Dinner Tonight: Spaghetti Pie

I was entranced by a meal that I had at Brian's sister-in-law's house one night a year or two ago and that meal was the deliciously carb-ful Spaghetti Pie. It was a flaky brown drum sized crust surrounding steaming spaghetti and meat sauce. Since then, I have been looking online for something similar but have only come across spaghetti al forno (baked spaghetti), spaghetti casseroles, and worst of all, some kind of pie with cheese and marinara filling and a spaghetti crust! Hmm...

Luckily, after I pulled a few google tricks out of my sleeves, I found a recipe on vegweb for a crusty, spaghetti-filled "pie". The recipe, which can be found here, was not so much a recipe as a set of guidelines which when distilled reads:

1. Make/Buy a crust
2. Put half the crust in a casserole dish
3. Fill the dish with cooked pasta, sauce, seasonings, and veggies/meat
4. Cover with more crust
5. Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown (30-45 min)

There werent even amounts for most of the ingredients! The exception was the crust. This came in handy because my local grocery store was out of the pre-made kind. I made the crust in about 3 minutes using the recipe listed:

7/8 c. oil
1/2 c. ice water
3 c. self-rising pastry flour
(I never buy the stuff- For each 1 c. all-purpose flour, add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder & 1/2 tsp salt.)

I filled it with spaghetti and meat sauce and it's currently baking. I hope it's as good as my first one!

Photo Quality & Artichoke Dip

I should really edit my pictures before I post them here. The difference may be subtle, but food definitely looks more professional and more tasty when edited! Here's an example of some artichoke dip I made a couple days ago for lunch. Before:


After:


And the recipe...

Artichoke Dip
All measurements are approximate.

Dip:
1 can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
1 c. mayonnaise
2 oz. softened cream cheese
A few dashes of red pepper
salt & pepper

Topping:
a handful of grated cheese
a sprinkling of breadcrumbs

Mix all ingredients thoroughly. Spread in a pan or cute little ramekins for individual portions (pictured). Top with topping. Bake at 350 degrees until warmed through and browned on top.
Serve with your favorite chips.

Use Your Noodle!

I can't believe I haven't posted about my noodle experiments yet!

Since Italy, I have been driven to make various kinds of noodles, mainly out of curiosity and also because fresh pasta is delicious and requires very few ingredients. Brian got me a pasta maker back in December but I only got to use it once or twice before skipping town so I'm trying to make up for that now.

With a pasta maker, noodles can be as simple as mix thoroughly (2 c flour, 3 eggs), roll (insert pasta maker here), and roll again to cut, but for some reason I like to pick the really difficult kinds of pasta...

Like penne. With the penne noodles I had to mix, roll, cut into squares, and roll each square point to point around the back of a wooden spoon.

The result, covered in some doctored up tomato sauce from a jar, was pretty good but only moderately better than the $0.80 boxed kind and a LOT more labor. Still I was proud.

Then I made gnocchi. This was actually slightly less arduous then the penne but even less rewarding. I used the method in Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Basically, you boil 1.5 lbs small potatoes until tender (about 20 minutes), peel off the skins while hot, rice the potatoes (I don't have a ricer, so I grated), mix with up to 1.5 c flour, then roll into long cylinders and cut into 3/4" sections. Roll each noodle on a fork while making an indent on the other side with your index finger. That step may be optional. Boil for 10 +/-3 seconds and consume.

The result seemed right on the outside but was sort of mushy and gummy on the inside. Brian and I agreed that this probably wasn't my fault and is maybe just how homemade gnocchi turn out sometimes. He said the ones he ate at Julienne in Santa Barbara a few weeks ago weren't too different. (I highly recommend Julienne, by the way, except maybe for their gnocchi.) We left the rest out to dry overnight to see if that helps, though I'm not counting on it.

Anyway, I didn't want to eat them or make him eat them either, so we went with some boxed pasta instead. It was the perfect compliment to my homemade pesto (recipe to come)- much more fitting!

Summer Produce

Shopping in the summer is so fun & cheap! Yesterday for dinner I came home with a huge honeydew ($2) and 5 ears of corn ($0.32 each).

Brian was not exactly thrilled with my idea of produce for dinner, but we boiled the corn, made some chicken with maple chipotle grill sauce, I whipped up a quick (and sort of mediocre) pasta salad and sliced the honeydew and we actually turned out a great summery meal!

I'll try not to forget the protein tonight to avoid any more grumbling.