After our first attempt at making Jamie Oliver’s 30 minute meals with Stuffed cypriot chicken, we were really excited to try making another 30 minute meal again.

So the next day, we watched another episode of the show, and decided to make Broccoli Orecchiette Pasta with  Zucchini & Bocconcini Salad, and Prosciutto & Melon Salad.

Again, we took 1 hour to make it this time. It really shouldn’t take an hour, because the 2 salads can be made in 10 minutes. Most of the time went to figuring out how to work Dee’s food processor, going back to video/cook book, and preparation. If you have all ingredients and kitchen tools ready, I think this can really be done in 30 minutes.

The meal was really yummy, and again everything tasted together really well.  I loved everything, but my favorite was the prosciutto & melon salad, there was a good balace between the sweet melon and the saltiness of the prosciutto. It was the refreshing part of the meal. I will be making this salad more often because it was so easy to do.

Steps:

Ingredients (See exact measurements in book)

Pasta:

• Parmesan cheese
• Broccoli
• Broccolini
• Capers
• Anchovies in oil
• Dried chile
• Garlic
• Thyme
• Dried orecchiette

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Here is a recipe for a baked pasta with pork sausage and eggplants from Tyler Florence’s cook book. This was a very rich and meaty pasta, it’s very comforting, perfect for this time of the year.

Cooking and Prep time: 1 hour

Ingredients (see book for exact measurements)

• Rigatoni Pasta
• Pork Sausages
• Eggplant
• Onion
• Garlic
• Canned whole tomatoes
• Fresh Basil Leaves
• Olive Oil
• Mozzarella Cheese
• Parmesan
• Salt & Black Pepper

1. On high heat, sear the pork sausages in pan with olive oil until the sausages have a nice caramelized crust, but still raw on the inside.
2. Remove sausage from pan, add a bit more olive oil, turn heat down to medium and place eggplants in, season with salt and pepper. Cook the eggplants until they are soft on the inside. Meanwhile, start boiling a pot of water for the rigatoni.
3. Remove eggplants from pan.
4. Place rigatoni in boiling water, cook for about 5 minutes.
5. add more olive oil and place onion and garlic in. Cook until the onion is transparent.
6. Add the canned tomatoes inside the pan with onions and garlic.
7.  Crush the tomatoes, add in fresh basil leaves, season with salt and pepper, let the sauce simmer until sauce is thick
8. Save about 1/2 cup of pasta water. Drain the pasta. It should be little bit under cooked than al dente.
9. Cut the pork sausages into bite sizes.
10. Mix pork sausage, eggplant and pasta in your baking pan.
11. Break up mozzarella into bite size pieces, carefully mix them in with the pasta.
12. Add in tomato sauce, and carefully mix everything together. If it looks dry, add in the pasta water.
13. Place an even layer of mozzarella on top of the pasta, and sprinkle a generous amount of grated parmesan on top.
14. Place it in pre-heated oven for about 20 minutes.

As you can see from my picture, I left my pasta in the oven for a tad too long, I have burned the top a little. I relied on my timer, so this could totally be preventable if I had kept my eye on it.

I also cooked my rigatoni in the boiling water for too long. Because the pasta gets cooked again in the oven in the tomato sauce, my pasta was way over cooked.

It looks like there’s a lot of steps in making this baked pasta, but it is actually quite simple. It all involves cooking everything separately then mix and bake them all together.

Where to get the cook book:

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So a few months ago, when Beipas and I decided we wanted to cook more, we picked master chef’s. Beipas chose Tyler Florence (I chose Bobby Flay after he beat Michael Smith on Iron Chef) and shortly after we each ordered one our master chefs’ cook books from Amazon. We’ve cooked a few things from the cookbook and they’ve all been delicious. I decided to cook this recipe because it was really simple, and didn’t have very many ingredients. I’ve never actually had carbonara besides the frozen Michelina’s kind, so I was excited to try it out. This was a really simple recipe.

Prep time: >10 minutes
Cook time: >20 minutes

Ingredients(see his book for exact measurements)

• Heavy cream (I used whipping cream because I think it’s the same thing or similar)
• Parmesano Reggiano
• Eggs
• Bacon
• Onion
• Parsley
• Spaghetti
• Olive Oil
• Black Pepper

I usually have most of that stuff lying around the house besides the parmesano reggiano, and parsley. But damn, parmesano reggiano is expensive at Safeway. Cheapest block I could find is $13.45 so I have to make sure I use it all! @LRX350 tweeted that it’s usually cheaper at Costco. Too bad I don’t have a Costco membership under my name though. Now how do you cook it?

