Posts Tagged 'pasta'

What I did with a Tex-Mex Mushroom Ragout

Published September 29, 2009 Dinner , Leftovers , Must repeat , Recipe , Spice , Vegetarian , Weight Watchers Leave a Comment
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A few days ago I made a vegetarian dinner from the Weight Watchers Turn Around Program book. It’s called Tex-Mex Mushroom Ragout and this is how it’s made:

Makes 2 Servings:

1 onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

1/2 lb fresh cremini or white button mushrooms, quartered

1/2 lb fresh portobello mushrooms, stems removed and diced

1 (15oz) can pinto beans, rinsed and drained

1 (4.5 oz) can chopped green chiles

1 tbsp ground cumin

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp dried thyme

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 fresh ground pepper

4 tsp fresh lime juice

In a pan, cook onion until soft, about a minute. Add the garlic and stir constantly for about 20 secs then add the mushrooms. Cook until mushrooms have released their liquid and then reabsorbed it, about 5 mins. Stir in the beans, chiles, spices, and salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer and cook until thickened (I’m not sure what they mean by this because I didn’t notice any “thickening”) for about 15 mins. Serve and squeeze some of the lime juice on top. I sprinkled some shredded Havarti cheese.

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It was tasty and flavourful…but not as fantastic as I thought it could be. It’s more of a side dish than as a main meal as the book says it should be. It’s very good because it has lots of protein and fibre but if you’re eating a whole bowl of the stuff, it can be a little boring. Needless to say I didn’t eat a full serving and I put the rest away in a container.

Two days later my little sister came over and she was hungry. “You have food at your place right? I’m reeeeeaaaally hungry.” Unfortunately I hadn’t done any groceries yet and I didn’t have much in my fridge except the leftover ragout. I brought out the container and told my sister to try it but she didn’t seem too keen on it, “Hm, smells spicy…do you have anything else?” Sigh.

1/4 of a jar of Classico pasta sauce

3/4 of a can of diced tomatoes

generous splash of heavy cream

1 1/2 servings of leftover Tex-Mex Ragout

Make 2 servings of whatever pasta you like, I used angel hair. Heat the ragout in a pot along with the tomatoes and pasta sauce, stir. Once it’s heated, add the cream and stir until it’s all blended and heated through. Serve over noodles.

So very yummy! I think I’ll be making more pasta sauces like this one.

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Noodles with Spicy Turkey and Avocado Sauce

Published September 22, 2009 Dinner , Recipe , Spice , Weight Watchers , Yum! Leave a Comment
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Inspired by a Weight Watchers recipe from the Turn Around Program Book, I decided to make this simple meal for myself. The recipe in the book serves 6 but, because Jay is out of town this week, I wanted to make two servings. However, I am terrible at measuring the right amount of pasta noodles so I made way too many. I always grab about a handful because I heard or read somewhere that a handful equals a cup…I obviously need to learn to measure properly.

Anyway, the recipe says to use lean ground beef but I had left over ground turkey from turkey shepherd’s pie I made before. Here is how I made the sauce:

Recipe for approx 2-3 servings

200g Lean ground turkey

1/3 of a large white onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

2 pickled jalapeño peppers, chopped

1/4 tsp cumin

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1 cup of canned tomatoes, chopped

1 tbsp tomato paste

2 tsp fresh cilantro, chopped

1 avocado, mashed

In a pot cook turkey meat and break it up and cook until it’s brown. Add the onions, jalapeño, and garlic, cook until soft. Next add the cumin and cinnamon, stirring constantly for about 30 seconds. Mix in the tomatoes and paste, bring to a boil and then lower heat and let it simmer for about 15 minutes. You can add salt and pepper but I didn’t add any. Remove from heat and throw in the cilantro and avocado until it’s all mixed in. Serve over cooked noodles.

The book says each serving is worth 5 points but I’m wondering if my version is worth less points because I used turkey instead of beef. But, because I used an avocado I probably brought up the points to 6 haha. No matter, it was very tasty.

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Turkey Tetrazzini

Published August 28, 2009 Dinner , Recipe , Yum! Leave a Comment
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Comfort food at its best. This little dish comes from a diet comfort food magazine I bought a long time ago. Apparently, one serving of this turkey tetrazzini is only worth 400 calories. That’s not so bad for a whole single serving. And, it’s quite filling and delicious.

