Tortellini with Parsnip Bolognese

I love tricky ways of making pasta healthy. Small things like sneakily changing out butter and cream for vegetables. I'm pretty sure that swapping parsnips for the roux in a traditional bolognese sauce cancels out of the cheese I sprinkle on top.

Right? You're all with me here. I know you are.

There's a delicious Parmesan butternut squash pasta that I make sometimes that's just like this. It's good even if you're not a squash fanatic. I'll share it with you sometime. It will make you happy. In the meantime, make this. It's delicious.

Tortellini with Parsnip Bolognese
Adapted from Bon Appétit, March 2011

2 large parsnips
2½ cups milk
1 cup Parmesan cheese
nutmeg
4½ tbsp butter
1½ lbs baby portobello mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp dried rosemary
3 8-9oz packages of cheese tortellini
1½ cups freshly grated mozarella cheese
salt
pepper

Peel and cut the parsnips into ½ inch rounds. In a medium saucepan, boil parsnips in salted water until very tender, about 20-30 minutes. Strain the parsnips and add to a food processor. Add 1½ cup milk and puree until smooth. Add the remaining 1 cup of milk with the processor running. If the sauce is thin, return it to the saucepan and reduce for a few minutes. If it is too thick, add more milk. The sauce should be a little thicker than a typical Alfredo sauce. Add ¾ cup of Parmesan cheese and a pinch of nutmeg. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, clean mushrooms and slice thinly. Melt 2½ tbsp butter in a large frying pan. Add the mushrooms. Add garlic and rosemary and cook until mushrooms are brown and the liquid released by them has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper.

You can stop at this point if you want, cooling and refrigerating the sauce and the mushrooms for up to 1 day. Warm the sauce before continuing.

Preheat the oven to 400°. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and cook tortellini according to package directions. Butter a 9x13 baking dish. Drain the pasta and mix with remaining 2 tbsp butter. Add the mushrooms to the tortellini and spread into baking dish. Pour the sauce on top. Sprinkle with Mozarella cheese and remaining Parmesan. Base until sauce is bubbly, about 20 minutes. To brown the cheese on top, broil for 2 minutes, turning once. Let rest for 5-10 minutes. Serve with a green salad.

Enjoy!

Beet Pasta

John has a seriously growing obsession with beets. The only other beet recipe I've posted here is Chicken with Roasted Root Vegetables, but I feel like we eat them all the time. I was looking around at the Bon Appétit website the other day and as soon as I came across this recipe I knew it would be an instant favorite in my house. Plus, I used red beets and then we got to eat pink pasta. Score.

Farfalle with Beets and Spinach

Adapted from Bon Appétit 

The recipe calls for a few things that I either couldn't find or didn't have. First were the golden beets. Normally my local grocery has delicious golden beets with beautiful beet greens. But of course, the one time I really wanted golden beets with beautiful beet greens, they were out. I resorted to using red beets (which is why my pasta turned pink) but the greens weren't exactly beautiful. I substituted spinach and it was delicious! If you can find beets with nice looking greens, use those instead of the spinach that I used in the recipe.

⅓ cup pine nuts

2 large bunches of beets (golden or red, depending on what color you want your pasta), peeled and cut into 8 wedges

2 tbsp olive oil

2 large onions, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

8 oz spinach

12 oz Farfalle pasta

⅓ cup Parmesan cheese

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Boil beets until tender, about 10 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, drain beets. Return the water to a boil and cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain, reserving 1 cup cooking liquid, and keep pasta warm.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet, toast the pine nuts over medium heat, tossing often, 4-5 minutes until lightly browned. In the same skillet, heat 2 tbsp olive oil over low heat. Cook the onions on low until lightly browned, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for about 1 minute. Add the spinach (or beet greens) in bunches and sauté until wilted, 5-7 minutes.

In a large bowl, mix the pasta, beets, greens, and Parmesan cheese. Add enough of the cooking liquid, about ¼ cup at a time until sufficiently moistened. Mix until combined. Season to taste with salt and pepper. To serve, sprinkle with additional Parmesan cheese and toasted pine nuts.

Enjoy!                 

Tortellini Soup

I have seriously woken up every day this week wishing for summer. Every day. I'm so sick of cold and snow and sleet and snirt, which I learned the other morning when I was snowed in is a term New Yorkers coined for a combination of snow and dirt. Snirt. Gross.

I'm sick of it all. I want it to go away. I want to go outside and plant my garden and play in the yard with my dogs without my hands freezing off. OK, I'm done.

To get me out of this I wish winter would just hurry up and leave funk, I made soup. Like any normal person does, right?

This recipe was featured a few weeks ago on the Tasty Kitchen Blog. Have you been there yet? It's an awesome place for all kinds of recipes.I've found a few recipes on there, but the Mattar Tofu is one I've posted about.

This was unbelievably easy. I threw it all together in about 15 minutes and had a warm winter blues relieving soup on the table in a flash. And it' helped! (A little)

Tortellini Soup
Adapted from The Well-Fed Newlyweds on Tasty Kitchen

1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1/2 small onion
1 tsp dried oregano
5 cups vegetable broth
1 14.5oz can whole peeled tomatoes
1 19oz package cheese tortellini
4 cups fresh spinach
Parmesan cheese, to serve

Heat the olive oil in a large pot. Saute onions until soft, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the oregano, broth and tomatoes to the pot. Break up the tomatoes with the back of your spoon. Add salt and pepper to taste, then bring to a boil. Add the tortellini and cook according to package directions. When the tortellini has about 1 minute left to cook, stir in the spinach. To serve, ladel into large bowls and sprinkle with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!

