Pasta Caprese

Chapter 12: Who Wants Pasta? - Page 193
Time: ~30 minutes
Cost: ~$15 (if you grow your own tomatoes and basil, it’s much cheaper and tastier)
Serves: 4

Drew's Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
We make this all the time, and it’s always really good.

Sara's Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
I love this in the summer with fresh tomatoes. It’s easy and attractive to serve for company. It’s also really tasty as a cold lunch the next day!

First off, my apologies for the month delay in postings. I procrastinated, then we went on vacation, then I started a new job, and I’m just now catching up on the 3 more blog recipes we made at the end of June. Look for Sautéed Chicken Cutlets and Enchiladas Verde coming up soon!

Pasta Caprese is a favorite in our house. We made it for the first time a few years ago and loved how easy and delicious it was. It makes a big bowl for 4 nice servings, but it’s so addicting it’s easy to plow through the whole thing with just 2 or 3 people. The ingredients are about as simple as it gets: fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, basil and pasta are pretty much it in a nutshell, with some added flavor from garlic, shallots, and lemon juice. As with many simple recipes, ingredient quality is a key factor. If you have lousy tomatoes and dried basil, this recipe will be a dud.

This is one of those great pasta dishes where you can finish in just about the time it takes to boil water and cook the pasta. The most time consuming piece of this, and what bumps it up to a half hour, is the coring, seeding, and dicing of the tomatoes. This always seems to take me twice as long as I imagine it will, and I can pretty much guarantee that tomato guts will end up on the floor next to the garbage can. Hopefully you have better sous chef skills than I do!

The diced up tomatoes marinate in a mixture of extra-virgin olive oil, shallot, garlic, lemon juice, and a little salt and pepper. While the tomatoes are enjoying their swim, the mozzarella gets diced and thrown in the deep freeze. The step of freezing the mozzarella is a big secret to success in the recipe, so you don’t end up with one giant ball of stringy mozzarella in the middle of a pound of pasta. When the pasta is done, all the ingredients get tossed together along with the basil to make a lovely room temperature dish. The frozen mozzarella is softened just enough from the heat of the pasta to make soft pillows throughout the bowl. Serve the bowls with some nice crusty bread and you have a great summer dish. The leftovers are great as well, as the pasta tastes pretty good cold out of the refrigerator.

Pot Roast

Chapter 4: One Pot Dinners - Page 50
Time: 4 1/2 hours
Cost: ~$20

Drew's Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Really tasty. The gravy made the dish.

Sara's Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Meat was a little plain, but the gravy was fantastic! Pair it with mashed potatoes and anyone you serve it to will love it.

Surprisingly, this recipe was not in the Roasts chapter as I would have expected, but in the One Pot Dinners chapter. Also surprisingly, the picture in the book shows a roast in a pot with lovely little red potatoes cooking alongside it. There are no potatoes in this recipe… methinks the chefs at America’s Test Kitchen changed their minds at some point! The recipe is pretty easy, with only about 30 minutes of active cooking. The oven does the rest... a great meal for company! (especially if you’re like us and ALWAYS seem to be running an hour behind when you have guests over)

First challenge with the roast was getting the correct cut of beef. The recipe calls for a chuck-eye roast, which I had never heard of. Since our Wegman’s doesn’t carry that, we substituted a chuck roast instead at the recommendation of the butcher there. The picture shows a very cube-like hunk of meat that fits perfectly in a pot. Our chuck roast was thick, but much more like a slab than a hunk. So we trimmed off the sides to make it fit in our somewhat small Dutch oven. Never be afraid to improvise!

