Stacerella

I was planning to make this meal last night anyway, so don’t get all misty eyed about Valentine’s Day. We don’t observe it. We figure there are 364 other days of the year to show you love someone, so why get caught up in the pressure, the maddness, the commercialism? Yeah, we’re that couple. Sorry, I digress.

Using the recipe for homemade pasta noodles that Cooking Like Your Grandmother posted awhile ago, I mixed up enough dough for Joe and I to feast on last night. I made the dough in the morning before we left for work and let it chill all day in the fridge. When we got home, I started prepping the sauce while a salted pot of water was coming to a boil on the stove.

Joe likes to hang out with me in our dinky kitchen to watch. I guess he’s facinated by the process or just likes to be stuck in my enormous gravitational pull - dunno which - but it’s annoying sometimes because no matter where he stands, the kitchen is still too small. So, I asked him to help me in the dining area with the pasta dough. I rolled out the first half of the dough till it was thin enough to make linguini noodles. I asked him if he could do the same with the second half on his own while I turned my attention back to the sauce. He said he thought he could do it, so off he went. He was a natural.

We ended up hanging the noodles over dish towels draped over the back of our chairs to air dry them. Because I chose to roll the dough out to almost the thinnest setting before cutting the sheets up into noodles, they air dried in a few minutes. Impressive. Now I know if I want to to a bigger batch it won’t take me as long as the first time I made pasta and it took forever to air dry the noodles because I made them too thick. (Oops!)

After they air dried enough, I threw them into the pot to cook for just under five minutes in two batches. I took the sauce off the heat and set it aside while I strained out the noodes and scooped out some of the starch water to add to the sauce as a thickener. I drained the pot water and returned the noodles and poured the Alfredo sauce over top. I reduced the heat a bit from medium to a medium-low, and stirred in grated parm cheese. Stirring constantly, I watched as the noodles absorbed a good amount of the sauce while the remaining thickened up enough to coat the noodles nicely. When that happened, I plated and served the linguini.

It was heaven. Delicate, lovely, tastey, salty homemade pasta in Alfredo sauce. Nothing beats it. Nothing!

Noodles: 3/4C all-purpose flour, 1 large egg, and 1 tsp salt.

Alfredo Sauce: 1 1/2C 5% cream, 2 tbsp butter, 1/2 minced garlic clove, S&P to taste, 1/4 + 1/4C grated parm cheese, pinch of dried thyme, oregano and basil, 1/2C startch water from the cooked pasta.

An oldie, but a goodie. Awhile ago I hauled out my deep fryer and made a batch of sputnuts. Spudnuts, for those of you who have never heard of them, are potato doughnuts. You read right - potato doughnuts. Instead of a yeast dough, these babies are made using mashed potatoes instead of flour as the starch.

Spudnuts:

I got this recipe from my mother-in-law a few years ago, and of course haven’t a clue where she said she got it, but I think it might be from the master baker/boss she and I both worked for (a few decades apart). I hold onto this recipe for almost two years before I dusted it off and took it out for a spin. I remember thinking I have a deep fryer and beyond fries and breaded zucchini sticks, I had nothing else to make in it. That’s when Joe reminded me his mother gave me a perfectly good recipe for these spudnuts, and I jumped out of my chair with such excitement, I scared him. Hee.

These doughnuts turned out to be easier to make than I ever thought possible, and they plumped up nicely in the hot oil, but the best part of them is they didn’t really taste much different to me than yeast based doughnuts. That was an interesting and fun fact for me to discover as I sampled the finish product. I packaged up a lot of them and took them to work at the college kitchen I used to work at. Even the chef and master baker agreed they tasted like regular yeast doughnuts. Fun stuff. Make a batch and see for yourself.

Ingredients:
3 Eggs
3/4 C Sugar
3 Tbsp Shortening, softened
1 Tsp Vanilla
1 C Water, hot
1 1/2 C Instant mashed potato (or 1 1/4 C potato of your choice cooked and mashed up)
2 C Flour, all-purpose or bread, sifted
4 Tsp Baking powder
1/4 Tsp Nutmeg

Prep:
1. Chill dough for recommended time.
2. Heat oil to 375 degrees.
3. Set up paper towels on plates or cooling racks.
4. Melt fondants and assemble toppings station.

