Antipasto Mac n Cheese

This is very loosely based on a pasta bake recipe from Taste.com.au. I've made this before, as the original incarnation - learning from this experience, this time I used regular pasta, and just doubled the amount I'd use to feed my family. (Which is a full pack per meal!) This recipe will make 2 pasta bakes, or one pasta bake, and 4 1/2 bowls of pasta. (I couldn't be bothered with the bake bit tonight lol)

Antipasto Mac n Cheese
1kg pasta
120g butter
1/2 cup plain flour
4 cups milk
3 cups grated cheddar cheese
250g rindless bacon, diced
250g fire roasted capsicum
1 stick celery, sliced thinly
150g semi dried tomato strips, drained
100g baby spinach
3 tsp mustard

Preheat oven to 180°C. Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling, salted water, following packet directions until tender.

Meanwhile, fry bacon and celery in a saucepan, until golden. Add the capsicum and tomato strips and stir for a few more minutes. Put into a covered bowl and set aside.

Melt butter in the same saucepan over medium heat. When foaming, add flour. Cook, stirring, for 30 seconds. Remove from heat. Add half the milk SLOWLY while whisking until smooth. Add remaining milk and whisk to combine. Return pan to high heat. Cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, for 3 minutes or until sauce comes to the boil and thickens. (it's probably longer because there is more sauce) Remove from heat.

Stir in 2 cups cheese and mustard. Season with salt and pepper. Tip in bacon mixture. If mixture has liquid pooling in the bottom of the bowl, strain that off first. Mix gently through the sauce, then fold in spinach. The heat will wilt down the spinach, so just be patient with it.

Drain pasta and return to pot. Add sauce. Stir to combine. Spoon into 2 7-cup capacity baking dishes. Sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden. Serve.

Uncooked (or cooked) pasta bakes can be frozen in a baking dish if covered. Allow to defrost thoroughly before cooking as directed.

Mt kids are such foodies. Here is Master One picking out his semi dried tomatoes, so he can eat them first!

Agnolotti & Broccoli Bake

DP wasn't impressed with this, because he is not a fan of store bought filled pasta. He doesn't mind filled pasta, as long as I were to make it myself.

Yeah, I laughed too.

This is yet another way of making my favourite Creamy Lemon Chicken Pasta. Note, there is no actual chicken in this. In fact, there was no meat at all, so vegetarian friendly!

Agnolotti & Broccoli Bake
1 jar Chicken Tonight Creamy Lemon Chicken sauce
630g pk Fresh Agnolotti with Ricotta, Spinach and Cracked Pepper
1 head broccoli, cut into florets
2 cups frozen corn kernels
1/3 cup crumbled feta
1 1/2 cups grated mozzarella (or to taste)

Preheat oven to 180°C.
Cook the pasta as directed on the packet, throwing in the broccoli for the last 3 of the 5 minutes cooking time. Drain pasta, and place into a large casserole dish. Add the corn, feta and sauce, and mix thoroughly. Top generously with mozzarella, and bake until golden brown.

Fresh from the oven

Three Cheese Pasta

Sorry, I didn't really have a recipe for this one. I cooked some pasta, threw some broccoli florets in for the last 5 minutes, and some halved and trimmed snow peas in for the last minute before draining. Fried some sliced mushrooms, and some bacon. Threw in 1/3 cup crumbled feta, and a tbsp of cream cheese. Topped it with grated mozzarella on serving.

Nothing to it really.

Bacon, Zucchini and Lime Penne

Based on this recipe from Taste.com.au, this unusual combination came about because I didn't have any lemons in the house. Likewise with the sour cream. It rained all this afternoon, so we had to make do. Luckily I had ranch dressing still in the house.

Bacon, Zucchini and Lime Penne
500g penne (or pasta of your choice)
250g shortcut rindless bacon rashers, thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2 large zucchini, thinly sliced
1 onion, thinly sliced
zest and juice of one lime
2 Tbsp sour cream (or Ranch dressing)
grated parmesan cheese, to serve

Cook the pasta in boiling, salted water. Meanwhile, fry the bacon, garlic, onion and zucchini until golden. Add the zest and lime juice, stir through, and add the sour cream. Drain the pasta and add to the sauce. Serve with shaved parmesan cheese.

