Making Homemade Pasta

Got a pasta crank sitting around? If not, this can be done with a rolling pin, too. Making homemade pasta couldn't be simpler, and it's the perfect thing to do on a Sunday. 3 ingredients, an hour of your time, and you could be eating pasta YOU made yourself. How gratifying! There is nothing like eating the real deal. Much lighter than any box pasta! I got this recipe from Lidia Bastianich's Family Table.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 3 eggs + 1 yolk
• 2 TB olive oil

Beat the eggs and the oil together in a small bowl. In a large bowl, add the flour. Add the egg mixture to the flour and mix with a fork until clumped. Make a ball of dough with your hands. On a floured working surface, start kneading your dough until it gets dense and shiny. It should not be sticky, if it is, add more flour.

Your dough should look like this. Wrap it in plastic wrap, and let rest for 30 minutes at room temp.

After resting, cut the dough into fourths. Take one piece and wrap the rest so it doesn't dry out.

Make a work surface, complete with pasta crank, bowl of flour for sprinkling, kitchen towels for layering, and a floured baking sheet for your pasta nests. It's good to do this while the dough is resting.

 

Pass the dough quarter through the pasta crank on the widest setting (#5). Pass thru once, and fold into thirds. Turn, and pass through again. Do this about 8x, continuously folding and turning the dough.

 

 

Turn the crank down 2 notches, to setting #3. Pass through once more.

Turn pasta crank to setting #1, thinnest setting. Pass through once more.

You'll have beautiful, long, thin sheets, keep them nicely floured, and continue with the rest of the dough. Layer the strips between kitchen towels, being careful not to let any pasta touch each other. The dough will get drier and easy to work with.

Once you have all your strips ready, move the crank to the pasta setting of your choice. I chose wide pasta - like fettuccine. Crank your strips through, catching the pasta strands on the other side.

Start piling up "pasta nests", sprinkling liberally with flour.

Beautiful pasta!

Boil some water, add pasta. Only takes a minute til it's ready!

Plate and serve with your favorite Sunday sauce.

More Laptop Lunches...totally obsessed.

I love this thing so much, I bought one for myself. Lilly gets excited to see what is under the lid each day! Here are some lunches you may have missed...

Lilly's lunch:

Meatball/mozz skewers, homemade granola bar, corn on the cob, edemame, bear-shaped egg,
organic vanilla yogurt with colored sprinkles!

My lunch:

Turkey chili (with cheese), corn on the cob, edemame,
bear-shaped egg, arugula salad, homemade granola bar.

 

Lilly's lunch:

tri-color letter pasta, meatball/mozz skewers, bunny-shaped egg,

edemame/carrots, vanilla yogurt with chocolate sprinkles.

 

My lunch:
chicken salad w grapes, TJ's organic vanilla yogurt with homemade granola,
pita chips with hummus, bunny-shaped egg, edemame, tomatoes.

For more Laptop Lunch ideas, see my Flickr set!

What's in YOUR fridge? I'll show you mine if you show me yours!

I'm putting it out there today and offering you a glimpse of my fridge. I am always interested to see what people eat and buy. It's fascinating to me! I always get new ideas, too. So...I thought I'd make this a fun one and call it a meme.

I am tagging some of my favorite peeps because I wanna know what's in their fridges! No obligations, just a chance for fun! If I haven't tagged you and you want to show your goodies, by all means!

Enjoy!

Some items on the top shelf: TJ's Organic Wheat Bread, TJ's organic vanilla yogurt, mozz balls in brine, free-range chicken broth, ciabatta bread, 1/2 a lemon

2nd shelf down: Bota Box Wine pinot grigio, fresh mint and thyme, TJ's tuscan pane bread, TJ's whole wheat pitas, organic strawberries, organic milk.

 

3rd shelf down: Brita, light sour cream, light cottage cheese, Lindenhof Farm ground turkey, organic rotisserie chicken, TJ's tilapia, farm fresh eggs.

Drawer #1: Fresh basil. Babybel cheese, yogurts, cheeses
Drawer #2:  Fruits, limes, lemons, waters for lunches.
Drawer #3 (not shown): All my fresh greens - lettuce, cukes, peppers, cilantro, parsley, arugula, baby spinach

So...I wanna see these fridges:

Pam - For the Love of Cooking
Chris - Nibble Me This
WWW - Words Words Words
Lori - The Recipe Girl
Blonde Goddess - The Blonde Goddess
Eric - SubEWL
Dr. Zibbs - That Blue Yak

I am looking forward to peeking in YOUR fridge!

Laptop Lunches!

My new favorite thing! What a great idea...bento lunches for kids (and adults)...and if you are conscious, you can make them completely litter-free, helping to reduce the amount of cafeteria waste. You can get SO creative with these! I've had this thing for 2 days, and I can't wait to get up in the morning and start making lunch :)

Organic Vanilla Yogurt from TJs (with sprinkles), Organic red grapes, homemade whole-wheat zucchini bread, gummy penguins from TJs, Whole wheat Goldfish, rabbit and bear-shaped bologna & cheese on TJ's Organic Wheat bread, and organic chocolate milk. Almost totally organic and litter-free!

 Heart-shaped bologna & cheese, cheez-its, fresh pasta with olive oil, cheese wheel, apple slices with peanut butter, baby carrots.

To get your own laptop lunchbox, go where I go: The Healthy Cottage

For more Laptop Lunch ideas, see my Flickr set!

Gnocchi Bolognese

Two great things that go great together! My homemade basic ricotta gnocchi and bolognese sauce.

