Here's a healthy pasta dish that uses up vegetables from the garden. It's also a fast dish to make so you know this ranks high in my book. :)

Here's the recipe for this Vegetable Pasta with Alfredo Sauce.



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When you love pasta, you love it in every possible way it could come. However, there are days when simplicity can also do you in. That was the case with this easy pasta carbonara recipe. I didn't feel like chopping up too many ingredients or cooking up a marinara or alfredo sauce. I wanted some simple and quick but also comforting. The answer was this easy carbonara pasta recipe. The only way it could have been simpler is a butter tossed pasta. This packs so much flavor though that you don't even realize how easy it was to put together.

Here's the recipe for Easy Carbonara Pasta.

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Click on the photo for the recipe.

The Daring Bakers challenge for March was to make your own spinach pasta for this Lasagne Verdi al Forno. This was my first time making pasta and since I don't own a pasta maker, I ended up making the pasta the old fashioned way, by hand. I must say it was an enjoyable experience and one that I won't mind doing again. As a matter of fact, I have requests to make it again this weekend!

If you've always wanted to try making pasta and were too intimidated to do it, I say give it a go. You'll find it's really not as hard as you thought it would be. Just watch the video below. You can be doing this in no time!




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I've always wondered how anyone could not like hotdogs in their spaghetti. I love hotdogs and I love spaghetti so doesn't it make sense to combine them? I thought so, and a lot of Filipino people think so to, that's why I named this post Filipino spaghetti. Only in Filipino homes have I ever tasted this slightly sweet spaghetti sauce with hotdog slices. Surprisingly enough, my kids like it too! Of course, their dad, that's a different story. But then he's not too crazy about spaghetti in the first place. He says he's only tasted good spaghetti from on place, a place called Anna Maria but can't remember where it is now. Oh well... he'll just have to live with our versions then.

Here's the recipe if you care to try...

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Click here or on the photo for the Sweet Onion Spaghetti recipe.

I am still not up to cooking much. We have just been cooking old standbys like soups...lots of soups. It has been wickedly cold, but I am not going to complain because I know plenty others who are having a much harsher winter than we are.

While going through my saved drafts, I realized that I haven't posted this one yet. Perhaps it was because it was such a simple recipe that I decided to hold off on it. I don't know. But when I saw the photos I just made me remember last summer when we had such an abundance of basil that I started putting it in everything until the kids had pesto coming out of their ears. Not really, that was just a figure of speech, but you get it.

Anyway, I was making so much pesto that we just had to use them up before it went bad. For the salmon, it is really simple. All I did is to take some of the pre-made basil pesto sauce that I had saved in the fridge, about a cups worth, and mixed it with about half a cup of mayonnaise then slathered it on the side of salmon. Bake it for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees, and you have dinner! Serve with salad, and in this case, pasta with, what else, pesto sauce.

I have one child who is a pasta addict and hates fish. Can you guess who it is? Yes, the Clone. The girl can eat spaghetti everyday. So just for a change because even I get tired of cooking the tomato sauce variety sometimes, we decided to try this recipe (Zucchini Carbonara) from Good Cooking - the new basics by Jill Dupleix. This cookbook is one of our best finds on the bargain section. We have cooked several recipes from this book and they are all good. This is one of them. The recipe is called zucchini carbonara, but when I got ready to make this I realized I only had broccoli on hand. We have since tried it with zucchini and it's even better! Note: I made this for five pasta eating people, so I actually doubled the proportions in the book. Hubby also had to have some meat so I added sliced, pan fried chicken breasts. This version is what I made.

INGREDIENTS:
16 oz (1 lb) penne pasta
Sea salt and coarsely ground black Pepper
1 bundle of broccoli (florets only, save stems for another recipe)
5 egg yolks
3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
Pan Fried (can also be grilled) chicken breasts, sliced

Cook the pasta in boiling, salted water until they are al dente, between 8 to 10 minutes. Add the broccoli florets in with the pasta for the last minute of cooking, just until the broccoli takes on a bright green color before removing the pasta and broccoli from the water.

While the pasta is boiling, mix in a large bowl the egg yolks, parmesan cheese, lemon zest, sea salt and pepper together (see first photo). When the pasta and broccoli are done, drain them from the boiling water and quickly add to the mixture in the bowl and mix. Add some of the cooking water if the mixture/sauce seems too thick. The heat from the pasta and cooking water cooks the eggs in the sauce. The sauce should be creamy and fragrant. Either stir in the chicken pieces or just lay them on top of the pasta. Sprinkle with additional parmesan cheese if desired.

Jade also made this dish on her own using zucchini:

Being a working mom, I love fast and easy meals. I love them even more when they are also delicious and healthy to boot. This is one of them. It is tried and tested, and this is really a 30-minute meal. It's true. I timed it. Several shortcuts were used, but that is ok. That is why they are called short cuts, they cut short the time spent in the kitchen so you can get on with the many other duties in life.

The tilapia parmesan recipe has been posted before, and I am not too sure about the asparagus. The asparagus is simply sauteed in olive oil and garlic for exactly three minutes to retain their crispness. The pasta is simply sauced with store-bought, alfredo sauce in a jar.

When you have a dinner like this in your repertoir, last minute PTA meetings, band concerts, swim class, and the like are all doable.

In honor of the Clone (my youngest daughter) whose birthday is tomorrow and who loves anything with pasta, this is for you, baby! We actually had this last week, as we have to have something akin to spaghetti at least once a week for the clone, but I just haven't had time to post much since it has been a hectic week for me at work. This is you basic tomato sauce, only with italian sausage instead of plain ground meat.



My basic spaghetti sauce recipe is here. I took the sausage out of the casing, since for some reason the Clone will not eat sliced sausages in her sauce. She like it this way though.

My recipe for this sauce changes all the time, it just depends on what I have on hand. This is the simplest version, without any additional vegetables or meats.




Click here for the Meat Sauce recipe

Garden Harvest Dinner

This is a plate that Jade made for dinner, and got carried away with the photography. I think it looks pretty though. The vegetables are from our garden. Here is what was on the menu:

Tilapia Parmesan

Tilapia Fillets
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup of all-purpose flour
1 cup of bread crumbs
1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp. of dried basil
1/2 tsp. of dried oregano
1/2 tsp. of garlic powder
Salt and Pepper to taste
1/2 cup of vegetable oil for frying

Sauce:
Capers
Pine Nuts
Butter

Heat the oil in a skillet to medium high heat. In the mean time, beat the eggs in one bowl, and in a separate bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients. Dip the fillets in the beaten egg, then dredge in the flour/bread crumb mixture. Fry in the hot oil until brown on both sides.

For the sauce, place the pine nuts in a small skillet and toast on medium heat, when lightly toasted, add 2 tablespoons of capers with some of the brining liquid. When the liquid has been reduced by half, slowly incorporate as much butter as needed to make a light sauce. Pour over the fried tilapia fillets.

Angel Hair Pasta with Basil Pesto

2 Cloves of fresh garlic
3 cups of fresh basil leaves, stems removed
1/2 cup of pine nuts
1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup of olive oil

In a blender, blend the above ingredients together until smooth. Pour the sauce over cooked pasta, preferably while the pasta is still hot. If it seems too thick, add a bit of the hot water that the pasta was boiled in to thin the sauce. Toss together, and enjoy.

Tomato Basil Salad

We have an abundance of tomatoes from our garden and they are sooo sweet! So we have been eating them with almost every meal. For this meal, we sliced yellow and red tomatoes and topped it with sliced red onions and basil leave. Nothing else. Simply delicious!