Moving into a new house with two babies and no heat in the beginning of winter (don't ask) is serious chaos. I scraped by with dinners each night by grabbing things from my pantry cupboard or freezer. One of our favorite pantry meals to throw together is Chicken al Diavlo Penne. Using the shortcut of jarred pesto and alfredo sauce creates a fast, flavorful and creamy pasta sauce.
I set out to make this meal for my family, only to discover there were no chicken breasts, penne or mushrooms, but instead bone-in chicken thighs, spaghetti and broccoli. I was excited for a new twist on our family's favorite and I tied all the flavors together with fresh lemon. The pungency of the lemon juice really brightens up the creamy sauce and pairs well with the vibrant, crisp vegetables.
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Serves 4-6
8 chicken thighs
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp lemon pepper
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp seasoning salt
1 lb spaghetti
1 head of broccoli, cut into small florets
1 red pepper, cut into strips
1 jar alfredo sauce
2 heaping tbsp pesto
1 lemon, zest and juice
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Put a large pot of salted water on to boil.
In a large oven proof skillet over medium-high heat add 1-2 tbsp of olive oil. Add the flour, lemon pepper, basil and seasoning salt into a bag and shake it up. Add the chicken thighs and shake to coat in the seasoned flour. Add the chicken to the pan and sear sear until golden about 3-4 minutes per side. You don't have to worry about cooking them all the way through, just let it get a beautiful golden color. Transfer the chicken in the skillet to the oven and let bake for 15-20 minutes. If you don't have an oven proof skillet, transfer the chicken to a baking sheet.
Once the water boils add the spaghetti and cook until al dente following the package directions.
In another skillet, heat up 1 tbsp of olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the broccoli and peppers and saute for 2-3 minutes. Add the zest of 1/2 the lemon as well as the juice of 1/2 the lemon. Stir in the pesto and alredo sauce. Turn the heat to low and simmer 1-2 minutes just to heat through. If you simmer the mixture for a long time you will lose the crunch and vibrant color of the vegetables. Drain the pasta and toss with the sauce and vegetables.
Remove the chicken from the oven and squeeze the juice of the other half of the lemon. Serve a mound of creamy lemon basil spaghetti with the crispy lemon chicken on top.
Click here for printable version of Creamy Lemon Basil Chicken & Pasta
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THE RESULTS?
My daughter and I loved this twist on one of our favorite pasta dishes. Probably my favorite thing about this dish is the contrast of textures between the crispy chicken and the creamy spaghetti. I'm a bit of a carbaholic so this satisfies my mighty craving for all things pasta. My husband really liked it as well, but prefers the original dish this was based on.
For more inexpensive meal ideas check out the $5 Dinner Challenge and Gayle's Grocery Cart Challenge Recipe Swap.
Gyoza (pronounced "gee-oh-za") are Japanese potstickers filled with ground pork and shredded cabbage and flavored with garlic, ginger and sesame oil. The combination is lethal; death by dumpling overload. Every time my husband and I go out for Japanese we order these puppies, only to be left wanting more and more. $5.95 for 6 dumplings split between two people doesn't cut it for me. I found dumpling wrappers at our Asian Supermarket and then I researched and experimented with filling recipes for the last six months so that I could make these at home. The results make my waistline want to scream because I could eat two dozen of these to myself.
Gyoza are prepared by first pan frying to crisp up the bottom and then steamed to finish the cooking. You get both the pillowy softness from being steamed and a nice little crispy edge as well. If you enjoy these at restaurants, you will be surprised how simple they are to make at home. You can find most ingredients in your regular supermarket, but a few you may need to venture to an Asian market to get. Make sure the wrappers are marked specifically "gyoza wrappers" or "dumpling wrappers". It is definitely not the same to substitute these with spring roll, egg roll or won ton wrappers.
Get ready to gorge yourselves my friends.
