Baked Rigatoni and Ziti

The girls got all excited about the idea of preparing Baked Ziti. No idea where they picked up that nonsense. But we went ahead and gave it a shot. Here is our second truly original recipe (As we went shopping for ingredients, Lily thought the Ziti to be too unassuming and decided we should do 50/50 Ziti and Rigatoni.):

 

Lena started the adventure by cutting up 2 sticks of celery, half a red onion, and 2 garlic cloves.

Next we got a pot of salt water going to cook a total of 1lb of Ziti and Rigatoni pasta.

We also started frying up 1 lb of happy beef with a dash of olive oil, a little salt, pepper, ground coriander seed, and cumin, as well as separately softening the cut-up veggies in a bit more olive oil.

In the meantime Lena cut up 3 big handfuls of tomatoes.

After about ten minutes we added the pasta to the boiling water and about 1 cup worth of red wine to the veggies.

After a few minutes we added about a half cup of veggie broth and

all the tomatoes,

fresh rosemary, and the stem of the tomatoes (We are convinced that it adds good flavor).

While the pasta and tomatoes were cooking for about eight to ten minutes we turned the oven to 400F, shredded about 3 handfuls of white Cheddar and Parmesan cheese, and

cut up 2 handfuls of kale.

We removed the tomato stem and whizzed up the veggies to a sauce; rounding off the great flavors with salt and pepper and adding the browned crispy meat.

Now we had all the ingredients ready: cooked pasta, shredded cheese, kale, home made tomato sauce, and a hot oven.

Then Lena went ahead and kept layering pasta, sauce, kale, and cheese into a baking dish until it was filled to the top.

We stuck int into the oven for 15 minutes until all that goodness started to brown on the top.

There it is. Baked Ziti. It came out just beautifully good looking and tasted DELICIOUS!

 

Rigatoni with Mushrooms

When dinner was served 5 year old Lucy took off and toasted herself a bagel. Guess you can't win 'em all. (As mentioned before Papa was thoroughly ticked off at 7 year old Lily when he prepared this week's shopping list and decided to pick meals as he pleased."What did I do to you?" Mama asked. She doesn't like Mushrooms much either.)

Nonetheless, this thing was easy and yummy for at least one of us. While we cooked up a pot of pasta we chopped up 4 handful of mixed mushrooms, 2 cloves of garlic, a small pile of thyme leaves, and parsley. We also grated a bunch of parmesan.

First we fried up the mushrooms in a chunk of butter for just a few minutes and seasoned them with a little salt and pepper.

Then we added the garlic and herbs for a couple more minutes.

We added about 4 to 6 tablespoons of creme fraiche and the juice of half a lemon.

We served it all with the parmesan. For those that like mushrooms this is one killer dish.

Pasta and Peppers

This gotta be up there on the Olymp of soul food. Try to stop eating. We dare you. This we learned to make from Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Dinners.

First we sliced up 2 red peppers and 2 yellow peppers

and tossed them in a pan with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. We placed a lid on them and cooked them ever so slowly for 15 minutes. It was impressive how much tasty fragrance they produced like that.

Meanwhile we started a pot of water for cooking rigatoni pasta, sliced a red onion,

and added it to the mix. We continued the slow heating process for another 20 minutes.

This gave us plenty of time to slice a couple cloves of garlic, plug the leaves off a handful of parsley, and finely slice the stalks.

After a total of 35 minutes we cranked up the heat and added the garlic and parsley stalks, tossing them about for a short while.

Then we added a couple gluggs of red wine vinegar and let it sizzle away.

We turned the heat back down and added a little bit of freshly grated parmesan cheese and a couple chunks of mascarpone cheese.

When the rigatoni were done we tossed them with the veggies, some reserved cooking water from the pasta, and the parsley leaves.

Gorgeous!