1. Boil a pot of water and add the spaghetti, and cook til al dente.
2. Cut up your onions and bacon.
3. Add a “3 second pour” of olive oil to your pan and get it to medium heat. Yes it looks like a lot (at least to my brother it did), and you are getting the bacon fat too, but you have to because this is part of the sauce!
4. Add your bacon first and fry for a bit, then add the onion a few minutes later. I found that by the time my bacon got crispy, my onions started to brown a little too much.
5. In a serving/pasta bowl, add the heavy cream and eggs.
6. Grate the parmesano reggiano and add it to the egg and cream mixture in the bowl. Whisk.
7. Add a bit of the pasta water to your serving bowl.
8. Add all of the bacon, onions and oil to the serving bowl and mix with the eggs, cream, and cheese.
9. Add the drained spaghetti into your serving bowl and toss lightly and coat all of the pasta.. Add some freshly ground black pepper to taste.
10. Cover with a plate or foil and let sit for 5 minutes to set the sauce.
11. Cut up some parsley. Uncover the serving dish and sprinkle some parsley on top.

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It’s really not hard, and not much cooking at all. I basically let the bacon and onion just cook in the oil, and stirred it occasionally, didn’t really have to watch it much. Using the ingredients I used, I found it to be a bit lacking in flavour, and needed a bit more cheese or cream, and a little more salt. I was hoping the saltiness of the bacon, and cheese would be enough, but I think a bit more seasoning would’ve fnished it off nicely. My fault for not tasting as I went. My bacon lost its crispiness, but expected when mixed in a sauce. The caramelized onions added an awesome sweetness to the dish, and the fried smoked bacon was great too. It wasn’t too oily, as there wasn’t a big pool of oil on the bottom, it mixed and set really well with the pasta. I thought the amount of sauce was perfect, and coated the pasta well. The bacon tended to stay on the bottom so toss it well, and evenly distribute the bacon. I think my last bowl was packed with yummy bacon. My brother and family liked it. I’d definitely make this again with a few minor tweaks because it’s so easy. So overall (with what’s left over) I think only about $12 of food went into this dish that fed 4 people. I only used like 1/4-1/3 of my cheese. 2/3 of my pack of bacon. 1/3 of my little heavy cream. Onions and parsley, and egg are pretty negligible in price. And my pasta was about $3.

My first attempt to make Mac and Cheese that was NOT Kraft Dinner (which I now hate oh so much). I’ve actually been pretty disappointed with the Mac & Cheeses that I’ve had. No matter how extravagent it seems it was just never that good. I’m still on my quest to find the Ultimate one. If anyone has any recommendations please let me know!

So, we made the Barefoot Contessa’s mac and cheese with tomatoes. It was actually very simple to do. The thing I was most worried about screwing up was when making the cream sauce, but worked perfectly.

Ingredients, again check the link up there for exact amounts.

So first, we boiled the pasta with a bit of oil and salt. And in the mean time, we grated the Cheddar and Gruyere cheeses. We were doing a bunch of other stuff, so it took us a little bit more time, as we were prepping 3 different dishes at the same time.

Once the pasta was al dente, I drained it, and added a tiny bit more oil to it so  it wouldn’t stick together while we made the sauce.

The sauce was pretty easy too. Just make your basic roux. Melt the butter, and add in the four and mix for a minute or two until it combines. I haven’t made a proper roux since high school (over 10 years), so I was a bit worried because it seemed a bit clumpier than I remembered but my friend said it should be fine. Oh, we also heated up our milk in another pot. We then combined the milk with the roux and whisked it together until it got a little bit thicker and took it off the heat. It smoothed and thickened perfectly. We added our cheeses and it got even more thick and creamy. So that’s how easy it is to make a creamy-cheesy sauce. I had no clue. Then we added a bit of nutmeg, and pepper to taste. We then combined  the macaroni with the sauce in the pot and mixed it all up until it was well combined and every bit of pasta was coated in cheese. Looked really good. Not fluorescent orange like KD.

We combined our bread crumbs with some melted butter and mixed them together. We then put the macaroni and cheese mixture in our baking dish. We lined the top with sliced tomato, bread crumbs, and some extra cheddar cheese that we grated. We baked it for about 40 minutes until the sauce was bubbling and the top browned a bit. We broiled it for a few minutes to help melt the cheese on top and brown it.  The first taste it was really good. The creaminess wasn’t all there anymore, as the pasta and sauce kind of set together. Maybe I cooked it a bit too long but it was still better than the Mac & Cheeses I’ve had at other restaurants.

A few hours, the creaminess was completely gone, and it was actually quite dry when I was eating the left overs. The one thing I would change for next time would be to use fresh bread crumbs as the recipe stated. I just used dried pre-packaged bread crumbs that I had lying around the house, and I didn’t really like the texture it gave to the top. It was definitely a grainy texture. Maybe I’d also put more cheese, so it will have an awesome lasagna like crust on the top. So overall, it was pretty good while it was fresh, but still not “mind-blowingly awesome comfort food”.

I just had some home-made lasagna last night, and that was heaven.

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