Creamy Broccoli Penne

Creamy Broccoli Penne
500g dried penne
1 broccoli, cut into florets
4 rindless bacon rashes
1 garlic clove
200g mushrooms, sliced
1 zucchini, roughly diced
125ml sour cream
1 tsp mustard

Cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling water until tender. Add the broccoli in the last 2 minutes of cooking. Drain and return to pot.

Meanwhile, cook the bacon in a large frying pan over medium-high heat for 3 minutes or until golden. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds or until aromatic. Add the sliced mushrooms and chopped zucchini, and fry gently until golden.

Add the sour cream and mustard and mix through. Thin down with a little pasta water if required. Tip the drained pasta and broccoli into the pan and toss until well combined. Top with grated mozzarella to serve.

Summer Sauce for pasta

This is the only one of three recipes from this fortnight's Cooks Club Challenge that I'll be doing. The others are Pork in Caper sauce and Rice balls. I don't like capers, and DP doesn't eat rice. I've always wanted to try the rice balls stuffed with mozzarella, but it seems like a lot of work, especially when I have to cook a seperate meal for DP on top of it, so that won't be happening this time around. However, this make ahead pasta sauce is perfect for the hot days we've been having lately.

Summer Sauce (taken from the Taste.com.au forums)

The key to this lovely fresh sauce is really ripe tomatoes – vine ripened are best, or better still home grown.

Ingredients
500g firm ripe tomatoes
1 onion (I use a red onion)
6 green olives
1 Tablespoon capers
½ teaspoon dried oregano (or 1 tablespoon fresh)
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley (I like to use a combination of parsley & fresh basil)
2 cloves of garlic
½ cup good quality olive oil – you can use light or extra virgin it’s up to you, I prefer extra virgin
Fresh ground black pepper (optional)
Splash of balsamic vinegar (optional)

Chop unpeeled tomatoes finely; peel and chop onion; stone and chop olives; chop capers finely, crush garlic. Combine ingredients, add herbs and olive oil and mix well. Grind in some pepper and splash with balsamic (if using) Cover and stand for at least 6 hours or overnight. I made mine the night before and put in fridge, but returned to room temp 2 hours before serving.

Toss through hot pasta (I like fettuccini) and top with shaved parmesan cheese.

I skipped the olives and capers, and used a mixture of basil and parsley as suggested. Instead of the oregano and 1/3 cup regular olive oil, I used 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil infused with rosemary. I served with spaghetti, but no parmesan.

Chicken & Ranch Hot Pasta Salad

Last night's dinner was so easy I won't dignify it with a recipe tag. Boil pasta in the usual way, and while that's cooking, fry a crumbed chicken tenderloin in a little butter. Use a pair of kitchen scissors to chop up the green of 3 or 4 spring onions, and add them straight to the frypan, along with a large heaped teaspoon of minced garlic (about 2 average cloves chopped if you don't have a jar kept in the fridge).

Remove the chicken to a plate once cooked, and cover with foil to keep warm. Turn the heat down on the pan as low as it can go, and add about 3 Tbsp of bottled Ranch dressing. Stir it around to get all the lovely cooking juices off the bottom of the pan.

Drain the pasta, and tip into the frypan with the hot dressing. Turn the heat off. Stir the pasta through the dressing, adding more dressing if needed to cover all the pasta. Serve in big bowls with the sliced chicken tenders on top.


Don't forget to get messy with your young 'uns for Kids In The Kitchen, training our next generation of food bloggers! ;)

Poached Chicken Pasta with Feta & Baby Spinach

Sounds Posh doesn't it? Thankfully the recipe isn't hard like you expect with a posh named dish. I pretty much made this up so I didn't have to get more than one pot dirty. Course, I cheated with a jar of ready made sauce, but if you have aversions to ready made sauce, you are welcome to make your own, and go through the rigmarole of bottling it, or at least freezing and defrosting it. Me, I'm very fond of the flavour and chunky vegetables in the Aldi brand Garden Vegetable pasta sauce, and it's cheap too.

Master One has no problems with bottled sauce!

