Kids Dish

We’ve been eating a ton of noodles lately since I’ve been way too tired/lazy/pregnant/cranky to cook. Most nights we just toss the cooked pasta with a jar of store bought sauce. Sam, who has for reasons unknown stopped eating tomato sauce, eats his noodles with olive oil or butter and Parmesan. One night, on a whim I decided to go the extra mile and throw together a quick sauce that had a little protein, some vegetable matter, and considerably more flavor than a jar of store bought sauce. I warn you that this recipe is not the healthiest (though it’s not as bad as it could be), but it was delicious. The main selling point was that Sam loved it.

Pasta with Pepperoni, Spinach and Parmesan

*1/2 a box of pasta (I like a sturdy noodle for this recipe- rotini, penne, or farfalle will do) Make it whole wheat or use Barilla plus for more fiber
*2 tablespoons of butter
*2 tablespoons olive oil
*10 slices of pepperoni (turkey pepperoni isn’t quite as bad for you)
*2 oz Parmesan (from a wedge, not the stuff in a can)
*2 cloves garlic, minced (or more to taste)
*1 bag of pre-washed spinach (use baby spinach if you don’t feel like removing the stems

Cook the pasta according to the directions on the box. While waiting for the water to boil mince the garlic and prep the spinach if needed.

While the pasta cooks, pulse the Parmesan cheese in a food processor for a few pulses until it’s finely ground. Add the pepperoni and pulse a few times more until the pepperoni and cheese are combined and no large chunks remain. Heat the oil and butter in a large skillet or saute pan. Add the cheese mixture and stir to combine. Add the spinach and cook just until wilted. Add the garlic and stir for about 30 seconds. Drain the cooked pasta, reserving half a cup of water. Add the pasta to the skillet and stir until coated. If needed, add a small amount of pasta water to help distribute the sauce. Serve with fresh ground black pepper.

Disinterested as I’ve been, I’ve still got to get dinner on the table most nights. Dinner has primarily consisted of boxed pasta and jarred sauce with a boring, steamed vegetable, but that’s about all I can take these days. Last night Bob said he’d make dinner. I’d bought feta cheese last week so I could make zucchini and feta patties with the last of the zucchini from last summer but I figured that would be too complicated for him with the draining, mixing and frying. I had a package of organic spinach so I decided to have him make a quiche with spinach and feta instead. I had him pull a package of puff pastry out of the freezer to defrost before he went to scrape paint in one of the third floor bedrooms.

Close to two hours later I realized that if I wanted dinner on the table before 9 I’d have to make it myself. I preheated the oven to 400 degrees, the temperature on the puff pastry package directions for a fruit dessert, and rolled out the puff pastry a little bit. I knew it was too late to make a quiche, so I wasn’t really sure of what to do with it once I rolled it. I decided to just cut it into squares and make little turnovers. I chopped an onion and sauteed it in a knob of butter. When the onion was soft and slightly browned I added a few cloves of garlic. About 30 seconds later I added the fresh spinach and stirred until wilted. I added about 4 ounces of crumbled feta, some fresh ground pepper, a few shakes of dried basil and oregano,and a pinch of nutmeg to the pan and stirred well. I put a spoonful of the spinach filling in each square of puff pastry and sealed the edges. I thought an egg wash would be nice, but didn’t feel like making the effort so I took out the Misto and sprayed each turnover with a little olive oil and stuck them on an ungreased baking sheet and baked for about 20 minutes, until the puff pastry was golden brown.

Aside from defrosting, the whole thing took about 30 minutes start to finish. The turnovers were delicious. Easier than spanakopita and much quicker.

Here’s the recipe for the Leek and Swiss Chard Tart I wrote about on Monday. It was excellent. I mentioned that I don’t love egg dishes. This one was similar to a quiche, but airier and fluffier. Without using too many ingredients it was rich and flavorful.

