Shrimp and Orzo Bake

I made this in advance of a week of running. Last Sunday I ran my first ever 5K in DC’s The Color Run. Yesterday, I ran my my first ever 10K at the Marine Corps Marathon. The Color Run was a ton of fun – I ran with my roommate and some other friends and it is not lying when it bills itself as the happiest 5K in the world. Though the washing machine in my apartment complex wasn't quite as happy…

The 10K was more challenging, namely because Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on the entire East Coast. Luckily there wasn't much wind and no rain during my run, but the hour and a half waiting for the race to start in my shorts and tee shirt in 50 degree weather wasn't too fun. However, I finished at my goal time and have stocked up on the necessities (Oreos. I had planned on doing a big cook on Sunday of three different soups, but with massive power outages expected in my area, I didn't want to take non-perishable food and make it perishable. So Oreos, pasta, and plans to eat all the frozen food I can in case of power outages. I'll let you know how it goes).

I wanted to have a dish I could eat throughout the week that would be filling, but not too heavy, would have protein, but wasn’t a cooked chicken breast, and if it could use most of the ingredients I already owned I would consider it a bonus. This one hit all those points – orzo to stick to your bones, shrimp and feta for some protein, onion and garlic because they are a basic necessity of any dish I cook, and white wine because it’s awesome.

I’ve mentioned previously that I tend to stock up when I see a great deal on dried goods, so I always tend to have pasta hanging around as well as canned tomatoes and frozen shrimp. So I only had to buy minimal ingredients to make a dish that will likely last me multiple  meals – so overall, cheap as well!

Is it any wonder I couldn’t wait to share?

Beet Gnocchi

After discovering I liked beets this summer, I knew I had to continue exploring or my palate would never expand beyond “roasted with an egg.” Granted, roasted beets with an egg is delicious (recipe soon to come), but why stop with one good thing?

But then I found so many other delicious recipes to try, I got side tracked from my quest. There were popsicles to make! And meat to cook! And smoothies to make! Who has time to experiment with veggies that stain everything pink with so much else to do? 

But that's when it hit me - since beets stain everything pink, adding them to things makes them pink as well. So when I saw this recipe for beet gnocchi, PINK GNOCCHI, how could I resist? It continues to allow me to avoid making real gnocchi (see also: ricotta gnocchi) and was absolutely beautiful. 

I’m sorry the pictures are so dark – let’s continue to morn the fact that my kitchen only gets good natural light for about an hour a day (that I tend to miss when working) – but I can assure you these are delicious.

Homemade Ravioli and Summer Squash

I promised you more zucchini and here I deliver. In today’s recipe it plays second fiddle to homemade ravioli, because why not? If you’re going to go to all the trouble of making ravioli by hand, you want it to be the star of your dish. And since zucchini is pretty easy to find right now, might as well make a bed of it to add some veggies to your meal.

When I last tackled ravioli (seen here), I lamented that I couldn’t master egg yolk ravioli. Today is still not that day. But I am getting one step closer! One of these days…

It’s not as easy as using wonton wrappers because you actually have to make pasta dough. You would think this might have given me a clue that my kitchen was about to be inundated with flour, but I marched on to my cleaning hell unconcerned. Don’t skimp on flouring your work surface. It might make cleaning up more interesting, but your pasta won’t roll out nicely without it. Necessary evil folks, necessary evil.

(And yes, that is an instagrammed picture of the pasta I made. Can you tell I got a smartphone recently?)

Spinach and Orzo Salad with Chicken and Almonds

Pasta salads are a staple of American picnics and barbeques for a reason – they’re easy to make, it’s easy to scale them up to feed a crowd, and they taste fantastic at room temperature on a hot day. Growing up I was never really a fan of the traditional pasta (or even potato) salad because I don’t like mayonnaise.

I know it’s weird. I get the same looks I’m sure you’re giving the screen right now when I tell people I don’t like mashed potatoes either. It’s a texture thing. Both just strike my taste buds as wrongwrongwrong even though I know 98% of the country could probably happily live on mashed potatoes for a couple days (or years in the case of my sister).

In any case, I was a happy camper when I realized you could make pasta salad with olive oil rather than mayonnaise. I’m sure I’ll be sharing a couple other pasta salad recipes down the road with you all as we get deeper into summer, but for now I hope you enjoy this one!

Linguini with Broccoli and Peanut Sauce

There are a million and 10 recipes for peanut butter noodles on the internet (I know, I counted). I'm not claiming this one is my favorite, but it did hit the spot recently when I couldn't figure out what I wanted for dinner. It's vaguely reminiscent of Pad See-Ew with the whole wheat noodles, soy sauce, broccoli, and egg but it's sweeter and doesn't employ dark soy sauce. Instead, it uses a variety of ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen. I always love recipes that don't make me buy new spices that I'm not sure I'll use again (it's one of the reasons you haven't seen anything made with 5 spice powder or all spice - I'm not sure how often I'd use either and am still on the fence about making such a commitment). 

As I've told you before, I'm a weird breakfast person so bear with me when I tell you these are awesome cold and early in the morning. Give it a try! Not every day has to be a smoothie or pancakes kind of morning. Or you can always eat them cold when all the microwaves at work are busy and you're too impatient to wait another minute for tasty tasty noodles. Not that I have experience with that kind of behavior...

