Quick Roasted Tomato Pasta

Being that I am "with child" and therefore get very hungry, but don't want to spend much time making dinner and certainly very little time around a hot stove, I like dishes that are quick. This was very quick. So quick I was done cooking and had consumed my dinner way before the night's NFL game came on.

I had a bunch of cherry tomatoes getting kinda wrinkly - and while I will eat them wrinkly my husband certainly wouldn't. How to disguise wrinkly tomatoes? Roasting! Roasting always brings out the flavor in anything. I simply tossed them with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, put on a baking sheet, and roasted at 375 until the skins had popped and they were releasing their juices. I added some sliced garlic about halfway through to the pan.

2 cups cherry or other small tomatoes
2 cloves garlic, sliced
pasta
garnishes - onions, pesto, parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Toss tomatoes in a small amount of olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Put on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for around 15 minutes. You're looking for them to start looking "oozy". About halfway through add your garlic.

When done, put the whole mess on the cooking sheet into a saucepan with a teaspoon of olive oil. Keep warm.

Boil your pasta in a large pot with plenty of salt. When al dente, add to saucepan. I added a couple tablespoons of basil pesto and a 1/4 cup finely shredded parmesan cheese. If I had more ambition, I would have sauteed or roasted some chopped onion along with it.

Chicken Paillard

A paillard is simply a piece of meat pounded so that it is one even thickness. You will recognize the "paillard" if you've had schnitzel or chicken fried steak. Wiener Schnitzel is just veal pounded thin, breaded, and fried. I believe we had Wiener Schnitzel in Vienna on our honeymoon, though we weren't overly impressed by it. In fact, I probably had none considering veal grosses me out.

Over on this side of the pond, a paillard is used mainly so you can cook stuff quickly. A normal chicken breast would probably take 12-14 minutes in my kitchen to cook, but these took about 3 minutes per side. Last week I made paillard but couldn't find my grill pan so they were cooked in a regular nonstick skillet. I can tell you the grilled version is FAR superior.

These received very little treatment, just a brushing of olive oil, salt, and pepper. I went a little heavy on the pepper, and they were a little spicy when done.

You can use a lot of things to pound the meat thin - DO NOT use the pointy side of one of those meat mallets. Ever. For anything. They'll just tear up your meat. One of the things that basically looks like a metal disk with a handle on top work well. You need one that has enough heft that when you come down on the meat it actually does something. You can improvise with a rolling pin, but the problem is that it's so large that the end gets a lot more pressure than the middle, and you end up bashing the heck out of the meat and getting holes in it. If you're using a rolling pin, come down lightly and from not a high distance and use the middle of the pin, not the end.

I have this one, which was a wedding gift. I think I would prefer to have this one in the upper right - they call it a pounder.

Pound your meat out between 2 pieces of plastic wrap or parchment paper to about a 1/4 inch thickness. Brush with oil and season with salt, pepper, and whatever other seasonings you want. A brush of dijon mustard would be nice, sprinkled with some dried thyme.

Heat your grill pan over high heat. Using tongs place your paillard in the pan. It will stick - don't worry about it! At some point, it will start to release (after some nice grill marks are placed) and you can turn it 45 degrees if you want to get nice marks. Cook for about 3-4 minutes. Turn over and do the same to the other side. Remove from pan and let sit for about 5 minutes before serving.

Serve with mashed potatoes, salad, pasta, or any vegetable you like. A nice easy, healthful meal.

Pesto Pasta Potluck

Italian Potluck at work - much thanks to my J-dog Joana for giving me the idea. It saved me from slaving over vegetable lasagna - which is good, but dang I didn't want to spend that much time in the kitchen on a summer night.

To me, pasta salad is all about throw together what you have. Pasta, whatever vegetables, and a dressing. Tonight I made use of the basil taking over my tiny garden and in fact, some of the tiny cherry tomatoes we have as well. I added some green onion and red bell pepper. I was going to add defrosted peas but forgot - oh well.

