Mezgaldi

When I saw the title of this post over at Dutch Girl Cooking, my first thought was Mezga what?? Then I saw the photos of the beautiful caramelized onions, browned to perfections, calling to me from their warm baking dish.

I love onions.

Wait I don’t think you understand.

I LOVE ONIONS.

You all have to do me a favor. When I tell you that I love onions, visualize me saying it in the sultriest, most demonstrative voice you can imagine. I really, really love onions. Caramelized onions are my crack. They are so high on my list of foods I love, that the only thing I can liken my craving to is the way I imagine a heroin addict must crave his next hit. It’s that bad.

I’ve been known to cook up a heaping bunch of them and eat half of them straight out of the pan before they even hit the table.

I got it bad.

So imagine now the salivation that occurred when I saw this recipe for a Moroccan based dish for my beloved onions brushed with cinnamon and ginger and curry powder, oh my. This dish was originally made by Kay’s Moroccan neighbor. Bless you sweet woman. I could have sat down with some crusty bread and eaten all of these straight outta the baking dish. The flavors were just amazing. You get the little hints of the spices in each bite. This dish was so excellent that I can’t wait to make again.



Mezgaldi
recipe from Dutch Girl Cooking
Printable recipe
4 medium sized onions (I used yellow, Kay thinks a sweet onion would make this dish too sweet).
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon turmeric or ¼ teaspoon curry powder
¼ teaspoon coarse black pepper
3 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon granulated sugar

Peel 4 medium sized onions and slice into 1 inch thick. Grab a bowl and combine 3 tablespoons oil with the turmeric or curry, the cinnamon, ginger, and pepper. Mix it all up.

Brush the oil on top of both sides of the onion. Place them in an oven safe dish. It’s ok if they overlap each other.

If there is any marinade left, add it in as well and then pour 2 tablespoons of water down the sides of the baking dish. Tightly wrap with foil and place in the center of a preheated oven. Bake at 400 for 40 to 45 minutes, until they are nice and soft.

Take out of the oven, uncover and drizzle with some of the cooking juices that have accumulated at the bottom. Sprinkle the sugar on top. Turn the oven up (I put mine at 500) and place the baking dish back in, uncovered. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the top layer caramelizes and turns golden brown. I actually put mine under the broiler for about 5 minutes so they would get good and caramelized.

Heaven.

Quick Spaghetti Carbonara

Pasta
Bacon
Cream
Cheese
Eggs

What’s not to like about those 5 ingredients besides the fact that if you indulge in any one too much, your hips would double in size? Other than that small minor detail, just the mere thought of all those ingredients in one dish makes my heart swoon.

I set out to make some spaghetti carbonara. I had seen a lot of carbonara recipes floating around recently and every magazine I subscribe too seems to have at least one recipe for it lately. I looked around at a dozen or so recipes from sources I trust and found that no one makes carbonara the same way. There are a thousand different variations of it out there. Some with pancetta instead of bacon, some made with no cream, some with half & half, some include garlic, some don’t. When it comes to recipes like this one, I think you just kind of find the right combination of ingredients and flavors and just make it your own.

You think a nice Italian girl like me would have been making carbonara for years and years right? Nope. Can’t say that I have. Can’t even remember if my Nonna did either.

This is my version. It’s quick and easy. This is the way my family likes it. Well, let me make one correction, if my husband had his way, there would be 3 pounds of bacon in it.



Spaghetti Carbonara
Printable Recipe
1 pound of spaghetti or bucatini
10 slices of bacon
1 cup heavy cream
½ cup Parmesan cheese
5 large egg yolks
Salt & pepper
Additional grated cheese for serving

Cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook until the bacon is brown and crisp. Remove the bacon from the pan and drain on paper towels. Leave the drippings in the pan. Once the bacon is cool enough to handle, break it into pieces.

Whisk the cream, the cheese and the egg yolks in a medium bowl to blend. Whisk in 3 tablespoons of the drippings from the skillet. Set the cream mixture aside and discard the remaining drippings.

Cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling water until al dente. Please don’t over cook your pasta. Mushy pasta is just nasty. Drain the pasta and return it to the pot. Add the cream mixture to the pasta. Toss over medium-low heat until the sauce cooks through and coats the pasta (about 4 – 5 minutes). Mix in the bacon. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve with additional grated cheese.

Penne Salmon Bake

We are a salmon loving family. It’s one of my absolute favorite fishes. My standard preparation for salmon is to cover it in honey and bake until it’s flaky, and trust me, salmon cooked that way is a great meal in and of itself, but I decided I wanted to experiment and incorporate it into a casserole. So I poked around on the food blog search and looked at what other people were doing with salmon and then came up with my own version of this Penne Salmon Bake.