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Makes 72 dumplings
1 lb ground pork
1 lb bag of coleslaw (or 1 lb cabbage finely shredded)
1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated or minced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 package of gyoza skins (also called Shanghai dumpling wrappers)
1/4 cup water
1 tsp cornstarch
Before you start making the gyoza, prepare your workspace. Get out a large baking sheet and moisten a clean kitchen towel or paper towel until just damp. In a small bowl mix together the water and cornstarch.
In a large mixing bowl mix together the pork, cabbage, ginger, garlic, sugar, soy sauce and sesame oil until well combined.
To begin filling your gyoza, hold a dumpling wrapper in one hand. Dip your finger in the cornstarch water and moisten all around the outside edge of the wrapper.
Place a heaped teaspoon of filling in the middle of the wrapper.
Fold the gyoza wrapper in half and pinch in the middle.
To make a pleat, you'll need to make a small fold to the left of the middle.
Pinch that together.
Make another fold to the left of the pleat you just made and pinch together.
It will look like this.
Make the same pleats pinching them together on the other side until the dumpling is completely sealed.
Your cute little pot sticker is now folded and ready to stand up....
In the palm of your hand or on a hard surface, stand the gyoza up and tap to make a flat bottom.
I've looked at pictures in dumpling cookbooks and they have many more pleats than I do but this works for me, takes less time and this is what ours look like at our local Japanese restaurant. You can get fancy and add more pleats if you like.
When you are all done folding and making the potstickers, you could at this point place your whole baking sheet in the freezer. The gyoza will freeze in about an hour or two and can then be placed in a ziplock bag. This prevents them from freezing into a big potsticker ball. When you are ready to use them, just pull them out of the freezer and add an extra minute or two for cooking time.
Whether cooking these fresh or frozen, get out a large non-stick skillet that has a tight fitting lid. Place a couple teaspoons of oil in the pan and turn the heat up to high. Get a 1/2 cup of water ready and place on the counter beside you. Place the gyoza in the pan on the flat side with their pleats sticking up. Depending on the size of your pan you should be able to fit about 12 or so into the pan (if I'm serving this as a meal for 4, I have two frying pans going at once). After about a minute or two the bottoms of the gyoza will be browned and crispy. Grab the lid to the frying pan in one hand and the 1/2 cup of water in the other. Quickly pour the water into the pan and put the lid on. Turn the heat down to low and set a timer for 10 minutes. The dumplings will finish cooking in the pan by steaming.
After 10 minutes remove the lid of the pan. If not all the water is gone let them sit another minute or two to let the water evaporate and let the bottoms of the gyoza get crispy again. Remove to a serving dish. In the Japanese restaurant, they serve them with crispy side up.
If you want to impress your company they look really pretty pleat side up. You choose.
Serve the gyoza with your choice of dipping sauce:
#1 Soy Sesame Dipping Sauce
2 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
Mix ingredients together in small bowl and serve with gyoza.
#2 Tangy Chili Dipping Sauce
3 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp chili oil (Layu chili oil)
Dash of chili pepper (Ichimi togarashi)
Mix ingredients together in small bowl and serve with gyoza.
Sauce #1 is made with easily accessibly ingredients that most people already have in their pantry. Sauce #2 is the same as the one served in our Japanese restaurant and I found the chili oil and chili pepper at our little Asian market. Both are great dipping sauces. I serve both to give my guests choice. My personal favorite is the two sauces mixed together.
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THE RESULTS?
The recipe sounds long and complicated but I assure you it is not. Mayyyyyybe slightly time consuming, but it's the kind of thing that you can make on a Saturday afternoon, throw in the freezer and have a restaurant-worthy meal in 15 minutes on a weeknight. If I could inject this stuff into my veins I would. I can never seem to make a big enough batch. My husband and I inhale them.
The biggest thing that I have learned these past few months that I've been teaching while being a mom of two small girls is that dinner needs to be:
1. Easy
2. Minimal effort
If not, there's a good chance I'll get home, flop down on the couch and realize I'm too tired to think about the mult-step recipe that's slotted in the meal plan for tonight's meal and I'll call my husband and tell him to pick something up on the way home.