You can substitute frozen piecrust for the puff pastry or make your own, but using a frozen puff pastry sheet makes the crust light and crisp. I used spinach in place of the chard because chard was unavailable.

I have one complaint. The tart took forever to cook. Forever. I don’t think it was a problem with my oven since I’ve been baking cookies all week without a problem, but nowhere in the recipe reviews does anyone mention that the cooking time is off. The puff pastry browned and puffed in the time suggested, but the eggs took forty-five minutes, not the suggested fifteen to cook through. I don’t know if I was being overly cautious in not wanting to eat runny eggs because I’m pregnant, or if the runny eggs would have set in the resting time, but at one point I ran everything under the broiler hoping to firm things up quickly. It seemed to work, but when I cut all the way through liquid filling rose to meet me. I stuck the whole mess back in the oven for another ten minutes and it was finally cooked when I took it out. It was surprisingly not overdone.

Assuming your tart behaves better than mine did, this is an easy kid-friendly egg dish. If your kids like scrambled eggs they’ll like this. Call it egg pie if they’re suspicious. It would be great for brunch, but it was a nice dinner too. Serve with a salad or a side of veggies and you’ve got a healthy, complete meal.

Leek and Swiss Chard Tart
1 sheet frozen puff pastry (half of 17.3-ounce package), thawed
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
3 large leeks (white and pale green parts only), coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 bunch Swiss chard, ribs removed, leaves chopped (about 2 1/2 cups)
1 1/4 cups whipping cream
3 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
Pinch of ground nutmeg

Position rack in bottom third of oven; preheat to 425°F. Whisk cream and next 5 ingredients in large bowl. Mix in cooled leek mixture. Pour filling into crust.

I’ve been tired and lazy and haven’t much felt like cooking. When I was pregnant with Sam I had a second trimester energy burst that led to me cooking and baking like crazy. Right now I’m in a second trimester slump that’s led to two nights in a row of pasta with jarred sauce and a night of pizza and french fries. I’m lacking energy and inspiration and Sam’s return to middle of the night wakeups isn’t helping matters much. But I took a large frozen whole chicken breast from my organic, pastured meats stash out to defrost and have no choice but to cook it since I can’t bear the idea of letting it go to waste. Looking for a one-pot meal I can cook before I head off to water aerobics tonight I decided on arroz con pollo.

Arroz Con Pollo, Rice with Chicken, is a Latin American favorite. When I taught high school in a predominantly Puerto Rican part of the city (90-some percent of my students were Puerto Rican and the rest were Dominican) many of our PTO-sponsored events served homemade, Latin American dishes. Arroz con Pollo was a staple. It was always deliciously seasoned, yet the cut up chicken parts were always flabby and greasy. I never tried to make the dish at home because as a rule, I generally try to avoid cooking anything that I know will be flabby and greasy.

But a recipe on one of my favorite cooking blogs, Smitten Kitchen, turned up a recipe that looks and sounds neither flabby or greasy and stresses the importance of it being a one-pot dish. It unfortunately requires a number of ingredients I don’t have in the house and don’t feel like going out to get. (I’m too pregnant and tired to go out to the store again.)So I found another recipe, this one from Simply Recipes, that only requires things I have in the house. Combining the two is my best bet. I’ll post the adjusted recipe tomorrow.

The jícama (pronounced hee-ka-ma) is a South American vegetable, also called the Mexican potato. It’s not pretty, but the taste is surprisingly sweet. It’s similar in texture to a water chestnut, but sliced raw it tastes kind of like an apple or pear. You can do a lot with a jícama, but they’re best served raw with dip or in salads. Since it hails from Latin America it pairs well with other staples from the region, like black beans and corn. Sliced raw, it’s great for scooping guacamole.

Or you can use jícama in a dip and serve it with crudités. Here’s quick recipe for jícama salsa. Serve it with jícama slices, other sliced veggies and veggie batons, and tortilla chips. You can use a less intense pepper if your kids don’t like things too spicy, or use the spicy pepper but remove the seeds to lower the hot-factor.