Directions:
1. Beat eggs well. Gradually add sugar until mixture is thick and light in colour.
2. Blend in Shortening and vanilla.
3. Sift the rest of the dry ingredients in a seperate bowl; set aside.
4. Blend hot water with instant mashed potato mix and let stand 3 minutes, or boil and mash potatoes.
5. Blend egg mixture into the potato mixture. Add sifted dry ingredients, mix well to form dough ball.
6. Chill dough at least 4 hours or overnight.
7. Roll dough out to 1/3″ thick on lightly floured workspace.
8. Heat deep fryer or oil in a pot on the stove to at least 375 degrees.
9. Cut dough up into small chunks you can roll in your hands before dunking into the hot oil to fry.
10. Fry each doughnut roughly 2-3 minutes, or until golden brown - whichever comes before the doughnuts rise to the surface of the oil.
11. Scoop the doughnuts out using a metal slotted spoon or an Asian birds net spoon.
12. Lay each doughnut on paper towel lined plates or cooling racks.
13. While cool enough to touch but still warm enough to slightly melt toppings to the surface, sprinkle with either powdered sugar, sprinkles or melted fondant of your choice - or cool completely for plain old fashioned doughnuts.

Yields 1.5 to 2 dozen doughnuts.

Ermine is at home sick this week, so I told her I would blog some of my recent and favourite recipes so she can see what I’m up to and, hopefully, be inspired to try new things herself for her family. So, this is for her.

Presenting, my variation on the Foodland Ontario’s original cabbage meatball recipe that came out about four years or more ago. It was an instant hit with Joe, who isn’t into soups or stews in the least. But, something about the ingredients I mixed together and my straining of the broth before serving intrigued him enough to at least try it. And once he did, he declared it “awesome!” (That’s high praise indeed from a man whose only rating of meals ranges from, “it’s ok,” to “it doesn’t suck.”) As you can tell, I have a harsh food critic at my table every night. Heh.

Ingredients:
3 C Broth (of your choice - I use chicken because I use turkey meatballs more often than not)
1 Bay leaf
2 C Onions, sliced
1 C Whole potatoes, undrained (I use a large can of diced tomatoes instead of potatoes - personal pref)
1 Tsp Dried thyme and dried oregano
1 Pinch Sugar
1 Pound meatball of your choosing, frozen or homemade (I have used frozen chicken, turkey and Angus beef)
1/2 C Dry pasta, uncooked (I tend to use penne, macaroni, bowtie, or any other small pasta I have on hand)
6 C Savoy or green cabbage, finey chopped [1 medium head] (I used half a bag of packaged coleslaw mix)
Freshly grated parmesan cheese

Directions:
1. Boil enough water make your 3 C of broth in a large stock pot. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
2. Toss in the bay leaf and onions and simmer in pot for five to ten minutes.
3. Add the whole can of diced tomatoes to the pot (liquid included), thyme, oregano, sugar and meatballs to the pot. Cook on medium heat for ten mintues, stirring occasionally, till everything starts to blend into each other.
4. Add the dry pasta and a few good handfuls of the packaged bag cabbage mixture to the pot, cover and lower heat to med-low to simmer for final 15 minutes.
5. Serve hot in bowls with some freshly grated parmesan cheese over top if desired.

A few weekends ago, I made a pizza for Joe that was so damn good, we Hoover’d it back like we were Tazmanian devils. Seriously, we gobbled it down so fast, I didn’t even think about taking a photos until the last bite was in my belly.

And since Joe declared it the “best effin’ pizza” he’s ever had in his life, I knew I would be making it again very soon, and very often. This one is going into the regularly made meals rotation. I made it again last night - for Joey’s mommy - and this time I remembered to take photos of them for you, my pretties! Enjoy.

Dough: I tend to buy large Lebonese flatbreads that I can cut up into squares when I can; but when I can’t, I buy the premade pies in pizza kits. Both will work beautifully.

Sauce: Any sauce you like. (I hate marinara sauce, so I always use whatever pasta sauce we have on hand.)

Cheese: I used a pre-shredded blend of mozzarella and cheddar for a lovely flavour balance.

Layers: Thin layers of sauce, cheese, bacon, cheese, tomato slices, cheese on top of the bread or shell.

Update: Just got an email from Joe’s sister. They loved the pizza. Declared it better than their beloved Pizza Hut version they like to get at least once a month one town over. And they raved about this bread crust. Cool.

I woke up this morning and wanted a big-ass breakfast club on challah bread with home fries, fruit slices and juice. Sorta like this version I had at Dunn’s over the Christmas holiday when Ellen, Ermine, Joe and I went out to eat.

Sooooooooo good. Dreaming of it. Wanting it. Damn. I don’t know of a Dunn’s near here, but I’m going to have to look it up now. Damn you, beautiful sandwich! Damn you to hell. Argh.