Margherita Pasta Salad

Whenever I am fortunate to be eating in a restaurant that has a wood-fired oven, I like to order a Margherita pizza. In my opinion, this simple and classic combination of tomato, fresh mozarella, and basil is the perfect way to enjoy a good quality pie. I haven't had one in a while, but, for some reason, as I was dreaming up a pasta salad for tonight's supper, the image of a Margherita pizza popped into my head. Once it did, it wasn't going anywhere! So, I decided to just roll with it.

I kept the salad very simple, just like the original concept. I tossed some cold fusilli, halved grape tomatoes, and quartered bocconcini in a homemade garlic-infused olive oil and let the mixture marinate for a few hours. In order to keep the basil as fresh as possible, I waited until I was ready to serve the salad before tearing the leaves and adding them in. I sprinkled a little bit of asiago on top as a garnish, and I was good to go!

Sometimes, simple is best. Tomato, fresh mozarella, and basil are a classic for a reason; the combination of the three just tastes right! (A little garlic in the background never hurt anyone, either.) The Margherita pasta salad was very refreshing, and I think it will be perfect for warm weather cooking, alongside just about anything. Why not borrow flavours from one dish to create another? I'm glad I did!

Margherita Pasta Salad: The Recipe
Amanda's notes: When cooking pasta, make sure your water is very salty--like the ocean! This is your one chance to add flavour to the pasta itself. If you do it right, you won't even have to add salt to the final dish before serving.


Ingredients
1 pkg fusilli pasta
1 container bocconcini (200 g), quartered (or whole baby bocconcini)
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
3/4 cup garlic-infused olive oil*
freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
1 bouquet fresh basil leaves
grated asiago, to garnish

Directions
Cook pasta to al dente in plenty of boiling, salted water; drain, rinse under cold water until cool. Toss with bocconcini and tomatoes, add olive oil and toss to coat. Add plenty of freshly cracked black pepper, stir, and set in fridge for at least a couple of hours. Stir occasionally.
When ready to serve, tear basil leaves and fold into pasta. Taste and season if necessary. Garnish salad with grated asiago, serve immediately. Enjoy!

*To make your own garlic-infused olive oil, pour 3/4 cup of olive oil in a pot over medium heat. Add 2 or 3 peeled and smashed cloves of garlic. Once oil heats and bubbles for 5 minutes, strain and cool.

Grown Up Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese

Are you looking to update your favourite childhood meal to your sophisticated, adult tastes? Simple!

Start with a homemade bowl of tomato soup. No need to put too much effort into it; just mix some canned crushed tomatoes with some broth (we had homemade chicken broth in the freezer, but a good store bought brand is just fine) and some flavouring agents and spices, and let it simmer for a little while.

Onto the sandwich. The foodie's secret to a phenomenal grilled cheese is quality ingredients. Choose wisely, keeping in mind that there are a few easy ways to sneak in extra flavour. For example, this fresh loaf we bought at the farmers market is a rye bread with caraway seeds. I love how fragrant it is!

Of utmost importance, of course, is the cheese. My suggestion is to go with either something that is flavoured (like an herbed Gouda, Havarti, or Monteray Jack) or something smoked. Pictured here is one of my favourites, apple wood smoked Cheddar cheese. The beauty of using it in a grilled cheese (or in just about anything, really) is that it tastes a bit like bacon. The taste of bacon in your grilled cheese without having to bother frying any? Yes, please!


Are you ready for this?

Oh, yes.

Mmmmmmm! Although reminiscent of everyone's familiar childhood meal, this gourmet version takes the concept of tomato soup and grilled cheese to a whole new level. Homemade soup, even a quick one such as this, always has a lot more depth and flavour than what comes out of a can, and the sandwich, when made with quality bread and cheese, is a little taste of happiness. I guarantee that this meal will put a smile on anyone's face. Personally, my inner child jumped for joy while my matured taste buds savoured every element.

Lastly, I think you all know what to do: dip that baby!

Quick Homemade Tomato Soup: The Recipe

Amanda's notes: If you would like to make a heartier meal out of your soup, add a handful of macaroni and a drained and rinsed can of beans.

Ingredients

olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

6 cups broth (chicken, beef, or veggie)

2 large cans crushed tomatoes, plain

1 tsp crushed red pepper

2 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

about a palm full each of basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary

kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste

Directions

Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium high heat. Add onion, saute a few minutes. Add garlic, saute a few minutes more. Add broth and tomatoes, bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer. Add rest of the ingredients. Simmer for 30 minutes. Enjoy!

Polenta with Marinara Sauce and Mushrooms

On the first snowy morning of the season, Jeff decided to make himself some cornmeal porridge for breakfast; however, by following the directions on the back of the bag that are meant to feed an entire family, he unintentionally ended up with an entire saucepan full of it. After he served himself a bowl and set to sweetening it with cream and brown sugar, I poured the rest of the plain porridge into a dish so that it would cool completely and mold.

Although traditional Italian polenta is cornmeal that is more coarsely ground, I was confident that this would be a close approximation. Since it's not at all common in my region, I've only tried polenta once before, several years ago in a restaurant in Fredericton, where it was cut into triangles and served under a wild mushroom ragu. I loved how it was an interesting alternative to pasta or potatoes, and how its neutral taste absorbed the flavour of the ragu. Armed with this tasty memory, I set to work on creating a polenta dish to call my own.