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Recipe for 6 servings:

1/2 pound uncooked spaghetti

1/4 cup finely chopped onion

1 garlic clove, minced

1 tbsp butter

3 tbsp cornstarch

1 can reduced-sodium chicken broth

1 can fat-free evaporated milk

2 1/2 cups cubed cooked turkey breast

1 can mushroom stems and pieces, strained (I used about 4oz of fresh mushrooms instead of canned)

Salt, Pepper

2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 tsp paprika

Cook spaghetti according to package directions; drain. Preheat oven to 350F. In large pot, saute onion and garlic in butter until tender. In small bowl, mix cornstarch and chicken broth until smooth then stir into the pot with onions. Bring to boil and stir 2 minutes until thick. Reduce heat to low and add the milk, cook 2-3 minutes. Stir in cooked spaghetti, turkey, mushrooms, salt and pepper.

Transfer to greased square baking dish, cover and bake 20 minutes. Uncover, sprinkle Parmesan cheese and paprika and bake another 5 to 10 minutes more.

Coffee Chops and Blue Cheese Pasta

Published August 18, 2009 Dinner Leave a Comment
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I have laid to rest my French Food At Home book, temporarily. After making Laura Calder recipes for a week I have discovered that some of her recipes are awesome and some are not so scrumptious. I cannot tell if the recipes were not wonderful due to my inability to follow directions correctly from time to time, or simply because the recipe just wasn’t meant to be. For the most part, though, I enjoyed the meals immensely. Another thing I learned is that I really hate blue cheese. I’ve known this for a very long time, ever since I was 12 years old and my sister’s god parents were in town and they brought us a small brick of blue cheese. I remember sniffing it and thinking it smelled like old cheesy socks. I remember tasting it and spitting it back out because I was convinced the blue bits were the remains of old cheesy socks. Since then, I have avoided blue cheese and the faintest scent of that cheese triggers my gag reflex.

So, it was a great surprise to Jay- who absolutely loves to eat blue cheese – that I made blue cheese pasta. I made it because I knew he would like it, and he did, and also because I thought that if I gave it a chance I would somehow instantly fall in love with it. This was not so. I ate about four bites of it before announcing, “Yep, I really do not like blue cheese. Please eat the rest.” Jay laughed. I’m so glad he found my suffering amusing. The pork chops were great though.

To make the pasta, cook fetuccini noodles how you like them and while they’re cooking make the blue cheese sauce. Melt 250g of blue cheese and then whisk in half a cup of cream. Once the noodles are ready, drain them, return to pot, and coat them with the sauce and some fresh ground pepper.

For the pork chops, season two chops with salt, pepper and sugar on both sides. Heat a bit of olive oil and butter and once that’s hot fry the chops for about 10 minutes or until they are nice and caramelized. While that’s happening, brew about a quarter cup of strong black coffee. Once the pork chops are done, set them on a plate and keep warm. Pour the coffee in the pan and shake to deglaze. Let it boil down to a thin syrup, about 1 or 2 minutes then pour over the pork chops.

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Blue Cheese Pasta

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Coffee Pork Chops

Quick Shrimp Pasta

Published July 10, 2009 Lunch 1 Comment
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It’s been one of those days where I’m so focused on a project that I feel too lazy to make lunch and my brain chooses to ignore the loud rumblings coming from my belly.

I finally decided to appease my hunger and I quickly prepared a shrimp pasta dish. Initially I was just going to fry up some shrimp with a bit of butter and garlic and then toss it with cooked spaghetti noodles.

But, of course, once I got cooking and I placed the pot of water on the stove I couldn’t settle for just plain butter and garlic!

I remembered the days when I worked near Monte Carlo Hotel in Markham. I’d go to the hotel sometimes to get a freshly cooked pasta lunch made by a funny and charismatic cook. He’d have a couple of table top burners going, two pasta sauces, toppings and cooked pasta noodles. I would walk up to him and he’d ask “White sauce or red sauce?” What he meant was Alfredo sauce or Marinara sauce. He would then ask which toppings I wanted from the small bowls set up on the counter; onions, ham, green peppers, black olives, red pepper flakes etc. He’d cook the toppings first in a small pan, then the he’d add the sauce and the noodles came last. I was always very satisfied.

Remembering that particular cook I felt inspired to make something similar.

I didn’t have ham but I did have bacon and so I cut that up into small pieces and sautéed it with diced onions, garlic, green pepper and red pepper flakes. I love cooking with bacon because it gives whatever I’m cooking a nice smoked flavour. Once that was cooked I added shrimp, a bit of tomato sauce, a generous dollop of heavy cream and lastly Parmesan cheese and a bit of grated cheddar cheese.

