Spaghetti with Meat Balls: or how to hide veggies without even trying, my recipe

Ingredients
2 onions
2 carrots
2 celery sticks
1 lb lean ground beef, appx
1 egg
breadcrumbs (optional)
2 cans diced tomatoes, no salt added
1 jar tomato sauce
garlic
My herbs of choice: parsely, basil, oregano, cumin, turmeric, black pepper
Spaghetti

Supplies
knife and cutting board
blender
2 pots: 1 for the spaghetti, 1 for the meatballs (if you cook the spaghetti 1st and set it aside, you can get away with just 1 pan)
colander (for straining the spaghetti, you can use the pot lid if you don't have one.  Just be careful of steam burns.)
jar or garbage container of some kind

Dice onions, carrots, celery. In a blender, puree 1 onion, the carrots and the celery.

Mix the pureed veggies, meat, and egg in a bowl.

Add breadcrumbs to the bowl.  The point of the breadcrumbs is to help bind it all together by keeping it from being too moist, but if you don't have that, just treat them more gently.  I usually start mixing the meat, and have my hubby shake some in, and decide how much by feel--not too dry, still moist, but holding together a bit.

Once mixed, roll the meat into little balls, about 1" diameter.

Heat a pot and add meatballs gently, one at a time.

Keep adding meatballs, rolling the already cooking ones to one side so they brown all over and to make room for the new ones.

Carefully pour off the fat that is cooking off the meatballs into your throwaway jar or container.  I didn't have one, so I poured it into a bowl until it cooled enough for the trashbag.

The meatballs don't have to be fully cooked, just gently browned.  They're going to simmer in sauce later to get fully cooked.
Add the remaining diced onion to the meatballs to soak up the fat that is left in the pan.

When they begin to soften, add the two cans of diced tomatoes with their juice.

Add the whole jar of sauce.  Sometimes I save the jar in the fridge, wait until the pasta is cooked, and pour about 1/4 c of the pasta water in the jar to pick up ALL the rest of the sauce in there, and pour it into the cooking sauce to thin it.

Stir very gently so as not to break up the meatballs.

Cover, bring to a boil, then simmer on low for about an hour or until you're hungry, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing is sticking to the pan and burning. 

Add spices to taste soon before serving, so they don't lose their potency in the long simmer.  You can thin the sauce out if you need to be frugal and stretch this meal out, the meaty taste really permeates to make it feel richer than it is.
Serve with cooked spaghetti.

This dish freezes really well, with or without the spaghetti, so you can make a big pot of it on the weekend, freeze in individual containers, and have an instant and healthy meal on a night when you don't feel like cooking.

Chicken Stock

What do I do with the chicken after a delicious roast chicken dinner from my previous post?  I use the giblets and the carcass to make chicken stock.

Ingredients
leftover whole chicken (or soup bones from the butcher)
carrots, onions, celery, any root veggies (you can use the ones that had been roasted under the chicken, or fresh roughly chopped ones.  If you need to be frugal, you can save the chopped off ends and the pared skin of veggies in a freezer bag, and use them in this stock.)
water

Remove the chicken meat from the carcass of the roast chicken.

Save the chicken meat for other things.  (You could throw into a tortilla with salsa for a nice taco, add to the stock you'll be making with this recipe for a nice soup, add to a casserole.) 

Put the carcass, the reserved giblets, the vegetables, and skin into a stock pot.  Fill with water and bring to a boil.  Let simmer for about an hour.

I forgot to take pictures of it, I will fill them in next time I make stock, but once it smells fragrant and all the water is golden-brothy, place a colander in a large bowl and pour out all the water.  I put that in the refrigerator to cool.  I don't have a stockpot, so to get the quantity of stock that I want and the flavor level,  I generally refill the pot with fresh water and boil it again for another hour.  Then I pour it again into a colander, adding it to the first batch of stock, since the first batch was very flavorful stock and the second batch is weaker, it evens out to a nice balance.  Then I cool it, measure it into freezer bags, and freeze the stock for later.

Vegetarian Lentil Soup

This recipe was adapted from The Joy of Cooking (1997 publication) Lentil Soup Recipe (page 104).

Ingredients
2 c lentils
2 carrots
2 onions
2 celery
1 zucchini
2 T diced garlic
olive oil
can of diced tomatoes
bay leaf, thyme, peppercorn
8 c water
balsamic vinegar (optional--could also use sherry, chicken stock, etc in which case substitute for some of the water)
turmeric, your favorite spices

Supplies
colander (for rinsing lentils)
pot
knife and cutting board
either string, or an empty tea bag

Dice the onions.

Chop the celery finely.

Dice the zucchini finely.

Dice the carrots.

Heat the olive oil in the soup pot.

Add all the vegetables and the garlic to the pot until they soften, which is before they brown.

While you wait for the veggies to look like this:

Sort the lentils to remove any rocks or bad looking legumes.  Rinse.

Add the can of diced tomatoes with their liquid to the pot of softened veggies.

 

Add the rinsed and strained lentils to the soup pot.

When adding the water, I like to rinse out the tomato can into the total water to get all the tomato juice out.

Measure the water and add it to the soup pot.

