Year of the Noodle: Week 7

Is this cheating?  I’m only half convinced that it isn’t.  The thing is, last week was crazy.  We were in between trips to Steamboat Springs and Aspen, trying to make five days of work fit into the three days we left ourselves.  (Yes, I realize that no one feels bad for me.)  A little busy, and a little stressed, I felt a little less interested in making something creative and time consuming.  But soup sounded fantastic.  Chickenless Noodle Soup, to be exact.  John convinced me that making egg noodles by hand to add to the soup counted it as a new recipe.  I’m not sure it’s a new recipe entirely, but I’m going to count it as close enough.  If nothing else I can claim that I’m building on what I learned last year with this year’s new noodle technology.  (Are you buying any of this?)

Regardless, this soup was still a winner, and thick homemade egg noodles only made it that much tastier.  The soup recipe can be found HERE, with the egg noodle recipe below.  When its cold outside, and you need comfort food fast, this is a great go-to recipe. Continue reading »

Year of the Noodle: Week 6

A snowy weekend spent in the mountains begged for a baked pasta dish.  We spent last weekend in Steamboat Springs along with my sister and her boyfriend, and I volunteered to make noodle dish while we were there.  With no idea how well outfitted the kitchen of our rental condo would be, I had a few concerns about pulling this one off.  But as it turned out, this recipe is delightfully easy and absolutely fabulous.

Even if you think gorgonzola has too strong of a flavor, I encourage you to go with it.  The intensity becomes more subtle once it mixes with the bechamel sauce and spinach, and provides that nice pop of flavor.  If you’re dead set against it, I suppose a gouda or gruyere could work, but probably wouldn’t be quite as tasty.  Regardless, choose your cheese and make this recipe – it’s so good.

Baked Ziti with Gorgonzola and Spinach

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 cups Classic Béchamel (recipe below), hot
• 4 ounces full-fat Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled (about 2/3 cup)
• 1 pound flat-leaf spinach
• 1 medium onion, minced Continue reading »

Year of the Noodle: Week 5

I love tofu.  Not many people would own up to that, I’m guessing, because tofu has such a bad wrap.  But it can be so good.  Even in this recipe, where there’s no additional flavoring added to the tofu before you cook it, I though the tofu tasted delicious.  Just cube it on the smaller side, and fry it until fully golden.  Yum.  If you absolutely loathe tofu, I’m sure chicken would be a suitable substitute.  Not nearly as authentic, though :)

My noodles turned out a little gluey, so you’ll probably want to use some type of rice noodle instead of the udon noodles I used.  This recipe has great flavor, but the dressing is a bit sweet and after a while the taste becomes one dimensional.  I think this dish would be best served alongside a couple of Asian vegetable dishes, rather than on its own as a main entree.  It’s quite good, though.  Give it (and the tofu) a chance.

Orange Sesame Noodles with Tofu

Ingredients

• 1 lb. fresh Chinese lo mein noodles (I used Udon Noodles)
• 3 Tbs. vegetable oil, or more as needed
• 1 Tbs. minced garlic Continue reading »

Year of the Noodle: Week 4

The food processor started smoking.  Hmm.  Pretty sure it isn’t supposed to do that.

Our food processor just barely fit the ingredients for this pasta recipe, which apparently meant the motor had to work extra hard.  Oops.  Hopefully it will still function properly if I give it a week off :)  After the pasta dough came out of the smoking food processor, I had to roll and cut it by hand because I don’t have a pasta machine yet.  No matter how thin I tried to roll the dough, the noodles still came out super thick.  (Yeah, I’ll be purchasing a pasta machine shortly.)  But thick noodles weren’t the only problem with this dish – at least they tasted good.

The sauce was the real problem.  It smelled amazing, looked fantastic in the pan, and yet my first thought as I tasted it was “EW.”  Not good.  I served this dish to my family for my mom’s birthday (sorry for the experimental birthday dinner, mom.)  One or two of them claimed to like it, but to me the sauce was nearly inedible.  I’m not sure if it was the strong flavor of the dried mushrooms that turned me off or the overwhelming wine flavor (which did not seem to cook off.)  Either way, the flavors were too intense, and frankly kind of icky.  That’s right, icky. 

I’ll file this one under the “not every experiment succeeds” category.  Try it at your own risk :) Continue reading »

Year of the Noodle: Week 3

Making macaroni and cheese from scratch impresses people.  I’ve known this for years, and often make my own non-recipe version for company or when cooking at someone’s house while visiting.  It’s such an easy dish to make, and yet whipping up a cheese sauce from scratch and baking the macaroni in the oven somehow feels fancy in a way the blue box never could.  Since I’m already well versed in the more traditional version of mac & cheese, I thought a nice spicy version sounded like an interesting change of pace.

The result was a comfort food upgrade.  The veggies add a nice crispiness to an often texturally boring dish, and the subtle spice brings a new dimension of flavor.  If you like your food spicy, I’d advise adding a bit more jalapeno and pepper jack to bring it up a notch.  Since it is far from a low-fat dish, you probably won’t want to substitute this recipe for your standard mac and cheese too often, but I suspect it would make a nice cure for the winter blahs.  Enjoy!

Spicy Macaroni and Cheese

Ingredients

• 4 cups cooked macaroni or cavatappi
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 to 1/2 finely diced red onion
• Equal amount diced red bell pepper
• 1 finely diced jalapeno
• 1 4 oz can chopped green chilies Continue reading »