Quickie light and tasty salmon spaghetti

There's something about the beginning of spring that has me looking at food a whole new way every week.  The new produce, the lighter meals, the heater not having to be on.. more daylight.. and sunshine!  Loving the sunshine!   I made this for lunch the other day and it was just enough for me and hubby so suggest if you want to make it for a family or more, multiply the ingredients as you need.   It takes about 25 minutes from beginning to end, such a great way to get dinner (or lunch) in a hurry.

Ingredients:

120 gr spaghetti of choice

1 small spanish or red onion, diced

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

3 tb of parsley chopped

zest and juice of half a lemon

100g smoked salmon

1/3 cup evaporated milk

4 tb fresh pecorino or parmesan cheese, finely grated

Method:

Put a medium sized saucepan full of water on to boil.

Prepare your onion, garlic, parsley, lemon zest (do not juice yet) and salmon.  Open your evaporated milk.

Once your pot is boiling, add your spaghetti.. then heat a heavy frypan and add oil, garlic and onion until soft.

Keep it simmering until your pasta is almost cooked, if it gets dry, just drop some tablespoons of the spaghetti water to keep it bubbling away.

Drain your spaghetti, and add to the frypan.

Ad parsley, lemon zest and salmon to the top and squeeze lemon juice over the top before tossing.

Add evaporated milk and toss a few times

Then add some lashings of black pepper

Lastly grate your pecorino/parmesan over the top and give it one last toss before serving.

The smell is so fresh, as is the taste.  You can taste it all - it tastes light and filling all at once.

I'll be making this one again soon, looks like smoked salmon slices will be making a regular visit to my shopping list!

Leek and Crab Lasagne

Karen Martini on Better Homes and Gardens is a bit hit and miss for me.    But when she hits, she hits it out of the ballpark.  I saw this recipe on the show a few weeks back and thought it looked interesting and mentioned it to hubby.  He was practically drooling just talking about it so I picked up this months edition of the magazine and gathered the ingredients. The original recipe uses fresh lasagne sheets and capers - hubby detests capers so I didn't use them and I had some dried lasagne sheets to use...

Crab meat my friends isn't cheap though - and although the recipe calls for 200g, I used 400g.  And that cost me a bit - but in hindsight totally worth it - it made enough for us, a leftover lunch and gave some to Nanny.   This would impress the pants off friends at a dinner party I'm sure (well hopefully not literally) but Hubby has already told me this is his new birthday meal - he's pretty impressed!


Ingredients:
4 leeks, sliced
4 cloves of garlic
200g crab meat
100g butter
700ml fish stock
1 bay leaf
1/4 cup plain flour
100ml cream
1 packet large curly lasagne (or whatever you like!)
1 tub baby bococcini
180g mascarpone
fresh grated parmesan


 Method:
In a saucepan place 30g of the butter with garlic and leek, over medium heat cook until the leeks are soft and a bit golden on the edges.

In another saucepan (hope your dishwasher is empty!) bring your fish stock up to a boil with the bayleaf (I used 2 small fresh ones from the garden..)

In another saucepan (yes I'm serious) heat the remainder of your butter until it starts to bubble and go golden, add the flour and whisk quickly - add the stock bit by bit still whisking until all the stock is in the mixture and it's like a gravy.  Discard the bayleaf.

Add the cream and then pour the leek into the sauce or vice-versa.

Preheat oven to 190 degrees c.

Put a bit of the leek sauce on the bottom of your baking dish and put your lasagne sheets on top.

Then start layering.... 1/3 at a time - crab meat, baby boccocini, dollops of masarpone, leek sauce and then sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan and black pepper.

Keep going, layer after layer until all done.  Cover with baking paper (will stop the cheese sticking to the top) and then a layer of aluminium foil.

Place in the oven for 50 minutes with the foil and baking paper on and another 15-20 minutes with it off.

Let it sit for about 15 minutes before serving.  Oh my - you're going to congratulate yourself (and by then you've done all the washing up too!)

OK, who wants some?

Kid friendly stash-meal: Pinoy baked macaroni

If I told you I put banana in my macaroni would you think I was crazy?  Probably.  When I was in the Philippines this was everywhere and whilst I would not recommend eating spaghetti from Jollibee - the Filipino (or Pinoy as locally known) equivalent of McDonalds I would recommend trying the local spaghetti or baked macaroni.  It's a little on the sweet side but I think if cooked the right way and not overdone it's really, really delicious.

