Pasta e Fagioli (Pasta and Beans)

I love chickpeas. They are incredibly versatile and are part of my “I forgot to plan dinner and am stuck rummaging around the pantry” arsenal. For this recipe you just need a few pantry essentials and you can pull it together in less than 20 minutes.

First off a chopped onion.

Once that is cooked a generous amount of pureed tomatoes.

And some fresh garlic.

As well, some red chillies that were hanging around the fridge.

Some salt, pepper and dried basil.

 

You then need to let that bubble away for a few minutes until it thickens.

Now for the beans part of the recipe. You can use whatever you would like but I’m rather partial to chickpeas. I always rinse them since I can’t stand the liquid that they come in.

Stirred into the sauce.

I used penne for the pasta but you could just use spaghetti.

After giving it a taste I decided that something was missing and grated in a generous amount of parmesan cheese.

Fast and cheap. What is there not to love about this? And since there is no such thing as too much parmesan, I added some on top at the end.

del.icio.us Tags: Pasta

Favourite Cheap Eats- Italian Food Restaurant

In the area where I work downtown there is a dearth of decent places to eat during lunch hour. There are basically two options: overpriced restaurants to which business people bring their clients in hopes of impressing them or disgusting food court slop. My little oasis of Italian Food in this culinary desert is a place called Cafe Presto. It is a terribly cute restaurant with a very unassuming name owned by two brothers who welcome everyone warmly and make everything on the menu sound really good.

One of their most brilliant strokes of inspiration was setting up the dessert cart in the middle of the restaurant. When you have been staring at a cannoli for half an hour it doesn’t take much for the waiter to convince you to order dessert.

One of the things I love about this place is how incredibly cheap it is. Main course with a large roll, salad and dessert will only set you back 13 bucks and that is including tax. The menu is fairly limited, there are maybe only 5 items, but everything is really well made and tastes like it was made by an Italian grandmother.

Here is a shot of my salad from the last time I went.

My nice big roll. I had already eaten around half by the time I remembered to take a picture.

I always have the same thing whenever I go: Penne Arrabiata with an Italian sausage.

My friend had meat cannelloni in tomato sauce.

As usual the food was great, we ended up splitting up a piece of chocolate cake for dessert but I forgot to take pictures. Oops!

Italian Wedding Soup

I always wondered if Italian Wedding Soup is actually served at Italian Weddings. After some quick googling I discovered that no, it is not wedding food instead the name comes from a mistranslation of the original Italian name. Regardless of the origin it is a nice filling soup with lots of veggies, pasta and meatballs.

The recipe called for ground chicken but I complete forgot to buy some so I thawed some chicken breasts and minced them in the food processor. Aren’t I clever?

In the meat balls there was also Italian sausages (taken out of their casings), fresh parsley, generous handful of parmegiano reggiano, pepper, an egg and some bread crumbs. I mixed the whole thing up with my hands, not one of my favourite jobs in the kitchen might I add. It is messy and your hands get really cold.

 

I made meatballs with my mini ice cream scoop and put them in the oven to cook while I made the soup.

The soup base was pretty simple with carrots, onion, salt, pepper, dried basil and dried dill.

Once that was cooked I added chicken broth and a superlatively generous amount of white wine, since booze makes everything taste better.

I also added in some mini pasta bows and turned the broth up to a boil. I wanted to buy the fancy-schmancy pasta shells that are imported from Italy and cost twice as much but I was vetoed by The Husband. I suppose anyone who is not a foodie cannot get excited about that sort of thing.

After half and hour or so (although honestly, I made these two weeks ago so I can’t even remember how long I baked them), my meatball were ready. The red bits are sausage, I know, it makes it look as though they are not fully cooked but they are.

A close-up of one of the meatballs. You can see the little green flecks of parsley peeking through.

The meatballs went for a swim in the broth along with a few handfuls of spinach. Once the spinach was wilted I served the soup.

 

I really liked this soup. It was a good balance between veggies, tasty meatballs and pasta. I also liked the taste of dill in this soup, I don’t use it that often in recipes but maybe I should. This made a lot of leftovers and reheated really well.

Spaghetti Carbonara

 

Supposedly Spaghetti Carbonara was invented in World War II when homesick American soldiers brought bacon and eggs to Italy and the Italians decided that it would make a far better pasta dish than a breakfast dish. I think it is more likely that a cabal decided to try to see how they could pack the most fat and cholesterol into a dish without having people eat solid butter and they came up with this recipe.

d

Carbonara has only a few ingredients:

-Bacon or pancetta

-Cream

-Eggs

-Parmesan cheese, lots of it

-Fresh parsley

-Roasted garlic paste

-Salt and pepper

I prefer using bacon to pancetta because bacon throws off more fat and makes a better base. Yes, I know that makes me sound like Paul Deen (she worships grease) but it is true. What can I say?

