Pot Roast Pappardelle

A couple weekends ago when Hurricane Irene hit, all I wanted was comfort food; this pot roast fit the bill (and thankfully, we didn't lose power). The slow-cooked tender meat can be served as its own course with some wide pappardelle noodles coated in its sauce as another course, or the meat can be shredded and added right to the sauce to top the pappardelle. We opted for the latter.

This recipe comes from Domenica Marchetti's The Glorious Pasta of Italy, which you may already be realizing is my current go-to cookbook. Every time I flip through it, I find something else I want to make, and everything I've made from it has been so full of flavor and satisfying -- this pot roast is no exception.

I made the simple tomato sauce from Marchetti's book as well, but you can use store-bought sauce if you prefer. When I was looking for a dry white wine for the recipe, I came across Tavola food wine at Whole Foods. The wine bottle had tomatoes pictured on the label, and I was only too happy to incorporate it into the dish.

While the pot roast takes a little hands-on prep time at the beginning, for the most part it slowly braises in the oven, and you can put your feet up and relax while it cooks. It's a perfect Sunday evening meal. And you'll probably have plenty of leftovers to eat throughout the week as well.

Pot Roast Pappardelle (adapted from The Glorious Pasta of Italy)

Ingredients

1 (2 1/2 to 3 pound) boneless chuck roast, tied
Kosher salt and pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large yellow onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, peeled and finely chopped
2 celery ribs, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, lightly crushed
1 1/2 teaspoons finely chopped, fresh thyme
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup simple tomato sauce
1 cup water
12 ounces pappardelle
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, for serving

Preparation

Heat oven to 325 degrees.

Season the roast on all sides with salt and pepper.

Heat oil in Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Once the oil is hot, place the roast in the pan, and turn it every 3 to 4 minutes to brown it on all sides. Transfer the roast to a plate.

Reduce heat to medium, and add onions, carrots, celery, and garlic to the pot. Cook, stirring frequently, for about 10 minutes, or until vegetables are softened and onion is golden.

Stir in the thyme and the wine, tomato sauce, and water.

Return the meat to the pot, along with any juices that accumulated on the plate.

Bring liquid to a simmer, cover, and place the pot in the oven. Braise the meat, turning it every 45 minutes or so, for about 2 1/2 hours or until meat is fork-tender and sauce has thickened. (At this point, I turned the oven off and left the roast in there until we were ready to eat, about an hour later, to keep it warm.)

Remove the roast from the pot, and slice and shred it.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and cook pappardelle according to package directions. After draining pasta, return it to the pot, and stir a little of the sauce into it.

Transfer the shredded meat to the Dutch oven, and stir it into the sauce.

Place some pappardelle on each plate, and spoon the meat and sauce over the pasta. Sprinkle with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and serve.

Store the pasta and sauce separately in refrigerator in airtight containers. Each night, we reheated some of the pot roast and sauce in a skillet, stirred in some pappardelle, and cooked everything together.

Like it or not, fall is coming. (I'm kind of excited for it.) What comfort foods are you looking forward to this fall?

Pasta with Roasted Garlic and Eggplant Sauce

If you are a reader of this blog you know that when Steve isn't home for dinner I try to make something that I know I can't make when he's around.  Steve is not a fan of eggplant andI had some from the farmer's market along with some tomatoes from my parents' garden. I remembered a recipe from Rachael Ray.  She made a pasta sauce from pureed eggplant.  She puts her eggplant in the oven whole and scoops it out but I wanted more caramelized flavor on the eggplant so I roasted it in cubes.  I absolutely LOVED this recipe.  Probably one of my favorite eggplant recipes of all time! I debated about posting this recipe because the picture was lacking some color.  I posted it on my facebook page and I was assured the photo was good enough to post so hope you all think so too.  The only problem is I don't have an exact recipe to follow here.  I am going to have to make it again to perfect it and write down the measurements.  So this recipe is an approximation.  Give it a try and use your own judgement (more or less tomatoes, onion, etc) otherwise  wait for me to try this once again.  One thing I did realize is that it would be much better to roast the tomatoes on a seperate cookie sheet since they give off too much water and prevent the eggplant from browning well. 


Pasta with Roasted Garlic and Eggplant Sauce


Ingredients:


2 eggplants, partially peeled (peel every other section so it looks striped), cut into large dice
4-5 tomatoes, cut into large dice 
1 large vidalia onion, cut into large dice
1 head of garlic
Fresh basil
extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
pecorino romano cheese, grated


Directions:


1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.