Poached Chicken Pasta with Feta & Baby Spinach
1 pkt pasta shells/penne/spirals
a couple of splashes of Maggi
400g thinly sliced chicken (breast or thighs, whatever's on hand)
small head broccoli, cut into florets
100g baby spinach
2 spring onions, finely sliced
1/4 cup feta, crumbled
1 jar tomato based pasta sauce

Put a large pot of salted water on the stove. Add the Maggi and the pasta straight away. When the water comes to a boil, stir the pasta. Slice the chicken and tip into the pot. Chop up the broccoli and add that to the pot when the pasta has about 3-4 minutes left to cook. When the pasta is cooked to your satisfaction, drain and return to the pot. Throw the spinach in on top of the pasta. Use a pair of kitchen scissors to chop the spring onions on the diagonal - it's much easier than slicing them with a knife. Toss them into the pot too, along with the feta and sauce. Stir everything up until it is well combined, then serve. Season individually with freshly cracked pepper, and salt to taste, if needed.


Don't forget to get messy with your young 'uns for Kids In The Kitchen, training our next generation of food bloggers! ;)

Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad

Okay, so I took the cheats way out by buying a Caesar salad kit to make this, but next time I swear I'll do it properly. I felt like it needed vegetables of some sort too, chicken with pasta and bacon and cheese flavoured powders plus salad dressing doesn't really do it for me as nutritionally balanced. But crunchy crumbed chicken forgives a multitude of cooking sins anyway.

Oh, before I forget, there's a new blog out there called Regretsy - who knew there were so many bad taste crafts out there for sale?


Tonight is the deadline for the Virtual Night In, so get those entries in!

2 for 1 Creamy Lemon Chicken Pasta (Bake)

I know by now you are all aware that we are very fond of my Creamy Lemon Chicken Pasta, but tonight I made it slightly different, and more of it. I'm trying to get a buffer up, of a few meals that can feed all of us during the upcoming move. Moving is never fun, less so with children, and I'd prefer not to have to feed them junk every night while we settle in. This was surprisingly easy to expand into two meals, and what's easier than a frozen pasta bake, ready to pop into the oven?

2 for 1 Creamy Lemon Chicken Pasta (Bake)
500g pasta (we used hi-fibre spirals)
3 small carrots, sliced
2 small heads broccoli, cut into florets
200g mushrooms, sliced
175g bacon, diced
1 onion, diced
1 red capsicum, chunky diced
1 cup corn
1/2 cheese, + more for sprinkling
1 can Cream of Chicken Soup
1 jar Chicken Tonight Creamy Lemon Chicken

Put some water on to boil for the pasta, add some salt to taste, and the carrots. Add the pasta when the water is boiling, and cook to preferred stage of 'doneness'. About 4 or 5 minutes before the pasta is done, throw the broccoli florets into the pasta water to cook gently. You have to time this well, as too long will result in soggy broccoli, but not long enough will result in semi raw broccoli. Err on the side of caution in which your family is most likely to eat. For instance, my kids will eat broccoli any way it comes, raw or mooshy, but Master One can't eat raw broccoli yet. So I tend to overcook rather than undercook my vegetables when I don't know what I'm doing. You get a feel for it eventually.

While the pasta and boiled vegies cook, fry the onion, bacon, capsicum, and mushrooms in a pan. Add the corn last if you are using frozen like I did, or whenever if using canned. If you are using fresh corn kernels, then you are a better mother/cook than me, and you should know how long it needs anyway :P
Once all that is browned and cooking away nicely, add the soup and sauce, and cook down until everything is cooked and smooth and yummy. You'll have to use your own discretion for this.

Drain the pasta and vegies, and tip back into the pot. Pour all the sauce into the pot, and mix to combine thoroughly. Dish out enough for everyone to eat that night. Then tip the rest into a disposable foil tray. Washing dishes, like cooking, is also something that isn't much fun while moving. And even if you aren't moving, it's always nice to have few dishes on a lazy dinner night.
Add the 1/2 cup of cheese and mix in well. Sprinkle a bit more cheese on the top if you like. Cover with foil, and cool before freezing.

Frozen pasta needs to be thawed, before baking at 180C until golden.

