Sweet and Simple

Life has been ramping up lately. Work has been going at full speed, the sou chef started her second year of pre-school and her assistant (I guess that would be the line cook?) is now hitting 15 weeks.

Time for meals that are both wicked fast and can be frozen or kept for left overs later that week.

enter

the

chop-suey

According to Wikipedia the dish I ate growing up is not chop-suey at all. Rather it is just elbow macaroni, ground beef, diced yellow onion and 2 16 ounce cans of stewed tomatoes.

I don't care, I call it chop suey, my wife calls it chop suey and besides, meat and macaroni sounds a bit sketchy to me.

This could be a one dish meal if you cooked the meat in the same pot you used to boil the pasta. Basically it it is as simple as can be-

1 lb of ground beef
1 lb box of elbows
1 medium yellow onion diced
2 cans of stewed tomatoes

Mix and serve

We got a little fancy and added some parmigiana cheese to it for the wife and I.

The sou chef, who won't eat hamburger, ate up the 'meatballs' in the chop-suey.

I do like to make fancy dinners but during the week this hits the spot. It is cheaper then take out and there is enough leftovers for lunch the next day.

A brief programing note. The photos are something I have never been real thrilled with on Sauces and Stuff. Some of the blogs I read have really over the top photos. Over the next few months I will be working on the photos on the site.

Stuffed

I was at the grocery store and in the mood for something different to make for dinner. Having been away all week left me in the need of some kitchen time. However, I did have some criteria that needed to be meet. Dinner had to be a) something I could have leftovers of and b) something that I would be able to make in a hour.

Stuffed shells

Ahh the perfect thing for dinner: stuffed shells. It has pasta, has meat, has cheese, freezes well, reheats well and easy to make. Seriously could this get any easier or annoying (maybe if I was Rachel Ray)


I sort of made this up as I went along but here are the basic ingredients:

- 1lb groud turkey
- 1 16 oz can of Muir Glen Crushed Tomatoes with Basil
- Half a jar of Prego with Mushrooms
- 1 box of Barilla large shells ( I picked Barilla because that was what was in front of me)
- 1 bag of Sargento shredded mozzarella cheese (again because that was what was in front of me)
- half a 32 oz container of Sorrento whole milk ricotta cheese (could of gone with the 15 oz)
- some parsley, oregano, salt, pepper, basil
- fresh grated parmigiano reggiano cheese
- 1 package frozen spinach
- 2 Roche brothers sweet Italian chicken sausage links


- Put pot of salted water on to boil
- Brown the turkey with some salt and pepper and set aside ( I do have photos but they are sort of gross, if you really want them let me know), then set aside
- Cut up the sausage in chunks and then cooked till through in the same pan, then set aside
-Microwave according to directions the spinach and drain until dryish
-Mix the sausage, grounded turkey and spinach together with your hands (again, I do have photos but they are sort of gross, if you really want them let me know)
- Add about half the ricotta cheese to the sausage, turkey and spinach mix. Add seasoning to taste.
-Drain pasta and shells
- In a 9x12 dish, pour the crushed tomatoes over the bottom just to give the shells something to sit on.


- While still warm, put as much of the mixture into each shells as you can. In my dish, I can fit rows of 4 together so over all, I can do 4 rows of 4 with 2 additional shells tucked in at the end. it is about half the box of shells. It should look something frighteningly like this.




Once all the little fellas are comfortably tucked into their beds, I then cover them each with a little of the Prego and the shredded mozzarella.


Then into the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes or so.


I sprinkled a little bit of freshly grated parmigiano reggiano cheese on top before serving. The end result was very very tasty.


What I liked about making this was that it falls into a classic friends and family category. Even if you know vegetarians you could do a half and half with little to no extra effort.

Fried Rice

Any fan of the cartoon series , Fighting Foodons, knows that dishes served can win the battle. Much like an animated version of Iron Chef, Fighting Foodons pits dishes against each other in a battle of good versus evil.

It was in this vein that I whipped up some chicken fried rice after the Pats miserable loss to the Jets this past Sunday.

Fried rice is very easy to make. That said I did take some shortcuts as I had a bunch of other stuff we needed to get done around the house. The basic key is to have some day old rice since fresh rice, while tasting fine, will make your fried rice a sticky mess. We had some left over from the day before so I made a small amount to add to the existing amount.

We do have a rice cooker but I did not want to dig it out

That was short cut one. Short cut two was to use a bag of Cascadian Farm frozen vegetable blend rather then go with fresh veggies. I did add some fresh carrots we had in the house as well as some canned water chestnuts.


The third short cut was to cook the chicken in the over while I did other stuff rather then cook the chicken in the pan. I did however, mix the veggies with the rice in the large fry pan. I cooked the rice and veggie combo with a little oil a very small (about half a teaspoon) of sesame oil and some low salt soy sauce.
.
Once I was satisfied with the overall look and taste, I cut up the chicken added it the the mix and seasoned accordingly. Finally I took an egg that I had previously lightly scrambled and added it to the mix. The finished dish looked like this.


I microwaved some frozen Cascadian Farm Edamame in a small corning ware dish covered with water for about 5 minutes, drained the water and tossed with some sea salt.

Dinner was served.