2.  Prepare 3 sheet pans with parchment paper (makes clean up a lot easier) and spread out eggplant and onion over 2 cookie sheets and put the tomatoes on the 3rd.  Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper and toss to coat.  

3.  Slice top off of the head of garlic so garlic is exposed.  Drizzle with oil, salt and pepper.  Wrap well in foil and place in a small oven safe bowl or if you have space on your cookie sheet put it there.  (Do not put it directly in oven as the oil make leak out and onto your oven.) 


4.  Bake in the oven for 20 minutes and toss and flip so all sides get color. Cook veggies until soft and browned. Tomatoes may come out sooner than the eggplant. Check on the garlic - when a knife can easily pierce the garlic it is ready.  The garlic can easily over cook and become burnt and hard.  Check every 5 mins afterward if it's not yet ready.   Remove everything from the oven and allow to cool.


5.  Meanwhile bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.  When garlic is cool enough to handle, squeeze out of the papery skin.  It will come right out.  When veggies have cooled down add them and garlic to a food processor (you may have to do this in batches and just add to a bowl to combine when it's all blended).  If it's very thick drizzle in some oil while the food processor is on.  Taste and adjust seasoning.  Add torn basil.  


6.  Cook pasta until al dente and reserve some pasta water.  Return pasta to pot and toss in eggplant mixture.  If it looks like it's too thick add a little bit of the pasta water.  Toss with romano cheese and enjoy!

Click here for a printable version of this recipe.

Simple Tomato Sauce

I've made tomato sauce so many different ways -- with canned tomatoes, with fresh tomatoes, with butter, with olive oil, with onions, with meat. Some are complicated all-day affairs, and some are quick to throw together and simmer for only 30 minutes. This particular tomato sauce falls in the latter category and uses fresh plum tomatoes, a little garlic, and some olive oil to make a simple sauce that I used in two other recipes.

It also involves a step I've never tried before: scraping the tomatoes against a box grater. This allows you to separate the pulp from the skins and easily discard the skins. (Just be careful to keep your fingers out of the way.)

The recipe comes from Domenica Marchetti's The Glorious Pasta of Italy, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite cookbooks. I flip through it on a regular basis to find dinner ideas.

Simple Tomato Sauce (adapted from The Glorious Pasta of Italy)
Makes about 3 cups

Ingredients

3 pounds plum tomatoes
2 garlic cloves, lightly crushed
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt

Preparation

Cut the tomatoes in half lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds with your fingers. It's easiest to do this over a bowl set next to your cutting board. Once you're done, discard the seeds.

Place a box grater on a cutting board with a moat, and hold the cut side of each tomato half against the large holes of the grater, and grate until all that's left in your hand is the skin. Discard skins. Periodically scoop up the pulp and transfer it to a large bowl so as not to crowd your cutting board.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, and press down on it with a wooden spoon to infuse the oil.

After 2 minutes, when the garlic starts to sizzle but hasn't turned brown, carefully stir in the tomato pulp.

Season with 1 teaspoon salt, raise heat to medium-high, and bring the sauce to a simmer.

Reduce heat to medium-low, and let tomatoes simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 25 to 30 minutes, or until thickened.

Serve with pasta, or use in any recipe that calls for a simple tomato sauce.

Store in fridge in an airtight container for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 3 months.

Come back tomorrow for a recipe that calls for this tomato sauce.

Do you have a tried-and-true tomato sauce recipe?

Blueberry Ricotta Cake

Found another great recipe from Stacey Snacks.  She found the recipe from the King Arthur Flour website and added some lemon zest to it.  I added the zest to mine too and really loved it. Stacey says to use fresh ricotta but I had some part skim ricotta I wanted to use up in my fridge and it worked just fine.  I'm sure the fresh ricotta will make it even better but don't shy away from trying this if you don't have it.  I prefer eating it at room temperature but when I brought some of it to work some people said they prefer it cold.  So you decide how you like it.  I love the crispy sugar top!