Tortellini Soup with Spinach

Chicken noodle soup may be the default meal when you’re sick, but I think I like this pasta soup better. It not only includes cheese and spinach, but if you include the red pepper flakes it has a bit of a kick as well. Perfect for clearing up those clogged sinuses!

Normally soup would make perfect sense for the end of January - cold dreary weather demands comfort food. Except that it was 65 degrees today. I ate lunch outside on the patio this afternoon. Seriously, I'm calling this the Year without Winter, and for a snowlover that is pretty devastating. So in defiance of the weather, I'm eating soup anyway. Haha wea-THOR (aka the God of Weather), I'm going to eat warm and comforting soup even if I'm wearing shorts (which is deeply disturbing)

I hope you enjoy!

Ricotta Gnocchi

Gnocchi are awesome, but the idea of destroying my kitchen to make the traditional version with potato has never been appealing. I grew up on horror stories from my father about how flour and potato got everywhere when he made them. We’re talking flour in every crevice available and the unenviable task of trying to sweep it and mop it without turning it into paste, as flour is wont to do when you add water.

So this recipe immediately caught my eye when I noticed the ingredients – ricotta in place of potato, a bit of parmesan, and egg. Sounded pretty simple! I still ended up destroying part of my kitchen when it came time to roll out the dough into ropes to cut into the individual gnocchi, but it was a much smaller area than I’d feared. These are easy enough to make on a weekday night if you’d like (though I didn’t want to chance it and made them on a Sunday and froze the extra). Enjoy!

Semi-home-made Ravioli

In the interest of total disclosure: I originally set out to make this ravioli recipe. I mean look at the pictures – doesn’t that runny egg yolk look amazing? Seriously – runny egg yolk + ricotta + pasta = love in my world. I wanted it in my mouth immediately. However, I failed miserably. Since I don’t have either a pasta machine or rolling pin, there was no way I was going to take on the task of making homemade pasta dough. So I decided to use premade wonton skins as a short cut.

It was a short cut that took me into raw egg hell. Seriously, my cutting board looked like a scene from a henhouse massacre. I couldn’t fit the egg yolk into the mound of filling, and the one time I managed to, I couldn’t fit the second wonton skin over without breaking the yolk and having it ooze out the side. After my third attempt went horribly wrong once again, I decided to cut my losses and simply carry on sans egg yolk. It’s not my Great-Aunt Joyce’s ravioli by any means (because that is simply divine), but it’s a tender, relatively easy, and tastes good. All’s well that ends well I suppose.

But one day I will master this recipe. One day.

Stuffed Shells

I’ve been wanted to make a stuffed shells recipe for a while now, but two things held me up: 1) it was a bit warm for the abundance of cheese and carbs and 2) I couldn’t find jumbo shells anywhere. So finding a box of jumbo shells the same weekend DC had a freak October snow (it wasn’t a storm here, don’t let anyone tell you differently) seemed to be a sign from the cooking gods that this dish needed to be made. I like to rationalize that the equal ratio of spinach to ricotta almost makes this dish healthy.

Almost.

Still, they are tasty and fairly easy to make. Also, don't they look cute in that ramekin? My friend Amber gave me four last time she came to visit and I've tried to think of recipes that make small enough quantities I can use them for photos since. Luckily, two stuffed shells fit perfectly! Thanks again Amber. 

Vegetarian Carbonara

I first tried making carbonara when I studied abroad in college. I had a few disadvantages then: a semi-working cook top in place of range, a refrigerator the size of my foot, a kitchen that tripled as a hallway and closet, and a complete lack of understanding how to make carbonara. I had the vague idea that cheese and eggs were involved, so I went to the grocery store and bought a kilo of pasta, some cheese that I hoped read parmesan (my Greek is still not particularly great), and some whole milk. I then mixed all three together.

It wasn’t particularly good (I would even use the word "horrible"), but as it was the second to last weekend I was in the country and was completely broke, I ate it for every meal for three days.

I think you can understand why it’s taken me four years to try again. But I’m glad I did. This is not a low-fat dish. This is not a vegan dish. This isn’t a non-dairy dish. It is, however, perfect for those cold nights when you need comfort food. And now that I kind of know what I’m doing, I’m definitely putting this recipe into rotation.

Pork Meatballs

My sister Emma asked me to explore the wonderful world of meatballs after an experiment of hers went terribly terribly wrong. She mistakenly thought I would have a better idea of how to make them and could walk her step by step through the process. While I really like the recipe seen below, it wasn’t what I would call a crowning moment of cooking glory.

Here’s a sad confession – I don’t like touching raw meat. It’s one of the reasons I don’t have many meat recipes up on the blog (the other being that meat’s really expensive). The full body shudders and the facial expressions I made while rolling the meatballs would have you believe I was elbow deep in tarantulas or something. Luckily, the end result was totally worth subjecting myself to several five minute long hand washings.

Caramelized Garlic and Shallot Pasta with Chicken

My love of pasta is not exactly a secret. It was one of the first dishes I taught myself to cook; I wrote about Barilla for my college application essay; and part of it may be genetic (I’m Italian). In college, whenever I wanted to feel fancy about my box a week habit, I would chop up an onion, sauté it with some olive oil and garlic, and add it to whatever red sauce had been on sale earlier in the week. This recipe is an extension of that trend, but slightly more sophisticated by caramelizing the garlic and using shallots in place of white onions.

This isn’t the most visually beautiful dish I’ve ever cooked, but it tastes amazing.