Home Made Ravioli

Super awesome homemade pasta.

Amish Sausage, homemade pasta, butter brandy sage sauce.

Food from July

A close up on a variation of one of my more awesome and regular pasta dishes. 

It's ordinary box pasta, I know, I don't love that idea either, and you can totally taste the difference. Anyway, I made a bechemal sauce, sort of. Made out of some beef stock and onions. It's topped with chicken made a few days earlier on the grill which added a fantabulous smokey flavor. Add some chopped scallions and fresh basil for a basic dish that's scrumptious down to the last bite!

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Spaghetti Squash!

This dish is totally inspired from watching an episode of Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives. While I can't say I love that show there is the occasional piece of awesome. 

Here I cut a spaghetti squash in half and dropped it in boiling water for fifteen minutes. While that was bubbling away I cooked up some sausage in a pan (Jimmy Dean hot for this particular dish, fancy I know) Opened a can of crushed tomatoes, added garlic, onions, diced carrots and spices to simmer. After pulling the squash out I let it cool just enough to touch them spooned out the "spaghetti" and added it to the sausage, stirred in some of my quicky sauce then refilled the squash shell. I placed a few slices of mozzarella on top then placed it in the over to bake at 375 for half an hour. Meanwhile I let the sauce continue simmering and when it was all done, spooned out the sauce, sprinkled a little cheese and added a little fresh basil to create what you see above. 

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Jake made some braised ribs in scotch. Precious precious scotch. Luckily it tasted fairly amazing, but he'd have to try and remember to tell you himself.  The perfect complement was my cole slaw of deliciouso. Jake doesn't like me calling it cole slaw because he feels that the only thing it has in common with cole slaw is the cabbage. Ingredients include tons of fresh cilantro, fresh squeezed lime juice, cumin, sesame oil, grapeseed oil, soy sauce, garlic, and chiles. Mmmm. I've made this a few times and the specifics can vary but it's perfect every single time.

Also, braised ribs.

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Flank steak rubbed in spices of a Mexican flavor and sit in that for an hour, served on flour tortillas with my black beans, cheese, sour cream, sauteed onions, and cheese. One day I'll talk about my black beans, but they're not your ordinary beans.

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Jake made this steak. I took the picture. I liked the picture more than Jake liked the steak. I thought the steak was fine.

With the steak, (which was grilled) we had the above vegetables, also grilled. While also not great, they too took a great picture.

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Best. Hamburgers. I've. Ever. Made. Fresh chuck from the Amish, not sure if that's what made the difference or if I was starving or if I just finally have figured out how to make hamburgers. First we made the bacon, then grilled the burgers in the bacon grease, then once one was done grilled the bread (slices from Panera's asiago loaf) and onions. I added dijon mustard to mine and the only thing that would have made it better would have been some vine ripened tomato slices. 

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Amish Pierogies with basil.

I don't remember what else he did to them. But I do remember they were good. Hard to believe it was only a week ago.

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Omelette!

Eggs were light and fluffy, cooked on low in a hot pan in butter, filled with feta and fresh basil.

Three out of the last four dinners

I wanted to share a few of the meals we've eaten this week!

First up, boneless rib eye with broccoli rabe and onions

It's not obvious from the photo, but the rabe was amazing. The steak was fantastic, but we eat fantastic steak all the time, the rabe though? I made magic. I started with a spoonful of bacon grease, then after it was hot put in the rabe covered the top with shallot salt and let it melt. After tasting the rabe I realized it was far too bitter to be truly enjoyable. I added some basil but still wasn't sure, I wanted acid and I wanted sweet. I added basalmic vinegar and then sprinkled sugar over it then let that cook on low for another five minutes. I realized then I wanted the sauce I was creating to bind to the leaves since otherwise it wouldn't really meld flavors so I added some cornstarch, stirred it all up and turned the heat off and let it sit for ten minutes.

I can't describe how perfect it was.

Last night I meant to just make foccacia but then there was pizza at work and it accidentally became a pizza, or two ... or three. I made one.

Sunday night we had a fresh cut of swordfish and artichokes. 

Jake made a crazy limey dill butter sauce to go with. It was delicious, if a little acidic, but the acidity did pair well with the artichokes. I ate every bit on my plates.