1/2 small pineapple
a 1/2-pound piece jícama
3 ounces dried apricots (about 1/3 cup)
1 small red onion
1/2 cup packed fresh cilantro sprigs
1/2 fresh habanero or Scotch bonnet chile

Peel pineapple and cut enough into 1/4-inch dice to measure 1 3/4 cups. (You can use canned pineapple, just make certain to drain it or your salsa will be very soggy.) Peel jícama and cut into 1/4-inch dice. Coarsely chop apricots and chop enough onion to measure 3/4 cup. Finely chop cilantro and, wearing rubber gloves, finely chop chile with seeds. In a bowl toss together all ingredients and season with salt. Salsa may be made 6 hours ahead and chilled, covered.

I had every intention of making Spanakopita for dinner last night. I remembered to defrost the filo at room temperature and remembered to buy all of the ingredients I don’t usually have on hand. Bob and I planned on walking to our favorite bakery for coffee and pastries when he got home from work and I figured we’d be home before five, giving me plenty of time to get dinner on the table by seven. But then, when we were on the front porch with our coats on and Sam in his wagon anxiously awaiting the cookies to come, I realized I’d completely forgotten to pick up our meat order the day before.

After filling up my kitchen with great clouds of acrid black smoke, this was my second major case of pregnancy brain in a week. So we packed the unhappy toddler into the car and drove to the house where the meat is delivered, hoping it would still be there and still be frozen. The temperature was on our side and even though someone had removed our order from the cooler it was still there. We drove straight to the bakery and enjoyed cookies (Sam and I) and eclairs (Bob) with our coffee.

By the time we finished our snack it was after five and I still wanted to stop at the library to pick up a book that had come in from my reserve list. It was way too late to make Spanakopita. So we had grilled Delmonico steaks from the meat order, steamed green beans and baked potatoes instead. Dinner was on the table in under an hour, and it would have been on the table sooner if Bob hadn’t lost track of time and forgotten to light the grill.

The part that surprises me most about dinner being ready so quickly is the part about the baked potato. Believe it or not, it’s possible to have a perfect baked potato in half an hour. The amazing people from America’s Test Kitchen have found the perfect recipe for a potato with a crispy skin (my favorite part) and a soft, flaky middle.

30-minute Baked Potatoes

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Prick the top of the potatoes several times with a fork. Microwave for 8 to 12 minutes, or until soft to the touch, rotating halfway through the cooking time. Bake the potatoes for twenty minutes. Using the tines of a fork, make an x on the top of each potato immediately after removing from the oven. Squeeze the potatoes open, allowing the steam to escape. Serve immediately with butter, salt and pepper or your favorite baked potato toppings.

This is the quick-ish and easy-ish lasagna I recently overcomplicated. If your ingredients are measured and ready to go this takes an hour total to make. If you like, you can assemble the lasagna, cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 24 hours before use. Allow to sit at room temperature for an hour before cooking. You can also make two and freeze one, wrapping it with a layer of foil over the plastic wrap. Defrost it in the refrigerator for 24 hours and allow to sit and room temperature for an hour before baking.

Simple Cheese Lasagna
from the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook

15 oz ricotta cheese (1 ¾ cups)
2 ½ oz Parmesan Cheese, grated (1 ¼ cups)
½ cup minced fresh basil
1 large egg, lightly beaten
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
6 cups chunky tomato sauce (about 2 24- to 26-oz jars)
1 (8 or 9 oz) package no-boil lasagna noodles
1 lb whole milk mozzarella, shredded (4 cups)

Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 375 degrees. Mix the ricotta, 2 cups of Parmesan, basil, egg, salt and pepper until well combined.

Spread ¼ cup of the tomato sauce over the bottom of a 9 by 13- inch baking dish. Place 3 of the noodles on top of the sauce and drop 3 tablespoons of the ricotta mixture down the center of each noodle and spread it to an even thickness. Sprinkle evenly with one cup of the mozzarella. Spoon 1 ½ cups of the sauce evenly over the cheese. Repeat this layering two more times.