Ready for freezer. Note the anti-dishes foil tray

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Herb & Garlic Sausage Pasta

Yes, I know, we had sausage pasta on Monday, but that was to use up some kangaroo sausages I had in the freezer. They'd been there for ages, in case of a 'end of fortnight no money' night. But I could never come up with something to do with them, so I cooked them up. And then here I was today, with $5 to buy dinner, and those sausages would have been really handy. Luckily for me, there were some delicious herb and garlic sausages for only $2.20, so we had sausage pasta again. This time I added celery, capsicum, carrot, broccoli and onion to the chopped sausages and jar of sauce, so it was a little more filling.

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Kangaroo Sausage Pasta

Not much to put here, I forgot to take a photo. It was just chopped kangaroo sausages, with pasta and a jar of sauce though. Since I didn't do much today, take a look here Huhcorp - They do stuff.

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Easy Creamy Chicken & Mushroom Pasta

Creamy Chicken & Mushroom Pasta
1 bbq chicken, skin and bones removed ($5)
400g sliced mushrooms ($2)
1 can Cream of Chicken soup ($1.69)
500g pasta ($0.59)
cheese to serve

Cook pasta in boiling salted water.
Meanwhile, heat mushrooms in a large frypan, with no butter or oil. Cook over high heat until the mushrooms start to sweat and go all brown and gleaming like you fried them in a tub of butter. Add chicken meat, and soup. Cook until soup has warmed into a sauce type consistency and is no longer a gelatinous blob. Drain pasta. Toss through sauce. Serve with a sprinkle of cheese.

And all for less than $10! Serves 5 btw.

Leftover Pasta

I used the leftovers from Wednesday's Pizza Braid to make a simple but tasty pasta. Pizza sauce, baby spinach and cherry tomatoes tossed with cooked corkscrew pasta, and topped with a little mozzarella cheese. Too easy.

Creamy Lemon Chicken Pasta

Creamy Lemon Chicken Pasta
4 chicken thighs, diced (guess you could use any diced chicken really)
1 small head of broccoli, chopped into florets
2 small carrots, sliced
1 stick celery, sliced
1 onion, diced
1 zucchini, chunky diced
3 shortcut rindless bacon rashers, sliced
1 jar Chicken Tonight Creamy Lemon Chicken sauce
500g pasta
tarragon, maggi, salt and pepper (optional)

Place the pasta on to cook, putting the carrots in with pasta (large pot of boiling, salted water, you know the deal).
Fry the onion, celery, bacon and zucchini until almost golden. Add the chicken, and brown well on all sides. Then add the sauce and simmer until everything is ready. (Like the pasta, the table setting, the baby's nappy changed etc ;) )Add the broccoli to the pasta and carrots a few minutes before the pasta is ready, you want the broccoli to cook, but still be bright and vibrant green.

Don't over cook it. Don't over think it. We had no tarragon, but I wish we did, it would have been great in this. I added a few splashes of Maggi, and then a sprinkle of salt to my serve only (I hate my arteries, but that's no reason for everyone else's to suffer). Miss Three cleared her plate - a rarity, because I always seem to over serve her, but it was quite tasty. I'm going to buy Tarragon tomorrow, and another jar of this sauce, to sit on standby in the cupboard, it was make-again good, and made a nice change from the usual tomato based pasta.

Odds and Ends Pasta

If you take a 59 cent bag of pasta, and add a $1.59 jar of no name pasta sauce, you have the perfect base to clear out anything out of your fridge or cupboards that needs to go.

Example: tonight's pasta featured celery, onion, rinsed off baked beans, mushrooms, some chopped artichoke hearts, a dash of non-alcoholic red wine, bbq chicken cup-a-soup mix, and a teaspoon of mustard. Sounds strange, but it all got eaten, and for once Master Five didn't complain about being hungry afterwards (thank you baked beans!). Throw some shaved cheese on the top and voila, aren't we fancy? (Vegetable peelers make great thin "shaved" slices of cheese)

So for just over $2, you can clear out your fridge, and still rest easy knowing that it was a "proper" meal before you started.

Cannelloni

DP cooked tonight, so I got the night off. Here is the recipe he used, it's from San Remo Apparently it's the wrong recipe, but all he told me was "It's the one on the back of the box". How was I supposed to know he wanted the spinach and ricotta recipe but to switch the spinach and ricotta for mince? That doesn't exactly make it easy for me to make the shopping list up. But then, I wasn't a huge fan of the old recipe either. Must find a new meat and tomato based cannelloni recipe. Anyone got any ideas?

