marinara, or crushed/diced tomatoes (maybe more if you want more sauce)
Black pepper
1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley (optional if you have it. I didn't.)
1 lbs Angel Hair pasta
salt
In a large saute pan, saute the garlic, anchovies and red peppers in the olive oil. Make sure the garlic is all soft, the anchovies should become a past (if not mash them around with a spoon or spatula), and use enough red pepper to make sure you can get some heat. Puttanesca is suppose to be spicy, yeah. Then just dump in the olives, capers, tomatoes, and black pepper. I let this simmer for about an hour with a top on it so it didn't reduce too far down. If you don't have a top, just add water to keep the consistency nice.
With the pasta, I put a good 1/2 cup of salt in the water before it started to boil. This makes some damn good pasta. Give it a shot.
If you have the parsley, put it in right before mixing it with the pasta. I mixed this all up and put some good Parmesan on top to serve.
In the pic above, you can also see some nice crusty bread. I was pretty pleased with this so I'm including it in the post. The bread was a small loaf of artisan bread from the store. I took a few Tablespoons of olive oil in a pan and sauteed up some garlic. I then spread that garlic oil on the bread and put it out on a pan. I topped it with a good bit of fresh ground black pepper, Parmesan, and baked it in the oven at 400 for 5 minutes. I then topped with some fresh chopped basil. Good stuff.
More chicken? Yeah, yeah I guess so. So this one was all off the cuff. Turned out purdy darn good, so I'm posting it. I figure this should make up for using the Tyler Florence recipe.
I can't give you exact measurements for anything but here were the basic ingredients:
-4 chicken breasts
-turkey ham
-basil
-garlic
-parmesan
-1 can tomato sauce
-onion powder
-white cooking wine
-oregano
-salt
-pepper
-olive oil
-milk
I started off by seasoning the chicken breasts and then searing them in a skillet with some olive oil. Took the breasts, sliced them open, stuffed them with pieces of the ham, and a mixture of basil, garlic, parmesan, oregano, and onion powder. I also covered them on the outsides with the same filling. Then I popped them in the oven at 350. Hit the hot pan with the seared chicken bits with some white wine, popped in the tomato sauce, and some milk. Brought it to a boil, reduced it, started to stir in parmesan, basil, garlic, and a little bit of onion powder. I let that simmer basically the whole time the chicken cooked. Amber made some mashed potatoes. I pulled the chicken out when it was about 150 internally, let it rest for 10 minutes and it rose to about 165 when it was done. It ended up being cooked perfectly. Super moist, super tender. It was good, especially for being completely on the fly.
