OMGSNAX!

i’ll be honest with you: i don’t know what recipe to put here b/c i combined two different recipes & made the rest up, so secretly maybe it’s all mine & i’ll play it that way.

INGREDIENTS
refrigerated bread dough
1/2 cup to 1 cup marinara sauce
8 oz fresh mozzarella cheese
1/2 bell pepper, diced
1/4 white onion, diced
a couple mushrooms, sliced
black olives, sliced
olive oil

METHOD
preheat the oven to 375 F. dice the bell pepper & onion; sauté in a little olive oil. roll out the bread dough & divide in half. spread the marinara sauce on half the dough, then add the vegetables & the cheese (cut into quarter-sized chunks). fold the other half of the dough over the filling to form a half-moon. pinch the edges of the dough together using your fingers or a fork. using your fingers or a pastry brush, lightly coat the tops of the calzones with some oil. bake 20 minutes.

DEVIATIONS & OBSERVATIONS
the whole recipe was basically a deviation, b/c the calzone recipe i found called for smoked cheese, potato, & spinach. potato? no. i’m done with potatoes for a while, i think.

basically, my made-up recipe came down to a normal pizza, only folded in half. it tasted damn good, though.

my my, that’s a lot of cheese

see? a folded pizza!

the main problem we encountered was that, due to our hunger, we used a ready-made pizza crust in a can (pillsbury-style) & it came out as a huge rectangle, & when i tried to form my half into a circle (so i could have the traditional half-moon-shaped calzone), the dough wouldn’t really roll out. it was super-stretchy & just snapped back no matter what i tried! very frustrating. & for the record, the calzone recipe i had DID call for pre-made bread dough, so it wasn’t 100% laziness on my part.

daniel tries to figure out the magic elastic dough

anyway, you really can’t go wrong with tomato sauce & cheese, you know?

yum!

 

 

“Calzone” from two different recipes in Vegetarian Classics: 300 Essential Recipes for Every Course and Every Meal by Jeanne Lemlin, © 2001.

i really needed to use up the broccoli i had from that curry recipe a couple weeks ago & the cream i never used to make whipped cream when i made that apple crisp, so here we are at one of my favorite dishes from when i was a kid.

INGREDIENTS
4 ounces dry fettucine pasta
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons butter
1 ounce tomato sauce
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 cup broccoli florets
1/4 cup fresh sliced mushrooms
salt to taste
ground black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese

METHOD
cook fettuccini in a large pot of boiling salted water until “almost” done. drain, & return noodles to pot.

stir cream, butter or margarine, tomato sauce, garlic, & broccoli into the noodles. simmer until noodles are done. stir in sliced mushrooms, & remove from heat. sprinkle with parmesan cheese, & season with salt & pepper to taste.

DEVIATIONS & OBSERVATIONS
fettucine? no no no. maybe it’s just that i have a soft spot in my heart for rich & charlie’s terribly overcooked pasta con broccoli, but i just never visualize this dish with a long pasta — r & c uses shells, my favorite shape is definitely wagon wheels, & on this particular night, i ended up using penne b/c that was the box i had in the cabinet.

i schlepped all my stuff over to daniel’s house for a reason that sounded good at the time, & while he cursed at the speaker stands he built this afternoon, i boiled the water, chopped the broccoli, & threw everything together. so fast, so easy. mushrooms are a big no-no in my book (even though my distaste for them is purely psychological), so that variation had to go, & i used half a box of penne (which was 8 oz, not 4 oz), but it all came out JUST RIGHT.

this is what i mean by “easy”

before the ingredients become a meal

i think this is probably daniel’s favorite recipe to date — or, at least, he was incredibly enthusiastic about it, which i can’t say about every dish i’ve made thus far.

the finished product

 

 

“Pasta Con Broccoli” from allrecipes.com.

an OMGSNAX! special edition

ok, i’ve made this dish more times than i can count (hence “special edition,” duh), but it’s too good & too easy to not pass along. i learned the recipe from this girl i used to know named anna, who was my closest friend for years & years, & she made it for me & my family when she came to st louis from brooklyn to visit. i’ve since made it for various gatherings, most often when i know there’ll be lots of hungry boys around b/c, even doubled, the recipe’s a breeze. (it’s also a good show-off recipe, b/c you make the sauce from scratch (kinda) but it’s nearly imposible to get wrong.)

(& it smells really good, too.)

i think my hands-down favorite ziti occasion was the night my friend phil’s band (ResistAll) was playing mississippi nights (a pretty decent-sized venue on the landing in downtown stl). i commandeered his kitchen that afternoon & simmered the sauce all evening & popped the finished ziti in the oven right before i left to pick up my two junior high boyfriends (these kids i met through work who dug good rock’n'roll &, you know, somehow i managed to convince their respective moms that i was responsible enough to take them to the show) — & when i got back, we ALL ate mounds of ziti, sitting at the table in the orange dining room or on the floor in the living room & being loud, me & phil & joe & john & will & robby & cody & diamond, yes, & it was pretty much exactly how you’re imagining it only a billion times bigger, like ROCKSTARS.

i’m making it tonight b/c daniel doesn’t get out of class till 10pm & will likely be gnawing his arm off by the time he gets here, & me? i’ve got all the time in the world while i sit here printing CDs for I Like the Future and the Future Likes Me.