Blueberry Ricotta Cake
from Stacey Snacks

Ingredients:

Batter:
1 cup All-Purpose Flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup butter
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
zest of a lemon
3/4 cup fresh blueberries

Topping:
2 large eggs
1 1/4 cups ricotta cheese
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9 x 9 x 2-inch pan

For the batter: In a small bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the milk, shortening, egg and vanilla, beating till smooth. Spoon the batter into a greased 9 x 9 x 2-inch pan Sprinkle the blueberries over the batter.

For the topping: In a small bowl, beat the eggs till frothy, then beat in the cheese, sugar and vanilla. Spread this mixture evenly over the blueberries.

Bake the cake for 55 to 60 minutes, or until it's golden brown around the edges. Remove from the oven and cool to lukewarm before serving.

Click here for a printable version of this recipe.

Coconut Macarooners!

I love all things coconut and have been looking at making the macaroons in the Flour cookbook for a while.  When Nick and I were responsible for bringing a dessert to a party it proved to be the perfect excuse to make them!  The post's title is from when Cookie Monster was auditioning for SNL on Facebook and he impersonated McGruber, calling himself Macarooner - too funny!  While these cookies tasted pretty good, they did not come out looking the way they were supposed to.  So here is the story of how I made the cookies that tasted great (people confirmed that!), but with some places noted where things did not turn out the way they maybe should have!

Macaroons!

Not having looked at a Macaroon recipe before, I was surprised to see how this one actually seemed doable and did not require too many ingredients.  To begin, I first had to make the pastry cream.

Necessities for the Pastry Cream

I put the milk in a saucepan until it started to simmer, and separately I combined the dry ingredients in a large bowl.  According to the cookbook, mixing the sugar with the rest of the dry ingredients will prevent clumping when adding the egg yolks.

Dry Ingredients

Once all combined, I stirred the whisked egg yolks into the dry ingredients.

Adding the egg yolks

Once it was all whisked together it was supposed to become pasty, however mine was a little less pasty (really, more crumbly) than I think it should have been.  Once the milk had reached the bubbly stage, I slowly added it to the egg yolk mixture.

Once fully combined I returned the mixture to the saucepan, over medium heat and whisked my little heart out for the next minute until the mixture came to a boil.

I then removed the pot from the heat and stirred in the vanilla, covered the mixture in plastic and let the whole thing cool completely. 

Cooling pastry cream

Once the pastry cream was fully cooled, I set to work on finishing the cookies. 

Best of the rest...

I put the pastry cream, sugar, coconut, salt and egg whites in a large bowl and combined.

Final Necessities

All stirred up

Once again, Joanne Chang gives helpful tips in the recipe.  In this case, the finished "dough" can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days!  Not wanting to wait that long because the party was later the same day, I forged ahead.  Using a tablespoon, I spooned the dough out onto a parchment lined cookie sheet.  This is where I noticed that something wasn't quite right - the egg whites seemed to be seeping out and forming a ring around the cookie dough mound.  Since I had made it this far, I kept going - still loads of good coconut.  Once the sheet was filled, I put it into a 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes.  

Almost there...

As you can tell, the little ring cooked right around the cookie.  I let them cool a bit on the sheet and then I moved them to the cooling rack.

Out of the oven, with the rings...

When I tasted one of the cookies (I mean I had to!), they actually tasted pretty good - sticky, but tasty!  Not really believing it, I had to have Nick confirm, which he did!  They may have been ugly, but they tasted pretty good.

Cooling cookies

In an effort to salvage the cookies, I cut off the weird ring around the cookie, plated them and they were ready to go.  The people at the party enjoyed them too, not even noticing that they looked a bit off - its amazing what a nice serving dish will do.  While these were more or less a success in taste, I still have some work to do on the construction of the cookie.  So, in an effort to perfect the Coconut Macaroon, I will have to make them a few more times.  Good thing I love coconut!

Anyone there with thoughts on what went wrong here??

Anticipation

Vacation is on the horizon!! I can barely contain my excitement over here as I finalize packing and other necessary travel preparations. My Labor Day Weekend has been super low key as a result. In between outfit planning (what to bring, what not to bring, these are tough decisions!) and finishing all the food in my fridge, I sprawled out on the Greenway. Last year I was living it up on Cape Cod (and I was sad to miss all the fun this year.) Here are my recaps from 2010:
Welcome To The Beach
Beach Biscuits Bocce Boats & Beer
Still Recapping Labor Day Weekend....How did you spend the long weekend? Were you savoring summer or looking towards fall? (Or perhaps a little of both?)

Lake George