Put the bay leaf, 1 peppercorn, and dried or fresh time into a food safe bag of some kind.

I used an empty "fill-your-own" teabag.  The important thing is it should be food safe, contain the spices, and make them easy to remove, but still be permeable to liquid so that they can flavor the soup.  You can make a bouquet garni tied with string and just use ground pepper as well.

Bring the soup to a boil, turn down to a simmer, and cook until the lentils are tender, about 45 minutes.  Stir occasionally so that nothing sticks to the bottom and burns.  Feel free to add more water so it is to your desired "soupiness".  Before serving, remove the herb packet.

Add the balsamic vinegar, turmeric, and your favorite spices.

Ladle into a bowl and serve!

This soup freezes very well.  It also goes delicious with some kind of warm and hearty bread.  You can also add ham hocks or sausage for more flavor, at the beginning of the cooking process in place of the olive oil.

Pumpkin Mascarpone Tart

This recipe uses the "French Tart Dough" crust from David Lebovitz's website.

Ingredients
6T butter (I use dairy-free margarine)
1T veggie oil (I use canola)
3T water
1T sugar
1/8 t salt
1 heaping cup flour

Preheat oven to 410F degrees.
In an ovenproof bowl (I used one of my pyrex mixing bowls) put the butter, veggie oil, water, sugar and salt.

Heat in the oven until it is bubbly and browning around the edges, about 15 minutes.  Careful when you're checking it, it spatters a bit.

Take it out of the oven and dump the flour in --don't forget the bowl is VERY hot and this WILL spatter!

I let it sit for a minute.

Stir it with a fork until it makes a ball.

Let it cool down until you can handle it.

Line a tart pan with wax or parchment paper.

Put it in a tart pan. 

Save a marble-sized piece of dough for patching up cracks after it bakes (I put it in a shot-glass for safe-keeping.)  Press the dough into the pan and up the edges, try to keep it even.  Stab it all over with a fork, taking care not to make tears by scraping the fork.  Be sure to stab into the corners where the dough might be a bit thick.

 Bake until lightly browned. Patch any cracks with the reserved dough.

Now to make the filling!

Ingredients
1 c pumpkin
1/2 container mascarpone
cardamum
cinnamon
ginger
nutmeg
cloves
allspice
brown sugar
powdered sugar

Mix the pumpkin with the cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, allspice and brown sugar, all to taste.  I used about a 1/2 t cinnamon, 1/4 each ginger and nutmeg, a few shakes of cloves and allspice.  This is basically pumpkin pie spice and brown sugar, if you prefer to use that.  Spread on crust.

 

I should have put it in the oven now to heat through, but i didn't.  Instead I mixed the cardamom, powdered sugar and mascarpone to taste.  I then spread that on really messily, accidentally getting it mixed in with the pumpkin.


Then I baked it at 350F, melting the cheese into the pumpkin.  It made a nice toasted marshmallow type melted topping , but not the cream-cheese texture I was hoping for.
If you are using a pie pan with removable bottom, be very careful when you take the bottom out of the pie pan (and when you take it out of the oven!) I have burnt myself twice when they came awkwardly, and I have also broken the crust a bit, as it is perfectly flaky and crumbly.

It was still delicious.

My Iranian-inspired beef dish

The recipe for this came about by accident--I was craving steak but low on cash, had recently read a Medieval Middle Eastern cookbook, and was also trying to clean out the pantry.  It is an attempt to balance the acidity of vinegar and lemon with the sweetness of cinnamon, and the smokiness of cumin.  Texturally it is crunchy and smooth.  It might seem eclectic, but the flavors and textures usually work.  Adjust all the ingredient quantities to taste, as these are just approximations.

Ingredients:
Marinade
1/2 c white vinegar
1 t cumin
1.5 t sumac
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t cardamom
2 boneless round (breakfast) steaks, thin cut

Meal
1 can butterbeans, drained and rinced
1 Red bell pepper
1 Yellow squash
1/8 c lemon juice
1 t, heaping, garlic
cumin
turmeric
olive oil
parsley

Serve with:
green onions
rice (I prefer basmati, made with a cripsy crust in a rice cooker)

Supplies:
ziploc bag and dish
teaspoon
measuring cup
cutting board and knife
frying pan and wooden spoon

Mix all the marinade ingredients in a ziplock bag.

Add the beef.

Marinade the beef overnight.  I like to set the ziplock bag in a bowl to eliminate fear of leaking.

Dice the pepper and squash, set aside. 

Chop the green onion, set aside.* 

Chop the steak into bite sized pieces, brown in pan. 

Add cooking liquid and boil until steak pieces are cooked through, about 5 minutes.  

Pour all into a bowl and reserve.  Clean pan. 
Heat up olive oil and add the peppers and squash. 

Cook until the red pepper starts to soften.  Add beans. 

Continue cooking.  Add lemon juice, garlic and herbs. 

When everything is soft and the liquid is mostly cooked off, remove from heat.

To serve:
Layer rice in bowl.  Add scoop of vegetables.  Add meat slices.  Sprinkle on green onions.
Enjoy!

*I do these all first because I only have one cutting board, and I don't want to cut veggies on it after I've cut raw meat.