I had both frozen, so this made for a quick and delicious chilly-weather meal.

 

Enjoy!

Easy Lemon Chicken Penne

 

This was one of those quick pantry meals I pulled out of my you-know-what. Had 1 leftover chicken cutlet from the weekend, and the rest fell into place. You probably have all the ingredients too! Would be great with grilled chicken as well.

• 3/4 box of dried penne
• 1 chicken cutlet, battered and fried crisp, cut into strips
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cloves garlic (I used 2 cubes of frozen mashed garlic from Dorot)
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 big handful of baby spinach
  
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1/2 cup white wine
  
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan

For the chicken cutlet:

Butterfly cut one chicken breast and pound thin. Beat one egg in a bowl. In a separate bowl, mix 1/4 c bread crumbs, some salt, pepper, dried parsley, and parmasan cheese. Dip the chicken into the egg, then coat with the breadcrumb mixture.

In a large saucepan, start the water for your pasta. 

Meanwhile, heat a deep skillet on med-high.  Add a couple turns around the pan of olive oil. When oil is hot, add the chicken, brown on both sides and set aside.

Shh. Yes, that is my wine glass! I love to cook with the same wine I'm drinking. 

Cook your pasta to package instructions, drain and set aside while you're cooking the sauce...

For the sauce:

Add the 3 TB of olive oil to the same pan you cooked the chicken in. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes to pan and saute until fragrant. Add the wine and simmer for about a minute. Add the cooked pasta and the spinach. Toss until the spinach wilts. Turn heat off.

Remove pasta to a large bowl. Squeeze the lemon into the pasta and toss again. Slice the chicken into strips, and arrange atop the penne. Give the chicken a nice squeeze of lemon too. Before serving, top with Parmesan.

Very light and lemony! The crispy chicken really highlights the meal. Enjoy!

Apologies and a lesson.

You may have noticed that my blog has been taken over by hostile spammers, trying to sell pharmaceuticals. I would like to apologize to anyone linking to me, since those posts may have shown up in your sidebar.

Blogger is absolutely NO help (no number to call), and nothing in their Help Forum describes the problem I'm having. And even if you do get as far as filling out a form with a choice that's close to yours, you still receive an automated email, basically stating, "you're screwed".

I couldn't figure out how to stop it. No matter how many times I changed my password, it was still happening. That's when I realized it had to be an "inside job".

So I took a look from another perspective this morning, and realized that I have mailToBlogger enabled, and it was set on the default setting. Easy for anyone to figure out. The word "mail" should be changed to anything but "mail", else hackers can figure out how to post their spam on your precious site.

I was about to export my blog and start over, when this dawned on me. It's only been a few minutes though, so I'm crossing my fingers that this was the fix.


A word to the wise: Change the default "mail" in your MailToBlogger setting! Under Settings>>Email & Mobile>>Posting Options>>Email Posting Address.

Baked Zucchini Fritters

I bought one of those ginormous zucchinis from West Chester Grower's Market for $1.00. With it, I managed to make a sidedish of grilled zucchini for dinner one night, 2 loaves of whole wheat zucchini bread, and these babies...

Baked Zucchini Fritters

• 3 cups of shredded zucchini (I used a mandolin)
• 1 TB basil, dried
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1-2 eggs, beaten
• 3/4 cup italian bread crumbs
• 1/4 white onion, minced
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• pinch of cayenne pepper
• 1/2 cup asiago (or parmesan) cheese
• Olive oil
• salt & pepper

Oven at 425 degrees

Shred the zucchini in a box grater or mandolin. If the zucchini shreds are really wet, wring out the shreds in a dishtowel or cheesecloth.

In a mixing bowl, combine all ingredients.

Drizzle a baking sheet with olive oil. Make 8-10 patties and place on the sheet. Drizzle tops of patties with more olive oil.

Bake in oven on one side for about 15 mins. Flip each patty then bake 10 mins more or until crispy.

Serve as a side, or with marinara sauce. Kid friendly! Lilly gobbled these up!

Chicken Scarpariello

This was adapted from a Lidia Bastianich recipe. If you don't know Lidia, she's on PBS every Saturday and she is an incredible chef of Italian cuisine. I just love watching her program...she's very soothing and her foods are full of flavor, yet rarely complex. Simple, Italian rustic meals.

• 4 boneless thighs (cut into cubes)
  
• 2 Italian sausage links (I used a broccoli rabe version - remove sausage from casing and crumble)
  
• Olive oil (a couple turns around the pan)
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 3 pickled cherry peppers, seeds removed and chopped coarse
• 1 - 2 longhots (peppers) - I used jarred.
  
• handful of spinach
• ¼ cup red wine vinegar
• ¼ cup dry white wine
• ½ cup chicken stock
• 1/2 box of Orecchietti pasta
• salt & pepper to taste

Cook your pasta, drain and set aside.

In a deep skillet on med high, add olive oil. Season the chicken with salt & pepper, and add to pan. Cook til browned, and remove from pan, set aside.

Add the sausage to the pan, and more olive oil if needed. Once cooked through, set it aside with the chicken.

Time to put all those yummy brown bits to work! Add the garlic and peppers, and saute for 1 min. Add vinegar and scrape all the brown bits from the pan. This is called "deglazing the pan".

Cook til vinegar is reduced by 1/2, and add the wine. Reduce again. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil. Add in the chicken, sausage and spinach and toss to coat. Add in the pasta, toss all together.

Spiiicy! But in a really yummy way :)