Tonight I decided I would make home made ravioli. It looked so easy in the cookbook, the pictures made it look like simplicity in cooking form. While it was not difficult to prepare, it was very messy, or I was very messy, in any case there was a mess. We can assign blame later.
So I began! I cooked my ground turkey and I mixed my ravioli filling - garlic, herbs and spices and ricotta (instead of mascarpone, it's what I had on hand, and I forgot to put in the Parmesan cheese... oops!) I laid out my wonton wrappers because they are multipurpose items, and scooped my filling onto each little square. I brushed the edges with water and topped them each with another wonton wrapper and pressed to seal. They were adorable pouches of delicious.
In the meantime I was making the sauce these little cuties would be cooking in. Red wine in place of white... what's life without improvisation? The wine is mixed with chicken broth and you put in cherry tomatoes and cook them until they pop. But I was impatient so I squashed them. I scooped out the little flattened tomatoes and ground them up in the Manual Food Processor so my sauce would be a little smoother. I accidentally reduced too much liquid so I added a can of diced tomato.
To cook the ravioli you put them in the sauce and "swirl to coat". I'm not even kidding, that was my instruction; so I'm "swirling" and nothing is really being coated so I just scooped some sauce on top of the little buggers.
After the cooking time was up I fished out two, one for me and one for Shane my dearest husband, and we dined upon these test ravioli. They needed more cooking time. Despite the recipe's clear lack of calling for a lid, I added a lid after more attempts at "swirling" and then just scooping.
Then we feasted upon ravioli as if we were royalty who particularly love to feast upon ravioli. They were delicious, but sort of hard to eat without making a mess. They were kind of too big, and I ended up chopping all mine up (yes, after all that work, I just chopped them up) and it turned into sort of goulash.
When I finally finished cleaning up the HUGE mess I had made while preparing this dinner I decided that next time I will just buy the filled pasta and make this amazing sauce to go with them. I'm glad I made this recipe, but I don't think I will go to the trouble again.
Showing posts with label trying new things. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trying new things. Show all posts
Monday, March 19, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Ricotta Gnocchi
Last Monday we decided to go meatless for dinner. So I looked through my cookbook, "29 Minutes to Dinner Volume 2", and found the meatless section. After flipping past recipes for soup and tofu which I just did not feel like making, I found a recipe for "Ricotta Gnocchi". At first glance I was sure this recipe was far too fancy and difficult to make.
But it sounded so good and the picture was so tantalizing, I read the ingredients and there wasn't anything too fancy... then I read the instructions and I was amazed at how easy it was going to be to make this beautiful, fancy dish in just 23 minutes. I'm not kidding, it really took less than 30 minutes to make dinner!
So we set out for the grocery store for the two ingredients we did not have on hand: ricotta cheese and Parmesan cheese (block). That's it. Everything else I had on hand: flour, butter, olive oil, red pepper flakes, garlic and 1 egg. I left a couple things out, because that's how I roll. And I hate lemon as you may know, so I feel I had good reason. I picked up spinach because spinach is delicious and it sounded good.
Then Monday dinner time arrived. I began by preparing the simple dough in my batter bowl. I grated the parmesan, measured the ricotta and mixed them with the egg and flour. I used my Small Scoop to make the cutest little dough balls. I heated butter and olive oil in my non-stick pan and scooped the dough directly into the pan. I cooked each for two minutes and flipped them with my chef's tongs (coated in silicone to keep the pan safe) and cooked them another two minutes. As they cooked they flattened just a bit and looked kind of like small scallops when they were finished.
I removed them from the pan, added garlic and red pepper, and then tossed in a couple handfuls of fresh spinach leaves, just to coat and wilt a bit. I made a wilted spinach salad with our cheese gnocchi. Truth to tell, I had this ulterior motive since I purchased the spinach when we went out for cheese.
It was ridiculously delicious! My husband tried to confiscate mine and has requested this dish again and soon. I was so impressed with how simple and elegant this dish was and how quickly it came together.
But it sounded so good and the picture was so tantalizing, I read the ingredients and there wasn't anything too fancy... then I read the instructions and I was amazed at how easy it was going to be to make this beautiful, fancy dish in just 23 minutes. I'm not kidding, it really took less than 30 minutes to make dinner!