Spaghetti and meat sauce is the kind of meal I have made a thousand times since I was a teenager. The ratio of ease of preparation to family pleasing taste is so great that I think it has become a default meal on most people's meal plans. While I do love a good spaghetti and meat sauce every once in a while, it screams BORING. I could make it with one hand tied behind my back in the most tired of tired moods, but week after week, month after month on the meal plan and nobody wants to go near it with an eight foot pole (no matter how easy it is).
This dish is different enough to be exciting yet the method is easy enough that it could quickly become a go-to meal. Swapping out the ground beef for ground pork adds a nice savoriness and just a touch of balsamic vinegar adds a sweet tang. I never want to go back to my regular spaghetti sauce after this.
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Serves 4
1 lb ground pork
1 medium onion, finely diced
1 rib celery, chopped
1 cup mushrooms, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 jar spaghetti sauce
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tsp dried basil
1 tsp sugar
Salt and pepper
3/4 lb penne
In a large skillet over medium high heat add the pork, onions, garlic, celery, and mushrooms. Fry for about 8 minutes breaking up the meat as it cooks, until the meat is browned and the veggies are soft. Pour in the jar of spaghetti sauce and scrape up the good bits on the bottom of the pan. Add the balsamic vinegar, basil, sugar, salt and pepper and turn the heat down to low. Simmer and stir occasionally for 15-20 minutes.
Put a large pot of salted water on to boil. The sauce will simmer while the pasta is cooking. When the water is boiling, add the pasta and cook following package directions.
Drain pasta and serve with the Sweet Basil Pork Ragu over top.
Click here for printable version of Sweet Basil Pork Ragu.
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THE RESULTS?
I have made this dish twice in the last couple weeks and Steve and I gorge ourselves on it every time. The sweetness combined with the savory pork is an addicting combination. I suggest swapping out the veggies for whatever combo you and your family like, or whatever is in your fridge. Add diced carrots or leave out the mushrooms, whatever tickles your fancy. It's the addition of pork, balsamic vinegar and basil that makes this dish so special.
As you probably noticed I suggest to put the pot of pasta water to boil on after the ragu has already been assembled. I do this to give the ragu a longer simmer time to allow the flavors to mingle and combine, but if you are in a rush put the pot of water on to boil at the same time as beginning to brown the pork. This will cut down your cooking time.
I was able to find this ground pork for cheaper than I can find ground pork; $1.75/lb which is GREAT for Canadian prices. For more inexpensive meal ideas check out the $5 Dinner Challenge and Gayle's Grocery Cart Challenge Recipe Swap.
I happened to get a 3 lb package of Italian sausage 50% off last summer and came home with my loot and froze it. My love for Italian sausage knows no bounds, but my knowledge of recipes that use the savory meat is limited. I went on a search and bookmarked all kinds of recipes, even ones that I wouldn't normally try. This recipe was one of those ones. I'm a Go Big or Go Home kind of girl when it comes to spices and combining flavors but since a friend had passed on some carrots and zucchini from her garden I tried this soup. Not my usual style; there's no fresh herbs, no dried spices, no addition of condiments lurking in the fridge. Just meat, vegetables and broth.
Much to my surprise, I had to have 3rd and 4th helpings of this soup. The flavor is incredible!
The spices in the Italian sausage marries with the broth and vegetables creating a soup so delicious it is now at the top of my favorites list.
I shredded the carrots and zucchini in order to disguise them from my 2 1/2 year old, but doing so also has the added benefit of cooking up in a snap.
Recipe slightly modified from Recipezaar
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Serves 4-6
1 lb Italian sausage, casings removed
1 garlic clove, minced
2 cups beef broth
1 14 1/2 oz can Italian-style stewed tomatoes
1 cup carrot, shredded
1 14 1/2 oz can white kidney beans, drained and rinsed
2 small zucchini, shredded
2 cups baby spinach, packed and rinsed
Salt and pepper
In a large pot over medium high heat add your Italian sausage. Brown the sausage with the garlic for about 6-8 minutes breaking it up while it's cooking. Add the beef broth, tomatoes, carrots, white kidney beans and zucchini. Allow to simmer for about 15 minutes. Taste the broth and see if it needs any salt and pepper. Turn off the heat and stir in the spinach. The residual heat of the soup will wilt the spinach. Serve.