You got a recipe tonight, so it wasn't really a lazy dinner night post, but I'm feeling lazy, so you can have a link anyway.

Cake Wrecks - it's funny because they're true!

Cauliflower & Bacon Macaroni Cheese

This is fairly close to the recipe in the August 08 issue of Australian Good Taste, but I'll give you what I actually did, and not what it says. ;)

350g penne
1/2 cauliflower, broken into small florets
2 tbsp olive oil spread (or marg, or butter)
175g bacon, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
250g cream cheese (that's one "brick")
2 1/2 cups milk
1 tbsp Dijon mustard (but I used a big squeeze of dijonnaise)
160g grated tasty cheese

Cook pasta in salted water until not quite done. (8 minutes, or whenever you have finished chopping cauliflower). Add the cauliflower to the pot, and cook until desired done-ness of pasta (in this house that means almost soggy, definitely past 'al dente').
Melt butter/marg/spread in a saucepan, and cook the bacon, onion and garlic until the onions are soft. Whisk in the cream cheese, milk and mustard.
Place pasta and the grated cheese in a baking dish, retaining about 1/2 cup of cheese to sprinkle on top just before baking. Mix through, then add the bacon sauce, mixing that through as well. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top.
Either place under a grill for 5 minutes, or if your grill is too small, like mine, place in a 180°C oven for around 10 minutes, or until the cheese melts.

Feeding the family

Both kids emptied their plates. Miss Two had seconds. I had enough for the freezer to feed both kids on a night when dinner doesn't happen for whatever reason. And everyone was happy. We like our veggie dishes in this house. Now I just need to go and wash all those cheese dishes :(

Cheesy Spinach & Mushroom Spaghetti

Since today's lunch at the ILs got called off due to illness, I thought we might need something a little more substantial than jaffles. But since we still haven't done the fortnightly shop yet, I was a little limited as to what I could make.

I settled on pasta - two votes for spaghetti over the penne, and used up some leftover baby spinach, and neglected mushrooms from the bottom of the fridge. Add a few cloves of sliced garlic and some cream cheese, and regular cheese, and what more could you ask for?

All I did was set the water on the boil for the pasta, and when that boiled, added the spaghetti and boiled till soft. My family prefer their pasta on the soggy side, not al dente. While that was happening, I lightly fried 4 cloves of garlic I'd sliced, along with about 8 large mushrooms (just normal large, not the huge flat ones), also sliced. Then I added roughly 3 tbsp of cream cheese, and a bit of the pasta water. Mixed it until it was nice, added in, hmm, maybe 3 cups of baby spinach? I didn't measure, it was just everything left in the packet. Add it to taste, or whatever you have. Then add about half a cup or more of grated cheese right before you tip the (drained) spaghetti into the frypan. Mix together and quickly serve before your pan gets coated in melted cheese and all yuck to clean up.

The finished sauce before adding pasta

"Red" Pasta

Again, I am unashamedly cooking a meal purely for a blog event. This time, it's not even something we would normally eat. I made this up specifically for the Food in Colours event. I was going to submit the Strawberry Cupcakes the kids and I made two weeks ago, but submissions had to be vegetarian (no eggs), so there went that idea. At least I saved a lot of food colouring, in making them pink and not red ;)

I was planning on using sun dried tomatoes in this, but chickened out at the last minute because I know DP doesn't like them. So, this was simplicity in itself. I boiled up some penne, and when it was done, added a jar of char grilled marinated capsicum strips, some red wine, a little balsamic vinegar (almost red!), some delicious tomato paste with basil and oregano in it, and about two tablespoons of garden vegetable pasta sauce, only because the pasta wasn't 'red' enough for my liking, and the sauce was very thin. I dished a bowl up for DP, and then added fresh tomato wedges. I quite raw tomato in my cooking, especially pastas, because you get a bit of texture, and a little burst of freshness. DP doesn't like his tomatoes raw though, that's why I served him first.

The funniest thing was, even though it was so simple, everyone loved it! Maybe less really is more!

This was an entry for Food In Colours: Red
***Round up is here***