Cheesy Baked Pasta

Ever look in your refrigerator and wonder what you can throw together from the random ingredients that are lurking behind milk that might have expired a few days ago and roasted chicken that you're not too excited about eating anymore? This was one of those meals on one of those nights where I wanted to clean out the fridge, but I was sick of leftovers and wanted something a little different. When I combined my scouring efforts between the pantry and the fridge, I had found a half of a box of pasta, leftover pizza sauce and lots and lots of cheese. First, I thought of just whipping up spaghetti, which sounded too boring for me that night. But cheese sounded good, which isn't exactly a stretch considering no one has ever had to force me to eat mass quantities of cheese. So some sort of cheesy pasta dish was in the works.

And then I remembered that John got me these super cute individual sized baking dishes for Christmas that I've been wanting to try out. Thus, cheesy baked pasta was born. And it was good.

Cheesy Baked Pasta
6 oz bowtie pasta (or any leftover pasta you have lying around)
1 cup pasta sauce
1 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded
Parmesan cheese

Cook the pasta according to the package directions. Meanwhile, heat the sauce in a medium sized saucepan over low heat. Once the pasta is cooked, drain and add to the simmering sauce. Stir to coat the pasta in the sauce then pour it evenly into two small oven proof dishes. Top each with half of the shredded mozzarella cheese and then sprinkle with Parmesan. Turn on the broiler and place both dishes on the top rack of the oven, leaving a few inches between the broiler and the top of the pasta. After about 5 minutes, or when the cheese is starting to brown, flip the dishes so that they are both evenly browned on all sides. Broil for another 5 minutes, or until the cheese is completely melted and starting to turn golden brown. Carefully remove the dishes from the oven and serve with crusty bread and salad.

Enjoy!

Creamy Orchiette with Kale and Chard

Apparently I'm on a pasta kick right now. I promise that the next post will not include any sort of pasta! I think... well that's the plan right now. I might have to change that up in case I get a massive macaroni and cheese craving. Which is not at all out of the ordinary.

In other news, John dug out one of his old lenses this weekend. It's been my favorite toy for the past few days. He just keeps hiding all the awesome camera equipment! I'm going to raid his camera bag soon.

OK, back to food. For those of you wondering why I always use chard and kale together, I will answer your question. Because I don't want to keep you up at night. It's just not the type of person I am. The only real reason is that we usually get only about 3-4 stalks of kale in our CSA share for that week and that usually isn't enough to make a real meal for two people. We were growing chard in our backyard (this is the last of it!) so we usually just picked enough of that to make up for the sad amount of kale. That's the mystery my friends. I'm sure you were on the edge of your seat.

But regardless, you should totally make this tonight. It's fantastic.

Creamy Orcchiette with Kale and Chard
4 stalks kale
5-7 stalks rainbow chard
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 cup whole milk
1 tsp flour
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
3/4 lb Orcchiette

Cook orcchiette according to package directions. Drain and keep warm.

Meanwhile, melt butter in large saute pan. Cook onions for about 3-4 minutes until soft. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add kale and cook down for several minutes, stirring occasionally. Next add the chard and cook down for several minutes until both kale and chard are completely tender. Slowly pour milk and mix with the greens. Sprinkle flour over milk and greens and stir to avoid clumps. Mix in Parmesan cheese and turn heat to a simmer. Cook sauce until thickened and creamy. Add pasta to the pan and mix to evenly cover the sauce and greens.

Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and serve! Enjoy!

Eggplant and Tomato Pasta

Weekday meals for me are almost always easy. Unless I'm in the mood to cook up a storm (which usually only happens on the weekends) dinners have to take less than 45 minutes to prepare, from cutting board to plate. Not because I don't enjoy cooking, but because on weekdays I want to get home from work, eat dinner, and then relax.

This dish was one of those awesome meals that you can make in about 30 minutes. Yay!


I saw this severely misshapen eggplant at the farmers market and I had to have him. I mean, who else would buy him and truly appreciate all of the weird nooks and crannies in his purple skin? To me, he looked like the people on Wall-E.

Eggplant and Tomato Pasta

1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium eggplant, chopped in 1/2 inch cubes
3 tomatoes, chopped
1/4 cup red wine
10 fresh basil leaves, chopped
1 tsp salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp parsley
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2-3/4 lb penne

Heat olive oil and butter in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add onions and cook until soft, about 4-5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add eggplant to the pan and cook for 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally until eggplant are cooked and slightly reduced in size. Add tomatoes to the pan and stir to combine. Next, slowly pour the wine into the pan and cook to reduce slightly, about 1-2 minutes. Add basil, parsley, oregano, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper to the sauce, stir and cover. Reduce heat to medium low and let sauce simmer for 10 minutes, until vegetables are tender.

Meanwhile, cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and add pasta to the sauce. Stir to combine. Serve with freshly grated Parmesan cheese and crusty bread.

Enjoy!