Click here for printable version of Italian Sausage Soup
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THE RESULTS?
Soups are perfect for cold weather and since it has been -35 C here this soup NEEDS to be the remedy. Doctors orders for frosty bodies and tempting tummies.
I submitted this recipe to Gayle's Grocery Cart Challenge Recipe Swap
and the $5 Dinner Challenge.
This dish, ironically named, was birthed from a kitchen accident. My lovely culinary friends Tara and Shanna set out to make a Chicken Korma recipe from Jamie Oliver's cookbook Jamie's Food Revolution. It's a mild creamy curry making use of lots of coconut milk and sometimes almonds or cashews; Only to find they didn't have some of the ingredients. In the spirit of getting dinner on the table, they switched gears and decided to make his Vindaloo recipe instead, which is an incredibly spicy curry, peaking the scale in terms of piquancy with a tomato base and lots of vinegar. Two TOTALLY different curries.
Shanna forgot the plan. She still had Korma on the brain and began preparing it. Half way into the recipe she asked Tara "Where are the rest of the ingredients for this curry?" Tara figured out the mishap and she screamed "Shanna! We're not making KORMA we're making VINDALOO!" but there was no turning back. The ingredients were in the pot and their family was hungry. In went the Vindaloo ingredients to the half-made Korma curry with fingers crossed.
With two cooks, two recipes and one pot of curry this could have been a culinary disaster. But as it turns out it's a complete MASTERPIECE. I have eaten this curry three times in the last month and I am still craving another pot of it. It's got bite from the spice of the vindaloo paste, and tang from the balsamic vinegar but this beautiful sweetness you don't usually get from curries. The creaminess of the coconut milk is just wonderful.
This is most definitely one happy accident.
Recipe adapted by Tara Hopkins and Shanna Rodominski from Jamie Oliver
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Serves 4
2 medium onions, sliced in half moons
4 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated
a small bunch of cilantro
28 oz. can of diced tomatoes, or 4 ripe tomatoes
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp butter
1 3/4 pounds of chicken breasts or thighs, cut into bite sized pieces
1/2 cup of Patak's Vindaloo Paste
1/3 cup of balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp honey
1 13 oz can coconut milk
1 18 oz can chickpeas
1 cup natural yogurt
1 lemon
salt and pepper
Peel and finely slice the onions, and mince the garlic and ginger. Pick the cilantro leaves off the stalks and reserve for later. Finely chop the stalks. If using fresh tomatoes, cut them into quarters.
In a large pot over medium high heat add your oil and butter. To this add the onion, garlic, ginger and cilantro stalks and cook for 10 minutes. Add the chicken, curry paste, chickpeas and coconut milk. Stir well to coat everything with the paste and season with salt and pepper. Add the tomatoes, balsamic vinegar and honey. If you use fresh tomatoes instead of canned, you will have to add some water at this point. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for 45 minutes. Stir curry regularly to make sure it doesn't stick to the pan. When the meat is tender taste the curry and season accordingly with salt and pepper.
Serve on basmati rice with a dollop of yogurt and a sprinkle of cilantro leaves. Or eat it straight up. Either way it's delicious.
Click here for printable version of Vindaloo Korma
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THE RESULTS?
This showed up on my traditional Christmas Eve Indian Feast this year, which is quite a prestigious spot. My family and I are all smitten with this recipe. It does have quite a bit of spice made as is, but adding the yogurt on top will add tang and cut the heat a bit. You can also reduce the amount of curry paste from 1/2 cup to a 1/3 cup. I like it just as is, no yogurt or anything. I like the bit of burn on my tongue soothed by the sweetness of the honey.
I submitted this recipe to Gayle's Grocery Cart Challenge Recipe Swap.
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