Fra diavolo is loosely translated as “brother devil,” or devilish brother pasta, and it’s not a traditional Italy manner of serving pasta dishes. It’s something American-Italians made up from what I gather.

Chicken Penne Fra Diavolo

It’s very easy to assemble and plate. It will take you less time to make if you already have pre-grilled chicken you can slice up and saute in the skillet at the half way point. The pasta cooks in a large pot as you sautee your vegetables in a bit of oil along with the red pepper flakes (this tends to deepen the heat of the flakes and spice up the veg as they soften) in a large saute pan. In a small saucepan you will heat up your sauce, and in your oven or on your BBQ or in a contact griller (think George Forman here), you will grill up your meat. All at the same time.

The stove or griller to heat up should take 6-20 minutes (my oven heats up to 350 degrees in 6 minutes since it’s on the newer side), and the chicken should take 20 minutes to cook (less if you pillard or butterfly the breasts), plus another 10 minutes to rest. The pasta water will take five minutes to boil, and another 8 minutes to cook the penne to almost al dente (stop cooking it just beforehand so you can finish it in the saute pan with the sauce and veg). The vegetables should take 5 minutes to chop up (you will use this time to heat the pan and then add the oil to heat on alone), and another 10 minutes to soften in the pan, so the last item you’ll get started will be the jarred pasta sauce since you’re simply heating it up in a sauce pot.

2C dry Penne noodles
6C heavily Salted boiling water
2 large seasoned Chicken Breasts, covered in bbq sauce (optional)
1 1/2C Pasta Sauce of your choice (I used a jar sauce since I was pressed for time)
4C large cuts of Red & Orange Peppers and Broccoli florets
Oil (for the pan, so of your choosing – I used light olive oil)
A pinch of Red Pepper Flakes (this is completely to taste, so start off small if you’re unsure)
1 -2 Green Onions (finely chop the green stems only, reserve the whites for future pasta sauce making if you like)

This will make enough to serve 4 hungry people comfortably.

In a pre-heated non-stick pan, heat 2 tbsp of oil before adding the red & orange peppers and broccoli along with the pepper flakes. Sautee till the vegetables soften, making sure nothing burns. The vegetables tend to soak up much of the oil, so a great trick I use is to add a few small spoonfuls of the starchy pasta water to the saute pan as I go along. The water will act as a barrier between the food and the pan so nothing gets scorched, and will help thicken the pasta sauce you’ll be adding to the pan later on.

In a small saucepan, pour your pasta sauce in and add a few spoonfuls of pasta water to help loosen it up so you can stir it easily. Cover and let that heat up. Don’t let it burn or boil too long. Once it starts boiling, reduce the heat and let it sit covered till you’re ready to add it to the saute pan.

When the chicken is done cooking, remove it from the heat and wrap or cover it in tin foil for ten minutes to rest before taking a temperature reading. If its internal temperature has reached 77 C (165 F) , the chicken is ready to be sliced up. Tent the slices with the same foil till you’re ready for plating while tending to the other food.

About 1-2 minutes before the penne hits the al dente stage, scoop it out of the pot and put it into the saute pan and add the pasta sauce over that. Turn up your heat a smidge as you stir to coat everything in the sauce. Keep the food moving by stirring and shaking the pan occasionally as you chop up the green onions. When the mixture is heated through completely, heap a few scoopfuls into each pasta bowl and top with the chicken and green onions. Serve immediately with cold water or beer or soda.

Toppings: Can be fresh cracked black pepper (a smidge – you will already have spicy veg and flakes in the dish) and fresh shavings of parmesan or any other cheese of you choosing, and a small sprinkling of breadcrumbs to compliment the sting of the red pepper flakes.

Mangi!

For those of us who have Irish roots (such that they are in our family, a piddly 1/4), it’s our one day a year to try our hand at harking back to the Emerald Island in our minds. This is expressed typically in the form of Guinness beer, green tinted mash potatoes and, if you’re lucky, corned beef & cabbage or a lovely beef stew.

This year I have decided I will be doing a lovely beef stew. The husband will have to settle for whatever beer we have on hand unless he’s into driving across the street to see if the LCBO has any Guinness left on their shelves by this point.

I look forward to St. Paddy’s not because of family roots, but because it’s a day I get to try cooking different food fare; not that a beef stew is difficult or even exotic, but because it’s not really something I cook outside of this one day a year. We just don’t eat like that in our home. Pasta and pizza rules in our home.

What are you making for dinner this St. Paddy’s day? Are you eating at home or in a pub? Will there be Guinness involved in some fashion or another?

Here’s the one I also want to eat right now:

Orecchiette with Sausage and Broccoli Pesto - Pic & recipe by http://www.livelovepasta.com

Sesame Noodles With Pork

I made this in honour of Chinese New Year. It’s the Pioneer Woman’s Sesame Noodles with a few additions of my own. Of course.

I diced up the holy trinity of carrots, celery and onions to start it all off. I threw the carrots and celery plus half of my green onions (mostly the white portions rather than the green stalks) into a bowl, topped that with Ree’s sesame sauce and a 1/4 cup of the starchy pasta water. I let it all rest on the counter so the hot water would thin out the sauce and heat the diced vegetables through. in the meantime, I pan fried some rather thick and juicy pork chops that I seasoned very simply with S&P and olive oil. When they finished cooking and had time to rest covered for 10 minutes, they were sliced up into small chunks and set into the bowl with the sauce and vegetables.