So we set out for the grocery store for the two ingredients we did not have on hand: ricotta cheese and Parmesan cheese (block). That's it. Everything else I had on hand: flour, butter, olive oil, red pepper flakes, garlic and 1 egg. I left a couple things out, because that's how I roll. And I hate lemon as you may know, so I feel I had good reason. I picked up spinach because spinach is delicious and it sounded good.
Then Monday dinner time arrived. I began by preparing the simple dough in my batter bowl. I grated the parmesan, measured the ricotta and mixed them with the egg and flour. I used my Small Scoop to make the cutest little dough balls. I heated butter and olive oil in my non-stick pan and scooped the dough directly into the pan. I cooked each for two minutes and flipped them with my chef's tongs (coated in silicone to keep the pan safe) and cooked them another two minutes. As they cooked they flattened just a bit and looked kind of like small scallops when they were finished.
I removed them from the pan, added garlic and red pepper, and then tossed in a couple handfuls of fresh spinach leaves, just to coat and wilt a bit. I made a wilted spinach salad with our cheese gnocchi. Truth to tell, I had this ulterior motive since I purchased the spinach when we went out for cheese.
It was ridiculously delicious! My husband tried to confiscate mine and has requested this dish again and soon. I was so impressed with how simple and elegant this dish was and how quickly it came together.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Experimental Dessert: A Brilliant Creation or a Terrible Disaster?
In March I started offering My Pampered Chef Hosts and Hostesses free dessert when they host a party in the month that their birthday is in, and today (Saturday) I needed to provide a free dessert. I actually had this particular culinary adventure on Friday, but it's been a busy weekend (you know, homework, facebook, planning for the Pampered Chef party, facebook, housework, facebook...)
Originally I was going to bake a cake, but then I thought that was too boring. Then I was going to make a cookie dessert pizza thing, but decided that was too much work and too many ingredients. So I looked in my cupboard and I looked at my cookbook and I had a rare moment of total and utter recipe loss - I had no idea what I should make, and I had 12 hours until time to leave for the party (sleep took up a big part of the 12 hours). So I sat down and balanced my checkbook (math soothes me, don't ask because it probably won't make sense to you, I'm just that strange). While balancing the checkbook I came across the receipt from groceries earlier that day and on that reciept was two kinds of cheerios and an idea began to form.
I had both chocolate cheerios and cinnamon cheerios and at first I wanted to just cover and smother them all with a simple chocolate coating (2 cups chocolate chips, any kind, and 2T+2tsp shortening). It turned out I didn't have enough chocolate chips for that so I thought about the cheerio flavors - I'd already represented chocolate so more cinnamon would probably bring a nice balance to this thing I was making. I googled "cinnamon fillling" and found an amazing recipe for cinnamon rolls that I promptly stole the cinnamon filling from. I thought I would mix the cheerios in the cinnamon filling and then coat them in chocolate, like little coated candy treats. (Later I saw that cinnamon filling wasn't sticky enough to lend itself to this idea, so I came up with a new one.)
I mixed up a half batch of cinnamon filling in a mixing bowl and then a half batch of simple chocolate coating in the Double Boiler (then set to simmer so it wouldn't re-harden). I checked my cinnamon filling, and for cinnamon rolls, it would have been perfect, but I wasn't going to be making any sort of roll. So I doubled the butter (I know, I'm so bad, but it tastes so good!) and that gave it a smoother more "spreadable" consistency - but not at all sticky the way I had hoped it would be. I had another idea though, so all was not lost. But before I went and ruined two perfectly good things, I took a small bowl and mixed a spoonful of each sweet to give it a taste combined - the taste was good, the chocolate drowned the cinnamon a little in my sample, but overall there was more cinnamon filling than there was simple chocolate coating, so that wouldn't be a problem with the full size mixture.
I added the simple chocolate coating to the cinnamon filling and stirred until they were well combined, then I added 1 cup each of chocolate and cinnamon cheerios and stirred to coat. There was a lot of chocolate-cinnamon goo left so I added another 1 cup of each flavor of cheerios and stirred them in. This time they were all evenly coated without an excess amount of leftover chocolate-cinnamon sauce.
