Marinara Sauce

Learn from me, readers.  DO NOT watch FOOD NETWORK after 10pm!  Last night there was a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives marathon on, and I was only about 20 minutes into it when I could no longer resist the call of the kitchen.  Unfortunately, raw materials were limited, so instead of replicating the corned beef and cabbage, baked mac and cheese, polenta, and stuffed meatballs Guy Fieri was lucky enough to inhale, I was stuck sucking down three slices of garlic bread and a handful of peanut butter chips.  Not quite up to my usual standards, and also slightly embarrassing, and yet still most satisfying.

Changing topics now.  Marinara sauce is something you can always put to good use.  You can top pasta, slather up a grilled vegetable sandwich, or just drop in some meatballs and Italian sausages, heat up, and eat straight from the pot.  As you can see from the above, I used it for sandwiches (sausage, cheese, bell pepper and onion) and got the big thumbs up from MG.  Wrap these babies in foil and cook at 400 F for about thirty minutes.  Good hot, good cold the next day, good at 4 am in the morning when your building’s fire alarm goes off and you want to nosh on something while standing in your slippers on the street.

Continue Reading…

Farfalle with Sage, Peas and Bacon

MG is sick and I’m depressed about it. I know I’m depressed because I’m exhibiting my #1 symptom… I become super-productive on the weekends.

This is an improvement over what I did in my twenties when I was depressed, which was smoke grass, drink martinis and watch television until I either fell asleep or threw up.

Ah, the glamour of the twenties!

So I don’t plan too many structured events on the weekends anymore because they’ve become mostly about me and MG making fattening breakfasts, having coffee at The Big Fixx on Sunset (formerly Abbot’s Habit), watching television together and seeing who can win in the categories of “Snarkiest Comment,” “Best Impression of a Loser Celebrity.” and “Most Accurate Representation of What the Cat in the Cat Food Commercial would Sound Like if It Could Speak Human.”

Then we separate for a few hours in the middle of the day so he can get some work done, I’ll get together everything I need to make the night’s dinner, and we reconvene for more television, snarky comments and cocktails.

But none of that happened this past weekend, and by noon on Saturday I’d done all my grocery shopping, all my laundry, hit the post office and the dry cleaner, worked out, erased said workout by stopping at Carl’s Jr., tried to get my cat to eat a french fry and took a nap.

I had absolutely nothing else on my “to do” list for the entire weekend, so of course I spent it in the kitchen, making this meal, along with some other goodies that are being banked away for later postings. But MG wasn’t there to admire my kitchen technique, or rave about the finished meal after snaring his usual lion-sized portion, so it wasn’t nearly as gratifying and I have WAY TOO MUCH left over.

With each passing kitchen attempt I’m becoming more and more fascinated with perfecting the process than I am with actually feasting on the finished result. I’d much prefer to give the food itself over to someone else for them to enjoy, and just stay in the kitchen and tackle the next recipe on my long long list. Anyone else feel that way?

Continue Reading…

Mushroom Marsala with Artichoke Hearts

I have not eaten a mushroom since I was nine and my mom tricked me into eating one, telling me it was simply “a bean.” Standing in the kitchen near the stove where she was making dinner, chewing with an intesne curiosity, I was actually enjoying the damn thing (somewhat). Then, she revealed to me that “the bean” was actually a cremini mushroom at which point, I lept to the sink, spit it out and declared my sense of disgust and betrayal in the most dramatic way I could possibly fashion.

Were these NOT the same things that occasionally grew on the corners of our front lawn? Were these NOT the same things dad warned me away from because of their possibly poisonous nature?

Was my mother out to kill me?

Well no, in fact, they were NOT the same things as the possibly toxic (but probably not) varieties making homes out front the house. And I quickly understood that. But divorcing myself from a distatse, an almost irrational fear of the mushroom, has taken me decades.

I pick them off pizza. I fish them out of salads. And pack anything you damn well want into the caps, heat them up and drop them in front of me. I’ll suck on my sneaker instead.

And yet… I could not get this recipe out of my head. Maybe a mushroom on its own didn’t sound all that hot, but mushrooms with wine, pasta, cheese, and onions? This is something a spore-bearing fungus hater might be able to get behind.

Mom has often told me I was missing the boat on mushrooms. This patsa dish looked and sounded so rewarding that maybe, I thought to myself, just maybe, this would be the meal that could lead me to welcoming mushrooms into my kitchen on a regular basis.

And it was! Moms always know. Click below for more!

Continue Reading…