The recipe starts fairly predictably, seasoning the meat and then browning all the sides to get some nice flavor. Then out with the meat and in with the veggies – a traditional blend of carrots, onions and celery – to cook in the juices from the meat. Some garlic and a pinch of sugar liven up the pot, and then a combo of equal parts chicken and beef stock form the base for the meat to roast in. A sprig of thyme from our herb jungle joins the party (the way some of those plants are growing, “herb garden” just doesn’t cut the mustard), then the meat goes back into the mixture, and the whole covered pot pops into the oven for a few hours. The recipe said 3 ½ to 4 hours, but we found our meat was ready to go by 3 hours. This might have been due to the thinner cut than recommended. Always go by the meat thermometer; in this case once the meat reaches 210 degrees you let it go for one more hour.

At this point, the roast comes out of the pot to rest while you make the gravy. After skimming off excess fat, you reduce the liquid left in the pot for about 8 minutes, then add some red wine and reduce some more. You end up with an insanely flavorful gravy for the roast, which would be totally perfect for mashed potatoes. Unfortunately we discovered around this time that we were out of milk, so we had to make do with a Lipton rice side. Not exactly a perfect side paring for a pot roast, but the gravy made everything good. The meat was fall apart tender, though bland, and made a great vehicle for getting the gravy to your stomach. Mmmmmm gravy. ::drool::

Skillet Baked Ziti

Chapter 3: Easy Skillet Suppers - Page 38
Time: 30 minutes
Cost: ~$5 for 4 servings

Drew's Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Really good, but it wasn’t amazing. Good solid dinner.

Sara's Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
I love ziti, and I loved this. But really, nothing extraordinary. Easy and cheap for a weeknight meal.

Sorry it’s been a while since the last entry. This dish was done a week ago, but I’ve been battling a cold all week and didn’t feel up to writing until tonight.

First off, I must start by saying that I love baked ziti. Like, love love it. Probably my favorite single entrée in the world. But I was intrigued by the idea of a skillet baked ziti. I’d only ever eaten the typical ziti casserole in a 9x13 glass baking dish. This sounded faster and easier, so I was eager to get started. After cooking this, I can confidently say it is the first, and not so much the second. 30 minutes from start to finish makes this faster than the 45 minutes to 1 hour traditional baked ziti. However, it’s not a pop in the oven and walk away recipe, so it takes more active cooking time.

Basically, you sauté your garlic and red pepper to make that yummy start to the sauce, then dump in the ziti with a can of crushed tomatoes along with some extra water to cook in. Super super simple. You do need a 12-inch skillet with a lid, something Drew and I are lacking. We generally use our ginormous wok lid to cover, since all other lids are too small. This doesn’t exactly make the tight seal many recipes call for. We lucked out this time, and the sauce actually reduced the way it’s supposed to, resulting in rich tomato-y goodness for the ziti. I stirred in cream, some fresh basil from our garden, and topped the whole thing with more mozzarella than the recipe called for. I mean, who doesn’t like extra cheese? Pop the whole skillet in the oven for 10 minutes until the cheese browns and you’re all set.

The whole thing was melty and tomato-y and fantastic. So why not a 5 star recipe? Well, I loved it… but I always love baked ziti. It’s really kind of hard to make poorly, and I’d have been shocked if an ATK recipe for baked ziti came out lousy. It didn’t have a “wow” factor, or some kind of cool twist that I like to see on classic recipes. We made a regular baked ziti from ATK once, and that was special. I think it’s in the book somewhere, so you’ll see it eventually, but it has some surprise ingredients that make the whole dish unique.

Final verdict, if you like cheesy pasta dishes, you will love this. It’s fast and convenient and cheap (you can even use pre-shredded mozzarella instead of fresh… a first in my experience with ATK recipes!) Having the parents over for a fancy dinner? Not so much.

Leafy Green Salad with Red Wine Vinaigrette

Chapter 2: Salad Days - Page 20
Time: 5 minutes
Cost: ~$3 for 1 enormous serving, or about 4 side servings.

Sorry, no picture on this one. I forgot and ate it all before Drew came down to take pictures. It just looked like shiny lettuce leaves anyway… nothing fancy to look at!

Drew's Rating: N/A

Sara's Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
This is excellent at what it is… a simple green salad. It’s great for a quick healthy lunch, or as an elegant starting dish for company.