By the time the sauce was cooked my noodles were ready. I tossed the noodles with a bit of butter and dried parsley, placed them on a plate and then poured the shrimp sauce over the noodles and served it with two mini garlic bread.

I am so glad I didn’t fry the shrimp with just butter and garlic. This was much much better!


Quick Shrimp Pasta, originally uploaded by paintpaste.

Stormy Green Pasta

Published June 25, 2009 Fitness review , Lunch , Vegetarian , Yum! 1 Comment
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It’s been a bit of a crazy day today in terms of weather. It was almost unbearably hot and sunny this morning and by 10AM I was nearly soaked in sweat and praying for 11 o’clock to roll around so I could go for a dip in the pool. At 10:45 I decided to change into my bikini and I applied a generous amount of sunblock to my skin. I was all set to go and I happily bounded out of the apartment, into the elevator, down the hall and out the door to the sight of rain pouring down on the pavement.

With my head hung low I shuffled back inside, up the elevator and into the stuffy apartment.

I hadn’t exercised in a few days and that was the main reason I wanted to go for a swim…and of course because it was humidly hot. Since I couldn’t swim I decided to do a workout video. I chose Beach Body’s 20 minute Turbo Jam workout and after 15 minutes I really was soaked in sweat, I was out of breath and ready to collapse. The workout doesn’t feel very intense but it does leave you out of breath. At least in my case it did. Definitely worth doing again just to get my heart pumping.

Since it was (and still is) gloomy outside and I used up all my energy on a 15 minute workout, I felt lazy and very hungry. The cure for this was my new favourite comfort food; avocado and pasta!

I boiled pasta and frozen veggies together in a pot while I mashed an avocado with lime juice, cumin and hot sauce. Once the pasta and veggies were cooked, I mixed in the avocado paste and in 10 minutes I had prepared a healthy, satisfying and delicious meal. Perfect for stormy days like today.

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Cheap & Easy Vegetarian For Daddy Day

Published June 22, 2009 Dinner , Must repeat , Vegetarian Leave a Comment
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For Father’s Day my family came over to hang out and eat a quick, simple dinner. Both my parents were exhausted so they couldn’t stay very long.  Normally we spend a few hours playing board games but this time we ate dinner and sat on the balcony drinking beers for a bit before my parents and youngest sister left. We also took turns speaking on the phone with my middle sister in Ottawa. My sister in Ottawa is not the cooking type, per se, but she does make attempts to prepare some sort of nutritious meal for herself. When asked what I cooked up for Father’s Day dinner she was pleased to discover it was incredibly easy to make, not to mention uber yummy.

The idea for this meal comes from a vegetarian cookbook I found at my mom’s place a few months ago. It’s called Cheap & Easy: Vegetarian Cooking on a Budget by Rose Elliot. I checked out the pasta section (titled Fasta Pasta) listing all sorts of pasta additions and the one that drew my attention was Pasta with Avocado. Until last night I had never thought to add avocado to any cooked food item, let alone spaghetti noodles. I knew I had to try this since avocados are one of my favourite vegetable…or fruit, I’m still not sure what it is.

One of my favourite salads is avocado salad. Basically you dice a couple of avocados, a couple of hard boiled eggs and mix it all up with diced onions, tomatoes, green peppers and a generous portion of freshly squeezed lime juice. Whenever I think of eating avocado this salad is usually what I have in mind when thinking of how to eat the avocado. Besides guacamole of course. Or a substitute for mayo on a sandwich…Mmm…avocado and turkey sandwich…

So, as I began to boil the water for the pasta noodles I thought, “Why not combine my favourite salad with the noodles?” The only difference being that I sautéed the onion, tomatoes and green peppers in lime juice and ground cumin.

While that was cooking I skewered mushrooms and cubes of tofu I had marinated very briefly in Frank’s Redhot sauce and I broiled them for about ten minutes. I know now for future reference that I should marinate tofu overnight if I want the flavours to be fully absorbed.

Once the noodles were ready I mixed in the avocados and sautéed veggies along with more lime juice until all the noodles were well coated.

Result? It was SO good! As the book says, the buttery texture of the avocado complimented the pasta and the sautéed vegetables brought everything together nicely. Everyone really liked it and now my sister in Ottawa is excited to try this quick and easy dish.

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