For the final layer, place the 3 remaining noodles on top. Spread the remaining sauce over the noodles. Sprinkle with the remaining mozzarella and then the remaining Parmesan. Spray a large sheet of foil lightly with vegetable oil spray, cover and bake the lasagna for 15 minutes.

Remove the foil and bake until the cheese is browned and the sauce is bubbling, about 25 minutes longer. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Hazelnuts are high in protein and good-for-you unsaturated fat. Many brands of packaged mixed nuts contain lightly salted hazelnuts (also called filberts) in addition to the typical cashew, almond, walnut, peanut mix. They’re great for snacking on plain or salted, and they’re also now making hazelnut butter which is just like peanut butter only, well, made with hazelnuts. Hazelnut coffee is the only flavored coffee l like (though please don’t give coffee to your kids!) and hazelnut liquors like Frangelico are delicious poured over ice cream or just over ice (again, please don’t give booze to your kids!) Combined with chocolate, hazelnuts are divine.

Nutella, a chocolate hazelnut spread, is the easiest way to get your chocolate- hazelnut fix and you can even serve it for breakfast. I love hazelnut crepes, but sticking to my quick and easy theme I’ll just link to a recipe for the crepes (which require more effort for breakfast than I generally like to commit to) and give you a recipe for a close second in deliciousness. Grilled Banana and Nutella sandwiches. If you have a panini press, sandwich press, or George Foreman Grill I recommend using that for the ease of clean up and minimal effort, but if you don’t have specialty equipment any frying pan will do.

Grilled Nutella and Banana Sandwiches
makes 2

1 ripe banana sliced and mashed
4 slices whole wheat bread
1/3 cup Nutella
4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon confectioners (powdered) sugar (optional)

Place the bread slices on a flat surface and spread each slice with some Nutella. Spread the mashed banana over 2 of the slices and combine to make 2 sandwiches. Butter both sides of the sandwich.

Heat the grill or frying pan to medium-high. Place the sandwiches on the grill and cook until golden brown on both sides (cooking times vary, but it usually takes 3-5 minutes on my preheated panini press). If using a frying pan flip the sandwiches after the bottom is browned and cook the other side until brown and crisp. Remove from the grill and sprinkle with the confectioners’ sugar. Eat immediately.

Btw, I didn’t forget about the lasagna recipe! I’ll post it tomorrow.

Remember how I wrote that I was going to attempt to start using some quick and easy recipes? It turns out I’m not so good at it. The Saturday after Christmas we had my husband’s aunt, uncle, cousins and their kids over for Christmas round two and I decided that to make things easy on myself I’d make a salad, two lasagnas (because I could make them in advance) and let everyone else bring the rest. I new that one of the lasagnas I planned to make was labor-intensive. It’s a Lasagna Bolognese from Cook’s Illustrated and I’ve been eying it for months. But for the second lasagna I decided to make a regular spinach and cheese lasagna as simply as possible.

Of course I couldn’t make it simple. Rather than use a jarred sauce like most easy lasagna recipes call for I decided to make my own. Two days before the scheduled dinner I pulled out the tomatoes I froze over the summer and made a quick (ish) chunky tomato sauce. Then I started the ragu for the bolognese. As the meat simmered I realized that most of my husband’s family wouldn’t understand a plain meat lasagna. They’d want to know where the cheese was. So I decided to make a third lasagna with meat and cheese. This meant making more sauce because if I was making homemade for the first two I certainly wasn’t going to buy a sauce for the third.

While it should have taken no more than 2 hours to assemble all three lasagnas it ended up taking most of the following afternoon after making another batch of tomato sauce, reheating the ragu, making a bechamel sauce, cooking the meat for the third lasagna, chopping, cleaning and spinning spinach and basil, combining the ricotta mixture and grating four cups of Parmesan. Once all of that was done it took no time at all to assemble the three lasagnas, but I really could have simplified things by buying a couple of jars of sauce, pre-grated cheese and frozen spinach.