This was creamy, but not too heavy. Everyone loved it, even my picky eater Evan. I served this with a nice big salad. Definitely one to make again.

Penne Salmon Bake
Printable recipe
8 tablespoons butter (1 stick)
1 pound penne
1 to 1 ½ pounds salmon fillet
1 ½ tablespoons honey (or enough to cover your salmon)
2 cups half and half
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
¼ teaspoons ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 400. Place a piece of parchment on a baking sheet and lay the salmon on it. Pour the honey over the salmon and spread to coat the entire surface. Bake for approximately 20 minutes, or until salmon flakes easily. Don’t overcook! Set aside until cool enough to handle. Flake into pieces with a fork. Turn the oven up to 425.

Grease a 2-quart baking dish. Cook the penne in boiling salted water until it is al dente, drain and return to the pot. Toss with one tablespoon of butter and set aside.

In a saucepan whisk together the half and half, remaining butter, cheese and nutmeg over medium heat until the sauce thickens. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Pour the sauce over the penne, add parsley and salmon and mix gently. I sprinkled a small amount of Parmesan over the top before baking too.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until piping hot.

Summer goals.

· Learn to make a great cocktail.

· Perfect my new project - leaf castings.

· Learn how to make hypertufas. (look it up)

· Go blueberry picking.

· Go strawberry picking.

· Eat lots of the berries that I picked.

· Cook with the berries I picked.

· Take my kids to Bodies Revealed.

· Go to the beach more.

· Have at least 5 picnics.

· Visit the Butterfly exhibit at the zoo.

· Catch up on my reading.



· Take better photos.

· Paint my toes a funky colors instead of my usual red.

· Create some new salads with all the greens I planted.

· Makes some new dressing to go with the new salads.

· Work on my making Christmas presents – yes I know I’m sick.

· Find a big Buddha statue for the garden.
No I’m not Buddhist, I just want a little fat man in the back yard.



· Worry less.

· Want Less.

· Give More.

I think I can do it.

Ice Cream Sundae Bar

I highly recommend that at your next party you have an ice cream sundae bar.





The kids and the adults all loved it.

Sara declared me a genius for thinking of the idea.





The sugar hyped children told me they would love one at every party we host.

Smart kids.

Tortellini Pasta Salad

This is going to be a quick post. It's going to be a very busy Saturday for us. We're having a birthday party for Jess today. Its rained most of the weekend. Oh I grumbled and cussed. Over the past 14 years we've had 2 birthdays without rain. We thought by holding off later into the month we'd surely get sunshine, but the weather forecast was grim. Rain predicted straight through next Wednesday!

We didn't prep the yard cause we figured that the party would be in the house, but we woke up this morning to find that the sun really did want to come out after all and the rain will be holding off till early in the morning hours! Thank you Mr. Sunshine, thank you!

Now we are on a mad dash to get the rain soaked yard ready and I have to finish up a few things in the kitchen. I thought I'd post this super easy recipe for Tortellini Pasta Salad that is super simple to throw together.



There really isn't a recipe for this. I just add in whatever I have on hand.

Tortellini Pasta Salad
Frozen cheese tortellini (I used 2 pounds cause I'm feeding a crowd)
Pesto
red onion
sliced olives
artichoke hearts
diced cheddar cheese
fresh parsley
cherry or grape tomatoes

Cook the tortellini in boiling salted water until done. Drain and rinse with cold water. Add the ingredients into a large bowl and toss with pesto. I also add a dash of Italian dressing in just before I serve it to give it a little zing.

I used store bought pesto (GASP!). My local warehouse club sells a great organic pesto from a company called LOVE Inc., which is fantastic. I use this until I can make more of my own. Come on sunshine, my basil plants need some photosynthesis!

So if your looking for a change from the usual pasta salad give tortellini a try.

Schools out for summer!

Today is the last day of school for the kids.

They are pretty excited about it.

Jesse plans on sleeping till noon tomorrow.

I'm sure he will have no problem doing that.

He also decided that he was going to buzz off all his hair Wednesday night. Seeing that he spends more time in the bathroom then the rest of us combined, I was more than happy to assist him in removing the wavy clumps of tresses that have been blow dried for hundreds of hours over the past school year.

Jesse before:



Jesse during:



Jesse After:



The aftermath:



John said he went from looking like Moe to looking like Curly.

Jess said he feels much better already.
I'm crossing my fingers that this will cut down on shower and bathroom time.
I can only hope.