I spread out waxed paper onto two cookie sheets and cleared space in the refrigerator - chocolate sets best when chilled. I used my Small Scoop, which holds about 1 T, to scoop up about 65 of these little cheerio treats. I wanted them small because they had a lot of flavor, and if they ended up too big they'd be too sweet to eat. Once I had dished them all out I put them in the refrigerator overnight.
After packing up all my show supplies (cooking gadgets and toys, catalogs, order forms, netbook, first aid kit and aloe - I'm a little accident prone, and Pink Zebra demo products) I almost didn't remember to pack up my little creations! But luckily for me, since I had promised a free dessert, I did remember to pack them up (after sharing a few with my husband of course!) According to the guests, my brand new Chocolate Cinnamon Cheerio Treats are a brilliant creation, because there were only a handful leftover!
Next time I promise a dish, I think I'll plan ahead. (Even if these did turn out, you never know when a terrible disaster will land on your cookie sheet!)
Originally I was going to bake a cake, but then I thought that was too boring. Then I was going to make a cookie dessert pizza thing, but decided that was too much work and too many ingredients. So I looked in my cupboard and I looked at my cookbook and I had a rare moment of total and utter recipe loss - I had no idea what I should make, and I had 12 hours until time to leave for the party (sleep took up a big part of the 12 hours). So I sat down and balanced my checkbook (math soothes me, don't ask because it probably won't make sense to you, I'm just that strange). While balancing the checkbook I came across the receipt from groceries earlier that day and on that reciept was two kinds of cheerios and an idea began to form.
I had both chocolate cheerios and cinnamon cheerios and at first I wanted to just cover and smother them all with a simple chocolate coating (2 cups chocolate chips, any kind, and 2T+2tsp shortening). It turned out I didn't have enough chocolate chips for that so I thought about the cheerio flavors - I'd already represented chocolate so more cinnamon would probably bring a nice balance to this thing I was making. I googled "cinnamon fillling" and found an amazing recipe for cinnamon rolls that I promptly stole the cinnamon filling from. I thought I would mix the cheerios in the cinnamon filling and then coat them in chocolate, like little coated candy treats. (Later I saw that cinnamon filling wasn't sticky enough to lend itself to this idea, so I came up with a new one.)
I mixed up a half batch of cinnamon filling in a mixing bowl and then a half batch of simple chocolate coating in the Double Boiler (then set to simmer so it wouldn't re-harden). I checked my cinnamon filling, and for cinnamon rolls, it would have been perfect, but I wasn't going to be making any sort of roll. So I doubled the butter (I know, I'm so bad, but it tastes so good!) and that gave it a smoother more "spreadable" consistency - but not at all sticky the way I had hoped it would be. I had another idea though, so all was not lost. But before I went and ruined two perfectly good things, I took a small bowl and mixed a spoonful of each sweet to give it a taste combined - the taste was good, the chocolate drowned the cinnamon a little in my sample, but overall there was more cinnamon filling than there was simple chocolate coating, so that wouldn't be a problem with the full size mixture.
I added the simple chocolate coating to the cinnamon filling and stirred until they were well combined, then I added 1 cup each of chocolate and cinnamon cheerios and stirred to coat. There was a lot of chocolate-cinnamon goo left so I added another 1 cup of each flavor of cheerios and stirred them in. This time they were all evenly coated without an excess amount of leftover chocolate-cinnamon sauce.
I spread out waxed paper onto two cookie sheets and cleared space in the refrigerator - chocolate sets best when chilled. I used my Small Scoop, which holds about 1 T, to scoop up about 65 of these little cheerio treats. I wanted them small because they had a lot of flavor, and if they ended up too big they'd be too sweet to eat. Once I had dished them all out I put them in the refrigerator overnight.
After packing up all my show supplies (cooking gadgets and toys, catalogs, order forms, netbook, first aid kit and aloe - I'm a little accident prone, and Pink Zebra demo products) I almost didn't remember to pack up my little creations! But luckily for me, since I had promised a free dessert, I did remember to pack them up (after sharing a few with my husband of course!) According to the guests, my brand new Chocolate Cinnamon Cheerio Treats are a brilliant creation, because there were only a handful leftover!
Next time I promise a dish, I think I'll plan ahead. (Even if these did turn out, you never know when a terrible disaster will land on your cookie sheet!)
