At least once a month my apartment fills with the delicious aroma of sautéed onions and garlic.  You can bet that one of those aroma-filled days is a sauce-making day. It’s become a monthly tradition to make a giant pot of marinara to last for the upcoming few weeks. Freeze, thaw and create. The marinara we make is an excellent base for just about anything — chicken, sausage, shrimp, beef, turkey, veggies — you name it. We’ve even used it as a pizza sauce in a pinch.

Oh, and when I say “we” make, I really should probably say Mark makes. It’s really his baby. I would like to try this with fresh tomatoes sometime. Hopefully sometime I will have a garden with which to do such experimentations.

M. Cecconi’s Marinara

2 T olive oil
1 large onion, diced
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
4 large cans of diced tomatoes
Italian seasoning
crushed red pepper
salt and black pepper

In a very large pot, heat olive oil over medium.  Add garlic and sauté for 2-3 minutes.

Toss in onion and sauté for 3-5 more minutes.  Add salt and pepper to taste (usually a teaspoon of each).

After onions turn glossy, add tomatoes and stir. Add Italian seasoning (usually 2-3 tablespoons) and a dash of crushed red pepper*.

Reduce heat to low and put lit on pot. Let simmer for several hours, stirring occasionally. Once the sauce has been cooked to the consistency of your liking, let cool and pour 1-2 cups at a time in a blender and blend to a consistency of your choice (I like mine chunky, so I blend half the sauce and mix in the rest). Separate into smaller containers and freeze until use.

*If you like spicy, add 1 teaspoon. If not, go with 1/2 teaspoon. It won’t taste very spicy until after the sauce has been simmered and blended.

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Last weekend, my beau attempted some Giada cooking. He’s kind of in love with her, and who could blame her? She’s beautiful, Italian, and knows how to cook. Plus, she’s short and sweet like me.

He made her Linguine with Shrimp and Lemon Oil using whole wheat pasta. It was fabulous! It was like having our own little Italian restaurant.

Lovely parsley

The finished product … YUM!

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Warning: These are in no way shape or form healthy. But, they are awesome. And amazing. And fabulous.

Mark decided that instead of pizza, that we’d do something a bit different and make calzones.

Holy lord look at those fillings … soooo yummy!

I don’t have a recipe per say, but I do have a small how-to.  Use whatever dough recipe and sauce recipe you want. Also, you can add as much or as little of the ingredients as you want. I’d be interested in any suggestions for additional ingredients.

1. Make pizza dough and separate into softball sized balls.
2. Roll out each ball to about 1/4 an inch thick.
3. Gather your fillings. We used mozzarella, onion, fresh spinach, cottage cheese, italian seasoning, pepperoni, italian sausage, tomato and tomato sauce.
4. Mix fillings together in a large bowl.
5. Scoop 1-1.5 c of your filling into the middle of the dough.
6. Fold in half. Fold the bottom edge over the top edge and crimp to seal.
7. Cut a couple slits in the top of the calzone.
8. Bake in a preheated 425° oven for 30-40 minutes, or until crust is golden and cheeses are melted.

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After Mark’s trek to the Des Moines Farmers Market last week, he came up with an amazingly awesome idea for dinner. He’d picked up a batch of garlic focaccia bread (and I wish I knew where he bought it from, because I’d love to credit them — not to mention, get MORE). I had some steak in the fridge from grilling a few nights previous. Thus, his idea was born.

Grilled Steak and Blue Cheese Sammies on Garlic Focaccia Bread

1 large chuck steak, grilled to taste (I like medium rare), sliced thin
1 loaf garlic focaccia bread, sliced into 4 quarters, then sliced lengthwise for sandwiches
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T butter
1 avacado
1/2 c blue cheese crumbles
baby leaf lettuce
steak sauce or hot sauce

Heat a small skillet over medium. Butter and spread garlic on the bread. Toast bread until brown and crispy. Repeat with all slices. Set aside. To assemble sandwiches, place steak, avacado, blue cheese, lettuce and choice of sauce on the sandwich. Serve warm. Makes 4 sandwiches.

Sorry I’m a terrible recipe-writer, but that’s pretty much what we did. It was amazing. Check out the photos. They’re totally drool-worthy.

Focaccia, pre-grilling

Mark grilling the bread

Of course, Mark added more garlic to his bread after toasting.

Sandwiches, almost ready to go — sans lettuce

And the finished product … almost too big for me to eat.

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Mark was challenged last weekend. The task: make dinner without going to the grocery store.  He could only use what I had in the apartment.

Could he do it?

Was there really any question? This kid knows his stuff. He pulled through. And in a fancy way.

I’m not including a recipe this time because we’re going to refine it with all the changes we talked about during dinner, but it was still amazingly delicious. The list of ingredients included: lasagne noodles, tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, fontina cheese, basil, italian chicken sausage, garlic … I think that might have been it. Not sure what order. He made a sauce of some sort out of the cheeses and rolled the lasagne noodles around the sausage. I added the basil towards the end (I LOVE BASIL. Especially fresh basil).

My addition to dinner was the garlic toast. I actually used rye bread instead of my normal wheat. I will share a recipe for that (so you don’t walk away feeling cheated!)

Calee’s Garlic Toast

(recipe is per slice of bread — because I may or may not just make one piece occasionally)
1 slice bread (I like Sarah Lee 45 Calories and delightful)
1.5 T olive oil
italian spices
1/2 t minced garlic (or less if you’re into that)
2 T parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 400°.  Mix all ingredients except the bread.  Pour or spread onto the slice of bread. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until toasted.

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Hey all!

My boy likes to cook and I thought it’d be a cool feature to share his creations (with instructions) once or twice a month.

I shall call this segment: Wonder Bread Italian Boy Cooks.

For those of you who don’t get that, my boy is about as Italian as white bread. Wonder bread that is. He’s got the last name and the recipes. Not to mention he’s an amazing cook and comes up with crazy delicious meals on the fly.

So without further ado, this is installment #1 of Wonder Bread Italian Boy Cooks.

Sorry guys, I promise from now on I’ll have better photos. I did just buy a new digital camera! This was kind of an on-the-fly decision to add this feature, so the photo isn’t great, but it was YUMMY.

Everything from the Garden Pasta

Ingredients:

1 full chicken breast (both sides of the breast)
4 T olive oil (reserve 2 for the end)
Salt and Pepper to taste
2 lbs assorted vegetables — he used:
1 small yellow zucchini squash, sliced
1 small green zucchini, sliced
1 red pepper, julienned
1 green pepper, julienned
1 yellow pepper, julienned
1/2 red onion, sliced
1 small package mushrooms, whole
1/2 c red wine
2 14.5 oz cans diced tomatoes
italian seasoning to taste
Cooked whole wheat pasta

Directions:

Heat 2 T olive oil over medium heat in a large pan. Cut chicken into bite-sized pieces and add to oil. Season with salt and pepper. Cook through and remove from pan. Set aside.

Add veggies to pan. Saute while stirring until onions start to get glossy and see-through. Add half of the red wine. Keep stirring and sauteing for 15 more minutes or until veggies have cooked through.

Add the rest of the red wine, the additional 2 T olive oil, both cans of tomatoes and the chicken. Sprinkle with some Italian seasonings. Cook for 15 minutes more. Toss with the cooked pasta and serve with parmesan cheese.

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