The recipe for the basil pesto can be found here.

Pasta Pesto Salad

2 boxes wheat rotini pasta
1 cup basil pesto
halved cherry tomatoes
1 red pepper, chopped
chopped green onion tops
salt and pepper

Boil 2 quarts hot water with enough salt that it's salty to the taste.

Boil the pasta until slightly more al dente than you would serve warm with sauce. Drain and plunge into icy water to stop the cooking. Leave a few minutes to chill if you are serving right away.

Drain and add the pesto. Add the halved cherry tomatoes, red pepper, and onion. Stir together. Taste, then add appropriate salt and pepper.

If I'd had some cheese, say feta or goat cheese, I would have added that. This could be done with boccacini, tomatoes, and julienned basil to make a Caprese pesto salad. Mmm!

Utterly Delicious Chocolate Cake

I stole that description from Martha - she's always saying use superlatives to describe your food and your guests WILL BELIEVE that it is utterly delicious! In this case, the superlatives are not needed, as this great hunk of chocolate bliss stood on its own. Rich chocolate cake supported by its favorite player, velvety ganache. mmmmm. The above picture shows all that was left after my grandmother's 77th birthday celebration.

I truly couldn't believe how well this cake turned out. I'm not a great cake maker, as something always happens in the oven to make my cake come out lopsided or just baked WRONG and then no amount of frosting can cover it up. This time was no exception. I had thought I had 1 9" cake pan at home, so I purchased a 2nd, only to come home and find that I had 1 8" cake pan at home. sigh...so I was left to make them in my sorry silicone cake pan bakeware, which requires much babysitting and moving around of pans. Still, they didn't come out completely horrible, and after a few shave-downs to make them more even and an overnight visit in the fridge and a quick chill in the freezer, they weren't half bad to work with. From now on I'm taking the advice of professional cake makers and making my cakes ahead and chilling them.

The star of the cake I think truly was the ganache. I'd made ganache before to churn out bonbons, but never as a frosting. I had always assumed it was too liquidy to be a frosting, but chilling and letting it set up really gives it the consistency of frosting. I don't know if I will ever really go back to using buttercream, as it's such a pain to make and work with and this...well it was utterly delicious!

Awesome Chocolate Cake

2 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon baking soda
3 cups granulated sugar
5 eggs, room temp
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups buttermilk, room temp
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups strong coffee

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour sides and bottoms of pans. Set pans aside.

In large bowl of mixer, stir together the flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder and soda. Stir in the sugar.

In small bowl, combine the eggs and vanilla extract. Mix into the dry ingredients. Stir in the buttermilk, melted butter and coffee. Divide batter evenly among pans.

Bake at 350 for around 50 minutes. Transfer to wire cooling rack.

I can never find enough to make with buttermilk so I never have it on hand. In this case I subbed milk with some vinegar added. I couldn't tell you the measurements, but just make sure the mixture equals 1 1/2 cups. I also didn't use strong coffee, but instead chose to follow the directions on the back of my instant espresso powder for making 1 1/2 cups or 12 ounces of espresso.

Easy Foolproof Ganache

18 ozs semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon liquor or flavoring (optional)

Heat cream until nearly boiling. Pour over chocolate chips, cover and let sit 10 minutes. Whisk chocolate and cream (and flavor if using) until well combined; dark, smooth and glossy.

Let sit at room temp until cooled. To thicken, beat with hand mixer for a few minutes. Also thickens over time as it sits.

Refrigerate in airtight container for up to a week. To restore to spreading or glazing consistency, heat and stir over double boiler for a few minutes until softened.

I let my ganache sit out and in the fridge for probably 30 minutes, then spread it between the layers and on top. I then put the whole frosted cake in the fridge until it was time to transport. This helped a lot to firm it up for its short, albeit warm, transport to the party.

I omitted the liquor and flavoring as I didn't want to screw it up. In the future I would probably experiment with Kahlua or Grand Marnier, or even citrus extract. I would probably match it in the cake as well.