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Turkey Chili - A Surprise Inside
When I read the title on this recipe card I was thinking, "What's so special about turkey chili?" I learned it's dirty little secret when I read the ingredients list, it calls for beer! At first I wrinkled my nose at the idea of putting something as foul tasting as beer into something as amazing as chili. Then I remembered the first time I tried broccoli and decided to give this recipe a chance.
(I had spent my entire life up to the moment I tried broccoli believing I hated broccoli, merely because it was a weird little green tree. When I finally tried it, I LOVED it, and decided that there was no way I was ever going to not eat a food because I thought I might not like it. Which is why I always try the beer my husband drinks. So far the only ones I have liked have been so dark you couldn't see light through them - Guinness Extra Stout and He'brew Jewbelation Bar Mitzvah. In addition to those wicked dark beers I now eat pretty much every fruit vegetable except cabbage, because I think it has a strange texture, but still tastes okay, and lemons because I do not enjoy sour things - though I still use lemon juice and lime juice to cook with.)
Anyway, back to that chili! Another ingredient that this chili called for is chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, something I've wanted to try for a long time, but had never known what to do with them. After (finally) finding the chipotle peppers in the Hispanic foreign foods section in Meijer, I brought these little devils home to make an epic chili.
I read my recipe and instructions carefully, and started with my aromatics - onions and garlic in bruschetta flavored olive oil with a pinch of sea salt. To this I added chili powder, oregano and three chopped chipotle peppers, though the recipe called for a measly one along with tomato paste. Then I added the ground turkey, and cooked until well browned. Now it was time for that special ingredient! BEER! I poured in the whole bottle, thinking, "Wow, I hope this tastes good!" because up to that point it smelled amazing. I simmered my spicy mix for a few minutes, to cook off the alcohol and make a reduction (by half). Then I added a large can of crushed tomatoes and a well rinsed can of red kidney beans. Simmer for ten, garnish with a bit of freshly grated Parmesan and a side of cornbread (with bits of actual corn in!) Time for the taste test!
First bite and I'm thinking, "How have I gone my entire life without this amazing beer-ific chili?" Second bite and I'm thinking, "OMG! Maybe one chipotle pepper would have been enough!" All in all, this recipe is awesome and amazingly delicious, easy to make (30 minutes or less!) and was a fun flavor adventure. I highly recommend this one to everyone!
(Thank you Food Network recipe calendar!)
(I had spent my entire life up to the moment I tried broccoli believing I hated broccoli, merely because it was a weird little green tree. When I finally tried it, I LOVED it, and decided that there was no way I was ever going to not eat a food because I thought I might not like it. Which is why I always try the beer my husband drinks. So far the only ones I have liked have been so dark you couldn't see light through them - Guinness Extra Stout and He'brew Jewbelation Bar Mitzvah. In addition to those wicked dark beers I now eat pretty much every fruit vegetable except cabbage, because I think it has a strange texture, but still tastes okay, and lemons because I do not enjoy sour things - though I still use lemon juice and lime juice to cook with.)
Anyway, back to that chili! Another ingredient that this chili called for is chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, something I've wanted to try for a long time, but had never known what to do with them. After (finally) finding the chipotle peppers in the Hispanic foreign foods section in Meijer, I brought these little devils home to make an epic chili.
I read my recipe and instructions carefully, and started with my aromatics - onions and garlic in bruschetta flavored olive oil with a pinch of sea salt. To this I added chili powder, oregano and three chopped chipotle peppers, though the recipe called for a measly one along with tomato paste. Then I added the ground turkey, and cooked until well browned. Now it was time for that special ingredient! BEER! I poured in the whole bottle, thinking, "Wow, I hope this tastes good!" because up to that point it smelled amazing. I simmered my spicy mix for a few minutes, to cook off the alcohol and make a reduction (by half). Then I added a large can of crushed tomatoes and a well rinsed can of red kidney beans. Simmer for ten, garnish with a bit of freshly grated Parmesan and a side of cornbread (with bits of actual corn in!) Time for the taste test!
First bite and I'm thinking, "How have I gone my entire life without this amazing beer-ific chili?" Second bite and I'm thinking, "OMG! Maybe one chipotle pepper would have been enough!" All in all, this recipe is awesome and amazingly delicious, easy to make (30 minutes or less!) and was a fun flavor adventure. I highly recommend this one to everyone!
(Thank you Food Network recipe calendar!)
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