Here they are assembled and uncooked. From left to right: meat and cheese, spinach and cheese, bolognese

Sam just woke up from his nap so tomorrow I’ll post the recipes for the meat and cheese and the spinach and cheese. I promise I’ll make it easier for you than I did for me.

My husband’s family tradition is to eat Pasta e Fagioli, also called Pasta Fazool, on Christmas Eve. I believe the tradition started because the dish, a hearty bean and pasta soup is quick and easy to make before mass and heat up when you get home. We don’t go to mass, but now that we’ve had his family over for Christmas Eve dinner the past two years we’ve kept the tradition going and made a big pot of soup.

My father in law prefers the soup the way his mother made it- with tomato sauce, just a few beans, spaghetti, and no onions, garlic or herbs (other than a shake of dried oregano) to speak of. I prefer a more flavorful, heartier version using smaller, bite sized pasta that fits on a spoon. Either way you make it, both recipes are quick, easy and healthy. Serve with warm Italian bread.

Pasta e Fagioli

Cook the onion in the olive oil until softened, about five minutes. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook about a minute more. Add the tomatoes and the juices, the chicken broth and the beans and simmer about 10 minutes. For a heartier soup, add the pasta and cook in the soup for about 10 minutes, checking often to see if it’s al dente. For a more soup like soup, cook the noodles separately and add just before serving. Add the herbs, salt and pepper and serve with freshly grated Parmesan.

Delaware Online’s article about quick, healthy meals got me thinking. I don’t generally cook anything quickly. The majority of my meals take a minimum of half an hour unless I’m eating something unhealthy or eating something that’s primarily leftover based. Part of the problem may be that my definition of healthy may be a little different than most. For example, many quick recipes call for the addition of rotisserie chicken purchased cooked from the supermarket. I’ve bought them in the past and I don’t think there’s much that’s healthy about them. They’re salty and soggy and the chickens used come from factory farms. You might get a slightly better chicken from a market like Whole Foods, but it’s still supermarket chicken. Other quick recipes ask for store bought sauces and dressings. Unless you’re good at reading labels and know how to choose the healthiest options, most sauces, no matter how healthy and organic they claim to be are full of extra sugar, sodium and added oils. I prefer to make my own sauces, stocks and dressings which often adds to my total prep time.

So how do you make something healthy quickly? The article suggests stocking up on canned beans, chick peas, couscous and frozen vegetables and using the stove top instead of the oven and recommends purchasing a cookbook for quick and easy recipes. Focused grocery shopping, crock pot meals, and actually using leftovers for the next day’s meal (instead of letting them sit until they’re unrecognizable) will also cut down on prep time.

If your family eats fast food more often than you’d like to admit and you want to start cooking healthy meals, the article recommends choosing two nights a week to cook and moving on from there. Shopping with your kids on the perimeter of the supermarket where the fresh foods are located can help get them interested in the process. Getting them involved in prepping the food by chopping vegetables or tearing lettuce if they’re too young to use a knife can also ease your prep burden and make them more invested in the process. Using fruits and vegetables in your meals is key in making them healthy.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to try to change my mindset and move from slow food to quick and healthy. I may even bust out my dusty crock pot to see if I can find an appetizing recipe. If you have any suggestions leave them in the comments.

Here’s a recipe idea from the article with the timing to get you (and me) started.

Berman said parents don’t have to be “uber-organized” to get a healthy dinner ready, but Erica Cover enjoys her detailed methodology when meal planning. She creates her family’s meals for the week on a computer spreadsheet.

She put the tortilla dish in the oven, set to bake for 30 minutes. The time was 5:23. It took Cover 15 minutes to make a dinner that, before 6 p.m., would feed the whole family.