What made me change my mind - was one day a colleague's mother sent in some homemade baked spaghetti for us to share as she worried about all the long hours we were working and wanted us to have something homemade.  My kind of woman and how could I refuse a meal like that?  Well it was delicious and I begged for the recipe.. but have grown impatient and went to find it myself.

I was expecting to see a bunch of sugar in there but the sweet taste is actually the banana ketchup.  I promise making the banana ketchup is not a wasted exercise because not only is it yummy on sausages but it's a key ingredient in this macaroni and well worth your effort.  But if you're time poor it's cheap as chips from here.

Makes 2 meals

Ingredients:

1 onion, pureed

3 cloves garlic, finely minced

500g beef mince

1 cup beef stock

1/2 cup banana ketchup

420g tin peeled tomatoes, pureed

Cheese sauce

100g butter

1/2 cup flour

2 1/2 cups milk

250g cream cheese

1 cup grated tasty cheese

Method:

Have your blender or thermomix on standby, you're going to use it with this recipe - it really helps the texture..

So put your pureed onion and garlic into a hot well oiled pan and throw in your mince, brown nicely.

At the same time put a pot on to boil water and when it's boiling, add 2 cups macaroni.

When your mince is browned add your beef stock, pureed tomato and banana ketchup, turn on to a simmer for 10 minutes, by then your macaroni should be cooked.

Pour in your macaroni and give a good stir.  Simmer for another 5 minutes before you transfer your mince and macaroni into some baking dishes.

You can smell a slight sweetness and you might be tempted to eat it like this but keep going... place your baking dishes on baking trays to make transferring to the oven easier - so preheat that oven to 200 degrees c.

Make some cheese sauce by melting butter in a saucepan, adding the cream cheese until it's melted in and then add the flour, keep stirring and gradually add the milk and then lastly turn the hob right down and add the cheese and stir for another minute until it's melted in.

(I cheated by doing mine in the thermomix - all ingredients except the tasty cheese for 7 minutes at 80 degrees on speed 3 - throw in the cheese for another 3 minutes same speed/temp).

Pour over your macaroni and beef.

Lovely!  Now transfer to the oven for about 25-30 minutes until you get a light golden brown on top.

Serve one, stash one!

Let it completely cool before wrapping - my tip is a piece of greaseproof paper on top of the cheese and then wrap all of it in tin foil and then lastly in glad wrap.    That will make sure that the lovely top layer won't peel off when you defrost and reheat.

Enjoy!

Slow cooker easy pumpkin and spinach cannelloni

I've been cannelloni mad lately.  I think on here alone there's 4 different cannelloni recipes?  Oh well I'm adding another because I've often wondered how it would go in the slow cooker - and my life has got a teensy bit busier this past couple of weeks I'm definitely cheating a little bit here and there!

If you are setting this before you go to work or out for the day invest in a power point timer, set it to turn on the prescribed amount of hours before you get home.  You could also add grated zucchini or sweet potato - if you use zucchini - make sure you remove the excess liquid by wrapping it in a tea-towel and squeezing the liquid out.  If you don't, it could become quite sloppy.

If you've got vegetarians in your house they will love this, if you don't - they will love it anyway.

Other suggestions to 'customise' this is adding some beef mince (only 300g or so, you don't need much) of course then it won't be vegetarian..


Ingredients:
300g pumpkin, grated
500g ricotta cheese (use reduced fat if you like)
20g parmesan cheese, grated
1/2 cup baby spinach, roughly chopped
1 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp salt flakes
1 packet fresh lasagna sheets (or homemade pasta)
1 litre tomato passata (tomato puree)
125ml low fat evaporated milk
1/2 cup low fat mozzarella cheese
3 tb chopped parsley


Method:
Put your slow cooker on low, and pour 1/3 of your bottle of passata in the bottom.

Mix together the pumpkin, ricotta, parmesan, baby spinach, white pepper and salt.

Roll out your pasta sheets - I bought the Leggos one (I like to make them but I was short of time this week!) because no artificial anythings in them - also quite easy to work with.

