Ingredients:

• 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 cans diced tomatoes, Italian style
• 1 cup artichoke hearts, drained & chopped
• 1 tablespoon basil
• 1/2 tablespoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• S & P
• 1 pound tiger shrimp, de-veined, peeled & washed
• 1 cup penne pasta (I love the wheat version)

What’s Next:

In a large skillet on medium-high:  heat up olive oil & saute garlic cloves until browned.  Turn heat down to medium-low.

Add the cans of tomatoes and chopped artichoke hearts to skillet.  Mix together.

Add basil, oregano, Italian seasoning and S & P.  Stir until uniform.  Simmer for 30 minutes to meld flavors. 

In a medium saucepan- boil 3 cups water.  Add pasta and cook until al dente.  Drain & set aside. 

In a medium saucepan- boil 3 cups water.  Add shrimp and boil for 5 minutes.  Drain and add to tomato concoction.  Stir and simmer together for 5 minutes.

Place pasta on plates and spoon shrimp mix on top.  And there you have it, instant delicious!  Serve with a side of Italian bread and you have yourself a wonderful weekend meal!

Eat well & Laugh often.

Once you make your own pesto at home, you will never again buy pesto in a jar, bottle, or tube. I guarantee it. Making pesto is so unbelievably simple- see the photo above? That’s all you need to start making pesto. Really.

Like most simple recipes, of course, it matters that you use the best ingredients possible. In the case of pesto, this means fresh, bright green basil, young garlic, good extra virgin olive oil, parmigiano reggiano, and the freshest pine nuts you can buy.

Pine nuts, by the way, go rancid horrifyingly fast- so you probably don’t want to use that bag you’ve had in your pantry for a year. Get fresh, well-packed pine nuts. And if you can’t, use walnuts. Or pecans.

On to the pesto making: I like to use a mortar and pestle mostly (after all, pestle and pesto are derived from the same word, “pesta”, which means “to pound”) but have been known to pull out the trusty food processor- especially when there’s company for dinner and/or we’re making a lot of pesto.

Finally, here is my no-fail, you’ll-never-use-store-bought-again pesto recipe. Mix it with pasta, serve as a dip… you know what to do with it.

Pesto

3 cups fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated (or, use regular Parmesan or Romano)
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup pine nuts, walnuts or pecans
4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste

Start by pounding the basil leaves and pine nuts together. Add (in this order) the garlic, olive oil, cheese, and salt and pepper to taste. Either buzz this all in the food processor, or grind in your mortar with pestle.

And that’s it! This pesto keeps beautifully in the fridge.

Because I’ve always been a baker first, I’m a stick-to-a-recipe kinda gal when it comes to cooking. Thankfully, my husband is the exact opposite: he refuses to even look at a cookbook, and is always concocting the most unbelievably delicious dishes from various ingredient combinations. The Carbonara pictured above (taken with a crappy mobile phone camera) is one of our favorite dishes here at home. It’s based on a recipe I downloaded from the Pioneer Woman, by Pastor Ryan, with a few choice tweaks:

• We use Fettuccine instead of Linguine, because we always have Fettuccine in the house.
• We use two cups of stock, and omit the white wine. We’ve used Chicken Stock and Beef Broth, and both were delicious.
• We add about half a block of an 8 oz. block of Cream Cheese to the egg mixture, mashing it all up.

Did the Cream Cheese throw you? We wanted a creamier Carbonara, and I was all set to add some heavy cream to the recipe, when the husband suggested using Cream Cheese instead. Actually, he recommended Mascarpone- which just goes to show you how much he knows about what’s in our pantry on a daily basis. What we always have is Cream Cheese, so that’s what I used- and it. was. awesome.

I love rainy days. Not zero-visibility, wrath-of-God thundering days, mind you- I mean enough rain to make the grass and trees look just a little bit greener, rain I can hear on our roof without fearing that it will take our window shutters off.

Today is such a day. The air is cool, and the dogs don’t mind getting themselves wet outside. On days like today, there’s nothing like a bowl of hot pasta- hot spaghetti to be precise- to curl up on the sofa with.

My husband introduced me to the joy of “plain” spaghetti- that is, perfectly cooked noodles with nothing more than a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, some salt and pepper. That’s it. Sometimes, I like to throw on a bit of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano, perhaps a clove of crushed garlic- but make no mistake about it: the pasta is the star here.

It follows, then, that the pasta must be perfect. Start with good pasta- fresh if you have it, but there are several dried pasta brands I love as well, including Barilla and De Cecco. Bring your water to a rolling boil, salt it well (think seawater), and cook your pasta according to the directions on its packet. What I like to do is this: if the packet says “11 minutes”, I start tasting it at 9 minutes.

Drain your pasta- do not rinse it- and, working quickly, drizzle some extra virgin olive oil on it, sprinkle with kosher salt (not too much- the pasta is already salty from the cooking water), freshly ground pepper, the optional Parmigiano, and- you’re done.

Now, my husband and I like having this and this alone as a meal, but it’s also wonderful paired with other dishes, such as grilled chicken or salmon.

Here is another one of my concoctions. I actually got the idea from one of those recipe cards you get from the supermarket. They were promoting the use of McCormick spices and I thought I’d try them. I have never been one to follow a recipe to the letter, though, so I am sure that my version of this dish turned out differently. Anyhow, this dish is easy and quick to make, you will probably find yourself making it often.

Ingredients:
1 pound chicken breasts, sliced
1 small onion
4 tomatoes
½ cup light cream
Paprika
Salt
Black pepper
Olive oil

Preparation:
Wash the chicken well and then drain. Season with salt, pepper, and some paprika. It really is up to you how much of the seasoning you want to use – I just threw everything in there. Set aside for 10-15 minutes.

Heat some olive oil in a thick pan and then fry the chicken strips for about 5 minutes. Set aside.

Cook the chopped onion in the same pan until translucent. Add the diced tomatoes. Cook this for about 5 minutes, stirring all the while. You can also add more paprika at this point.

Put the chicken back into the pan and let it simmer until the chicken is cooked through. This took about 10 minutes. Make sure you stir every once in a while. You can add 1 to 2 tablespoons of water if you want.

Add the light cream slowly and simmer for about 2 minutes. Add salt and more pepper and paprika to taste. For garnish, you can throw in some parsley.

This dish can be served over cooked noodles or rice – I chose the former.