Spaghetti Squash
In a Hurry?
- Baste squash halves with oil
- Add pepper and salt
- Roast in an oven
- Scrape out the flesh and add spaghetti sauce
There I was, feeling a bit peckish, thinking about that honey melon in the fridge. I grabbed it, took my kitchen knife and started cutting, wondering about that big stem and how hard it was to cut it in half. Well, it turns out that I have no clue when it comes to fruit or vegetables. I was cutting into spaghetti squash, not into some honey melon. Of course, I didn’t want to let it go to waste and had to look up how to deal with it and found a plethora of recipes. Most of them tell you to treat the squash as spaghetti and add something you would add to spaghetti as well. Impatient, as I usually am, I picked up ideas for ingredients on the handful of websites that I had visited in the process. I had a plan for the sauce: Onions, garlic, tomatoes and the green onions I had left from that orange chicken experiment.
Preparing the squash is simple. Most of the websites suggested roasting it in the oven. That’s what I did. Cut the spaghetti squash in half, scrape out the seeds and soft bits with a spoon. Baste the cut side and the scraped out core with some olive oil and add salt and pepper. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and place both halves on it, cut side down. Roast it for about 40 minutes at 400 degrees.
For my sauce, I diced a small onion, chopped some garlic into pieces, opened a can of diced tomatoes and sliced my green onions. I did have fresh tomatoes, but I somehow hate to cook them. They usually go into a salad or get sliced for a burger or a sandwich. 30 minutes into the roasting of the squash, I started to sautee the onions in oil, added the garlic and a bit later, I added the diced tomatoes. I waited for this to cook through and added the green onions at the end, not giving them any chance to get soft or even burn.
I took out the baking sheet and turned the squash around. There was steam coming out from underneath the squash, but I could avoid it. The fork went into the squash without resistance and I started scraping the flesh out and transferred it onto the plates. I added my sauce and topped it with some grated cheese. Good stuff. The squash had a slightly sweet and nutty flavor and was a bit crunchy, call it al-dente. It’s quite nice as a summer dish, certainly not as heavy as the typical winter squash.
- 1 Spaghetti Squash
- 1 Onion
- 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1 bundle of green onions
- Cut the squash in half and remove seeds with a spoon
- Baste the cut and core with oil and add pepper and salt
- Place face down on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil
- Roast for 40 minutes at 400F
- Dice the onion and chop the garlic
- Sautee onion and garlic 2-3 minutes
- Add diced tomatoes and let it cook for 5 minutes
- Add sliced green onions and warm it up 2 minutes max
- Take the sauce off the heat
- Test the squash with a fork
- If there is no resistance, scrape out the flesh with a fork and transfer it onto plates
- Add the sauce
- Top it with grated cheese
Tzatziki
In a Hurry?
- Remove seed and chop a cucumber
- Add garlic and blend it coarsely
- Mix in Dill, spices and greek yogurt
Start by peeling the cucumber and remove the seeds. You’ll see how much water is in there, once you’ve done it for the first time. Cut the cucumber into 1/4″ slices. You could actually dry them here with a paper towel or just let them drain a bit in a colander.
Mince some garlic next and put it together with the cucumber slices. Chop it together, either in a small food processor or like I did with a hand blender. You see in the result, that there is still a lot of water, but without much impact for the final product.
Finally, add the yogurt into the mix, 2 table spoons of dill and salt and pepper to taste. I continued with the hand blender. Otherwise, you could just whisk the yogurt and the spices into the cucumber mix.
The final result is already very tasty with a slow kick of garlic in the back. But leave it in the fridge for an hour or two. Tzatziki goes well with pita chips, pita bread or just regular white bread as a dip. It is a must for gyro as long as you add fresh onions. Actually, all kind of meats will go well with it. And using it as a salad dressing is not unheard of. How about a gyro salad? Some green salad, gyro slices and topped with some onion rings and tzatziki
- 1 pound greek yogurt
- 1 large cucumber
- 4-6 cloves of garlic, to taste
- 2 Tsp chopped dill
- 1 tsp salt
- ¼ tsp pepper
- Peel the cucumber, half it and remove the seeds with a spoon
- Slice the cucumber
- Peel the garlic
- Put the cucumber into the food processor or a mixing bowl, press the garlic onto it and chop the mix.
- Add yogurt, dill, salt and pepper and mix it in
- Let the result sit in the fridge for 2 hours.
Kitchen Sink Salsa
It’s a gift, not having to care about what others think. Here’s somebody who doesn’t: Cooking for Assholes. His Title for the blog, not mine. But I have to link to one of his recent articles, just because of this:
“Where did you get the recipe?” Are you not fucking listening? I just throw shit in a bowl I think would taste good together. It’s that easy. The only time I follow instructions is when I buy furniture from IKEA. I learned that lesson the hard way.
