Dangerously Delicious Pasta Bake

I love pasta. I love cheese. I love tomatoes. I love garlic bread. I love lamp. (JK) Well I guess with my mixture of Italian and Japanese background it would be only right to share with you this pasta bake right after we had an Asian dish! It was delicious!! Each bite was full of flavor and definitely made enough to go around!! I found this recipe on Tracey's Culinary Adventure (still absolutely LOVING all her recipes)!  So let's stop the chit chat and get right down to it!!

Ingredients
1 (28 oz) can whole peeled tomatoes
1 lb. Italian sausage (Casing removed) hot or sweet
6 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp salt
3 C water
12 oz Ziti
1/2 c heavy cream
1 oz Parmesan cheese
Dash or two or three of parsley (flavor according to your liking)
4 oz Mozzarella cheese

Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees.

Add your can of tomatoes to a food processor and pulse about 10-12 times until all the large pieces are broken down and you have "tomato sauce".

Set a LARGE skillet on the stove over medium heat. Add the sausage (casings removed) and cook until no longer pink. All the while take a wooden fork or spatula and break up the sausage as you cook. 

The casings are still on in this picture. The easiest way to remove them (if you never have) is to take a small knife and slide it under the casing the whole length of the sausage. If you try and peel it off it can get messy and squishy (couldn't think of a better word lol). This way once you have a slit the entire length of the sausage you can just peel it back and it comes right off! 

Once the sausage is cooked, go ahead and add in the garlic and red pepper. Cook about 30 seconds to 1 minute, or until it gets fragrant (I promise this won't take very long)! 

Garlic-I can smell it cooking just looking at it

Stir in your tomato blend and salt. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes. 

I threw in some green onion at the last minute! Added color and little pop of flavor! 

Once you have simmered this mixture on the stove, add the 3 cups of water and pasta to the skillet (I told you that you would need a BIG skillet)!! Cover and turn up the heat back medium and cook about 15 minutes! You are going to want to stir this frequently or else it will all start to stick together and to the pan!!

After about 15 minutes (I checked the pasta to see if was soft) you're going to want to add the heavy cream, Parmesan cheese, and parsley. Stir this all together and season with salt and pepper. 

Heavy cream to help thicken the sauce

Okay, now if you have a skillet that is oven safe, you're going to want to top the pasta with Mozzarella cheese and place it in the oven for 10 minutes to bake. My skillet is NOT oven safe so I transferred mine to a baking dish, topped it with cheese and baked for 10 minutes! Threw in a couple slices of bread (in the toaster) to make garlic bread slices while the pasta was cooking! After the 10 minutes of cooking, your cheese should be melted and slightly browned on top! WARNING: this is a heavy dish and will make plenty! So, pace yourself!! I wanted to eat it ALL but also didn't want to wake up the next morning and only be able to fit in stretchy pants for the next few days! Moral of the story here: A small helping with go a long way because it's rich with flavor and the sausage adds some "meat" to any helping! (Sorry, no pun was intended there! That was cheesy (again sorry))!! Sheesh!! 

Pre-Bake

Right out of the oven

Ready to eat!

A good indication that it was delicious! 

Wiped the plate down with my last bite of bread (just in case you were thinking, Did she lick the plate clean?)

So, there you have it! A delicious weeknight meal that will last you and yours a couple of days!! Check back soon for a pork tenderloin recipe!! Until then...

~Happy Eating~

Ronald Reagan's Hamburger Soup

I decided it was time for some hearty soup with the falling leaves, and colder nights! I'm so bad about cooking soups in the summer because it's one of those things that warms your bones and when it's 110 degrees outside, it's hard to get in the mood for that! So, I looked through Tasteful Traditions cookbook put together by Fellowship Bible Church here in Tulsa, and found this recipe which was submitted by Connie Athens.

It is delicious, it is hearty, and it is easy....so here we go!

The ingredients you will need for this are as follows:
2 lbs. ground beef (we used venison)
2 T butter
2 cloves chopped garlic
1/4 tsp pepper
1 (10 oz) can Hominy (I used white hominy)
1 c diced green peppers
12 c beef broth or water with bouillon cubes (I used 10 cups of water (because I ran out of room in my pot) and 10 bouillon cubes)
16 oz Chopped tomatoes, canned or fresh (I used petite diced)

The portions of this I omitted are:
1 1/2 c sliced carrots
2 c celery
Only because I couldn't wrap my brain around carrots, and celery on a hamburger. The hominy....well, I just love hominy! So it stayed!!

You are going to brown the beef in a 6 quart sauce pan (I used an over-sized skillet) in the 2 T butter.
Next you will add onions, garlic and green peppers-Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes. Next add your beef broth or water with bouillon cubes. Then add the chopped tomatoes (I drained mine first), and the pepper. Simmer the soup on low for 35 minutes and then add the hominy and bring the soup back to a boil for another 10 minutes. (I boiled it for 10 minutes and then I put it back on low/warm and covered it until Dee Jay got home about 30 mins later).