And so begins the foray into the salad chapter. I admit, when I saw the ingredients list (greens, vinegar, oil, salt and pepper) for this recipe, I was disappointed. I thought there was no way this could be anything special. And I was wrong.

I cheated by purchasing bagged, pre-washed and cut greens (a mix of romaine, endive, and radicchio) instead of cutting them up myself. We don’t eat a lot of salad in our house, so I didn’t want to be stuck with tons of lettuce that would go bad in 3 days. If you choose to buy the greens separately, the recipe recommends a mixture of mild and peppery greens.

The dressing is all household staples, and couldn’t be simpler. Combine some red wine vinegar, salt and pepper, and then whisk in the extra virgin olive oil. Drizzle over the greens, toss and done. Five minutes from opening the refrigerator to eating in front of the TV. Surprisingly, this super simple salad was very tasty. The recipe made the perfect amount of dressing for the salad (about 3 tablespoons for 8 cups), and it clung nicely to the leaves instead of pooling in the bottom of the bowl. I actually ate the whole bag with nothing extra added, and I wasn’t bored.

If you wanted to turn this into a full dinner, you could just throw in some cut up chicken or steak for protein, and any veggies you have lying around your produce bin. Salads can be a great vehicle for using up leftovers. (They rank up there with frittatas and burritos for accommodating a wide variety of ingredients!)

Pasta with Garlic and Oil

Chapter 12: Who Wants Pasta? - Page 190
Time: 25 minutes
Cost: ~$3 for 4 servings

Drew's Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
Good... but verging on not remembering it unless I was looking through the cookbook. Really good for how easy it was.

Sara's Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
Really liked this. Would have been better with the fresh lemon. Probably not a dish I would make for company, but great when you want something fast and cheap.

This is a bonus entry for the week! Our regularly scheduled post (from Chapter 2 on Salads) will be up either this afternoon or tomorrow.

I’ve been wanting to make this dish since I first flipped through the cookbook. I LOVE the concept of a garlic and oil sauce for my spaghetti, but our past attempts have been seriously lacking. It usually ends up with pasta sitting in a pool of oil with mostly raw garlic adding a nasty bite. Not that it matters, since none of it sticks to the pasta anyway, it just gets left in the bottom of the bowl with the oil. Ew.

So seeing an ATK recipe for pasta with garlic and oil made me do the happy food dance (if you don’t know what the happy food dance is, you need to eat with me more often) and put it on the meal schedule for the week. I will preface this entry by saying you must be a garlic lover to enjoy this dish. There is TONS of garlic, and the flavor is quite strong. Drew and I are garlic fiends, but this might not be first date material.

One thing I love about most pasta recipes (and this one is no exception) is that they can often be completed in the time it takes to boil the water and cook the pasta. In my head, that feels like “free time” to make a fun sauce, since it would take the same amount of time if I were just opening up a jar. I hope that makes sense outside of my head. The one downside here is that you do have to attend the sauce (lots of garlic in extra-virgin olive oil) the entire time. You can’t set a jar of sauce up to simmer and then go watch TV for 15 minutes. Burnt garlic will make for a hideous sauce, and once it’s burnt there is no turning back the clock. You’ll have to start all over again, and I don’t think anyone really enjoys peeling 12 cloves of garlic once, let alone twice. Once the garlic is nice and golden (just about the time the pasta finishes cooking... amazing!), you just mix in a little parsley, red pepper flakes, salt and lemon juice and voila! Garlic bliss.

Mix it with the spaghetti, add a little shredded parmesan on top and we had a lovely lunch.

A garlic press is your best friend in this recipe if your knife skills aren’t up to master chef level. And I definitely recommend using fresh garlic, not the pre-minced jarred stuff, for this recipe. While peeling and mincing garlic is definitely a pain, it is the star in this recipe and deserves a little special treatment. The jarred stuff may work OK for what’s cooked in the oil, but not for the portion added raw at the end.