Place a 'sausage' of mixture towards the end

Then roll it over, cut off and place in the bottom of the slowcooker on top of the passata.

Continue, I can fit 12 in mine in two levels, but do whatever fits, there's no wrong or right way to do it!

Pour the 125ml evaporated milk into your passata jar.  Close it and shake it up so it all mixes together.

Sprinkle the mozzarella over the cannelloni, then pour over the passata/evaporated milk mix.

Put the lid on, and let it go for 3.5 hours on low, or 2.5 hours on high.

Serve with cracked pepper and sprinkling of fresh parsley - that really gives it a lift!

What's your favourite cannelloni?

Enough for seconds: Rigatoni al ragu

I'm like Dr Frankenstein in the kitchen it seems. Eloise can't get enough of cooking with me and always is asking 'what are we making next Mummy?' and some of the time in the interest of speed or safety I have to say 'not today'.  I don't want to dampen her spirits though and so have promised a meal/cooking session each week.

So this was one such recipe and I'll apologise in advance.  When you have a very enthusiastic and active sous chef in the kitchen it starts to get a bit blurry - in the photos that is.

First of all I set up a little station with all the chopped ingredients ready to go.  I set a plastic bowl next to it so she can fetch ingredients and put them into the bowl and bring to the stove.

The results are amazing - full of flavour and all the frills asked for seconds.  Hubby told Eloise she was a brilliant chef and she could make it again next week - she was as you could imagine greatly encouraged (ecstatic!) by this..!

Ingredients:
1 onion, finely diced
1 medium carrot, finely diced
1 stalk celery finely diced
1 clove garlic, finely sliced
4 slices proscuitto, finely diced
2 tb butter
3 tb olive oil
500g veal and pork mince
3 tb tomato paste
1 cup dry white
1 cup milk
400g tin of diced tomatoes
1 cup beef stock

500g rigatoni, dried


Method:
In a large saucepan, stockpot or frying pan melt butter with the olive oil and add the garlic, onions, carrots and celery, stir until the onion becomes translucent

Add the proscuitto and keep stirring until cooked

Add the mince and brown well.

Add the tomato paste and combine well

Add white wine, milk, tinned tomatoes and stock, turn to a medium heat for about 45 minutes-1 hour until the sauce reduces and becomes thick.

Prepare your rigatoni and drain well, add to the sauce and grate some fresh parmesan on top.

Psst - as promised - extra opportunity to spoil yourself with $250 Coles Myer Voucher PLUS $250 basket of Lindt TODAY ONLY (to those with Australian postal addresses)  I'm going to count an entry before 2pm and one after 2pm until midnight tonight (so two entries) if you tweet on twitter:

"I'm going #spoilmyself by winning a $250 Myer voucher and $250 basket of @LindtAustralia goodies!  http://bit.ly/koP7Qz"

Simple and yummy: Chicken mushroom creamy tagliatelle

And here we are back at Monday again?  The weekends flyyyy by so quickly!  I hope you had a wonderful mothers day..

Mondays for me is a day where I want a quick and tasty meal.  Don't ask me why it's not like Mondays are as a rule particularly busy but I tend to start the week either lacking motivation or with tons of it, nothing in between.  So either I can't be bothered making anything that will take more than 30 or so minutes or I wear myself out doing washing/cleaning that the outcome is the same.  Call it Monday-itis cooking.

I actually make this one ahead of time, cover it in aluminium foil before school finishes and pop in the oven with it off until 40 minutes before dinners starts.  The top goes a little crispy and I love that.  But you can serve it straight away if you like too!

Ingredients:

300g dry tagliatelle

1 onion, finely diced

2 rashers of bacon finely diced or piece of speck 3cm x 4cm squared, finely diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

4 chicken thighs, roughly diced

1/2 cup dry wine

10 medium sized button mushrooms

200ml cream

50g parmesan cheese, finely diced

Method:

Boil some water in a large saucepan and add your tagliatelle.  Meanwhile fry your onion, garlic and bacon in a heavy set pan or large saucepan and heat until onion becomes translucent 

Add chicken, mushrooms and white wine, simmer until chicken is cooked and mushrooms are soft.

Add cream and parmesan and simmer until thickens.

Mix through tagliatelle and some freshly chopped parsley.