First thing is to render the bacon until it gets nice and crispy. I do this over low heat in order to make sure that all the fat is gone. I'm not a big fan of white, chewy bits of bacon. I actually found center cut bacon for the first time at the supermarket last week and I bought that since it has a lot more meat than the regular stuff.

Just to be even "healthier" I add sausage to my Carbonara. I got the idea off a recipe in a Jamie Oliver cookbook and it works really well. I take the casing off the sausage and make little balls and brown and cook them in a pan.

 

Next is the sauce. Basically you take the cream, eggs, parsley, salt, pepper, roasted garlic paste and Parmesan and mix it all together in a bowl...

until it is all incorporated like so. Oh yes, I forgot somewhere along the line you boil spaghetti. I didn't take a picture of that since boiling pasta is a tad boring. Incorporating everything is also a tad tricky; the heat of the pasta and the bacon fat is supposed to cook the eggs. You have to let the pasta dry enough so that it is not too wet but at the same time if it cools down enough there won't be enough heat for the eggs to cook. I prefer to combine everything in a separate bowl since I've found that dumping everything in the hot pan of bacon will just result in scrambled eggs instead of a silky sauce. Basically you mix your pasta, bacon, bacon fat and sausage balls in a bowl and then you dump in the egg and cream mixture and toss everything together until the eggs are cooked and your sauce is smooth and thickened.

  

 

This meal was actually for The husband and is an easy way of pleasing him. He of course always wants a ton more Parmesan on top. It's artery clogging and utterly delicious if I may say so. As with all recipes where there are few ingredients it is really important to use good ones. Although I'm not going to tell you to go buy organic eggs laid by a rare breed of hen I will beg you to please not use that dreadful stuff that comes in a can that Kraft claims is Parmesan cheese. Go buy the stuff that comes from Italy. I know it's expensive but it's totally worth it.

Beef Ragu

Now for some man pleasing food. This time I made Beef Ragu. So simple I could make it with my eyes closed, well not really but you get the idea.

In the post above there are:

-Slice baby carrots (notice how they make cute little rounds)
-Half of a finely diced onion
-Sliced mushrooms (these come pre-washed and pre-sliced, such a time saver)
-Salt and Pepper
-Some garlic
-Rosemary
-Thyme

I then let all the veggies browned and then added ground meat and let that brown.

On top of that I added a can of diced tomatoes along with the juice and plenty of vino (i.e. wine).

The whole thing simmered until reduced and I made The Husband some pasta to go with it.

I almost had forgotten to take a picture of this meal. I had made it just for The Husband and he was already chomping along when I remembered and said "STOP! I need to photograph your food!!". I believe that he now thinks that I have officially lost my mind.

Like I have mentioned on before, The Husband is terribly picky but pretty much anything with red meat will make him happy. This was not admittedly, one of my more elaborate meals but I usually cook two different meals at the same time and having two labour intensive meals usually equals chaos and us eating dinner 30-45 minutes late. This is a good stand-by meal when I'm short on ideas of what to make for him and so simple that I feel sort of guilty posting about it, as if my credentials as a foodie will be revoked for making something so basic.

Chicken Braised with Wild Mushrooms, Pancetta and Prosciutto

I often have little odds and ends of ingredients hanging around the fridge. Since our grocery bill is high enough as it is I avoid letting them linger so long that they come to a slow, painful, mold ridden death and have to end up in the garbage can. This week's contestants were some prosciutto and some pancetta that were left in the meat drawer.

In the pan above I have:

-Sliced chicken breasts
-Fresh rosemary
-Fresh thyme
-Salt
-Pepper
-Pancetta
-Prosciutto
-A tablespoon of olive oil
-Onions

I know it seems like overkill that I threw in olive oil but pancetta does not throw off as much grease as thick cut bacon and I didn't have that much to start off anyways. I let everything brown nicely together. While that was going on I was....

soaking my dried mushrooms in boiling water. A long time ago my Mom bought me a big container of mixed wild mushrooms from Costco. I was happy that she did because fresh wild mushrooms are incredibly difficult to find here and even the dried ones cost a bundle.

Once my mushrooms had been soaking long enough I added them and their liquid to the chicken along with a generous (or many generous) glugs of wine (because booze makes everything better). I let this simmer away merrily so all the ingredients could get to know each other and so it could reduce to a thicker consistency.

Personally I am a fan of sauces and stews on the thick side. Mostly because I love lots and lots of sauce and thin sauce just doesn't stay on your fork.


I originally was going to make pasta with this but The Husband requested potatoes, which didn't really keep up with the Italian theme but whatever makes him happy is good with me. I know this isn't the prettiest looking dish but it was very tasty. You can see the chunks of chicken and make out some of the wild mushrooms in the picture.

This recipe was definitely a repeat for me. It was fast, comforting and filling. The Husband's one request was that I make it with fresh mushrooms; he has a thing against the texture of dried mushrooms. Unfortunately I married a very picky guy!