I cooked up a batch of regular spaghetti noodles because they were the longest noodles I had in the house, and because you should only use your longest noodle during the Lunar Festival meals to ensure your chances of great luck in 2012. The difference between regular pasta noodles and Asian noodles can vary wildly to not much at all, depending upon what ingredients went into producing them in the first place. Since this noodle meal calls for a rather chewy noodle to start with, I agree with Ree that spaghetti is a fine sub out in a pinch over something more traditional like the udon noodle.

The steaming hot noodles were then added to the bowl and tossed well so everything was coated by the sauce and piping hot. I plated generous heaps of the noodle mixture into bowls and topped each one with the remaining green onions before serving with chopsticks, forks and a spoon (for me who still struggles with a painful hand issue).

This noodle dish got the highest praises from my husband – which is unpublishable (sorry), but rest assured, he seriously loved the tastes and textures. I made a lot so that meant leftovers for me at work today. (Squee!) I scarfed it. I’m not even going to try lying to you about this. I try not to scarf food, but I couldn’t – and wouldn’t – help myself. It was *that* amazing.

Give it a go!

Chicken & Swiss Chard Pasta Bake. Picture courtesy of @TheKitchn.

Came across this linked recipe for Chicken & Swiss Chard Pasta Bake on Twitter by someone I follow, @TheKitchn. This looks so comforting, so delicious and so satisfying. I’m definitely going to take this recipe out for a spin or two. You should, too.

Here is a great resource guide for those of you looking to find the right taste for your dish. I love the Marcella Hazan butter tomato sauce, but sometimes I will make basic sauce sans butter {gasp} so I can add a cream product instead. Don’t forget to read the very helpful comments on that post. Many great tips and thoughts by home cooks in that post.

I’m not big on garlic or marinara sauce because of what it does to my breath for the following week, but a small bit isn’t a bad thing as long as you find a way to add a lot of mint or parsley to the plated meal somehow. Parsley and mint have long been known as natural breath freshener. Or, as I like to call it, garlic breath canceller. It’s not just garnish you leave on the side of your finish plate, kids. Not at all. Use it! It really does work. Trust me.

Stuffed Baked Fish served with banged-up roasted potatoes

I’ve ordered this dish a couple of times before when dining at Red Lobster now. I always remember it being so tasty, and this time round was no exception. I have now taken to making it at home on random Sundays. It makes for a lovely lunch or dinner meal. I highly recommend trying this dish. It’s a winner, even to those who aren’t big on fish, for several reasons.

1. It’s versatile in terms of the the kind of whitefish you use. Any whitefish will do, really. I use whatever we have on hand, and it’s never guaranteed to be the same two times in a row.

2. The filling can be made up of anything you have on hand or dream up – the choice is yours how fancy or how simple you make it.

3. The sauce can be a lovely white sauce, salsa, vegetable ragout, or nothing at all – your choice. Go nuts.

The version I normally make uses haddock fillets with a lovely ricotta filling topped with some fettuccine sauce over top, but this last one I didn’t bother with the sauce. I wanted a light lunch to carry me over the afternoon to dinner a few hours later.

Filling for 2-4 servings:
1/2 C ricotta (low fat will work well)
S&P to taste
1/8 C diced red peppers
2 tsp fresh lime juice
1/4 C chopped parsley

This knock-off version of the Red Lobster’s Broccoli Stuffed Sole from AllRecipes.com uses ingredients like rice and broccoli which is perfectly in line with Red Losbster’s ingredient list, but again I used what I have on hand, and the last time I made this I didn’t feel like making rice and I was also out of broccoli, so I went the rustic route.

It was delicious. And very filling. The whitefish fillets I buy tend to be very long, so I could have easily cut the final fish in half and fed four instead of two. This is a fantastic recipe to add to your weekly repertoire. You can easily make it up the night before or in the morning, and pop it in the oven when you get home from work the next night. Give it a go!

Me? Meh.

I honestly have no idea why. They didn’t taste even remotely interesting to me. I feel hoodwinked.

I imagine I will be shunned by all of the cookie and food lovers out there after this admission, but I can’t fake it. Not even a little. Sorry. Not my cup of chocolate chip cookie tea.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is, I’m back and I’m ready to make pasta!

Pumpkin Fettucine

I had some pumpkin puree kicking around in the fridge that was threatening to go bad on me, so I cooked it down and added it to a bunch of flour and water to make a lovely pumpkin pasta. I’ve been talking about doing this for so long, and after weeks on end of being distracted and taken away from my kitchen, I finally found a few hours to bang this out.

Pumpkin Pasta Dough

The basic recipe for my Pumpkin Fettucine Dough is as follows:
3 C semolina flour
1 tea sea salt
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 C cooked canned pumpkin puree
Spring or filtered water, as needed

Mix all of the ingredients in a large bowl till a ball forms, and then turn it out onto a floured workspace. Knead the ball till your hands are no longer sticking to the dough and the dough springs back when you press your thumb into it. This should take you about 8 to 10 minutes. Wrap in plastic film and let it rest for at least 15 minutes before you start rolling it out by hand or in stand mixer attachments. Store any unused dough wrapped up tightly in more plastic wrap to use up in the next two days in your fridge.

I served this pumpkin fettucine a light dinner with some pasta sauce, freshly cracked paper and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. So, what did I think of it? Ech. It was ok. Without the inclusion of egg anywhere in the dough, the noodles were limp and too soft to get a perfect al dente chew. I will have to redo this dough and add eggs to see if that’s where this recipe fails for me.