tasty vittles

As if you need one, here's reason #3597235 to love the Food Network:

Tyler Florence.

If you're looking for something really delicious to make for dinner, eat this:
(Dave has literally insisted that I only make this dinner for the rest of his life, and has agreed to go to the gym in the middle of the night every day just so he can eat it. I guess he liked it.)

 

Rigatoni with Eggplant and Sausage

Ingredients:

• Kosher Salt
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• 6 links fennel pork sausage (about 3/4 pound)
• 1 large eggplant (about 1 1/2 pounds), cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 large can (28 ounces) peeled whole tomatoes, preferably San Marzano
• Leaves from 1 small bunch basil
• 1 pound rigatoni
• 1 pound fresh mozzarella
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Directions:

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat for the pasta. Get yourself a 9 by 13-inch glass or ceramic baking dish.

Heat a 2 count of olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the sausages and toss in the hot oil for 3 to 4 minutes, you want them nicely browned on the outside but still rare on the inside. Put the sausages in the baking dish.

Turn the heat down to medium. Add a generous 1/3 cup of oil to the skillet and get it hot. Add as many eggplant pieces as you can comfortably fit in a single layer and sprinkle well with salt. Cook, turning, for 7 to 8 minutes, until the eggplant is nice and browned, crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. Use a spatula to put the eggplant into the baking dish with the sausage. Cook the rest of the eggplant pieces, adding more oil to the pan, as needed, and putting the finished eggplant into the baking dish.

Add another 2 count of oil to the skillet, then your onion and garlic, and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, until translucent. Dump the whole can of tomatoes and their juices into a bowl and crush the tomatoes with your hands to break them up; add that to the pan with the basil and cook it down until pulpy and relatively thick. This will take about 15 minutes.

By this time your pasta water will be boiling. Add the rigatoni, give it a stir, and cook for 6 to 7 minutes, it should be slightly firm as it will cook further in the oven. Ladle out 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water and reserve; the drain the rigatoni.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Chop the sausages into nice big, bite-size chunky pieces and return the pieces to the baking dish. Add the tomato sauce, rigatoni, and the reserved pasta water. Break up half the mozzarella over the mixture, season with salt and pepper, and gently mix with your hands or a spatula. Dust with the Parmigiano and drizzle with more olive oil. Bake for 15 minutes. Spread the remaining mozzarella in an even layer over the top and continue to bake for another 10 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly.

And for dessert?
A berry trifle.

I will be serving mine shortly as individual servings and used lime juice and lime curd to improvise :)

 
Ingredients:

Berries:

• 1 pint blueberries
• 1 pint strawberries,
  hulled and cut into thick slices
• 2 pint raspberries
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch

Lemon Cream:

• 1 quart whipping cream
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 (11-ounce) jar lemon curd
• 1 store bought pound cake, sliced 1/2-inch thick

Directions:

Place the berries into a large bowl and sprinkle with half of the lemon juice. Lightly toss.
Combine the berries, sugar, cornstarch and remaining lemon juice in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a simmer and cook just until the berries begin to break down and give up their juices, about 3 minutes. Take the berries off the heat and let cool; the mixture should thicken up as is cools.
In a clean bowl, whip the cream with the sugar and the vanilla to soft peaks. Put the lemon curd into a second bowl and stir in a little of the whipped cream to loosen it. Then fold in the rest of the cream.
To assemble the trifle, spoon a layer of the lemon cream into a large glass bowl. Add a layer of pound cake, breaking the slices into pieces that fit. Then soak the cake with a layer of berries and their juices. Keep going to make 3 or 4 more layers, depending on the size of the bowl, finishing with a layer of lemon cream. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

breakfast rescue

i need your help.

for some reason, i can no longer drink coffee or any of its brothers, sisters, or cousins. no hot coffee, no iced coffees, no mocha-latte-frappa anything because it makes me feel so ill (it's not like coffee has a lot going for in nutritionally, but...). when piper was going through her rotten i-want-to-do-back flips-instead-of-nurse-stage, i cut coffee (and chocolate- talk about love) out of my diet to see if that was part of the issue. and ever since i've reintroduced it- coffee and i are a no-go. of course, i still drink it anyways sometimes, because i miss it (did i just write that?), but every time i do, i feel nauseous and anxious. a great way to start the day, right?!

which brings me to my dilemma.

i am fresh out of breakfast ideas- especially when it comes to drinks. breakfast right now = big yawn. i do love tea, but in the summer, i can be a smidge hot for tea, no? and i'm SO sick of breakfast foods, i've reduced myself to eating things like pop-tarts and frosted donettes. eeww. i'm going to have a heart attack at 40.

so tell me- what the heck do you eat for breakfast, and what do you drink for breakfast? because if you know or learn one thing about me, it's that i cannot skip meals or i have a very bad attitude. also, i'm just not amused by food and, like my dad, find stopping to eat mostly inconvenient. unless there's bacon involved. or french fries.

overview: i need to find food i'm excited to eat OR i'm going to get mean. and it needs to be fast because i have eli and pip to cook for, too.

help!

delicious

just real quick-

i dreamed up this burger tonight and it was so good. i thought i'd share:

take 1 ripe tomato, slice it fairly thick, and put the slices in a bowl.

add creamy greek (or reg. greek) dressing, basil (fresh is always better, but i only had dried), and feta cheese and put into fridge

take 1 lb of ground beef (or turkey), salt and pepper it up and make 3-4 burger patties; fire up the grill

when burgers are cooked to your liking, throw a pile of shredded mozzarella cheese on there until it melts

toast up a few buns, slip on a burger, and add the sliced tomato and feta cheese on top

viola!
DELICIOUS.