A mistake we made was using our container of grocery lemon juice instead of buying a lemon. We could definitely taste the difference in the end result. I’m not exactly sure how to explain it, but it didn’t taste bright like fresh squeezed lemon juice would have been. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was noticeable. This is definitely not a recipe to shortcut your ingredients. Fresh garlic, fresh lemon, fresh parsley. No substitutions!

Classic Chicken Noodle Soup

Chapter 1: Soup's On! - Page 4
Time: 2 hours, 45 minutes (probably about 2 hours in the future)
Cost: ~$5 for 6-8 large bowls

Drew's Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
It was really good... but not oh my god wow.

Sara's Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
Awesome. I can't think how this would be improved. Best chicken noodle soup ever.

First recipe out of the gate, and Drew is 45 minutes late to the show. Men! So I figured I would show him how amazing I am and I popped open the book ready to start. Aaaand I'm cutting up a whole chicken. For someone who is the champion of the boneless, skinless chicken breast, this was a daunting task. I thought to myself, we've cut up a turkey for Thanksgiving... this will be no problem. I easily cut apart the wings and legs, and only moderately struggled cutting out the back. And suddenly I was left with a dilemma. The recipe said to split the breast.

Multiple attempts at cracking the breastbone, cursing, and considering buying a cleaver ensue.

About 30 minutes later I have finally split the chicken breast just in time for hubby to come down and cheerily join the project. In case you are ever faced with a similar task, just cut about a 1/2 inch into the base of the breast bone (it looks quite hard, but our chef's knife had no problem) and snap in half. 3 second project that took me half an hour just for not knowing to cut that slit. Thank you to this YouTube video for finally cluing me in.

The next difficulty came when it was time to brown the chicken pieces. I have never ever had something splatter so much oil as this chicken. Pieces were all browned 5 minutes a side in 2 batches, and for an entire 20 minutes that pot crackled and spluttered and made our kitchen an oily mess. Turning the pieces involved using the lid of the dutch oven as a shield while I tentatively poked my arm with the tongs into the pot. Somehow I still got hot oil splattered on my knuckles... the knuckles holding the pot lid. I swear the oil was doing 90 degree turns in mid air. Drew took his turn flipping and managed to get hot oil in his eye.

After the oil drama, things were much easier. The browned chicken and lots of onion made a totally fantastic chicken stock. If you have never made homemade chicken stock, do it. The chicken-y smell coming from the pot while everything cooked was FANTASTIC and I have definitely never had that great a smell from boxed or canned broth.

* A note for anyone who tries this: the recipe calls for saving a couple of tablespoons of fat from skimming off the top of the stock (to use in cooking the veggies for the soup), but our stock had very little fat floating up. We had to supplement with vegetable oil.

* Another note: the recipe calls for discarding the chicken pieces (other than the breast) after you make the stock. You can easily save the large leg/wing pieces for another use. We’re thinking of shredding the meat up for some tasty tacos.

The soup was a simple matter of cooking some onions, celery and carrot in that yummy chicken fat, and then adding in the stock, some noodles and shredded breast meat (cooked in the stock). It takes less than a half hour to make the soup, if you make the stock portion in advance.

Overall a great recipe, and while the stock takes some time, it is totally worthwhile. It only costs about $5 for all the ingredients, and you end up with two quarts of stock (a 1 quart box in the grocery runs around $3) in addition to the chicken itself.

Why?

Drew and Sara have decided to join the ranks of cooking bloggers! We're tackling our new cookbook from America's Test Kitchen, The Complete ATK TV Show 2001-2011 Cookbook. We'll be working through this 675 recipe monster at 1 recipe every week, which should take us into the next century. Lucky for you, eager blog-reader! We'll be rotating through the chapters, so as not to be stuck making a version of chicken noodle soup every week for the next year.

So scoot your chair under your desk, get something to drink, and prepare to witness culinary masterpieces! Or culinary disasters... whichever.