Seems we are not alone. Even if we have to deal with an A-hole. Here’s the full article: Kitchen Sink Salsa
Read MoreLinguica and Banana Peppers
In a Hurry?
- Slice and dice stuff
- Sautee onions, add sausage, then peppers
- Add garlic and other spices
- Cook for 20 min
- Done
That gives me obviously something to work with. That and the fact that my sister-in-law sent us Gaspar’s Sausage Gift Packs as a present “for emergencies”. One of those emergencies emerged this weekend, with lots of fresh banana pepper from the CSA in the fridge. I didn’t feel like cooking pork chops, the only fresh meet in the fridge at that point, but was staring at the Linguica in the freezer. Here comes dinner!
- 1 Linguica
- 1 pound banana peppers
- 1 medium sized onion
- 3 gloves of garlic
- pepper
- salt
- olive oil
- Dice or slice the onion.
- Slice the banana peppers into strips of 1×1/4″.
- Slice the Linguica.
- Saute the onions in oil.
- Add the sausage and let them heat through.
- Add the peppers.
- Add garlic whichever way you like, minced or sliced
- Pepper and salt to taste
- Cook until peppers are soft and most of the water has evaporated
The entire composition had a sweet flavor, mostly coming from the banana peppers. They and the onions even more had soaked up some of the Linguica juices, which added an interesting flavor. I will certainly cook this again, even if I have to buy the peppers separately.
Broccoli Stuff
A recipe that came out of my broke early 20′s. I was living with roommates who were also usually broke, and we all lived paycheck to paycheck. I was usually the one to cook, and tried to make meals of cheap ingredients taste delicious. The most requested meal that came out of that time was a combination of broccoli, pasta, and parmesan cheese that eventually became known simply as Broccoli Stuff.
- 2-3 heads of broccoli
- 3-4 cloves of garlic
- 1 pound bite-sized pasta
- 2 teaspoons butter
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- Ground pepper to taste
- ¼ to ½ cup shredded parmesan cheese (powdered won’t taste as good here)
- Get a few heads of Broccoli, and break them into bite sized pieces.
- Fill a large pan ¾ full of water, and bring to a boil. Add a few splashes of salt, then toss in the broccoli florets. Cook for just a few minutes, long enough for the florets to green up, and the water to turn a light chartreuse.
- Scoop out the florets, and add the pasta – I like penne, but anything bite-sized will work. Cook the pasta until it’s al dente.
- In a large skillet, drizzle in the olive oil, and some minced garlic – I usually go for about 3-4 cloves – and let it start to get golden, then add in the cooked broccoli florets.
- Grind some pepper over the broccoli, and then add in the cooked pasta.
- Next, add a few pats of butter to the sides of the mixture, letting it melt down into it… mmm, butter…
- Toss the mixture around to get everything well-mixed.
- Turn off the heat, and sprinkle a good ¼ to ½ cup of parmesan over the pan, let it melt a bit, then stir it in.
Previously published in part here: http://cookingwithevil.blogspot.com/2010/03/broccoli-stuff.html
Read MorePasta Pomodoro
In a Hurry?
- Cook pasta
- Dice tomatoes, mozarella, onions
- Cut basil
- Mix, add olive oil, balsamico, pepper, salt
- Pour over pasta
There are many variations of pasta pomodoro on the internet. Some of them are asking to heat up the tomatoes together with the onions, but using the fresh tomatoes is exactly what makes this dish a great dish to eat on a summer night on your porch. If you are feeling adventurous, don’t even saute the onions and the garlic, just add them raw. That makes it taste sharper, which might take the romance out of the meal, but it’s certainly tasty as well.
- 1 pound of pasta, spaghetti, penne, farfalle, your pick
- 3 tomatoes
- 1 medium sized onion, diced
- 2 gloves of garlic
- 1 cup of fresh basil, cut into strips
- 5-8 oz mozarella (optional)
- 3 tablespoons balsamico
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- salt
- pepper
- Boil the pasta
- Dice the onion
- Peel the garlic
- Saute the onions lightly and add the garlic using a garlic press
- Dice the tomatoes
- Cut the basil leaves into strips
- Pull the mozarella into chunks
- Put tomatoes, onions, basil and mozarella together in a mixing bowl
- Add the balsamico, olive oil
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Mix well
- Drain the pasta and let it sit for a moment.
- Serve the pasta in a bowl and top it with the pomodoro mix
Read More