To start, I sautéd a mixture of sliced cremini, shitake, and white button mushrooms with kosher salt and freshly cracked pepper in butter and olive oil until soft and fragrant.

I then seasoned the sliced polenta and fried it in butter until it was golden brown on each side. This took about 3-4 minutes on each side on medium-high heat.

I placed the fried polenta in the bottom of a shallow dish. I thought of making it arty and having the pieces radiate outward in a star shape, but then I snapped back to reality. That's just not how I operate! Random placement is just fine.

Lucky for me, Jeff had a marinara sauce bubbling away on the stove (made from crushed canned tomatoes, onions, garlic, basil, oregano, thyme, bay leaves, and copious amounts of red wine.) I ladled a generous serving of the sauce all over the polenta, and topped it off with the mushrooms.

The only thing left to do was to add some grated parmesan cheese for garnish, of course.

I was really pleased with this dish. The buttery polenta acted like a delicious sponge, and really took on the flavour of the sauce. I also loved the combination of the different kinds of mushrooms. This was a very hearty vegetarian dish, one that was perfect for the cold weather we've suddenly come into.

I'm grateful for Jeff's culinary mishap, because it allowed me to be creative and try something new.

In fact, from now on when he gets a craving for cornmeal porridge, I'll insist that he follows the instructions on the back of the bag.

Amanda's notes: Something I'd like to try in the future would be to mix herbs and spices and/or cheese into the cornmeal before allowing it to cool.

I think leftover slices of polenta broiled with a sharp cheese on top would make a wonderful breakfast.

Weeknight Macaroni and Tomatoes

Does everyone's grandmother make macaroni and tomatoes? You know, canned tomatoes mixed with ground beef, macaroni, and not much else? Both Jeff and I have memories of our grandmothers fixing us this comforting concoction; so, when we found ourselves on a Thursday night with a basket of local Roma tomatoes that needed to be used up, and an inventory of our fridge was less than inspiring, we thought of this simple childhood dish.

We figured that neither Gram nor Grand-Maman would be offended by a version modified to our current tastes, so Jeff set to quartering the beautiful, fresh tomatoes.

Meanwhile, I sauteed an onion and some garlic in a mixture of olive oil and butter until softened and fragrant. In went the tomatoes, which looked so pretty in the pot with the spices Jeff added in abundance (basil, oregano, and herbes de provence, with salt and lots of freshly cracked pepper.)

I browned a pound of ground beef from Stephen Taylor's Farm in a nearby skillet, while the whole-wheat pasta boiled away in yet another pot. After we added the meat to the tomato mixture, I remembered a pack of mushrooms that we had in our sorry fridge. I softened those babies up in some garlic butter, and threw them and the drained pasta into the pool with the others. Then, the entire thing was poured into a baking dish.

As you may have noticed, there aren't very many dishes that make it past my inspection without the incorporation of cheese. Although not in my grandmother's original, I sprinkled a blend of shredded Italian cheeses (mozzarella, asiago, provolone, and parmesan) on top before baking. We were very patient, and then...

Heaven! The macaroni and tomatoes was extremely comforting. It tasted so familiar to me, with just a little bit of a new twist. This was a great way to use our tomatoes! I liked the bright and fresh flavour that they brought to the table (no pun intended.) Also, I can't say enough about using garlic butter in this dish; it really stood out, but in the most delightful way.

I enjoyed this so much, that I want to experiment further. Something I'd really like to try, when I've bothered to plan ahead, is folding in cubes of fresh mozzarella before baking. However, that being said, Jeff and I both found ourselves craving Kraft "Parmesan Cheese," the stuff in the green can. Yikes...funny what childhood memories can do to a person!

Not Your Grandmother's Macaroni and Tomatoes: The Recipe

Amanda's Notes: Make sure you undercook your pasta just a little bit, so that it will finish cooking to a perfect al dente in the oven.

Ingredients

3.0 L fresh tomatoes, quartered

1 onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

1 lb mushrooms, sliced

olive oil, garlic butter

1 lb hamburger, browned

1 box whole-wheat macaroni

1 tsp each basil, oregano, herbes de provence

salt and freshly cracked pepper

Italian cheese, grated

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F.

Sautee onions and garlic in a mixture of olive oil and garlic butter, until soft. Add mushrooms, sautee until soft.

Add tomatoes and spices. Add ground beef and pasta. Season to taste.

Sprinkle with cheese and bake pasta for 25-30 min. Broil to brown the cheese.

Let the pasta sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before serving.

Enjoy!

Simple Tomato Salad

I noticed fresh tomatoes at the farmers market last weekend. Even though it's not yet the right season for them, and, so, they're of the hothouse variety, I'm still very excited to have access to local produce that isn't a) potatoes; b) squash; or c) canned.  Besides, hothouse tomatoes produced in my own community are certainly better than tomatoes that the grocery store trucks in all the way from Mexico; so, I proudly picked up a basket, knowing exactly what I wanted to do with them.

When I want to enjoy fresh tomatoes, I like to make a really simple tomato salad. All I do is drizzle tomato slices with good olive oil, season them with kosher salt and freshly cracked pepper, and serve them with some kalamata olives and feta cheese. It is so easy, yet so delicious and pleasing to the eye.

I really enjoyed the tomato salad. While the hothouse tomatoes didn't have the same magical, juicy burst of flavour that they get from the summer sun, they were still very tasty and well-matched to the briny cheese and olives. This dish was a great preview to what I will be privileged to enjoy in a couple of months. 

Hurry up, tomato plants! I have big plans for you.