INGREDIENTS
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, diced
2 14-ounce cans crushed tomatoes
2 14-ounce cans diced tomatoes
2 6-ounce cans tomato paste
1 cup water
2 teaspoons oregano
2 teaspoons basil
2 tablespoons parsley
salt to taste
sugar to taste
1 14-ounce box ziti (or any other small tubular noodle)
16 ounces mozzarella cheese

METHOD
anna says: “sautée the onions until they are almost translucent, then add the garlic. sautée until garlic is GOLD, not BROWN! if it gets brown, it’s already starting to burn!!”

remove from heat & add one can of crushed tomatoes for every can of diced tomatoes. (generally two cans of each should be sufficient.) add 1/2 cup of water & one small can of tomato paste for every two cans of tomatoes [we’re using four cans, so that’s one cup of water & two cans of tomato paste]. add salt, basil, parsley, & oregano. anna says: “if you want your sauce to taste more like pizza sauce, add more oregano. if you like really sweet sauce, add a teaspoon of sugar for every two cans of tomatoes.”

cook on medium-low heat & stir every couple of minutes to keep the sauce from sticking to the bottom & sides. cook the sauce until it’s the thickness you want, but remember: if you’re using the sauce for something that is going to be baked later on (ziti, eggplant, etc.), you want it a bit watery. in fact, if it seems thick, & you’re going to bake it, feel free to add more water.

meanwhile, cook the pasta according to the directions on the box, drain, & set aside. grate the cheese. about an hour before you want to eat, preheat the oven to 375, & in a 9×13 baking pan, start layering: a layer of sauce first, then pasta, then more sauce, then cheese, then pasta, then sauce, then cheese. (anna told me that the reason you put sauce down first is so that the bottom layer of pasta doesn’t get dried out.) cover with foil & bake for about half an hour covered & then maybe ten or fifteen minutes uncovered (so the cheese on the top layer gets bubbly). serve to people while saying things like, “eat, pappa! no one likes a skinny santa!”

DEVIATIONS & OBSERVATIONS
ok, the recipe is basically a proportional recipe. & i do it from memory. so, you know, there are times where i get the proportions wrong. sometimes i forget the tomato paste. sometimes i use whole peeled tomatoes instead of crushed tomatoes b/c i can’t remember what i’m supposed to get at the store. i’m pretty sure i’ve used two onions on more than one occasion. but you know what? it’s pretty much always delicious.

oh look, another gratuitous onion shot!

is it wrong that i sometimes buy Red Gold brand b/c i like the packaging?

my biggest deviation is in seasoning the sauce. i just need more. i tend to eyeball it now, but i think it’s safe to say that i double the basil & add an extra teaspoon of oregano. & did i mention the sugar? b/c i happen to like a very sweet sauce, so i’ll tell you what: two teaspoons of sugar? totally not gonna cut it. it’s safe to say i add maybe a quarter of a cup before i’m satisfied with the taste of it, although the sweet basil i’ve been using lately has helped tremendously.

cooking sauce

alton brown would pretty much shoot me for not using enough water

&, of course, lately there’s the issue of the cheese. anna said that only fresh buffalo mozzarella will do, but ok! first of all, i haven’t been able to find that at the store in MONTHS (wtf dierbergs!), & second of all, NO GRATER. i totally thought my mom was gonna get me one for my birthday, but then i remembered that all official gift-giving holidays for 2005/2006 have been covered by the new mattress i got this past summer, which, fair enough. (oh, except she totally got me these super-sweet flour & sugar cannisters, &, like, some DVDs, go mom!) so, ok, i can’t exactly use fresh cheese if i don’t have anything with which to grate it, so i just got shredded cheese & a little part of me died, but since it was only a little part, i’ll pull through.

so that’s the other deviation. but i do have to side with anna & say that fresh buffalo mozzarella is pretty much the only way to go. like, if buffalo mozz is Empire Strikes Back, regular shredded mozz is that part in Episode III where anakin gets his sith name & you’re like, but wait, WHERE did “vader” come from, b/c for all we know, dude could’ve picked Darth Spatula & that’s that, like, there’s no REASONING for it, b/c SRSLY, WTF EVER. that’s how much worse it is. like, it doesn’t even get to be Episode III in toto, which would be bad enough but which has the kick-ass yoda fighting scene — oh no, it’s just the dumbest part of the dumbest movie EVER. like, dumber than Highlander II: The Quickening, & that movie didn’t even make any sense!

& now, two more pretty pictures:

“raw”

cooked!

 

 

“Baked Ziti” from anna