Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Week Plan Wednesday

Wednesday- Pasta with salmon cream and asparagus.  See the end for a recipe.  Salad with red peppers.  Yum.

Thursday- The Hubby is sick, so the littles and I will eat a leftover buffet with the neighbors.  Their leftovers are new to me!  My leftovers are new to them!  It's weird, I know, but it works.

Friday- Roasted potatoes.  Green Beans and Eggs.  If you search for a recipe for green beans and eggs, you will find on your first page of results Armenian, Turkish, Mexican, Georgian, Martha Stewart, and White Trash versions.  So international!  Basically, saute onions and garlic with whatever spices fit your ethnic profiling, add some steamed green beans, throw some scrambled eggs in, and cook until the beans are hot and the eggs are cooked.  Top with whatever toppings fit with the spices you chose.  Look, that's sort of a recipe, too!

Saturday- Auntie A is cooking artichokes and chicken.  With pasta, I think.

Sunday- Main dish salad.  I've got 2 t-bone steaks, which isn't enough to make "steak" for 5 people, but is more than enough marinated and grilled meat on a big lettuce, tomato, and broccoli salad.  Bread, because bread is the stuff of life.

Monday- Tabbouleh.  Homemade hummus.  Pita bread (I've still got some of the store-bought stuff in my freezer).Roasted Indian eggplant.  They're cute!  These little tiny egg sized eggplants!  I'm going to cut them in half and marinate them briefly in soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, chopped garlic, and a tiny smidgen of sugar before roasting them.  Three!  Three recipes in one week.  You're spoiled! 

Tuesday- Cabbage and chicken stir fry, which honestly never turns out the same way twice.  Brown rice.

Pasta with Something Cream

Choose at least two Italian (or reasonably forgiveably not Italian) ingredients that taste good together.  I used a can of wild salmon and some fresh steamed asparagus.  Other excellent choices are roasted red peppers, olives, spinach, sun dried tomatoes, diced tomatoes, fennel, artichoke hearts, peas, pepperoni, bacon, you get the picture.  These are your "Something."   Notice that many "Somethings" are easy to keep sitting around in your freezer or pantry, so you never have to panic when company shows up unexpectedly at dinner time.  Whip up... say, Penne with Roasted Red Peppers and Olives (both from a jar) and you look like a professional.

Put on your water to boil, and when it does, cook some  pasta.  It should take you the same amount of time to make the sauce as it takes for your water to boil and your pasta to cook.  Plan on about 20 minutes, as long as you chop your onion pretty fast.

Chop up an onion and saute it in olive oil. That's like, medium high heat as long as you keep stirring pretty regularly.  If your "Something" is a raw meat, cook it first, set it aside, and use the rendered fat instead of olive oil to saute your onion.  If your "Something" is a raw vegetable, steam it while you saute.  If it's frozen, defrost it.
When the onion is starting to brown, throw in some minced garlic.  I'm ok if you use the bottled stuff.  Otherwise, you'd better be busy mincing while your onion cooks. 
In a minute or two when your garlic and onion are pretty well cooked, add a good glug-glug of half and half or cream, a bunch of grated Parmesan cheese, and your "Something."  Stir and get everything good and hot.
While you stir, taste.  You will probably want to add of salt and pepper.  If the sauce is too dry, add more glugs of half and half or cream until it's nice.  If it seems really boring, throw in a splash of lemon juice or wine vinegar to perk the flavor up.  A pinch of red pepper is often nice.  You might even want to chuck in some fresh or dried herbs, like say, basil or rosemary or oregano or marjoram or "Italian seasoning."  When it's hot and cooked and delicious, your pasta should be done.  Drain the pasta, throw a little sauce in with it to keep it from sticking together, and then dish.  Ta-da!

2 comments:

  1. Pioneer woman does shrimp and tomato cream pasta (tasty)... if you are on a "seafood might have high mercury and is a no-no" diet, it is also yummy as chicken + tomato.

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    1. Yum yum! I'm big on vodka tomato sauce with cream, too. And because we drink coffee, any pasta with cream recipe can be all pantry staples. Hooray!

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