To top off our bowls we added a small handful of shredded Cheddar cheese (so I guess we actually had cheeseburger soup) and that really put it over the top on the greatness scale!

If you're looking for a quick meal, I had most of these ingredients in my pantry already! 

The only thing I would have to leave out was the hominy (::sigh::) but use what you have and get creative! We hope everyone is having a great week so far (it's almost over)!! Stay tuned! 

New recipes are coming soon!! 

~Happy Eating~

Venison Stroganoff as requested by Dee Jay

Randomly one evening Dee Jay decided he wanted Stroganoff. I started thinking about it, and looked up some good recipes for this dish that is often forgotten. It's not always the "prettiest" dish, and I must have put it in the back of my mind because I couldn't remember the last time I had it. I finally settled on Paula Deen's Beef Stroganoff Recipe, but instead of beef we used some of our venison stew meat we had frozen from last hunting season. Venison is actually better for you than beef, and you can click here to read more about it on Livestrong.com, which I look at almost daily for fun facts for just about everything I need to know!! So here's how it went down venison style in our kitchen...
Remember you can substitute beef into our version if you don't have venison in your freezer :)

You start out with one to one and half pounds of venison stew meat, a couple of dashes of salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

(You will find her recipe for "House Seasoning" in the link...I just didn't want to make that much of it, so I improvised).  Sprinkle the meat with the seasoning and then dust the meat with flour.

So tender...I know this picture looks real appetizing ya'll...Sorry

 

Then in a large skillet you are going to add two tablespoons of olive oil and three tablespoons of butter. Once that is warmed and ready to go, go ahead and brown the meat on all sides. Once the meat in browned take it out of the pan and reserve the liquids (as in leave everything in the pan but the meat). To the liquid in the skillet you are going to add one medium size onion chopped (we just halved a large onion), and an 8 oz package of mushrooms sliced up!  

 

Saute this around until the onion gets tender (it smelled so fantastic in our kitchen right at about this point)! After the onion is looking tender go ahead and sprinkle a teaspoon of flour in the skillet.

Makes your mouth go mmmm...mmmm....mmmmmm!

Then add the steak back in to the pan with the onions and mushrooms. Now you're going to pour in one (10 3/4 oz) can of beef broth, and one (10 3/4 oz) can of cream of mushroom soup, right in to the skillet and turn the heat down low! You're going to simmer this on low for about 30 minutes and let it soak up all the gravy goodness and do the loosen your pants dance while you get the pasta ready and eat it all up!! Now we used bow-tie pasta but egg noodles work great too, it really came down to the fact of what I saw first in the cabinet! So I cooked the pasta and by the time I had the pasta cooked and drained the meat was ready and we were good to go! (NOTE: Right before you serve it up, add one cup of sour cream to the skillet and stir around and let it warm up). All you do now is place the pasta on a plate or in a bowl and cover with the meat and juices from the gravy in the pan and get ready for a delicious dinner!!

Yummy and hearty! Can't go wrong with that combo

 

So, here is the run-down and the link to Paula Deen's Beef Stroganoff 

~Happy Eating~

 

1 1/2 pounds venison (or beef)
House Seasoning (that's the salt, pepper and onion powder)
All-purpose flour
2 tablespoons olive oil 3 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, sliced
8 ounces fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 (10 3/4-ounce) can beef broth
1 (10 3/4-ounce) can cream of mushroom soup
Salt and black pepper
1 cup sour cream
Cooked egg noodles

 

Sprinkle house seasoning over the meat then dust with flour. 

Heat up olive oil and butter in a large skillet and brown the meat. Remove meat from skillet (save drippings). 

Add onion and mushrooms to skillet and saute until the onion is tender (just a couple to three minutes). 

Sprinkle in 2 teaspoons of flour and add meat back in to the skillet. Cover with beef broth and cream of mushroom soup and cover and simmer on low for 30 minutes.

Add sour cream just before serving over a bed of cooked noodles!!

Just a fun side note...I've had a few people send me recipes this week on things they wanted me to share/try out/eat/pig out on etc etc....So, in a week I'm going to be cooking up your recipes!! The ones you have e-mailed me and random recipes I find on my friends Pinterest pages! Stay tuned to see if your recipes are coming up and send me recipes at ShellyHendrix@gmail.com because you know I'm game to try most anything once and love to discover what ya'll are cooking in your kitchens!!!

If you don't know what Someecards are you need to look them up or follow this link here

to go to their Pinterest page where I found this little gem floating around :)

 

 Photo found at someecards.com